Shine bright like a diamond! Adding style and class to the fitness tracking industry – The Misfit Shine dazzles as a premium sleep and activity monitor.

Words - Kate Perry Images - Missfit

It seems everything we do these days is measured. The head-unit on our handlebars measures how fast and far we have travelled. The strap around your chest; how fast your heart is beating. That addition to your cranks; how many watts you are putting out. How fast are your legs ticking over? Your cadence sensor will tell you that. Your My Fitness Pal account tracks your food intake and monitors input vs output. Output; now a variable you can measure in more detail with the introduction of a fitness monitor that tracks all activity types, as well as how much shut-eye you are getting.

We are a generation that want everything at our fingertips. One app, one device, all the answers. User friendly, non-invasive and in depth analysis. The Misfit Shine is well on its way in meeting all of these demands.

As an athlete and a coach, I take a great interest in looking at the bigger picture when it comes to training. How is what I am doing on a daily basis influencing all the hard training I am putting in? Does a rough night’s sleep correlate with poor performance the next day? Now I can monitor all of these variables and piece together the bigger puzzle.

ABOUT

The Misfit Shine is a fitness and sleep monitor that has the capacity to track steps, calories and distance, as well as automatic sleep monitoring along with the option of including a food diary; either via direct input into the Misfit App or syncing an already existing calorie counting App such as My Fitness Pal.

Sleek and stylish, the Misfit Shine is made of aircraft-grade aluminum, is the size of a watch battery and powered by exactly that; a CR2032 coin cell battery – which means no charging, ever! It can be worn on the wrist, clipped on the pocket or even around the neck. With a 3-axis accelerometer and being 50m water resistant, there is not much that the Misfit Shine can’t do!

The accompanying app is iPhone, Android and Windows compatible, with Bluetooth 4.0 technology, which means all the tracking is live at your fingertips.

QUALITY

In an ever competitive industry, the Misfit presents a stylish alternative to traditional fitness trackers. The fact that it runs off a watch-battery means that you don’t have to remember to charge it every few days like other fitness monitors, and the ability to automatically track sleep means again, it doesn’t matter if you forget to hit ‘I’m Ready’ before going to bed.

FUNCTIONALITY - FITNESS

When you initially set-up your Misfit Profile there is the capacity to select a ‘goal’ to which your activity is measured. This may be in the form of a number of steps you aim to take, a distance you plan on running each day, or generally how active you plan on being on a daily basis.

There are two main ways you can log activity using the Misfit Shine. You can either tap the monitor three times in succession so it lights up to mark the beginning of the activity session, and then again when you finish your workout or you can begin tracking via the App; selecting which mode of activity you were participating in, running, walking, cycling, swimming etc. The activity options are quite extensive, including tennis, soccer, yoga and dancing!

Being a cyclist, the activity tracking element wasn’t a huge selling point for me, as I already monitor activity using my HR monitor and Power Meter through my Garmin head-unit, but rather the Misfit Shine’s ability to track sleep and sync my My Fitness Pal food diary was what drew me in.

FUNCTIONALITY – SLEEP

It is important to remember that the data collected during a monitoring process is highly dependent on the accuracy of the monitoring tool, but in saying this, I was pleasantly surprised with the accuracy of the Misfit Shine’s ability to automatically track my sleeping habits.

The monitor automatically tracks the number of hours sleep you get each night, but also what percentage of these hours were spent in ‘light’ sleep as opposed to ‘restful’ sleep. Of course, this is determined on bodily movements, but it was interesting to consider the sleeping data with how I felt generally as well as during training the following day.

Generally speaking, on the days I had quite a broken sleep, sure enough I was feeling sub-par the next day. It is no secret that I take a great interest in how daily living patterns affect exercise performance, so the Misfit Shine definitely delivered in terms of providing useful training data.

COMPATIBLE APPS

Another big plus with the Misfit Shine is the fact that it is very user friendly and compatible with a number of already existing food and fitness tracking apps such as My Fitness Pal, RunKeeper, MapMyFitness, and Speedo Fit; the main one of which I use is My Fitness Pal. Whilst exact foods aren’t transferred across, daily calorie intake is, which helps to track input vs output for the day.

OVERALL

Whilst there are a number of different features that I am yet to test out with the Misfit Shine, like using it as a watch, adding an extensive food diary and utilising the fitness tracking capacity of the unit, the Misfit Shine definitely delivers in that the accompanying app is extremely user friendly, is sleek and stylish, non-invasive, lightweight unit and is low maintenance, with no charging required and can be worn in the shower. The only challenge still faced is the capacity to accurately measure activity on the bike; although I am spoilt having a power meter to do this for me already.

At only $89.95, Misfit Shine delivers on all accounts.

Comfort – 3/5
User-friendliness (accompanying app)– 4/5
Performance – 4/5
Style – 5/5

WHERE TO BUY

The Misfit Shine can be purchased online at the Apple Store, Move, or Dick Smith, Officeworks and Pica.com.au/misfit. for $89.95. Leather bands are also available for $59.95 or hand polished stainless steel Bloom necklace for $99.95.

SPECIFICATIONS

MATERIAL - Anodized Aircraft-grade Aluminum
CHARGING -None
DISPLAY - LED
BATTERY = CR2032 coin cell
BATTERY LIFE - Up to 6 months
WATERPROOF - 50 m
WATCH FUNCTION - Yes
DIMENSIONS - 27.5 x 3.3 x 27.5 mm (WxDxH)
WEIGHT - 9.4 g
SENSOR - 3-axis accelerometer
SYNC METHOD - Bluetooth 4.0 / BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy)
MEASURES - Steps, Calories Burned, Distance and Sleep Quality and Duration

COMPATIBILITY

iPhone® 4s/5/5c/5s/6/6 Plus
iPod® touch 5
iPad® 3/4/Air/mini
Samsung Galaxy S® 4/5/6
Samsung Note® 3
Google Nexus 4/5/6
Android 4.3 BLE devices and above
Windows Phone 8.1 w/ BTLE
Shine for iOS app is compatible with devices running iOS 7 and above and with Bluetooth 4.0.
Shine for Android is compatible with devices running Android 4.3 (Jelly Bean) and above with Bluetooth 4.0/Bluetooth Smart.