I'm really excited to be posting this Basis Peak Fitness and Sleep Tracker* review after many friends have quizzed me on how good it is. Lots of people are looking for something to keep them up to date with how active they are on a daily basis, and the demand of these devices doing more is rising. However many don't want something that gives a convoluted way of telling you something, that can actually be explained very simply and easily presented.
I was sent the Basis Peak to review and over the past month I've put it through its paces. I don't exactly sit still (or so I thought but we'll go into that shortly) and I don't stick to one activity so how would this help me? Let's talk about what it actually does first...
// What is the Basis Peak Fitness and Sleep Tracker
It is a touch screen watch that syncs to an app on your phone to give you a clear summary of how active you are and helps monitor your sleep pattern. That is a very brief round up of what it does! Firstly you don't need your phone with you when you want to use it, the device fits on your wrist as a watch would and monitors your activities. You can then sync up the data once you're able to use your phone.
// What does it come with?
- A Basis Peak watch
- A USB charger
- Instructions
// The Watch
The watch is very elegant to look at with a large screen - very handy! Has a rubbery white strap, (although comes in black too) with a sensor on the back that picks up your heart rate. It is touch screen with the following options right at your finger tips
- Time and date
- Alarm setting
- Heart rate
- Steps taken Activity detection
- Calories burnt
- Stopwatch
- Light setting (perfect for when you're in the dark and need to see the time!)
- Water resistant up to 50m
// Dashboard
The app itself is very easy to navigate around with a clear area of instructions down the side. There is the dashboard which is all the most recent information on your activities, but from there you can find summaries of previous days and compare them.
// Habits
This section is one in particular I wanted to highlight as I personally found this the most useful. This is an area which sets you goals! For example for at least 2 days a week can I walk 10,000 steps? Can I burn 2,500 calories in exercise a week? Can I fall asleep by 22.30hrs at least 2 days a week? And so forth. You don't have to select you want to aim for a particular goal but you can try to achieve them - the app will send you a friendly notification that you've unlocked a habit! I loved this because even though I wasn't using this watch for training for anything in particular, I liked having small personal goals to aim for.
// Activity Feed
This is like the dashboard but has more detail and you simply scroll down to gather the data from previous days. This is a great way to quickly see how much activity you have been doing each day and where you can pick things up a bit.
// Sleep Pattern
I loved using this section because I've never really know how much sleep I actually get. I did think I got a good amount of sleep before using this, but it turns out come bedtime I have really bad habits which cause me to miss out on a good nights sleep. I've since used the habit setting to try to conquer that problem. The sleep tracker breaks down the segments of type of sleep we have, so deep sleep, light sleep, if you toss and turn and if you get up in the middle of the night... it even notices when you have a nap!
// Charting
A great section to show the peaks in heart rate, steps and how many calories you're burning. This is yet another way for you to discover how much you're doing... it gives a good indication of what activities you do that burn the most calories and get your heart rate lifted. You can also quickly access your steps, calories and heart rate via your watch.
// Device
You can sync your watch up in this section and conduct any updates. This is also where you can set up a new peak, set the watch clock and see if your device and app are paired.
// Playground
You can add on extras from this area to make the experience more fun. A photo finish option (which I detail in the section below), distance tracking to help measure how far you've walked or ran via the Google Fit app. It will also allow you to get notifications from other apps on your phone if you want to.
// Photo Finish
This is a great added extra where you can take a selfie once you've completed some exercise. If you've been out for a 30 minute run, you will get a notification on your phone asking you to take a selfie to remind you of your hard work! Don't fret, even if you don't have your phone with you, you'll still have a notification when you do have it.
// Notifications
Each day I am more and more impressed with technology. If you wanted to, you can have notifications link up to your watch. For example you're out and instead of digging around for your phone in your bag, your watch can tell you that you've got an email, or it can notify you that there is a call from your Mum. It will also give you alerts on daily success, weekly success, when you unlock a new habit, plus a polite boost to encourage you to get going.
// Help & Support
There is a help and support section which sends a message to the Basis Peak help team who will be able to assist. Haven't used this section as I've had no problems but was pleased to see it was built in for ease.
// YouTube Action
I actually reviewed this on my YouTube channel - this even includes action footage of me using it over the time I've had it. I used it doing as much as possible to show you what it's capable of. If you want to skip just to the action footage go to 9.31 on the video.
// Overall
So is this any good? Firstly let's work out what you want out of it? This in my eyes is a daily best friend, it helps you help yourself to move. Walk around, go for a walk, go for a jog, sleep earlier... all those things we want to do and put off, this device gives you that gentle poke to get you moving and achieving some really easy goals.
I hadn't realised that on days when I was working from home and sat at my desk, I honestly only walked up and down the stairs a few times to go to make a cup of tea and trips to the toilet. I did nothing else! Those days I've now added in a quick 20 minute walk with the dog at lunch. I had no idea I was so stationary on my days off from biking or doing something really active. I also found the sleep pattern setting amazing. Again no idea I was lacking in energy on some days due to disrupted nights, I wasn't going to bed earlier enough and wasn't giving my body enough recovery time. I'm now using one of the habit goals to try and go to bed at 10.30pm every week night - it's been tough and I've still not unlocked the habit yet but I'm working on it.
Overall this is an easy device to manage and use, but just to reiterate it really is great to keep you on track on a daily basis to get active. Even though this is a sponsored post I'm always brutally honest and out of all the 'lifestyle' fitness tech I've tested, this is definitely one of my favourites. You don't have to be a runner or a cyclist, you can just be someone who walks the dog and wants to know how many steps you're doing? Or you're more interested in your sleeping pattern. It's going to work from all ages and all active lifestyle goals.
Basis Peak retails from £169.99
*This post is in association with Basis Peak.
