Review: The Jawbone Up Move

There are times when you want to show off your fitness tracker to the world; there are also times when you’d rather it stayed hidden. The Jawbone UP Move satisfies both of those requirements.

Unlike many of the current crop of fitness trackers the UP Move isn’t a watch design. Unless you want it to be, of course. It gives you a choice: attach it to your clothing or put it into an optional wrist strap. Either way it will track your movement and keep you on the straight and narrow as far as your daily activity levels go.

The main brain of the device is a small blue object, with one large button on the front. That can be transferred between the included clip and the strap if you choose to invest in that.

One press will cause it to light up, showing whether it is in activity mode or sleep mode, and how much of your goal you have achieved.

It also acts as a watch, if a difficult to decipher one, with two presses indicating first the hour and then the minutes – again with flashing LEDs.

The good

The versatility of the UP Move is a big bonus. You can tuck it out of sight, attached to your trousers or underclothes, and it will track your movement throughout the day. Compared with other fitness trackers it seemed reasonably accurate as long as it was placed appropriately.

There’s the Smart Coach, which will help keep you motivated and moving towards your goals, and will offer suggestions to improve your sleep and fitness once it learns your habits.

The device runs off a CR025 battery – one of the large flat ones you use in key fobs, for example – which means you’ll get several months out of it before you even have to think about changing it.

That’s good news for those of us who are completely and utterly rubbish at remembering to charge devices on a daily basis. It also means no cables to remember (or lose) and it’s less likely to die at an inopportune moment, taking all your data with it until you can change the battery.

The not so good

If one of the chief attractions is the UP Move’s versatility, it’s a shame that it comes at a price. In this case it’s €15, which is what it will cost you to buy the wrist strap.

That’s not a huge price to pay, but given that the strap is the best way to measure sleep accurately it’s pretty important.

You have to remember to switch it into sleep mode, which I forgot about 60 per cent of the time.

That neuters the Smart Coach a little; it can only go off the data it collects from you.

The rest

The UP Move is splashproof and syncs wirelessly with your phone.

Again, that means no cables or docks, which is where other fitness trackers fall down a bit. All your data is sent to the UP app, and you can link it up to other apps and services such as MyFitnessPal.

Food and drink can also be logged in the app through bar codes or keyword search, so you can tot up your calories for the day.

You can also log water, set goals, and identify activities as the trackers identifies periods where you seemed to be a bit more active. The more information it gets the better it can coach you later on.

The verdict

HHH A cheaper way to keep track of your fitness but including the strap with the device would have been a good move.