Gadget Review: Nike Plus Sportband |
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August 16th, 2008 | Nike |
The Nike Plus Sportband is an inventive way to track every aspect of your run without the typical iPod required in older Nike Plus configurations.
The device is basically a sophisticated pedometer which has two pieces: the sportband and sensor which fits in your shoe. The band itself is made of good quality plastic that feels quite comfortable when running and luckily doesn't move around at all.
What is cool about the design is that the display portion of the watch is actually a USB stick which is placed into the computer and instantly downloads your run data.
One grip I do have is that the software which communicates with your Sportband is web based and lacking some key features. First, the site is all Flash driven, which runs pretty slow on older computers ( and cannot be viewed on an iPhone). Next, there is amazingly no way to export your run data! I would love to be able to place my data into an Excel document. Not possible with this system.
As far as the performance of the device, it is pretty damn accurate. It calculates distance very well
The display on the watch is decent, however, after my 22nd run the display started to visible get some moisture in it. This may have been due to the high amount of sweat rolling off my smelly arms.
All in all, for $60 bucks this system cannot be matched.
Some improvements that could be made would be a backlight for the watch, a more water resustent design, and ability to export run data.
I think that one of the most valuable things about the Nike site is that it has excellent training programs which are expertly crafted and thankfully can be printed out and studied. I have been running on a 10k traing program for about 7 weeks and find the schedule challenging and fun.
For more features I would suggest a Garmin Forerunner 50, which does the same thing as the Nike Sportband but addresses all of the improvements I have mentioned above. It also costs 3x as much.
