Misfit, a fitness gadget company who have become synonymous with affordable health and fitness trackers are back this November with the follow up to their Shine tracker – the Shine 2.
In many ways, this is an evolutionary product rather than a revolution. As a starter, it looks entirely identical to the original. Minus any design overhaul, the functionality – at base at least – is hardly revolutionary either. We’re looking at basic sleep and activity tracking, but thankfully there are some nice new features buried in this new release.
The device is in many ways headlined by its funky ‘clock face’ interface. Featuring a quite staggering array of 12 LEDs which are capable of delivering over 12 million different colours, with enough horsepower in order to be seen in bright sunlight. This array of colours is designed to showcase all of the devices features in a simple way – so these lights will tell you the time, your activity and even whether you have any missed calls or messages.
Also new is the devices vibration monitor. This acts as a more gentle version of an alarm clock. Rather than jolting you awake, this ties in with your sleep cycle in order to more gently wake you up. This is a feature that w’re especially excited by, as it brings a lot of the value of more expensive trackers. This vibration feature will also buzz when you have been stationary for too long, acting as a reminder that you must get up and move around if you’re going to hit your movement and activity targets.
Misfit have some pretty ambitious plans for 2016, including a tie in with Uber in order to take cab hailing to the next level. Alongside Uber integration, they’re looking to hook more apps in too bringing the ability to take selfies and control presentations.
As the device comes to market, we’ll rush to get a full review done. Needless to say, we’re excited by this companies ambitions going into next year. The slightly thinner unit, with enhanced bluetooth 4.1 and other higher-cal specs, should be a winner in the affordable tracker market.