Why You Can Trust CNET Lumo Lift review: A posture tracker that puts design over details
This magnetic tracker clips to your clothes to track your movement and posture throughout the day and sends that data to your iPhone.
The Lumo Lift addresses a metric that few other wearable fitness trackers up to this point have, that being your posture. It does this by resting against your upper torso (or décolletage), using hardware sensors and algorithms to measure your body's alignment. Every time you put it on, you calibrate it, telling Lift what posture you want to maintain -- whether that's perfectly upright, or slightly slouchy.
Lumo Lift
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
Then, throughout the day, the tracker keeps track of how often you stay in that posture and when you deviate from it. You can see your progress, as well as your step count and distance, in the Lift app available for iOS and Android.
Throughout my testing, I enjoyed wearing the Lift. However, be advised that it's up to you to tell the Lift what posture you want, and you don't get any data on how to improve your posture. The Lift also doesn't offer sleep or elevation tracking. The device did at least make me more aware of how I sit and stand, causing me to sit up a little straighter at my desk. And I agree with Lift that walking down the street with my shoulders back and head up made me feel more confident.
The Lift costs $100 (which equates to about £60 or AU$107), which is on par with the Fitbit Flex , and even a bit cheaper than the $130 Jawbone Up . It also ships outside the US, but don't forget to factor in international shipping charges.
Just a note: because this device uses magnets and is meant to be worn on your upper torso, those who use a pacemaker need to check with their physician before using the Lift.
All about design
What's unique about the Lift is that you wear it with a magnet, instead of clipped to your clothes or around your wrist. It's made up of two parts, the tracker and a small, square magnetic plate. The polycarbonate tracker houses the internal components, while the plate holds the Lift in place on your clothes. The entire tracker acts as a button that you press to program and use it.
The device is supposed to rest about 1 inch below your collarbone, with the tracker against your skin or an undershirt and the magnet plate on the other side. You can keep it hidden under your clothes, or keep it visible as a fashion accessory; just make sure it can rest close to your body.
The Lift comes in three color options, white, black, and silver, and includes a black-and-silver metal plate by default. You can purchase packs of additional plates in bright or neutral colors for around $20. There's also an included separate rounded clip that's meant to be worn around a strap, such as from a bra or undershirt.
The tracker is small, about the size of two quarters side by side, and just a few centimeters thick. Though the tracker is as thin and small as it can be, it's still big enough that I could easily feel it under my clothes. I didn't notice it getting in my way often, but occasionally the strap from my purse or backpack would press against it.
There are a few a downsides to how you wear the Lift. Since it has to sit close against your skin to get accurate readings, you can't wear it with loose-fitting tops. Instead, you'll need to attach it to an undershirt or bra strap. Even wearing it with a fitted T-shirt, I noticed by the end of the day the weight of the Lift had caused it to sag on my shirt, which looked bad and felt uncomfortable.
The Lift's magnetic configuration gives you some room to personalize it, which is great because many other fitness trackers don't give that option. You can create your own magnet clasp using a strong magnet that you can find at most craft supply stores, and then add something decorative on top, such as a repurposed piece of jewelry or a button.
The Lift comes with a magnetic (see a theme here?) charging cradle with two metal pins that connect to your tracker to charge it. It takes around 2 hours to fully charge the Lift, and once charged, it will last around five days. Unlike other fitness trackers, the Lift doesn't have an LED display, though it does have an LED charging status light.
Perfect posture
The Lift is meant to be worn daily to track your posture and steps. You attach it to your clothing, finding the right spot based on your outfit, and get into the posture you want for that day. Then press the device twice to calibrate it, and it goes into what Lumo calls the Align mode. The Lift will vibrate three times to tell you that it's taking a snapshot of your current posture that it will use as a baseline for the rest of the day. You can recalibrate the Lift as often as you want, and Lumo encourages you to use Align every time you put the tracker on or adjust its placement.
Once it's calibrated, the Lift quietly observes your posture and motion throughout the day. If you want a more hands-on approach, the Lift has a coaching mode in which the tracker vibrates briefly when you slip out of your ideal posture. To start a new coaching mode, press and hold Lift for a few seconds until it vibrates once. Lift will then buzz every time you slouch, reminding you to adjust your posture. You can turn off the coaching mode by pressing and holding the tracker again until it buzzes twice.
According to Lumo, the Lift works by "detecting curvature at the top of your spine, in addition to the positioning of your shoulders, chest, and upper back." Each time you calibrate the device, it pays attention to how you're holding your body, and constantly checks that you're staying in roughly the same posture. The Lift is designed to track your upper body posture, that is, your upper spine, shoulders, and chest. Lumo's other posture wearable, Back, can track lower-body posture, including your lower spine and pelvis. It's worn around your waist and lower back.
