Edward Swift - Sony SmartBand Review

The Sony SmartBand is the latest wearable gadget released by the technology giant. The “life logging wrist band” as they call it lets people keep track of everything including walking, running and counting calories, control what they’re listening to on their phone, and even help wake its user up. 

It comes in two parts – the waterproof core unit, and the silicone wristband it sits in. The band is adjustable and being silicone sits very comfortably on the wrist, but I found it constantly getting stuck on the inside of my sleeve. While it is also unobtrusive in its appearance, when I was showcasing it to friends one of their first comments was it looks a bit ugly and they were expecting to see a bit more. I personally didn’t mind how it looked, but each to their own.

The functionality of the core unit is very simple. It can vibrate to notify you of something, you can tap it to start and stop music, and you can press the bookmark to create a ‘life bookmark’ or change which mode it is in.

One of its big features is it can track your fitness. It will know whether you’re walking or running, how many steps you’ve taken, how long you were running for, and how many calories you burned. In that respect, it’s fantastic. It’s a band that syncs up with your phone and allows you to log your fitness. And don’t worry if you want to go for a run in the rain – it’s waterproof so you won’t have to worry about damaging it. You could probably also go swimming with it on and have no issues, but I personally can’t testify whether it works so don’t hold me to it.

To track you fitness, it syncs up with the Lifelog app by Sony. Lifelog allows you to see your progress, set goals on how much exercise you want to do, but it also goes a bit further. You can effectively see how much time you spend on your phone playing games, listening to music, reading emails, and it also tracks your location.

Once synced with your phone, you can also use some extra features. You can set it to vibrate when you get a notification from any app or if you get a text message. You can also make it alert you if you walk away and forget your phone. This feature had a few issues for me. Was great if I was going downstairs at work and forgot to take my phone with me. I managed to get to the Newstalk ZB lobby about 30m from my desk before it reminded me I’d left the phone behind. But then another time I had my phone on my desk with and it told me I’d left my phone behind, even though it was less than a metre away.

It can also be used as a remote control for your phone. A simple tap can start and stop music, or take a photo on the camera – great if you’ve set the phone up on a ledge to get a group shot. Hopefully as more app developers find ways to utilize this feature, it can be opened up to more apps.

The band is designed for use 24/7 and has the ability to switch it to night mode, meaning you won’t be notified if you get an email in the middle of the night. It took a while to adjust to wearing it while in bed, and felt a bit uncomfortable at times. But by doing this, you do get to use one of its useful features - the silent alarm. Basically it figures out whether you’re in a deep sleep or a light sleep based on your movements. In the 30 minutes (this time can be adjusted) before your desired wake up time, it starts vibrating when you’re in a light sleep. From personal experience it did make it easier to get up at 6am, though sometimes I ended up being woken up a lot earlier that I would’ve preferred.

While the band and app is only compatible with Android devices, the SmartBand is great if you’re getting into your fitness or want to track how much walking you’re doing each day. However if you're looking for something that does more than just vibrate when you get a message, then I'd suggest this may not be the device for you.

Sony SmartBand SWR10

Available in black, more colours coming soon
RRP $169.95
Available from Sony Store and sony.co.nz
Availability at other retailers coming soon

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