There are many products of health tracker in the market. The three dominant players are Fitbit, Jawbone and Nike. Basically these health tracker devices will be able to count how many steps we take in a day, how many calories we burned and lots of other statistics around those data. Some trackers have sleep-tracker to help us identify if we have enough sleep at night, whether our sleep is “deep sleep” or not, and can wake us up at the best time in the morning without disturbing our deep sleep whenever possible.
Pebble has been my choice of smartwatch since last year and I’m glad to share that this wonderful piece of hardware can be used for health tracking, too.
To use Pebble as pedometer (step counter), there are at least 2 watchfaces you can use: Pedometer and Motiv8.
Pedometer watchface has a simple interface showing how many steps we have taken. However, I find it too sensitive and it always end up logging more steps than what I actually did. This watchface does not even show time, so I don’t find it practical to wear a smart-WATCH that doesn’t tell time.
My next experiment is Motiv8 watchface. It shows how many steps we have taken, the amount of calories burned and it shows time ! As a bonus, we can set up daily target and see our progress in achieving the target. Plus we can see the remaining battery of our Pebble too. Using this watchface, our Pebble becomes a fully functional health tracker without the need of additional hardware or companion app installed in our phones.
Now how about sleep-tracking? There is a Pebble app called Morpheuz that will take care of that feature of health tracking. It’s freely available from Pebble App Store and does similar function as the sleep-tracking feature offered by Fitbit Flex and Jawbone UP24. In the morning, my Pebble will wake me up on the best time without disturbing deep sleep. Plus I get to see how many times I was awake at night, how many hours I actually got deep sleep and other patterns. Very useful !
One issue I had is the feeling of discomfort from wearing the Pebble all-day. Perhaps it’s simply not designed for that purpose. When I sleep wearing my Pebble, I always have this worry that my sleep movement will break my favorite smartwatch. So, after few experiments, I stop using Pebble as health tracking device because of my own preference. The device is more than capable to do the job. If my issue is not a problem for you, then go ahead and try this extra features.
These are apps not watch faces.. It’s completely fine for them not to show time.