It's really up to you to determine what your ideal posture looks like, as Lumo doesn't offer any suggestions. I understand that posture can be a very personal thing that's determined by your body's particular alignment, but I wish that the Lift included cues to help you get into a healthy posture, especially for people like me who are prone to slouching.
Step it up
Lift also tracks each step you take during the day, and the total distance you cover, just like the Fitbit Flex and Jawbone Up. It's tough to say exactly how accurate these measurements are, but to test out the step-counting feature, I wore both the Lumo Lift and my Fitbit One , which is designed specifically to track steps.
During one day of testing, August 7, 2014, to be exact, my Fitbit said I walked 10,007 steps and covered 4.11 miles. On the same day the Lift said I walked 9,534 steps and exactly 4 miles. That's not a huge difference -- just below 5 percent. I put both devices on at the same time and took them off at the same time, so the discrepancy could be due to how each tracker records steps. I wore my Fitbit One clipped inside my pants pocket, close to my hip, while the Lift was worn higher up on my chest. It could be that because the Fitbit was closer to my legs, it recorded more movement than the Lift.
I can't be sure if one tracker was more accurate than the other, but I'd say both the Fitbit and the Lift are completely capable of tracking your daily steps.
The Lift app
The accompanying Lumo Lift iOS and Android app manages all of your Lift activity, and the company is working on desktop apps for Mac and Windows. The mobile apps show you a dashboard of your posture and movement activity.
To start using your Lift, you'll need to set up it in the app -- it won't record any data until you do. The app then syncs data from your tracker over Bluetooth to give you daily reports on your activity. The app's main screen shows an hourly snapshot of your posture and movement.
Instead of showing you numbers right off the bat, the app gives you a status report with words. For instance, if you've had perfect posture and have been walking around in the last hour, the you will see, "Your posture was Remarkable" and "You were Active." You can have Remarkable, Good, or Slouchy posture, and you can be Super Active, Active, or At Rest. Those statuses depend on for how long in the last hour you held a particular posture, and how much you moved.
If numbers speak to you more than words, you can tap the screen to see more tangible stats. You'll see how many hours you've had good posture that day and how many steps you've taken. There's also the total distance, in miles, that you've traveled, and how many approximate calories you've burned. For each day, your goal is to have 4 good posture hours and walk at least 10,000 steps, and you cannot edit those goals. Coming from using a Fitbit, which lets you customize nearly every goal, it was a disappointment that I couldn't do that here.
Beyond the home screen, the app doesn't have much else going on. One feature allows you to start a new coaching session and set the number of minutes you want to last. You'll see a few cheeky messages on the screen encouraging you to keep up your good posture or improve how you're sitting or standing.
There's also an hour-by-hour view, which shows your posture and activity status for each hour. You can swipe left and right to view your log from previous days. Lastly, there is a simple profile of your personal information, including name, height, and weight.
While the app is pretty, with a minimalist colorful design, I wish there were more there. You can't drill down into your activity, seeing your posture or how many steps you took at specific hours in the day. There are no graphs or charts, just simple metrics shown on the screen. There's also no social aspect, meaning you can't connect with friends or other users to see their activity. Lumo plans to add additional features, including social interactions and posture tracking over time, in the coming months.
In addition to showing your daily activity in the app, Lift sends you emails when you meet certain milestones as well as a weekly summary of your activity. The emails are fun and informative, but there's no way to turn them off in the app, and I had trouble unsubscribing from the email itself.
Conclusion
Amid of sea of fitness trackers, the $100 Lumo Lift offers a fresh perspective in a well-designed package. It's a versatile tracker that can be worn securely a few different ways, and it stays mostly out of your way.
The Lift is a great start, but it could use some improvements. The coaching sessions, while helpful, can get annoying with frequent buzzing. The app is too focused on design, not on function, with limited features and no way to drill down into your data. I also wish it offered posture tips -- such as how to improve it and what good posture looks like on variety of people -- especially considering that Lumo has been working on posture tracking for several years now with its Back device.
After a few weeks of testing the Lift, I can't yet say that it had a lasting impact on my posture. However, it did make me more mindful of my posture while I wore it, and motivated me to walk and sit taller. In the same way that wearing a Fitbit on and off for the last several years has changed my habits so that I take the stairs more often, I can see the Lift slowly changing how I sit and stand for the better.