Bowflex Boost Activity Tracker (Discontinued)

I have had the Bowflex Boost for about a month now and I would say that it is ok. It tracks steps and mile alright but I'm not too sure of the calorie counter. If you don't sink it every day you will lose data and depending on when you sink it you may not get your sleep tracker info. Speaking of sleep tracking I'm not sure that is accurate as well. For 50 bucks you get a pretty good pedometer though.

First product by bowflex that I would NEVER recommend PERIOD !! Didn't work out of the box .. Buy anything else but this particular product and bowflex is known for top of the line they should have never released a product like this and I own almost all of bowflex equipment such as the bowflex XP , the max 5 trainer and select tech 552 dumbbells , TC 5000 treadmill i'm highly disappointed in this bow flex boost however they make the best products that I've ever come across but this one don't make the cut ( boost )

I have always been a Bowflex fan. I have the PR1000 and love it, wonderful quality and works great. So when I was looking for an activity tracker, we ordered this one without hesitation.It took about a week to arrive, and when it did I was so excited to get it going. But the bracelet would not take a charge, not after an hour, or two, or three ... as it's supposed to be a quick-charge battery, six hours in I called Bowflex customer service. I had already waited a week to start tracking my activity and was anxious to get going. The woman on the phone was very nice, she walked me through some steps (which I'd already done, but that's ok) and when nothing worked she told me they would be sending me a new one, priority shipment, and I'd have it before the weekend. I had an active weekend planned and really needed it by then, and was very pleased with her assistance.Three days passed and Friday arrived, however my replacement Boost did not. I called customer service again, and the gentleman looked into the issue and saw the replacement order was never fully processed, so my Boost had not yet been sent. At this point, it had been almost two weeks from the time I first ordered the Boost, and as I needed something for the weekend I asked him to just cancel it and refund my money. I realized I had to run out to Best Buy and pick up a different tracker as I could no longer wait. He said no problem, he was very nice, and he apologized profusely. I assured him I understood, it was fine, but I could not wait until the middle of the next week to receive my Boost (which would be almost 2.5 weeks from date of order). He called me back not 10 minutes later and, still apologizing, said his manager wanted to send me a new Boost free of charge and priority shipment to try to make up for things. I thanked him but told him I was not comfortable with that, as I was receiving a refund and was planning to purchase another product. He said not to worry, I had already paid for the Boost in wasted time and frustration and they wanted to do this for their loyal customer. He said I should try both, the Boost and the other product I was buying, and then keep the one I wanted. We went back and forth a bit (very friendly), and I finally said fine, thank you very much, and that was that. I then went out and got a Fitbit Flex, which fired up and worked right away.Anyway, six more days passed. No refund, no new Boost. By this time I was of course used to my Flex. So I called Bowflex to ask when this Boost was expected (as I was planning to send it back) and where my refund was. The woman on the phone told me there would be no refund, as they were sending me another Boost. Now, after receiving a bad Boost, being promised the world, multiple calls when nothing was actually done and almost three weeks passing, my blood was starting to boil. I said no, that is not correct, I was promised a refund and that is what I want. She said she would "look into it" and someone "would get back to me". I asked for a supervisor, as I was done waiting for these folks to get their act together. She said hold on, and after a while on hold she came back on the phone. Not a supervisor, as I had requested, but her. Telling me again I was getting a new Boost, not a refund. Finally, after much demanding on my part, a supervisor got on the phone. He assured me they would refund my money and a new Boost should arrive at my home five days later, as it was in route, and at that time I could refuse delivery. Five days later? So, two weeks is the "priority shipment" I was promised? I asked him for an email confirming my refund, knowing that without this the same issue would come up a week later, and probably again and again after that. He kept ignoring my request. Again, I had to demand it. He agreed, the call ended, and moments later the email arrived.So here I am, no Boost and no refund yet, still waiting for Bowflex to make good on something, and very happily using my Fitbit Flex. What went wrong, Bowflex? Your customer service people are very pleasant, although they promise the world and then something happens to make none of their promises come to fruition. I'm disappointed. I still love my PR1000, but I hope you folks get your act together and fast. You're already late coming into the tracker bracelet market, and with issues like this, forget it.EDITED NOV 2013: I have received my refund and also the free Boost promised, and I was not here to send it back, but that is ok as I'm planning to give this product a try. Customer service also called me a few days ago, I am assuming to check in to see if all was resolved. So maybe they got everything worked out. They did finally resolve everything with me (although it took way too long and too much effort). They still need to make these available in stores.

I don't know if this would be appropriate if you have a neoprene allergy, but I found this tracker to be comfortable to wear, which is important for these things. Although you can track sleep efficiency with this device, I didn't use it much for that purpose since I just didn't want to wear it 24 hours a day. It seemed to me that the step tracker was a little low, but not outrageously so. I appreciate the quick 1 button red, yellow, green indicator that gives a basic indication of your daily progress. The app that goes with this tracker was functional. The band would support wrist sized from child to lowland gorilla.

