Hey, I'm Scott Stein.
How stylish do you like your wearable tech?
Is that a trick question?
Well, what I mean by wearable tech is basically anything that you put on your body then you starting seeing a pedometers, fitness trackers, smart watches and some of them look better than others.
Well, enter the MisFit Shine, which attempts to be the most stylish fitness tracker that's out there.
It's available in retail stores now and cost $100.
That's competitive with things out there like Fitbit
devices and the Withings Pulse which I also reviewed recently.
And there are handfuls of others.
You got the Nike Fuelband.
You got the Jawbone up.
What makes this different?
Well, these all pretty much use similar technology under the hood.
Usually 3 access accelerometer and sure enough this has it too.
But it's put into this totally alien housing.
It looks like a little sleek aluminum quarter and that's it.
This device has a built-in battery and Bluetooth and there are no buttons, no
charge port.
The whole thing is waterproof, you could swim with it.
You could also cycle with it.
You could take a shower with it.
It won't track your fitness in the shower as far as I know.
But it only works with iOS devices right.
It will work with Android probably early next year.
But this is a new company, trying to put some interesting and different on the market.
And the ideas that it feels more like a piece of jewelry.
To interact with it, there's not even a screen.
You double tap it and it brings up a ring of white LED lights, 12 of them
which begin to glow around to market progress on your day when you get to all 12 of them lit, it pulses and says, but it doesn't say anything, but it pulses to show you that you made it and succeeded in your goal, which you set via an app.
It also will tell you the time via a strange series of pulsing markers that will show you basically legging up one of the LED lights for hour and one of them for the minute and it looks like kinda cool and funky and will take some time to figure out.
It's there if you need it but it's not really a full
watch the way you'd imagine.
In the box, for a $100, you get the MisFit Shine and you will also get 2 accessories; a silicon watchband and you have a little attachment with a magnet clip that loops around the sides here and allows it to clip on to anything to hold on to your shirt or your belt or whatever.
Plus, it has a watch battery and a little accessory to pop-out the watch battery.
They might wear down overtime but the pieces are replaceable.
It's about $5 and $19 for the wristband
and you can also get a leather wristband if you want.
They'll even be selling a pendants you can wear this like a jewelry.
Or will you wanna wear it like jewelry, I don't know.
The wristband for me feels a little thin and a little more like a women's watch, although it does also feel like something out of Logan's run or some sort of a sci-fi like Elysium.
And that's the conversation starter here.
What is that?
What is that crazy thing clipped on your shirt?
And it has some appeal there.
But you have to understand that this is very minimal.
It's not gonna give you a read out.
It doesn't have a full set of features
like others and to sync it, you need to actually of that band and drop it onto your iPhone screen where it syncs seemingly like magic.
But, in fact, there's a reason why it's doing that.
It's making capacity of contact to initiate a very short range Bluetooth pairing because due to some of the metal, it doesn't have quite the long range of others previous press the button wall sitting on your wrist.
It's actually a bit of a downside because it kinda takes away the fun of wireless.
You literally have to drop it here
or hold the quarter here and hold it nearby.
I found that that works too.
It is interesting.
It is conversation started.
It could be usually lost.
It could scratch if you scrape it on the ground as I discovered.
But it is one of the more stylish fitness trackers out there.
And maybe it's a sign of where more stylish interesting wearable tech could go if people dare to think of tiny bit differently.
I'm Scott Stein and that's a quick look at
the mysterious MisFit Shine.
