Microsoft Band 2 Review

Microsoft Band 1, without a doubt, was the undisputed king in the smart wearables realm, and now the company has announced yet another iteration with even more powerful specifications and significant design changes.

The Band 2.0 is a package with excellent hardware and build quality, what’s more, the curved design will no longer obstruct your typing experience on the computers.

Comfier design; lots of smartwatch-like notifications; solid heart-rate monitoring, step counting and automatic sleep tracking; built-in GPS; can track golfing, biking and running; works with Android, iOS and Windows phones.

Still offers merely adequate 48-hour battery life; expensive; workout and coaching guidance isn't helpful or clear; doesn't provide social connectivity and only makes a few health-based insights. Microsoft's slowly improving fitness band remains seriously ambitious, but it still lacks the better battery life and helpful daily coaching needed to justify its price.

Is this too much to expect out of a fitness band? Possibly. It's probably my fault. I'm overweight. I have high blood pressure. I've known about these things for years. I cover wearables and many fitness bands, and despite trying to get a routine going, it's hard to get anything to stick.

BAND 2: SENSORS

Now, let’s take a deep dive and see why the Band 2 is a must-buy wearable. It sports almost the same set of sensors, including Optical heart rate sensor, 3-axis accelerometer/gyro, Gyrometer, GPS, Ambient light sensor, Skin temperature sensor, UV sensor, Capacitive Sensor, Galvanic skin response, and Barometer. MIT research has proved that the Band can offer the most accurate heart rate data no other wearable can come even closer to it. Several other researchers did the same by using hospital grade measuring equipment to see which one of the wearables are more accurate to the realistic data, and Band was the winner.

We aren’t talking about the Band 2 here, but the first generation Band that landed in the stores with some build quality issue. The pieces didn't come together, though. The Band wasn't automatic enough, or helpful enough, to seem like a device I'd use all the time.The new Band -- the Microsoft Band 2 -- is available now for $250 in the US, AU$379 in Australia, and £200 in the UK from November 19. It really is a slight design revamp, with an added barometer for stair-climb counting, improved UV and heart rate sensors, and a more comfortable design sporting a curved OLED screen.

 

It's also a $50 or £30 increase from the original. I've worn the latest band for several weeks: on its own, next to an Apple Watch and compared with the Jawbone Up3 and Fitbit Charge HR. And, while Microsoft has improved the Band both in terms of design and software, it still remains a proposition that's neither the ultimate fitness band nor the ultimate smartwatch. There's an improved heart rate sensor, according to Microsoft (it seemed fine for me, and about as good as the ones on the Apple Watch and Fitbit Charge HR), and a newly added barometer that tracks stair-climbing.

The UV sensor now can automatically measure your exposure over time, showing estimated minutes over a workout. The rest, for the most part, is similar. In that sense, this isn't a "whole new" band, but the latest revision of Microsoft's health strategy, which has been evolving over the past year. The Band has received consistent firmware updates, and Microsoft's been tweaking its apps and Web tools over time. So, in the end, you're just getting a better-feeling band.

New curves, comfier fit

The Microsoft Band of 2014 was a stiff black band with a color touchscreen. Its battery was part of the band design, giving it a thick, cufflike feel that was far from cozy. The newly redesigned Microsoft Band 2 is more curved, and softer and comfier to wear. But only by a bit. The rubbery band that extends from a now-curved OLED touchscreen is still really wide compared with other fitness bands.

The battery's been moved down to a bulge in a chunky metal band clasp, making that part thicker. A curved screen on top and a chunky metal clasp on the bottom make this a band that you'll either worry about scratching, or worry about having it scratch something else. I kept taking it off as I was typing and accidentally leaving it in my office.

Band as smartwatch

The Microsoft Band 2 is really, practically, Microsoft's Smartwatch. It can get notifications from your phone. It can check the weather, or your calendar, or stocks, or your Facebook messages, or Twitter updates (not tweets, but notifications and messages). It can do even more with a Windows Phone, using a microphone and Cortana for voice dictation and responding to messages (or with a built-in onscreen keyboard of sorts, too). I can set alarms. I can pay at Starbucks with a mini app that stores my barcode. But it's not a great smartwatch.