Great item… . fast shipping

For a little background, I am a fitness tracker nut. I have used the BodyBugg, BodyMedia Fit, Jawbone Up, Nike Plus, various phone apps and now this.Comfort:As far as comfort goes, the Boost is tops. It is a soft, malleable silicone with 14 holes along the band to give you the absolute perfect fit. The band is super thin all the way around until you get to the "meat" of the components, where it is about 1/2-inch thick. It feels like wearing a soft watch and you don't have to worry about it being too large or too small for your wrist, unlike the Up, which is a little tougher to fit.Charging and Use:To charge the band, you just remove it and clip the magnetized indentations into the USB hub and then plug it into a computer or USB wall charger. Very easy. The band claims to get 11 days out of one charge, and that seems to be true so far. To use it, you press a small little button when you want to check your progress, which is indicated with a little bar light. A red light means you aren't close, yellow means you are and green means you have reached your goals. You can set goals related to steps, distance and calories burned. Only when you have reached all three goals do you get the green light. To put it to sleep (or wake up in the morning), you hold the button for 3 seconds (it turns purple to let you know you did it right) and to sync you hold it for 6 seconds (it turns blue to let you know it is synching). Understandably (because you wouldn't want to press it accidentally) the button is a little hard to push. I have to use a fingernail and really hold it down.Step Counting:Here things get a little dicey. The Boost was somewhat inconsistent in counting steps. Like the Up and FIT, the band counts arm movement, so using the elliptical or stationary bike (with handles) reads as taking steps, but so can unloading the dishwasher. For the days that I wore the band, I also wore my Up, used my phones pedometer and a clip-on Omnitron pedometer. Boost was consistently high. For instance, yesterday I took 11,950 steps accord to Up, 9,430 according to my phone (which didn't count my elliptical steps), 9,510 according to the Omnitron and 12,445 according to Boost. This over-estimating happened every day that I wore it, which leads me to think that the Boost is counting more stationary arm movement than the Up does.Sleep Tracking:The Boost has a very rudimentary sleep tracking. You push the button to tell it that you are going to sleep (like the Up and other fitness bands out there) and it tracks how long you took to fall asleep and how long you were asleep. The Up does the same thing, but it also claims to track how often you were in deep sleep versus light sleep and how many times you woke up. I find this to be marginally accurate on the Up - it often can't tell between waking up and light sleep. The FIT is more accurate. The Boost seemed to be least accurate. It claimed that I feel asleep last night in 6 minutes, but I watched the clock as I was falling asleep so that I could check the accuracy and I was able to count 10 minutes before sleep. The Up band told me it took me 11 minutes to fall asleep and FIT told me 12. Again, this under-reporting was consistent every day I wore it and the band was a little slower to recognize my waking in the morning.App:This is where the Boost really suffers. There is no social aspect (other than sharing your numbers on Facebook), which is a shame because group motivation can be a huge factor for meeting your goals. The Up has a fantastic social system built right into its app. The app has three bars to show you your progress, which you can view all day to keep track, but once the day ends, the numbers are gone. You can't look back and see what your final step count was (unless you check at 11:59 while in bed) and you can't track your progress overall. This is a deal breaker for me, because setting a goal isn't about the day-to-day, but the overall trend. I want to know that I am consistently getting better and more active. I suppose it might work for some people, particularly if you only care about hitting your goal and nothing else, but it doesn't work for me. I also find it inconvenient to have to check the band in the evening if I want to see how many steps I took overall.On a second screen, the band shows you your steps (and here you can view past steps as well) but it doesn't give you a number of steps, it gives you a bar graph with percentage of steps. Percentage of what? It doesn't tell you. For instance, yesterday I took 7% steps at 10:00 am, 6% steps at 4:00 pm. I don't know what this means and it isn't useful for me. But if it is useful to you, you can look back at the past year of percentages by day, week, month or year. If they changed this from percent to actual steps, it would be much more helpful. Still, lacking the ability to analyze and understand trends like you can with FIT or Up kind of sucks.The final screen gives you the ability to set goals, set a wakeup time for both weekdays and weekends and to unpair the bracelet if you want.Finally, there is no feedback from the app like you have with FIT or Up. Both FIT and Up give you information based on your habits and can offer tips and encouragement.Overall:The Boost is really little more than a pedometer (and a questionably accurate one at that) that you have to sync to your phone (iPhone only) to see. It doesn't have the little things like feedback and number analysis that makes the other trackers out there so appealing. But it does also cost at least half (or more) of what the other trackers cost, so you get what you pay for. If all you want is a pedometer that can tell you when you are close or over your goal, I'd say it is pretty good. If you want a tracker that can do all the fun stuff, I'd keep looking.

It has never worked since I received it. The battery was completely toast as soon as I got it. It won't charge. It's worthless. I am very disappointed.