![]() Figure: According to the Microsoft Health Portal, even though I get less “restful sleep” than others with a similar health profile (I blame my kids…), at least my “sleep restoration” is better than others. I especially love how you can go into the Health Portal and see how your data compares to others who have similar health profiles. Figure: Here’s my sleep data for November – you can see that I’m averaging 5 and a half hours (I wish it showed the average “restful sleep” here alongside the “average sleep” so I can get this information at a glance. It looks like I usually get about 1-2 hours.)įigure: I can get the information on my average “restful sleep” from this graph – my average is 1 hour 9 minutes I plan to analyse my sleep data every month. Your sleep can be viewed on the Microsoft Health app and you can analyse it further on the Microsoft Health Portal. It tracks everything – how long it takes you to fall asleep, your heart rate and calories burned while sleeping, how often you wake up during the night, how many hours of sleep you get, and even more importantly, the * quality* of sleep you get during those hours. I love the sleep app so much I was tempted to make this whole blog post just about that. Note: Only works on a Windows Phone as you need Cortana Figure: With the Microsoft Band 2, you can keep your phone on vibrate 100% of the time and never have to worry about interrupting others with your ringing phone 2. It’s so convenient when you don’t want to reach for your phone. VIDEO: If you get a text message you can use the ‘quick reply’ function to reply by voice. You speak to your hand, it transcribes it to a text message and you just confirm it got it right. Unfortunately “quick response” is not available for iPhone. Note: the text message “quick response” feature is only if you are using Windows Phone or Android. The band will even allow you to send a text message-based ‘quick response’ to your caller to let them know you are busy. Don’t have time for the phone call? No worries. This gets even better for women who keep their phone in their handbag and miss important calls (like my wife!). That meant I got to update this rule, “ Do you keep your phone on vibrate?”. I couldn’t believe it – this solves a common problem that I’ve heard over the years at staff reviews: one of the complaints that pops up is other team members having loud ring tones. It connects with your phone, and vibrates on your wrist when you receive a call. When I bought the Microsoft Band, I thought of it as a replacement for my FitBit, not as a replacement for my phone, but I’ve grown to feel like it’s a notification device that allows my phone to stay in my pocket. You can keep your phone on silent permanently There’s a whole suite of things to love about the Microsoft Band 2 – from the cool scrolling user experience, the attractive full-color touch screen, the inbuilt GPS tracker, Cortana integration, even UV monitoring, and so much more – but I want to try to keep this brief, so I’ll focus on my *favorite features*: 1. This review brings together their feedback as well as my own – the good and the bad. Of course, they’ve all had different scenarios and each have given different opinions of the quirks and foibles of the device. It’s been enlightening to hear everybody’s experiences over the last month. ![]() ![]() ![]() I picked up a bundle of bands at the new Microsoft store to give to the guys at SSW. She said, “ Dad, 3 is too much!” – I expected she’d enjoy being my experiment! Figure: My daughter Eve wasn’t very grateful to get a new Microsoft Band 2. I haven’t tried the original Microsoft band, but I have tried several of the FitBit releases, and am familiar with the Samsung Gear S, so I was keen to see how this device would measure up. Microsoft recently released their second fitness tracker, the Microsoft Band 2, and as both a fitness enthusiast and a tech guy, I was excited to test it out. UPDATED #4: 2 February 2016 – Added a couple more “wishlist” points about syncing my personalisations, and ideas to improve the running app UPDATED #3: 20 January 2016 – After spending more time with the band, I’ve added a few more tips for ways I think the Band can be improved (bedtime battery notification, golf app, maintaining profile preferences between Bands) UPDATED #2:16 December 2015 – Updated to reflect some feedback I received from Ali Alvi, product owner for the Microsoft Band 2 UPDATED:14 December 2015 – An update added music controls and an inactivity monitor ![]()
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