Jaybird Reign fitness tracker set for release

Jaybird, an electronics company which made its name building wireless headphones, is expanding into a increasingly fierce fitness tracker market. Their new activity tracking device, Reign, is set to be released in Best Buys across Canada and the United States on Oct. 26.

The Reign comes at a higher cost than some of its competitors at $199 USD, but it also comes with notable upgrades to what’s currently available, the highlight being their use of heart rate variability (HRV) to measure recovery between exercise sessions, making sure the user has recovered enough to exercise again. The device tracks sleep, movement, HRV and knows what type of exercise you’re doing, to give you a “Go-Zone” score, using all the numbers it collects to tell you when you’re ready to go. Jaybird’s Go-Zone is an indication of how ready you are to perform. A low score means you may want to skip the run, while a high score means you’re body is prepared for a tough workout.

The benefit of tracking HRV — the time between each beat of your heart — is that it doesn’t only tell you how hard you’re working, but also is a great indicator of how tired or stressed your body is. A high level of heart rate variability means you’re calm, relaxed and recovered. Your heart follows a less-rigid beat when it isn’t tired, but snaps into a tight, regular beat while recovering or exercising. The Jaybird team suggests taking the quick HRV test each morning before anything else, the best time to get an accurate reading.

One of the selling features of the new tracker will that that, unlike some other newcomers to the market, it won’t require a user to have their phone on them while they exercise. The small tracker has one LED strip which displays a progress bar of how much you’be moved that day. Other information is beamed to your smartphone over Bluetooth, but it will store up to 48 hours of data, before dumping some to make room for more, so you’ll have two days of information backlogged on the Reign if you don’t have your phone around. The Reign is also fully waterproof, something which isn’t the case for many of the other options available right now, making it an awesome choice for triathletes.

The tracker itself comes with a few different bands for different activities. There is the usual silicone band for everyday use, a stretchy sport band for exercise (besides cycling) and an ankle band for cycling. The brains of the tracker, a small magnetic piece that houses the electronics, snaps into place in each band. It’s easily interchangeable.

The box also comes with two different band sizes with magnetic interlocking connectors to make a size change simple, a USB charger and a small cleaning device to keep sweat and dirt from building up in some of the small holes.

To really see how the Reign stacks up against what else is on the market, more use over a longer period of time will be needed, but at a first look it seems to offer a lot of what fitness enthusiasts have been asking from companies in this market. We’ll be doing a longer review after more extended use in the coming weeks.