Motiv Ring activity tracker – out of beta on Android
If you want a fitness watch but you don’t particularly like watches, Motiv is a ring that does what a fitness watch can do.
TL;DR – Good hardware, good iOS experience, Android app needs formula work, probably wait a week till they fix it/I do a full review.
Is the Motiv Ring compatible with my device?
I’m going to preface this with only a few Android phones work with their app at this time. They’re expanding the ones it works with but if the Google Play link shows it’s unavailable for your devices you may have to wait a few more weeks.
The current list of supported phones is Samsung Galaxy S7, S7 Edge, S8, S8+, S9, and S9+, Samsung Galaxy Note 5 and Note 8, Google Pixel, Pixel XL, Pixel 2, and Pixel 2 XL but I’m seeing the ability to install on a couple of my other devices. My guess is they’re working on fighting BTLE issues with some other devices and those will be taken care of shortly.
Also pretty much any newer iDevice. It integrates data with Google Fit and Apple Health.
Motiv Ring in use
The Motiv Ring requires you get your ring size. They sent me over a sizing kit and both me and my wife checked our size and found it in between what our size was and the next step up. I really would have appreciated a half size, but figured since I’m using this to do some fitness tracking and my hands tend to swell I went up a size.
In normal operations I believe the kit they send over you enter a code online and the ring gets sent, in my particular situation I asked the PR rep for a size and a color and it was there the next day or two.
The ring showed with almost no charge and needed to be charged. I plugged the Motiv Ring charger into a USB charger, the charging light showed, and then attempted to pair. It didn’t work. It didn’t work several times.
I plugged it into a computer’s USB port and it worked fine. I’m told that may be an issue with some third party chargers not working properly with such low power input. Who knows. If yours doesn’t work, plug it into a name brand charger.
The ring is slightly bulkier than my wedding ring, however the wedding ring does not have a fitness tracker built in and I knew I probably should have waited to get married until that technology had arrived. Ah well.
Android has room for improvement
I’m not going to go into a great breakdown of everything this ring can do that it’s not doing right now, they’re getting the software developed so at the moment you should treat this like a pedometer and sleep tracker and heart rate monitor.
The iOS app has an additional feature where you can find your phone by twisting the ring one way until the light comes on and then the other way until a multicolored light flashes. that doesn’t appear to be on the Android app yet.
I believe the tech they have in the ring they might be able to do O2 saturation checking, multiple trigger actions from ring twists, shaking your hands, and some other things, but you go for the product you’ve got now, and that’s pretty good still.
And you got that wrong…
I’m going to note for all of this I’ve got an email in with a bug report they’re looking at it.
A couple of days ago the Motiv ring reported that I had walked 4.6 miles and burned 4185 calories. You may spot something a bit afoot in that as I don’t burn 1000 calories a mile. I thought maybe I should take my base calories per day burned out of that as perhaps that was total calories for the day and that still left me burning 377 calories per mile.
Even with my weight factored in this means I’m burning 244 more calories a mile than I should be, or I’m burning 283% more than I should be. Their math is off somewhere in the app. That’s not the case.
To burn that level of calories I need to be (breaks out maths,) 707.5 pounds/321 kilograms.
And also that…
Another thing was I did not walk 4.6 miles that day. I was thoroughly slothish. I had not slept (which the tracker reported accurately,) and I was not moving much. I pulled out google maps to figure out how much walking I did and I came up with a little over a mile. Google Fit claimed 1.2 miles. I believe that.
So why did the Motiv ring say 4 miles?
I don’t know. I also don’t know why now it’s claiming I only walked 3 miles and burned 4185 calories which makes this far more off than it was when I wrote to the PR agent about it.
But wait…
The steps are higher than what they should be. I pick up a few “steps” just from typing, so as a pedometer it’s functioning a little off from perfect, however the number I’m picking up from typing is about 10 an hour.
There’s a couple of calculation errors somewhere or I got a misfit ring, although I’m going for logic error. Seriously if i could burn 377 calories per mile I walk I’d be half the size I am today.
As it doesn’t know my stride its distance calculations can’t be 100% correct. Eh, it’s something that will get fixed soon enough I’m sure. Looks like it’s basing things on 2000 steps a mile today, may have been based on 1800 a mile when I saw the 4.something miles. I don’t know.
As of this writing it’s reporting nearly 4000 steps (two miles) – I woke up, walked to the bathroom, to my closet, downstairs, got the kids dressed, walked to the car, walked a couple hundred feet to drop kid off at daycare and get back to car, another couple hundred feet to get Dunkin’ Donuts, 500 or so dropping older kid off at camp, and then like 400 at work so far today. Another sloth moving day.
As that’s about 1500 feet, let’s say I’m 3x off and put it at 4500 feet I’ve walked. That’s still less than one mile, it’s claiming two or roughly 8 times what I’m thinking I’m doing.
I’m not an expert, but I used to track the hell out of steps.
So yes or no on the Motiv Ring?
On iOS I hear it’s great. On Android they’ve got the above mentioned bugs to squash. I think the hardware is there, something’s just up with the app calculations.
Heart rate is correct, sleep tracker seems right, pedometer is showing 2-3x higher than I think is correct and there’s no calibration yet in the app. Seriously, everyone’s stride is different, you gotta calibrate that shizz.
On the Android app side, the calculations seem way off for calories burned. It doesn’t track with what my phone is claiming or what I’m gathering from charting it out on Google Maps. I mean I wish I was this active and burning 4K calories a day.
The calories burned is a software issue. My guess is they’ve got some logic in there for translating pounds to kilograms and back that’s taken my weight and shifted it up to 707 pounds.
If I divide by three for the steps, then divide by three for the calories, it tracks almost perfect. That’s just odd and fixable.
You can pick one up on MyMotiv.com or Amazon. if you’re on iOS you’re probably set, on Android I’m going to just leave all the above here until they’ve fixed it or sorted out why I’m burning calories on the level of a Tour de France biker.
