A few weeks with the Jawbone UP

I didn’t wear the Jawbone UP today. Nor did I wear it last night. And I’m pretty bummed about that trend.

If you weren’t aware, the Jawbone UP is a device you wear on your wrist that tracks your activity throughout the day and your sleep during the night. It’s very cool. It will also wake you at the optimal time by slowly vibrating your wrist (probably my favorite feature). And it gives you graphs like this:

So, why am I not wearing it after keeping it on for a solid two weeks?

First, I’m not a “bracelet” kinda guy, let’s start with that. I don’t wear a watch or a Lance Armstrong band, nothing like that. I don’t have anything against it, but it just feels odd to me. So keep that in mind as there’s a chance this experiment was doomed from the beginning.

The daily activity monitor wasn’t really telling me much. Or, better put, it wasn’t changing my behavior. When I first got it, I was excited to go on a walk during work and see how the graph would spike during that time. But that novelty quickly wore off and I found myself not really caring if the graph changed throughout the day. I just wasn’t doing anything with that data.

It’s difficult to wear with long sleeve shirts and/or a jacket. It snags all the time, which is annoying.

So with me not caring too much about the day-time data and it snagging a lot on my clothes, I decided I didn’t need to wear it during the day.

On the contrary, I do intend to wear it when I sleep and when I work out. And I think for the right person who is super into fitness and knowing how active they are during the day, it could be a great device.

Actually, it IS a great device. I think its fantastic. I just don’t think I’ll be wearing it during the day much. Not sure if that helps any of you that are on the fence, but thought it was time I shared my two cents on the UP.

5 Comments

  1. Ricardo Diaz on December 13, 2011 at 8:19 am

    Why did you pick the Up?

    Does it compare to the https://www.fitbit.com/ ?



  2. Jeff Hilimire on December 13, 2011 at 8:42 am

    Great question on the UP vs. Fitbit. I did research back when I bought it (a few months ago) and thought the Jawbone UP was more what I was looking for. At the moment I can’t remember exactly why but I do know that I’m a fan of Jawbone, have several fo their products, so I was excited to get something else from them.

    The funny thing is, Jawbone is known as a bluetooth badass but the UP doesn’t use bluetooth. At first I was kinda aggravated, but when I researched it I found out that was because the battery life was draining too quickly with bluetooth.

    And on that note I should have mentioned that I LOVE THE BATTER LIFE on the UP. It lasts at least ten days and that’s a huge plus.



  3. Anonymous on December 13, 2011 at 8:54 am

    Jeff —  the band is one of the biggest frustrations with UP. There’s actually a site that shows you how to liberate the UP band from the rubber and make it more comfortable:

    https://www.unplggd.com/unplggd/customizing/hacking-the-jawbone-up-for-comfort-161689

    The only problem with this is that the device is no longer water-resistant. Hopefully they’ll address this and the capacitor issue during the production pause.

    PS I’m impressed that you’re getting 7+ hours of sleep!!!



  4. Jeff Hilimire on December 13, 2011 at 9:36 am

    LOL, don’t be too impressed, that wasn’t MY graph ;) I pulled that from the web as an example…



  5. Joe Koufman on December 13, 2011 at 10:17 am

    Chris Traeger would LITERALLY be so disappointed that you are not still wearing it!

    https://www.genlux.com/News-and-Trends?editor=186&id=8119



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