Update 1/4/2016: Replying to texts on the Microsoft Band 2 can be done both via voice command and on-screen interaction.
You don’t need to spend too much time with the Microsoft Band 2 to start wondering what the purpose the developers had in mind when they designed it. If you’ve seen any other activity tracker device out there such as the Jawbone UP 3, Jawbone 24UP, FitBit, Garmin Fenix 3 and so on, you’ll certainly immediately notice the difference.
If anything, the Microsoft Band 2 – and its predecessor of course – resemble something that we would call an attempt to breach the smartwatch market more than appealing to the ever-increasing need of activity tracker features market. While usual fitness trackers either aim for a minimalistic and subtle build or go full on the tracking utilities and interface, the Microsoft Band 2 graces us with what seems to be a responsive and stylish looking touchscreen; similar to what the Android Wear and Apple iWatch would, no?
There’s no denying that the new Microsoft Band 2 has a great potential to appeal to the professional activity tracker market as well, thanks to all the sensors that have been packed in. But the question remains just to what extent you can truly rely on it in that particular role, and how much of it is simply Microsoft’s version of wearable tech?
Pros:
- Particularly stylish
- Plenty of methods to track your activity and fitness sessions
- Simple to use
- Great screen
Cons:
- Obvious wear and tear early into using it
- Not a great amount of support for iOS and Android
- High battery usage
- Expensive for a fitness tracker
Microsoft Band 2 Design & Display
Out of all the wearable tech units we’ve reviewed so far, the Microsoft Band 2 is one of the best looking ones by far, regardless of what you use it as – whether you prefer it as a smartwatch or an activity tracker. It doesn’t actively hide the fact that it’s wearable tech like the Pebble Steel, nor does it scream fitness tracker like the Garmin Fenix. At least in what the front of the Microsoft Band 2 is concerned, it looks sleek and stylish.
Turn it around however to where the clasp is located and things don’t remain so impressive still. Overall, the band of the device is not particularly slim and even feels a little too wide for comfort around the metallic clasp part. Because of the method it employs of keeping the band fit around your wrist, you’ll often find the clasp rubbing against the desk when you’re working at the office and in various degrees of danger of it accidentally clinching to various surfaces. That brings us to the sad realization that the Microsoft Band 2 may end up looking older and more worn out than it should. Especially when that occurs mere weeks into using it.
On the bright side, however, it would seem that the comfort issues that many users reported with the original Microsoft Bands weren’t here to stay. Other than the rather elevated angle at which your arm will rest on a flat surface when you rest it on the armband is probably the only hindrance at perfect comfort when using it casually. Considering the way its body is built, with flexible bands and a slightly curved but firm display, some individuals may find it slightly uncomfortable around the top, depending on the shape of their wrist. On the bright side, however, the device comes in three separate sizes (with an attached online guide on how to decide which one is for you) that you can choose from so there’s a good chance one of the models will fit you just the way you wish.
In terms of button placement, the design of the Microsoft Band 2 is relatively simple. By that meaning that there’s not much to interact with physically; most of the controls will be done via the touchscreen display. However, at the bottom of the display, beneath the band’s edge you will find two separate buttons: the on/off/sleep button and the activity button. On the rear of the display you will find the sensors that are in charge of tracking heart rate. The charging slot is slightly difficult to find at first but it turns out to be a comfortably subtle and overall great placement: on the back of the clasp.
The Microsoft Band 2 has a 12.8 x 32 mm display, slightly curving around the wrist. The actual display is surrounded by a relatively wide bezel, but the entire area is covered with a layer of Corning Gorilla glass, giving the device a great and glossy look. Because it employs an AMOLED build, you’ll find a great amount of contrast and brightness on the Microsoft Band 2 screen coupled with deep, inky blacks. However, there’s also a fair amount of reflectivity attached to the display meaning that you might have some trouble reading it in sunlight.
The display supports a maximum resolution of 320 x 128, making for a very strange aspect ratio to begin with. And with that particular aspect ratio comes a relatively awkward layout for your notifications and recorded statistics for your activity. That’s not only because of the shape of the display but also because of its orientation; if you just attempt to look at it like you would at a normal watch, you’d have to tilt your head a fair amount to read the screen properly. Instead you’ll find yourself holding up your arm in a strange fashion as if you were making a post-contemporary salute-like gesture just so you can get a good read of what is being displayed. From that perspective, the Microsoft Band 2 feels more than awkward.
