Ray Stevens Its Me Again Margret
TechRadar Verdict
The Misfit Ray'due south unusual looks will appeal to some, but it's severely express in terms of functionality – not to the lowest degree considering of the near non-real display – and struggles to justify its price tag.
Pros
- +
Unusual pattern
- +
Slick software
- +
6-month battery life
Cons
- -
Basic features
- -
Quite expensive
- -
Doesn't role equally a picket
The Misfit Ray is a style-obsessed fitness tracker. It wants to exist thought of as a slice of jewellery as much as a piece of tech.
Every bit a event, though, it's fairly expensive for what is a rather basic device. Information technology costs £79, $99, AU$135, so while it's cheaper than your average Android Habiliment picket, it arguably does a bit less than the cheaper Fitbit Flex.
Design and features
The commencement thing to get your caput around is that the Misfit Ray does not tell the time. With only a unmarried tiny niggling multi-colour LED on its forepart, a spotter face but isn't an option.
Permit's take a closer look at what the Misfit Ray is made of. Its body is an aluminium tube, the straps a translucent rubbery silicone.
The tube is no mere fashion offer, though. Twist around ane of the sides of the strap and the battery compartment pops out – this holds three 393 cells, and takes up a decent amount of the space in the tube.
The Misfit Ray looks unlike – bold, even – simply my honest first reaction was that it also looks a bit like something you might take to wear after a stint in prison; thankfully, though, an alert doesn't sound when you take the Ray off your wrist.
It's also merely halfway there in terms of comfort. Problems with wearables tend to centre effectually weight, skin-irritating straps and flat-out poor ergonomics. The Misfit Ray is pretty light, and the thin strap feels fine, merely unless you like your watches quite loose the main 'barrel' just isn't that comfortable.
As there's no curvature to its length, no flattening-out of its bottom, the surface expanse that actually rests against your wrist is quite small – and after a couple of days information technology had given me a sore wrist, apparently lightly bruising the meridian tissue.
This tin can be avoided by loosening the strap, but information technology's a clear sign that the Ray is ergonomically poorer than something like the Fitbit Flex or Sony SmartBand Talk SWR30, both of which are designed to follow the contours of your wrist, non actively disregard them.
As you lot can probably tell by at present, I'm not in love with the Ray's design. I like the bronze-inflected anodised finish to the aluminium, but that aside it feels a lot like strapping an AAA bombardment to your wrist. However, I practice appreciate how different information technology is to your everyday tracker.
Specs and performance
The Misfit Ray is a rudimentary fitness tracker. It but really has three bits of important hardware at its disposal: a three-axis accelerometer, a Bluetooth connection and a vibration motor.
These are at the heart of everything the Ray tin exercise – and they reveal its limitations. The Ray can track your steps, it tin can track your sleep, and it'll fizz you to let y'all know you lot've received a call or text.
Note, though, that information technology is just calls and SMS letters on the notifications front – nothing else. As someone who tends to employ WhatsApp rather than SMS texting, the alerts are largely useless.
One of the neatest features of the Ray – in theory at to the lowest degree – is that it'll wake you up with a 'fizz' when it thinks yous're in a light part of the sleep pattern. This didn't always work for me, yet. On a couple of occasions I've been woken by my regular phone alarm rather than the Ray, either because the vibration alarm failed to wake me up, or didn't become off at all.
And if I was using the tracker longer-term it'd probably terminate upwardly on the bedside cabinet anyway. It's bigger than it appears in some photos, and acquit in mind that the cylinder role sticks out from your wrist past a good inch.
The Misfit Ray doesn't have an altimeter, a heart rate sensor or GPS, which means it tin't accurately track your runs or hikes, and can't differentiate between you walking up stairs or on apartment ground.
On the fitness front, and then, it's a pedometer, and little more. What elevates it above the sort of pedometer you might get at Poundland is the software. Misfit has a slick-looking app (iOS and Android) that keeps runway of your activity beyond the days, weeks and months.
Rather than focusing on the verbal number of steps y'all've washed the app has its own points organisation, making yous piece of work up to 1,000 points each twenty-four hour period. I much prefer looking at number of steps when that'southward the just recorded metric, and the app tells y'all this also, equally well as the estimated distance y'all've covered.
As with any wrist-worn tracker, don't wait great accurateness from the Misfit Ray. The issue is obvious: nosotros don't only move our arms when we walk/run. Trackers like the Ray use algorithms to try to discount this sort of movement, simply the Ray's isn't all that clever.
As a test I thought I'd see how many steps the Ray registered while I was rooted by to my chair, working – in about twenty minutes it had tallied 32.
Where trackers like the Misfit Ray can be useful is for making you a flake more than mindful of when your couch tater backside starts sprouting roots. In the Misfit app you tin can fix the scout to give you lot a fizz when you've been sedentary for too long. Of course, you lot can get your phone to practice the same affair, but it may prove useful for those in office jobs who don't keep telephone in pocket all day.
You can too tap the Ray to accept the LED indicate how nigh your daily target you are.
For a bit more impetus to get off your backside, there'south a social side to Misfit. You tin compare your 'points' to those of Misfit-owning friends. That'south just useful if you have some of those, of course, but Misfit tin also hook up with Google Fit, the default Android fitness software if you have an Android phone rather than an iPhone.
I savor low-level fitness tracking. It's fun to see how much you lot really move during the 24-hour interval, and how far you really walked that Saturday you lot spent schlepping around the museum. However, it'due south not useful beyond that; if you're training for a marathon (or even just a 5K), a GPS watch offers far more than useful data.
Sleep tracking, equally is generally the case, doesn't really offer much across the satisfaction of curiosity either. You become a graphic of bars that show you when y'all're in periods of light and deep sleep, and when y'all woke up completely. The Ray only needs the accelerometer for this, because information technology's all based on how much you move.
Compatibility and battery life
I feature of the Misfit Ray you might not similar is that y'all have to manually sync the tracker to get an update on how you're doing – your phone and the band aren't constantly talking to each other.
To practice this you pull down on the screen in the app. For a tracker that wants to earn some attention, it may surprise that it actually wants to be ignored almost of the fourth dimension.
This lazy approach to syncing is used because the Ray has non-rechargeable batteries rather than a more than usual li-on cell, and they need to concluding as long as possible. The three 393 batteries are finer little, just thick and stubby, lookout batteries, and are easy to supersede.
These are meant to last up to half-dozen months, and will cost you around £half dozen/$10 to replace. However, I'm well-nigh certain this effigy doesn't accept into business relationship using the Ray for frequent vibrate message alerts; a fiddling vibrate motor will apply a reasonable amount of free energy if it'southward firing off 100 times a day.
Either way, battery life is far longer than 95 percent of trackers – although bear in mind that this is a display-less, clock-less device.
The Misfit Ray works with Android phones running Android 4.3 or newer, and iPhones on iOS 7 or newer – if you lot're running something older, peradventure upgrading your phone should be a higher priority than ownership a Ray.
Source: https://www.techradar.com/au/reviews/misfit-ray
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