Microsoft Band is a cross platform band which keeps you healthy by tracking your fitness activity, quality of sleep and heart rate. Apart from just being your health assistant, it also alerts you regarding Calendar meetings, emails, messages, GPS Tracking and many more.
What you need to know about Microsoft Band
Microsoft Band is with smooth black display with 11-millimeter by 33-millimeter screen. It has GPS, accelerometer, Optical heart rate monitor and gyroscope. The screen allows you to read in the bright sunlight.
Comprehensive Fitness Tracker
Time and one indicator among day of the week, calories, steps and distance is shown on the rectangular screen. You can select the indicator you want to show on the home screen. Device is with the 24 hour heart rate monitoring with the band itself. At once Microsoft Band only shows three tiles. Swipe left to see tiles like Walking/Running, emails, workouts, messages and calendar events. You can swipe left again to see next three tiles. You can set these tiles from the Microsoft Health App.
You can connect the device with your Lumia mobile and track your device. You do not need to carry the mobile with you. Just start the activity and after getting back from running/walk set off the activity. It shows you the distance covered, average and maximum heart rate, calories burned and pace per mile at an average. These statistics are uploaded to Health App in your Lumia Mobile. Interesting feature of Microsoft Band is that, it shows you the “recovery time”, which means the time required by you to get refreshed after completing the activity.
It also tracks the quality of your sleep. Start and stop the sleep tracker by pressing the activity button and it shows you the number of hours you have slept. It gives you information like amount of time you had “light sleep”, “restful sleep” and many more like how many times you have woke up in the night and resting heart rate per minute.
Microsoft Band works along with the Microsoft Health App in Lumia Phones running Windows 8.1.
More than a Fitness Tracker
You can view messages, emails and calendar events on the band itself. For that, you need to set those corresponding tiles on the band. You can have the preview and deactivate the unwanted tiles. Text messages and emails which you receive in your Lumia are shown on the band, so that you never miss anything. It also notifies you regarding your meeting using the calendar reminders. It vibrates on your wrists for such notifications and you can see them right on your band.
Read: Microsoft Band vs Apple Watch.
Speak to Cortana
You can speak to Cortana using the Microsoft Band. To do that, activate the Cortana by long pressing the activity button. It shows you the word “Listening” and you can start speaking to it. You can ask it any question and it responds you with the answer. You can ask it to remind you at particular time, set calendar events or send text messages (e.g. “Text Bill”) from the band itself.
The Microsoft Band comes in three sizes and is available online and in Microsoft retail stores, for $199. While it’s currently available only in the U.S., we look forward to continuing to innovate for the wearable market and with that, continue to expand to additional retail channels and markets in the future, says Microsoft.
