Poor Man's Fitbit

I was interested to hear Richard's views on the Fitbit. Keeping a record of your activities can be very addictive. Although I do a lot of walking, I am also a cyclist. I do around 100-150 miles per week, all of which is recorded on my Garmin 810 and uploaded to various cloud services. I am not competitive, so I don't care if I have a King of the Mountains Strava segment. However being able to see exactly where I have been and compare my performance to the last ride over the same route is highly addictive. Also, I try to cycle at least as far each month as I did in the same month last year. Knowing that you only have four days left in a month and you need to cycle another 200km to equal last year's total is good motivation to get out when it's pouring with rain!

Last year I saw the MiBand, which was only around £10, so thought I would give it a try. It's no FitBit, but is stonkingly good value for money. Battery life is amazing, often more than 30 days between charges. It records steps and sleep patterns. The one I have doesn't have an HRM, but there is a slightly more expensive model that does. It integrates with Google Fit and there are IOS and Android apps. One feature that I found very useful is the ability to set different vibration patterns based on your phones notifications. You need the excellent MiBand tools https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cz.zdenekhorak.mibandtools to do this. So for example if I get a text from a family member, I get a different vibration pattern to a text from anyone else. Very useful when I am out on the bike and the phone is in my rucksack. If you don't know if a fitness band would be any use to you, for a small amount of money you can try the MiBand.