Review: UP by Jawbone

Last week the Jawbone dealer sent me the UP wristband to tryout and review. The Jawbone UP tracks your sleep and movement patterns and I am going to start this review by saying I am not UP’s intended user. The UP is meant for casual users who want to get a rough idea of how many calories they’re burning or how active their lifestyle is. Since my lifestyle is already pretty active I need more accurate data which the UP can’t provide me with since it doesn’t monitor your heartbeat and it doesn’t have a GPS to track distance. But, after having used the UP for a week I ended up liking the device and I’ll explain why a bit further into the review.

The UP reminds me a lot of the Nike Fuelband and it should because they both basically do the exact same thing. Both the Fuelband and UP track your movement patterns and then converts that data into pretty graphs. The biggest difference for me with the UP is that it also tracks sleep patterns which is something that I was really interested in. When you run the app for the first time you enter various information about yourself and then you choose two targets, the amount of hours you would like to sleep and your daily target for steps. The defaults are 8 hours and 10,000 steps and I left them that way. Throughout the day all your movements are recorded by the wristband but you can also help make it more accurate by telling the wristband what activity you just performed.

Within the UP application on the phone you have the option to log specific workouts like a run or a weight lifting session. You select the kind of activity you performed based on preset ones along with the intensity of the activity and also the duration. The application then calculates how many calories you burned using published MET values. This isn’t very accurate because you have to estimate the intensity of your activity and so you’ll only end up with a ballpark figure which should still be fine for the majority of people.

Sleep tracking is a very interesting aspect of the UP. Before you go to sleep you put the device into sleep mode and when you wake up you just turn sleep mode off. UP then takes your nighttime movement data and plots them out for you. My aim was to get 8 hours of sleep every night but based on the data my average has been less than 6 hours. UP also lets you know how long it took you to fall asleep and how much light and deep sleep you’re getting. Finally UP can also help you take a proper power nap during the day. By pressing the button on the UP twice and then holding it down it will turn on power nap mode which based on your previous nights sleep will calculate the optimum duration for your power nap which could range from 27 to 45 minutes. When it’s time to wakeup the UP vibrates.

Synchronizing the data between the UP and the app is a simple process, there is small cap at the end of the UP band which when removed will reveal a headphone connector which plugs into the phone. The wristband is also water resistant which according to the Jawbone website means I can shower with it but I actually swam with it all day over the weekend and it’s still working perfectly fine. Actually the website says NOT to submerge it in water so if you do so you do it as your own risk. Battery life according to Jawbone is 10 days and based on my experience that seems about right.

So yes the UP isn’t very accurate but I personally still loved it and the main reason being is I’m wearing it like a normal bracelet, a fashion accessory. The UP looks good, I don’t have to remove it when I shower or swim and other than charging it once every 10 days the UP doesn’t require any maintenance. It’s like a nice looking bracelet that has the added value of letting you know approximately how active you are while also letting you know how much sleep you’re getting.

If you’re interested in the UP you can order one directly from the dealer by calling them on 97337221. It costs KD45 and KD2 for delivery. You can also check out their Instagram account for other ways of ordering [Here]