By Burton Craig

This year our company gave us a Jawbone Up 24 for a Christmas gift. I guess we were looking a little flabby. I was excited, as I have been meaning to try out a wearable health device to see if it would help me lead a healthier lifestyle. I had picked up a BodyMedia tracker earlier in the year based on a friend’s recommendation. I never used it because after trying it on, I didn’t like the feel of it on my arm. The Up 24 was small and unobtrusive. I was willing to give it a go.

It didn’t start our very well. Although they had purchased the largest size for me, it fit tight around my wrist. I’m a little above average build (6′ 6″ 240 lbs.) and periodically the snugness would bother me. Other than that I synced with my iPhone easily, the web account was easy to set up and the initial upload of data went smoothly.

I was going to CES and would be doing a lot of walking. I thought this would be a good test of the device. Just for comparison, I had also installed the Moves app on my iPhone 5s and would see if it and the M7 coprocessor in the iPhone would give me comparable data. My traveling companions also had the Up 24 and an earlier version of the FitBit.

My first day at CES went well and the data transferred from the UP 24 to the iPhone to the Jawbone website but when I correlated the data with Moves on my iPhone, the Jawbone showed about 2,000 fewer steps. Hmmm. Interesting. My second day at CES my colleague and I were together almost all day. In the afternoon his FitBit beeped to indicate he had reach his 10,000 step goal for the day – definitely not hard at CES. I thought I would check to see where I was and I was disappointed to see I only had 7,000 steps. I know I’m taller than he is but I don’t think that would account for 3,000 fewer steps.

Later that night I tried syncing the UP 24 with my iPhone and although it show a successful sync the number of steps was not incrementing and even after power cycling the iPhone, UP and resetting the Bluetooth connection the UP 24 data would not update. Frustrating and with the tightness on my wrist was growing more irritating, if I had to put up with this I would at least like there to be a payoff of dependable data at the end of the day. All this time, Moves on my iPhone was still tracking and showing data that looked correct.

I fooled around with the Up 24 for the rest of CES but I never could get the data to successfully sync. This was one of the times I wasn’t going to put a lot of effort into it. I was able to return it to the Apple Store for a store credit though $149 (plus tax) doesn’t get you much at the Apple Store 🙂

I think I’ll steal my daughter’s FitBit and give that a go.

P.S. Two other devices that were given as gifts to employees had to be returned due to malfunction.