Advertised as being water resistant, as well as having resistance to dust, dirt and sand, the LifeSense Band 2 by Axtro Sports is touted as a fitness tracker that is suited to all kinds of water sports as well as indoor and outdoor sports activity on land.

At the same time, the LifeSense Band 2 can sense your heart rate 24/7 and gives you all day activity tracking, as well as tracks your running status, sleep, calls and SMS notifications and has the ability to reject calls simply by touching the fitness tracker.

Thanks to Axtro Sports, I was given the chance to review the LifeSense Band 2. Here are my thoughts and comments on it.

Appearance

When the tracker arrived, my first impression was that it is quite sleek and light and that you should be able to go about your day wearing it, without the tracker feeling cumbersome or getting in the way.

The black colour body also ensures that the tracker can match well with all types of colours without looking out of place.

Charging

It can be quite hard to charge the LifeSense Band 2, though. The tracker is designed such that the USB charging unit is hidden within the removable left hand side strap, so to charge the device, you will need to physically pull out the strap.

The strap though, being fairly tight, is not easy to remove. In fact in the two times that I needed to charge the device, I needed help to remove the strap. So if you wish to charge the tracker in a hurry, then this can be quite tricky.

Tracker gives an indication of your health levels over time

The LifeSense Band 2 tracks your steps, distance walked, heart rate and calories burned. As well, it also tracks your sleep too, to give you a full idea or indication of your fitness and health levels.

As well, you can wear the LifeSense Band 2 like a wrist watch throughout the day, as it also gives you the date and time of day, which I find to be very useful and convenient.

Steps & Distance

For the steps and distance walked throughout the day, I feel that these are probably accurate enough, as the figures are pretty much in line with another fitness tracker that I was also wearing, for comparison.

It could be made more accurate to cater to each individual though, if the stride length could be changed but at present, this currently seems to be a default calculation and cannot be adjusted to suit for example, people with longer or shorter legs.

Heart Rate

But I did unfortunately notice some inaccuracies in terms of the heart rate readings though. When I am not exercising, the heart rate reading is pretty consistent. But when I am doing vigorous exercise such as running, the heart rate readings tend to get much higher than my body tells me.

For example when I had been doing an easy run and I felt quite comfortable, but my heart rate readings on the LifeSense Band 2 were reaching as high as 165 to 170 beats per minute; I knew that this was not accurate, as my normal heart rate tracker showed that my heart rate was less than 140 beats per minute. So if you are training by heart rate, trusting the readings of the LifeSense Band 2 may not be the best choice.

I must mention too, that the heart rate tracking needs to be turned on physically before the LifeSense Band 2 will start measuring your heart rate. When I first got the tracker, I have to admit I wasn’t sure how to do this; perhaps clear instructions could have been included in the manual on how to do so. I later discovered that it was achieved by switching on a simple toggle in the app but this isn’t distinctly indicated, though.

Exercise Mode

There is a exercise mode too, whereby you can switch it on and until you turn it off, the tracker will record your workout based on your steps and distance.

But should you forget to turn this mode on, there is also a auto track mode for clocking exercise and this is pretty accurate too in terms of being able to figure out when I am actually working out, such as doing running, and when I am merely going about my day, such as walking to the nearby bus stop.

Call & Text Message alerts

I like the feature where the LifeSense Band 2 alerts you to calls and text messages. The tracker vibrates when a message comes to your phone, so this means that you can keep your phone inside your bag and you won’t miss a phone call or a message again, with the tracker around your wrist.

Sleep Tracking

Sleep tracking is automatic and you don’t need to do anything to switch it on and off. The tracker will automatically sense when you have dozed off for the night, and it will pick up your movement when you wake up again in the mornings.

I find this to be quite convenient and fuss-free, because I don’t want to have the hassle of switching on a tracker when I am exhausted after a long day, and then have to then toggle off the sleep tracking when I am groggy and trying to wake up in the mornings. So the LifeSense Band 2 has got the algorithm right, in this aspect.

Connecting to the LifeSense app

The LifeSense Band 2 is synced to the LifeSense app, which is a free download on the Apple and Android App Stores. The initial syncing process, I found, was a pretty fuss-free affair and didn’t cause me any major problems.

With the app, you are also able to see a more detailed analysis of how your day went.

For example you can compare the quality of your sleep over time with the app to gauge not only whether you have had enough hours of sleep, but also the quality of your sleep, for example, if you were in a deep slumber or if you were only resting lightly. This gives you an indication of, for instance, why you could be feeling so tired despite having had eight or nine hours of sleep; the reason may be that your sleep was light rather than deep.

Also, you can monitor your heart rate, steps and weight loss or gain over time or throughout the day using the app – these all appear in the form of a graph so that you can easily see your progress at a glance. I think that this is quite useful to gauge your overall fitness levels over time.

In terms of exercise readings, the app will also show you your progress, with charts displaying figures such as your heart rate during the exercise session, as well as your number of calories burned when exercising. And this is regardless of the fact whether you may have physically turned on the exercise mode, or not.

Overall Thoughts

If you are looking for an everyday fitness tracker that is reasonably priced to monitor your daily activities, the LifeSense Band 2 is what you are looking for. But with the less than accurate heart rate readings, it may not be suitable for those who are looking for something to track their workouts.

The LifeSense Band 2 costs S$88 and it is available at the Axtro Sports website.

web counter