It took me ten seconds to open my Misfit Shine 2, ten minutes to set it up and fully customize it, and ten hours to fall completely, utterly in love with it.
I am not the “ideal candidate” for a fitness tracker, and I am by no means an active person. So it takes a pretty fantastic product to make me feel like an activity tracker is something that I need, but the Shine 2 did exactly that. Like any truly fantastic product, it was quick to show me not just how it could improve my life, but how it could uniquely improve it.
The tech specs
The Misfit Shine 2 is the most evolved activity monitor, sleep tracker, and smartwatch in the Misfit range. (It follows the Shine, which is bulkier and more prone to falling off and getting lost, and comes just before the brand new Misfit Ray, which has more of a fashion accessory feel to it but doesn’t display the time.)
It comes equipped with a 3-axis accelerometers and magnetometer to track motion in both activity and sleep, Bluetooth 4.1 for wireless data transfer, and a vibration alarm that can wake you up in the ideal stage of your sleep cycle, alert you to texts and calls, and remind you to get moving when you’ve been sedentary for too long!
The Shine 2 is also a mere 8mm thick, is water resistant up to 50 meters (yes, meters), and is built from anodized, aircraft-grade aluminum. It can also be hooked up to the camera on your smartphone, your music player, and your home’s Nest, and uses a coin cell battery for up to 6 months of constant tracking with no need to recharge daily.
What the Shine 2 does
Above all else, the Misfit Shine 2 is an activity monitor and sleep tracker. It is not a smartwatch that you can load new apps to, and it is not a heart rate monitor! It simply tracks your sleep and activity, reads your figures back to you using the Misfit app, and keeps an eye on things like activity goals, text notifications, and the time.
I think that the capacitive touch sensor on the Shine 2 could benefit from an update (I sometimes have to tap four or five times to get it to display the time), but it does everything else amazingly well. Despite the fact that it can only track your activities through motion, it knows the difference between going for a stroll and filing papers, and it can somehow track my sleep right down to the minute. (I’m pretty sure that Misfit powers its operations with magic and the ritual sacrifice of sleeping aids, but please don’t quote me on that.)
The Shine 2 also introduces the Misfit Move, an idle alert system that is great for reminding office workers and serious readers to get up and move! Even just stretching your muscles out and looking into the distance for 5 minutes every hour is great for your long-term health, and the Misfit Move system can be set to buzz you every 20 minutes right up to every 2 hours after you wake up.
Why I love the Shine 2 so much
While it might seem silly, I honestly think that the Shine 2 has improved my quality of life in the short time that I’ve had it. A top-notch activity tracker like this one gives you access to data about yourself that you never would have been able to (reasonably) record otherwise, and that data affords you a level of control over your day that is truly one-of-a-kind.
It’s not something that I talk about often on the Best Buy blog, but I actually have pretty severe fibromyalgia and rheumatoid arthritis. (In other words, I get tired a lot faster than your average style blogger, and I can end up in a pretty considerable amount of pain if I push myself too hard. I’m basically your grandma, but snarkier.) So, for me, knowing exactly how much activity and how much sleep I’m getting in a given day makes a big difference! A minute or two of walking at a time is really tough to track on your own, but the Shine 2 makes it so easy that you literally don’t even have to think about it.
What does knowing really mean for me, though? Well, it means that I can visually see how much activity I’ve gotten in a day and plan accordingly. It helps me keep my activity levels at a point that won’t set me back, but also won’t trigger my fibro pain because I’ve gone overboard without noticing. And it helps me determine whether I’m tired because I’ve done too much walking or because I just didn’t sleep very well the night before, which is a fantastic tool to have at my disposal for my recovery!
In the same ways, the Shine 2 can help anybody slowly build up to their fitness goals in a way that is the most ideal for their body. Your ideal number of activity points is fully customizable, as is your goal amount of sleep, so you can set the number as high or low as you’d like. I have my activity goal set at 500 points and I aim to reach it 5 times a week with 2 days of rest interspersed throughout; similarly, someone who lives a fairly moderate lifestyle already could set an activity goal for 1000 points and aim to reach it daily! (1000 activity points is equal to about 1.5 hours of walking or 30 minutes of running.)
The Misfit Shine 2 would be perfect for…
The Misfit Shine 2 would be perfect for the casual activity tracker. I think the Shine 2 does a remarkable job with just an accelerometer, but it (understandably!) can’t track your brain waves during sleep, or your heart rate while you work out. So, if you’re really focused on heart rate and calories burned, the Shine 2 might not be the ideal choice for you.
That being said, the Shine 2 is one of the most discreet activity trackers that I’ve ever seen, and it is extremely well-priced for what it does. It’s really wearable, and can be attached to a watch band, clip, or even a necklace depending on your outfit. (You can also slip the device itself into your pocket, which I imagine must be lovely for those lucky enough to have actual pockets in your clothes.)
As a piece of adaptive technology, I think the Shine 2 would be a great tool for anyone just starting out with their fitness goals, as well as anyone with insomnia or in physical rehabilitation. The Misfit app is super uplifting and encouraging, and the new Misfit Move tool is really helpful to remind anyone with a sedentary job of lifestyle to just get up and M-O-V-E on a regular basis!
What would you use a Misfit Shine 2 Activity Tracker & Sleep Monitor for?
