Recently I have been getting more interested in my personal health as I try and shed some pounds – so much so that I have even built the website The Chubby Challenge to help me and others do so.
Been a gadget lover this has inevitably led me to look at some technology to help with fitness, weight loss and well-being. Currently there are two players in this market: Nike and Fitbit. Both produce hardware that will record your activity during the day (and night with Fitbit) allowing you to see how active you have been. They both do this with wearable devices – a wristband for Nike and a dongle for Fitbit. The issue with these are that the Fitbit just doesn’t seem practical to me and both are expensive – £70 for the Fitbit and £120 for Nike equivalent.
Enter Moves for iPhone, which is an app that records very similar information to Fitbit and Nike but comes without the need for carrying any additional hardware and is free. What I like about Moves is that it is a set and forget solution. No having to remember to put on your dongle as it is part of something that I regularly carry with my anyway – my phone. Moves can record three types of activity: walking, running and cycling as well as logging when you haven’t been active by taking the car or public transport. The fitness information is shown as a series of bubbles on the screen for the day with a linear list below mapping out the day by time.
Having used it for a couple of days now a couple of things have become clear: Moves works incredibly well and when I am at home working I really don’t move about enough.
If I was Nike and Fitbit I would be worried as Moves really does eat into their market at a price point that you just cannot beat – free. No doubt there will be a pro edition at some point as they need to repay their investors and I am hoping that they introduce a calorie counter and an ability to set goals too but right now Moves is just perfect for the casual user to be able to track their movement or lack thereof.
Download Moves for iPhone here.