This Fitness Watch Doesn't Have A Lot Of Bells And Whistles But It Works Extremely Well

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/lifetrak-zone-c410-2014-7

Salutron's LifeTrak Zone C410 is a simple fitness-tracking watch. 

It doesn't have any bells and whistles. It simply tracks your steps, sleep, distance traveled, calories, heart rate, and it tells the time. All for a very affordable $99. 

The best part about it? You can forget about adding another charger to your collection: The C410 runs off a regular battery and you won't have to replace it more than once a year.

The Design

The watch has a pretty basic design. There are two buttons on the side that allow you to do things like scroll through menu items, start and stop the tracking, light up the display, and sync the watch to your phone (more on that later). 

There's also a button underneath the display that allows you to scroll through all the various tracking modes. When you hold it down, it tracks your heart rate. It even tells you the percentage of your maximum heart rate, which is an added bonus. 

The watch and band are waterproof up to 90 feet. The band is reversible (blue and black), but you can buy different watch bands for around $14 from LifeTrak's site. It fits securely on the wrist and overall looks pretty unassuming. 

The Watch

You can set goals on the watch, like how many steps you'd like to take per day. This is pretty straightforward; you scroll through your options with the top-right button. It also has an iOS and Android app that allows you to change the settings. 

There's a bar at the top on the watch face that shows you how close you are to reaching your daily goals. 

The coolest feature is the automatic sleep mode. I've used fitness bands in the past that required you to put it in sleep mode before it would t! rack how much shut eye you're getting. But it's hard to remember to press a button when you're halfway to dreamland. 

But luckily, the C410 senses it automatically. Once the device hasn't moved for a little bit, it goes into sleep mode and starts tracking your Zzzzs.

The problem is, it works a little too well. The watch would sometimes go into sleep mode even when I just took it off for a little while, like before a shower. But overall, that didn't seem to overly affect the overall sleep it thought I was getting.  

The watch can also sync with third-party health-tracking apps like as MapMyFitness. Syncing is easy; you just press and hold the bottom-right button, and all your information is pulled into the app via Bluetooth. 

Conclusion

The C410 is a basic fitness watch that performs well. It even offers more features than some of the competition.

All the information you need is right there on the watch. You don't have to take out your phone or use an app, if you don't want to. 

It doesn't vibrate. You can't track your food calories. It doesn't even have an alarm function.

But for $99, you get a straightforward fitness tracker, with the added bonus of a heart-rate monitor and automatic sleep detection. And it's super accurate.

In a world of Galaxy Gears and Pebbles, it's nice to have an option on the opposite end of the spectrum. And the Zone C410 performs exactly as advertised, with very little fuss. 

SEE ALSO: I tried out a standing desk for all the health benefits — here's why I quit

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