The wide screen, and the way it lies perpendicular to my wrist, means I have to twist my arm awkwardly or wear the Band 2 on my inside wrist to read messages easily. A speed-reading mode flashes large words at the press of a side button, which helps a bit, but there's no way I'd pick this over Android Wear or the Apple Watch (or the Samsung Gear S2) as my watch of choice. Also, just like last year's version, the Band 2 has a number of mini-app "tiles" that can be pulled on or off the Band, but you can't have all features at once. Each feature gets a tile: Twitter, Facebook, Weather, Facebook Messenger, Biking, Golf, Workouts, Exercise, Calendar. It's odd, because there aren't that many tiles, and who knows, maybe I'd suddenly like to ride a bike or start a workout, and realize that tile needs to be re-added via my phone app, and just give up.

All-day living (with recharging)

The Band 2 is meant to stay on your wrist all the time, much like a Fitbit or Jawbone Up band. It tracks steps, estimated calorie burn, heart rate, sleep and stair climbing. And, like many other fitness trackers, it can specifically time and track dedicated exercise sessions. To do all this, you pair your Band 2 with either an iPhone, Android phone or Windows phone. And you need to download the Microsoft Health app to do this, which acts as the band's syncing hub. Microsoft Health lives in the cloud, and you can access it via your phone app or a far more detailed Web dashboard.

Microsoft has been steadily updating its software and features for the Band over the last year, adding automatic sleep tracking, golf tracking that works via GPS and syncs with a golf app by TaylorMade, and some basic insights gleaned from the health data the band's collecting. It even takes a stab at VO2 Max, a test of your blood oxygen level, and a recognized measure of cardiovascular fitness, which the Band 2 estimates via heart-rate measurements.That's fine, but what does it all feel like on a daily basis? I wear the band, go about my life and occasionally check it from time to time to see what my step count or heart rate is.

The Band 2 lasts about two days on a single charge via its specialized USB charge cable, which magnetically snaps onto the back of the band's buckle. Half an hour will give it enough juice to last a chunk of the day in case you forgot to charge, which I often did. You can skip a night of charging, but that makes remembering to charge again the next day oddly difficult. If you run every day, as my colleague Dan Graziano does, you'll end up needing a daily recharge.

The long display doesn't seem used to its best advantage. If I want to check steps or heart rate or anything else, I have to keep swiping or tapping. Why not show all stats at once across that big, pixel-dense screen? As a running device, the Microsoft Band 2 performs the basics well. It tracks pace, distance, total time, elevation and heart rate, all of which is on par with devices from Garmin and Polar. The Band 2, however, doesn't include features like interval training or auto pause, which are fairly common in similarly priced running watches.

It can also be difficult to see your data on the display mid-run. While it remains on by default, it only shows pace, distance and elapsed time. Heart rate information was included on a cramped second screen, which required a swipe on the touchscreen to access. Microsoft has made a big deal out of workouts on the Band since last year: pick one, schedule one, be productive. But these workouts are not easy to set up, they don't educate and train you enough, and if you don't use them, you'll have no idea they're there. And they're really not much better, one year later.

Even getting to workouts means finding a buried part of a side menu in the Microsoft Health app. Various partners like Gold's Gym and Men's Fitness offer plans: Gold's Gym Plyometric Workout. Tabata Squat Thrusts. Couch to 5K in 14 Days. Clicking one brings up basic instructions and a video, then you need to download one of the various sessions to your Band 2. You also need a Workout Tile mini-app installed.

Tap the app, and you're in the workout: it's basically a set of timers, recording your heart rate, distance, GPS and calories for each session. And that's about it. Once you complete a workout, you'll see how you did and, yes, Microsoft's Health app will tell me to take a break if I've done a lot over a few days. But that coaching feels buried. It doesn't appear right on the face of the Health app when you launch it, or on the band itself.

Microsoft Health app: 

There's much to learn from the graphs and charts in Microsoft's Health dashboard on the Web, but will you ever go there? No, you'll want to use your phone. Microsoft Health's phone app, while clean, is too minimal. I'm greeted with four numbers on a blue screen when I start up, which are my daily stats. If I tap steps counted, it opens up into a nice daily or weekly readout. Same with sleep, or calories burned. But why can't all of this be synthesized into an easier-to-read look at your progress? I was hoping that Health would give me more analysis, like the Jawbone Up does, encouraging me to accept daily challenges and adjusting my goals.

The Band 2 allows for goals to be set and reached, and you can see your all-time bests in various categories, but I was hoping it would have social functions, connecting to friends and working on challenges together, like Fitbit. It doesn't. All I really get are basic stats, which I can get from a lot of other bands, too. And the app doesn't have any built-in tracking for food, water or caffeine, although it hooks into MyFitnessPal for those functions.