I picked up a Nike+ FuelBand in San Francisco a couple of months ago. It’s a nice piece of kit. On the wrist, it’s comfortable and, more importantly, unobtrusive. In black at least, it looks just like a charity wristband, so hardly anyone even notices it. The tiny little light-up display is both adorable and looks futuristic as fuck.

But I have a couple of minor problems with it.

  1. What the fuck is Nike+ Fuel? I’ve set a daily goal of 2,0001, but what does that actually mean? Is 2,000 a little or a lot? If I’m using this as a way to track my activity or to lose weight, I’d love to know exactly what this is supposed to represent2.

  2. This isn’t FuelBand-specific, and is more a problem with all phone peripherals, such as the Jawbone Up: If your peripheral has shitty battery life (the FuelBand gets less than a week per charge), can you not figure out some way to charge the peripheral off my phone? I’ve already have three things charging beside my bed each night, so if it’s between your stupid peripheral and my Kindle or my phone, you’re not going to win. Even some sort of pass-through between the phone charger and the phone that would siphon off enough to charge the peripheral would work for me.

Overall, it’s not bad. It would never replace my Nike+ app on my phone (I’ve logged 1,493kms run - I am locked in), but it’s a great supplement to it.

  1. Sub-problem: how am I supposed to refer to these units? “Nike+ Fuel Units”? That’s a bit of a mouthful, no? ↩︎

  2. This is like the problem when buying things off Xbox Live - the currency is “Xbox Points”, which doesn’t translate easily to euros, dollars or pounds. They’re obfuscating how much you’re spending. Why would Nike obfuscate the amount of exercise you’re doing? ↩︎