However, for anyone who has ever used the original Microsoft Band, the new display is more than just an upgrade; it’s a lot more responsive to touch, looks a lot better and even makes use of the curved display technology. However, having an AMOLED display attached to your wearable tech comes with several downsides. To name two that potential Microsoft Band 2 users will have to deal with are battery life and water resistance.
Firstly, you shouldn’t expect your tracker to go on without charging it longer than 2 days for example, depending on how many of its features you actually use. Secondly, the Microsoft Band 2 is not made to be water resistant: it’s protected against dust and was made to be “splash-resistant”. That merely means that you can probably risk a jog through the rain, but you shouldn’t even consider taking it with you to the pool or in the shower after a workout.
Microsoft Band 2 Specs & Hardware
So, as you may have heard before, the Microsoft Band 2 brings to the table a fair number of sensors that make activity tracking possible to begin with. There isn’t any on-board storage for apps or other particular stand-alone features like some wearable tech sometimes has.
Regardless, the Microsoft Band 2 hosts great amounts of potential when it comes to the physical intensive activities you can undergo and track with it. While it may not have a separate, personalized profile for every type of activity like the absolute top professional trackers do, there’s a fair amount you can do with it.
To make a short summary of what you’ll get as your bread and butter tools for fitness tracking and even more, the Microsoft Band 2 features a continuous heart rate monitor, both an accelerometer and gyrometer, various galvanic skin response sensors, a UV monitor and the newly added barometer. On top of that you also get GPS – great for route tracking, terrible for the battery – as well as a built-in microphone for voice commands via Cortana (only available if you have a Windows phone to match) as well as an ambient light sensor simply added to automatically control the brightness of the touchscreen display.
Just like any other tracker, it will use the motion sensors (accelerometer, gyrometer) to track things such as steps taken and sleep and calculate calories burned and how effective the exercise you did is. The UV monitor is not something I have found in many other devices of this kin before and can make for a nifty addition to the amount of health information you can gather. Lastly, the presence of the barometer within the ranks of sensors added to the Microsoft Band 2 you can map your actual progress and activity a lot better because it adds the tri-dimensional aspect to it all by measuring elevation changes when you job, bike or do things such as climbing stairs.
Microsoft Band 2 Software
Just like every other single tracker made and out there, the Microsoft Band 2 syncs with your mobile phone of choice (to note here that it doesn’t support tablets) via its Bluetooth 4.0. After pairing the two devices via the Microsoft Health app you can find for free in the various app stores, you’re near ready to proceed.
It’s critical to know that any kind of activity that implies movement such as biking or running, it’s highly advisable for you to make use of the GPS if you want to get accurate readings. Even if it takes an extra toll on your Microsoft Band 2 battery, using the device without GPS – even if it’s possible – felt underwhelming to say the least. There seems to be an unusually large amount of discrepancy between the results the band earns you with and without GPS.
Regardless, any type of fitness-related activity will require a slight nudge from you when beginning by pressing the activity button so the device is notified that something other than steps and sleeping patterns should start getting recorded.
The mobile app will pretty much display anything you need to know regarding your fitness sessions: duration – start and end time included – a rough estimate of calories burned, when GPS is on it will map a route of your job, included with a colored history of your pace (making you feel bad when you’re in the blue – depicted by a snail). You can swipe through the screens of data to display things such as heart bpm.
All of your recorded data gets uploaded to your online Microsoft Health Dashboard so you can overview your progress over time and draw charts of your current activity. Once again, even the dashboard doesn’t feel that detailed as the professional fitness tracker ones seem to be capable of producing but still offers a great amount of illumination when it comes to your health-related habits.
If there’s one absolutely knackering detail about the Microsoft Band 2 is the fact that it feels relatively lackluster when it comes to gathering data from third party apps. Many other fitness tracker apps offer you this select feature that can make up for the lack of their native capabilities; instead the compatibility of the Microsoft Band 2 is questionable to say the least.
