Thursday, July 31, 2014

Runtastic Announces 'Orbit', Its Own Fitness Tracking Gizmo

There are lots of fitness bands to choose from: the Jawbone UP, Fitbit Flex, Nike Fuelband...and many others. If you're a Runtastic user, however, there's a new one on the market that may interest you, the Runtastic Orbit. As you may have already guessed, this one is built from the ground up for use with Runtastic's services – running, cycling, etc. It doesn't yet work with the company's dedicated cycling apps (road biking, mountain biking), but support for those is current in the works.

While I say it's a fitness band, it's actually more than that. The core of the unit is a smaller-ish little gadget which can be placed into either a band or a clip attachment, making it pretty versatile. I've actually been testing one out for the past couple of weeks (full review coming soon), and I really like the ability to move it from wrist to belt with little effort.

The Orbit is meant to be worn 24 hours a day, is completely waterproof, and should get about a week's worth of battery life. When it comes to standalone tracking, it monitors steps taken, calories burned, "active time," and sleep quality. This is all on top of the fact that it synchronizes with Runtastic Pro to display thing like duration, distance, pace, speed, and the like while an activity is in progress.

There's also a companion app designed just for use with Orbit. Runtastic Me will sync Orbit with your device so you can keep up with how your activities change from day to day, toggle Orbit's alarm settings, and perform firmware updates.

Orbit is available today in Runtastic's Online Shop for $120 (units will begin shipping on August 11th), with availability in retail stores coming soon.