Body Media Armband REVIEWS?

I like and don't like mine. I don't like that it's so big and I feel dorky wearing it around in short sleeves. I wish they'd make bands and skins in skintone colors or something so it's not just so obvious. When people ask, I tell them it's my activity tracker so that I have an idea of how much to eat each day. But I really love seeing the data -- didn't realize just how much so until it somehow turned off last week and didn't record for nearly two days. But other than that blip, it pairs with bluetooth no problem and syncs great with my iPhone.

I use MFP for logging my actual food, but the BMFdashboard is so much more informative. It's also easier to see at a glance what my diet has been like than MFP is. I can see very quickly what my macro percentages are as well as tell how many grams of protein or calcium I've had that day.

I also check it to see how I've slept that night, and I do find that to be pretty accurate. It has me as "lying down" when I know I've been tossing and turning. It was even accurate for an afternoon nap once.

Burn-wise I find it to be pretty consistent. I've never compared the steps taken to anything in particular, and neither specific calories burned. But when I use the "Workout" feature, I find the calories burned to be in line with what my Polar HRM would have shown for something similar. Pretty much anything involving standing up registers as moderate activity for me. You've got to really work pretty hard for it to register as Vigorous, but that's also something you can customize on your own dashboard. I think the default settings are pretty accurate though.

I like and don't like mine. I don't like that it's so big and I feel dorky wearing it around in short sleeves. I wish they'd make bands and skins in skintone colors or something so it's not just so obvious. When people ask, I tell them it's my activity tracker so that I have an idea of how much to eat each day. But I really love seeing the data -- didn't realize just how much so until it somehow turned off last week and didn't record for nearly two days. But other than that blip, it pairs with bluetooth no problem and syncs great with my iPhone.

I use MFP for logging my actual food, but the BMFdashboard is so much more informative. It's also easier to see at a glance what my diet has been like than MFP is. I can see very quickly what my macro percentages are as well as tell how many grams of protein or calcium I've had that day.

I also check it to see how I've slept that night, and I do find that to be pretty accurate. It has me as "lying down" when I know I've been tossing and turning. It was even accurate for an afternoon nap once.

Burn-wise I find it to be pretty consistent. I've never compared the steps taken to anything in particular, and neither specific calories burned. But when I use the "Workout" feature, I find the calories burned to be in line with what my Polar HRM would have shown for something similar. Pretty much anything involving standing up registers as moderate activity for me. You've got to really work pretty hard for it to register as Vigorous, but that's also something you can customize on your own dashboard. I think the default settings are pretty accurate though.

That is interesting, it doesn't register standing as moderate activity for me. When I work from home, I often stand for hours - I assume I'm registering some extra calorie burn, but not activity. And, when I cross-country ski, it only registers it as moderate activity! That's a major workout, but I guess my mps don't get high enough :-(

I do move around when I'm standing. It's not like I'm standing still at a register or workstation. But it does seem to accurately distinguish from my sedentary times from my moving times. And not all movement registers in the "orange" moderate level on the graph. But I very rarely see a spike when there wasn't realistically one.

It does take quite a bit to register as Vigorous, but in that respect I would prefer it to be on the conservative side of the estimation than overinflate. Even still, for instance, I spent an hour last night doing Chalean Extreme Burn Intervals and Ab Burner. BMF estimated 306 calories total, and given that it's not non-stop high impact cardio for the whole time, I think that's probably about right. It counted only 8 minutes of it as "Vigorous". Exercises with overhead arm movements seem to kick it into that category (like playing Just Dance or maybe Zumba), but I've never tried to fake it out either. My lower body has been moving hard at the same time, and my heart rate does tend to jump the more I use arms. So, I feel like I've earned the Vigorous minutes when it gives them out.