Microsoft Band 2 Features
In terms of the capabilities of the Microsoft Band 2, there are two ways we can look at it. Firstly, we can consider it an activity tracker and judge it as that. Then we can regard it as a smart watch; there’s no denial that the Microsoft Band was originally the company’s attempt at breaking through into the market, with the focus on health and fitness as another way to latch to a particular niche as a safety net.
As an activity tracker, the Microsoft Band 2 surely comes with an extra amount of attention paid to the accuracy of data regarding your day to day activity. While you can’t cover every single type of sport activity with it in the absence of personalized app tracking and even due to physical boundaries (take pool or open water swimming), the band does fairly well in a more generic sense.
Where it really lacks as a fitness tracker is its capability of acting independently. There’s close to none of that present on the Microsoft Band 2 – no coaching, a minimal amount of attempts to enforce a healthy lifestyle or automatic notifications to remind you to follow a healthy schedule unless you set it up manually to do so. While you can create custom workouts through it, it’s not the smoothest of processes and risks giving you a bit of a headache and test of patience when you decide to do it.
As a smart watch, it ends up almost feeling as half-measured as a fitness tracker. Yes, you can push notifications from your smartphone to your watch and even do a fair amount of interacting with it to check weather, calendar, set alarms or whatnot. But you won’t be able to reply to your texts or social media messages directly off the Microsoft Band 2. Even if you did, you’d once again walk in headfirst into the same issue we mentioned earlier – the oddly shaped display.
There are, however, some nice things you can still get with the Microsoft Band 2, especially if you’re a Windows phone user. Firstly, there’s the neat voice command feature you can get by using the microphone that was built in the device to dictate replies to messages, setting alarms and other smaller features of that kind. However, this is only possible when using a Windows phone paired to the band. Another feature some individuals may enjoy on this device is the preinstalled mini app that allows you use your watch to make purchases once you store your barcodes onto the watch.
Microsoft Band 2 Battery Life
One of the more delicate issues that most smartwatches and activity trackers alike are burdened with is battery usage; in other words, just how much you can make use of it without the worry of having to charge it. And native to any smart device with an AMOLED touchscreen that is either cramped into a small space or made to be thinner than anyone would even ask for, the battery issues are still something that a solution has not been found for.
Long story short, the battery of your Microsoft Band 2 will probably never last you longer than 2 days at most. Out of that amount of time you have to deduct things such as GPS usage, the amount of direct usage you actually put the band up to and how much time the screen actually stays on for as that one will probably be one of your largest power consumers in the first place. In reality, with average use you will most likely get about a day’s worth of juice out of its Li-Polymer battery.
The upside of it all is the fact that a full charge is hardly lengthy and you should probably get your Microsoft Band 2 from 0 to 100% in about an hour and a half. Even if you’re at work or simply not actively using the tracker you can easily put it up to charge on the go, wherever you are.
Microsoft Band 2 Verdict
So what have we gathered out of our trek with the Microsoft Band 2? At the risk of sounding harsh or unfair, I feel compelled to say that while the device feels premium and a well put together piece of technology, it ends up in a strange place between two planes. One plane is the one of smartwatches and I’m uncertain the Microsoft Band 2 has its place here; at least not one that it can proudly occupy and say that it was deserved because of some innovative feature.
The other plane is the plane of activity trackers and this one is as iffy as the former. It can do mostly everything you would want it to if you’re not into professional sports and really are just trying to stay healthy and keep track of your activity over the length of weeks and months. Not to mention that the entire potential of the Microsoft Band 2 may feel a little limited depending on other factors such as the phone you pair it with, the number of compatible third party apps that you manage to find for it and such.
The device is an outright upgrade from the previous Microsoft Band with no doubt, but in all honesty, it doesn’t feel like the second iteration of the series is up there yet. Especially if you take into account the rather spiky price you have to succumb to paying for it.
You can purchase the Microsoft Band 2 directly from the official website for $249.99. December 29th: It is truthfully currently listed at $199 with no mention of a promotion or when it will end. If you are considering purchasing it, you can probably still get it for the reduced price until the end of the year at least.
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Roxanne Briean
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