Fitbit’s Zip has been on sale for a couple of years now. It’s still a fine activity tracker for anyone wanting to track their steps over a period of time, but Jawbone’s new Up Move adds sleep tracking and an optional wristband.
Jawbone Up Move review: design
It does, as one of my colleagues pointed out, look as if it came out of a Christmas cracker but plastic looks aside, the Up Move is a clever gadget. If you don’t like the garish combination of blue and yellow as we were sent, there are alternatives including black. Only the black and blue models have this design: the Slate, Ruby and Grape colours have a more flowery pattern. See also our chart of the Best activity trackers Jawbone has listened to feedback and although it has stopped short of a proper LCD or OLED display, the Up Move can double as a clock thanks to the fact it has 12 LEDs like the Misfit Shine. Press the face twice and an LED will blink to show the hour, and then a second will light up to indicate the five-minute period in which the exact time lies.
So it’s not exactly accurate, but good enough when you haven’t got a smartphone or a proper watch. You press the face just once to check which mode it’s in – awake or sleep – and animated LEDs show your progress towards your goal. If you want to log an activity, such as a run, you press the face twice and hold on the last press. This starts the stopwatch, and it’s the same sequence to stop it again. When you have a chance, you can then tag this activity in the app. The Move doesn’t have a vibrating motor, so doesn’t work as a silent alarm or give you ‘move’ reminders as the Up24 does.Fortunately, like virtually every other tracker out there, it synchs wirelessly via Bluetooth. It’s water-resistant so you can sweat and go for runs in the rain, but you can’t swim or have a bath while wearing it. Like the Fitbit Zip, the Move uses a replaceable coin battery, negating the need for recharging or a proprietary USB cable. Jawbone says it lasts up to six months, so we’ll have to report back when ours runs out.
Jawbone Up Move review: track steps, calories and sleep
The Up Move uses the same app as previous Jawbone trackers, which first of all means it’s very good, and second means you can check exactly how many steps you took, when you took them, an estimate of how far you walked and how many calories you burned. It won’t track the number of stairs climbed as there’s no sensor for that in the Move, but it does use its accelerometer to monitor your sleep. In the box is a clip which you can use to attach the Move to a pocket, bra or any other suitable piece of clothing. At night, Jawbone recommends you use the optional £11 wrist strap, but you can also use the clip to attach the tracker to a sleeve. You’ll notice that there are two different straps on offer: wide and thin.
It then works exactly like the Up24, monitoring your movements during the night and the app presents a nifty graph in the morning to show how much light and deep sleep you got. You’re responsible for holding down the tracker’s button to switch between awake and sleep states, but once you get into the habit, it’s easy.
Jawbone Up Move review: the app
We’ve said it already, but Jawbone really has nailed the software side of things. The main screen shows two big bars for sleep and steps, with large numbers showing the percentage of your goal for that day. If you decide to manually enter what you eat and drink, a third bar will appear with a rating out of 10 and a calorie counter.
Below these are motivational cards, offering helpful hints and encouragements. It sounds like a feature you’d immediately turn off, but we actually found them helpful. Scrolling down further shows an activity timeline, along with ‘Smart Coach’ hints helping you to hit your goals. You can tap on a steps chart of sleep graph to see more information, such as how long you were active (and idle) during that day.
Bear in mind that it won’t detect certain activities such as cycling, so you won’t see any extra steps or calories for a 10 mile ride. Instead, you’ll have to start the stopwatch and select ‘cycling’ in the app for that period, the select the effort you put in (but don’t cheat!). The left-hand menu lets you set your sleep and ‘move’ goals as well as a weight goal, which could be simply to maintain your current weight. You can enter your weight manually or have it imported automatically by using a compatible wireless scale such as the Withings Body Analyser. Since we reviewed the Up24, Jawbone has made a few changes to the app, including integration with the Health app in iOS 8. If you give it permission it can read and write steps and sleep data, which means that you can use the Health app as well as, or instead of the Up app. As well as Health and Withings, you can use the Up app with MyFitnessPal for tracking calories, IFTTT, RunKeeper, Strava and many more. You can even link it with your Nest app to “create the ideal sleep environment”. Via the app you can start and stop the stopwatch, switch to sleep mode and set activity alerts. The default is a notification (on your smartphone) every 2000 steps and a summary at 4.30pm. A new feature is a bedtime reminder which is completely customisable and can, for example, alert you 40 minutes before your target bedtime that it’s time to start winding down.
Jawbone Up Move review: verdict
For under £40, the Move is superb value. It’s a shame the wrist strap isn’t offered as a bundle for a few pounds more as £11 for a rubber strap is clear profiteering. Cheap copies might become available, of course. Although it doesn’t track certain activities or height climbed, its great sleep tracking makes up for that. Soon you’ll be able to buy the Up3 which will have considerably better sleep tracking but at this price, the Move is the best-value activity tracker around. Jim has been testing and reviewing products for over 20 years. His main beats include VPN services and antivirus. He also covers smart home tech, mesh Wi-Fi and electric bikes.
