Walking And Weight Loss: ActiTrainer Personal Activity Monitor, Yellow Review

I was very excited to buy this device, but when I got it, I wasn't very impressed with it.

Where to start. Taking it out of the packaging was the easiest part of the whole thing. You have to plug it into a USB port to charge, so if you don't have a lot of space on your CPU, I hope you have a port on your monitor or a USB extension cord.The equipment they give you to strap it to yourself consists of an elastic belt to put around your waist or torso and a strap you can use to put around your arm and I assume this is also for your wrist when you're sleeping at night.The maximum you can adjust the belt is around 41-42", otherwise its going to use its stretch function.You think yeah, ok, so what, but it's not comfortable. The case you put the Actitrainer in is plastic and pokey on your skin, especially when you sit. If you want to wear this for a short time, go for it, but I wanted to calculate my calorie expenditure.Let me tell you, this will tick off the calories regardless of if it's on your body or not. You're better off with a pedometer and a good formula to calculate what your body burns.

Nighttime comes and you must take it off your waist and put it on your wrist. It's rectangular, about 3-1/2" long not in the case. The arm band is too long, wraps around your wrist twice with velcro, not really leaving anywhere to put the device, which hangs on for dear life with a crappy little clip, which isn't really clip-like if you ask me.It's quite awkward sleeping with it on being as it's wider than your wrist and just hanging out there waiting to fall off. The reason to wear it at night is to count the number of times you wake up at night, to calculate your sleeping efficiency, which you can't do unless you have an account on their website. I had a sleep efficiency of 86%, but if I changed the time one half hour it jumped to 91%. It can also do your heart rate, but you have to take the waist belt and strap it as close to your sternum as possible, but if you're a woman, well it's not that easy, we have things in the way, but it seemed to work anyhow, and again, uncomfortable.

Now comes the software. You have to install a client and drivers. That in itself is not that hard. I had problems getting the battery to charge, would not charge to 100% to save my life. It held steady at 67% then the next day I was able to hit 83%, but as far as I can see, you have to be logged into the client to see that. There is a battery icon on the Actitrainer, but to see what the actual percentage is you have to be logged in. You may have trouble logging into the client, I received an error about a port 1433 being blocked numerous times before it worked on my home PC.On my PC from work, I received this message and never did get logged in. The customer service was helpful and fairly quit to reply, but by the time they tried troubleshooting, I was fed up with the whole thing and cancelled my subscription to their site and ready to send it back, which they didn't argue with at all. Must warn you though to read the fine print, there's a 15% restock fee involved and you ship back on your own dime.

There is a rather large PDF document that comes on the installation disk with instructions, while they tell you how to use the device, and it's not hard to, it leaves you to your imagination as to how to put the device on.Seems odd to put it next to your body under clothing because it is, like I said, NOT comfortable at all, same with the wrist thing, seems odd to have not much of a way to use it at night other than sticking out the way it does.It does not sit lengthwise on your arm, its the other way.I'm trying to explain this the best way I can, because I wish I would have known these things before I bought the item myself. I didn't see anyone saying anything about this device other than it was cool. Sure, it's cool for about one day until you wear it for more than a couple hours.

Bottom line.Too spendy, too uncomfortable, slightly on the flimsy side. Buy at your own risk.

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Product Description:
The ActiTrainer uses a triaxial accelerometer to measure and record personal activity levels, calories burned, steps taken, distance traveled and pace. Heart rate information is available when the included Polar strap is worn. This data can be viewed in real time on the device and then uploaded into the subscription-based Virtual Trainer Console for detailed analysis and progress tracking. The Virtual Trainer also allows you to track and monitor calories consumed, set weight loss, performance and nutritional goals, measure sleep quality and more! To find out more visit the ActiTrainer website. NOTE: THE ACTITRAINER AND ITS SOFTWARE ARE NOT COMPATIBLE WITH MAC COMPUTERS AT THIS TIME.