There are a lot of fitness trackers out there now vying for your attention with many of them trying to 1-up themselves with features. This is great for hardcore athletes and fitness buffs but what about us regular folks who don’t need things measured like elevation, location, heart rate, etc.? There are simple trackers out there that offer to track steps taken, calories burnt, and even the amount of sleep you get, and that is probably all most of you will ever need. The problem here now is that many of those can be quite ugly and utilitarian looking that might look at home at the gym or track but not out at a fancy dinner. That’s where the new Mistfit Ray comes in.
How does it look?
The Ray is the latest fitness tracker from Misfit that takes much from their other tracker, the Shine 2. The main difference between the two is that the Ray does not tell time and the most obvious, features a new cylindrical body instead of being a circular disk. The new shape allows for a much more compact and elegant design not to mention more stylish in my opinion. The older design, while good, didn’t really allow for the wearing of other accessories like watches on the same wrist. If you did decide to wear the Shine and a watch on separate wrists, then it looked like you were wearing two watches, which just looked really weird. The new Misfit Ray however looks more like an elegant bracelet or band with a much thinner design.
Like the Shine, the Ray can also be broken down to its base and accessorized with different bands and can even be worn as a necklace. This makes it more customizable than most other simple fitness trackers because you can easily change the way it looks depending on your mood. Use the sports band when you’re working out and when you’re heading out to a party or a dinner date, swap the band out for the more stylish leather band. For women, you can attach the main body to a necklace which makes it look like a piece of jewelry.
Something you won’t see on the Misfit Ray though is a charging port. That’s because the Misfit Ray uses batteries that will keep it powered up for up to 6 months. That means you don’t have to worry about charging it daily or weekly and for the most part, you’ll be able to keep it on at all times, both day and night. It’s even waterproof.
Is the tracking hardware/software any good?
Like with most fitness trackers that track steps and calories, there will be some margin for error. In my experience, I usually take what it shows me as an estimate and not as an accurate exact number of what I’ve accomplished that day. However, if I go by what I would normally get on average during a normal workday with my old Fitbit and compared it to what I measured with the Misfit Ray, the numbers are pretty close. On average, they’re about the same, give or take and deviations from my normal routine.
The same goes for sleep tracking. I’ve worn the Ray every night to sleep since I got it and again, on average, it keeps a pretty good record of how long I’m in bed. Usually it’s pretty on point with when I get into bed and when I get out of bed and it does this automatically. The part of the measurements I however can not really verify is when it shows me restful sleep and light sleep. I’m assuming light sleep means when I’m tossing and turning in bed while restful means when I’m completely motionless. For the most part, I’m usually half and half but for the nights that I do know that I’m not getting good sleep, it does lean more heavily on light sleep and even shows awake if I get up to use the restroom or something in the middle of the night.
The software you use on your smartphone for the Ray is the same software you use for the Shine. It syncs steps and sleep information from the Ray and that’s also allows the Ray to vibrate when receiving calls and texts. Other information like daily body weight, workouts, heart rate, and nutrition you’ll have to enter manually unless it can pull the info off other linked sources. Not only that, the app can also sync information to Apple Health which Fitbit still will not allow you to do.
On top of that, like I said above, it can sync with Apple Health. As a pretty cool bonus, if you download the Misfit Link app, you can make your Misfit Ray do all sorts of neat things like becoming a music remote, a selfie button, or even as a means of finding your iPhone if you misplaced it somewhere in range.
Final Thoughts
I want to share a little story about an experience I had with the Misfit Ray.
Just the other day while I was wearing the Misfit Ray out at the mall, a young lady commented on how nice it looked and what it was. I told her it was a new fitness tracker and she was amazed on how it didn’t look like a fitness tracker and thought it was just a really nice looking bracelet. That to me says that there are people out there who want to track their activity, but don’t want to look like that’s what they’re doing. There are folks out there who want to be discrete about it and the Misfit Ray lets you be that.
If this is you, than I highly recommend taking a look at the new Ray. It’s a very attractive fitness tracker that looks great on both men and women and I love the fact that it looks more like a fashion accessory then a tool. That doesn’t mean it’s not capable because it very much is. This is a fitness tracker for those who don’t need all those high end bells and whistles, the Misfit Ray is more than capable at everything it does.
The Misfit Ray is available in both carbon black and rose gold and with either a sports band or a leather band option.
