Adidas’ miCoach smartwatch line might not be as well-known as Nike’s Fuelband, but at least Adidas is still producing new hardware. On Wednesday, the company announced its latest wrist-based fitness tracker, the miCoach Fit Smart. It’s not strictly a smartwatch: it’s more like an old-school heart rate monitor with a bit of modern flair.
Unlike devices such as Android Wear and the Fitbit, the Fit Smart isn’t supposed to be worn all day. It’s a pure fitness tracker with a 10-hour battery life: You put it on when you start working out, and you take it off afterwards, like a piece of gear. It measures heart rate, as well as a number of non-biometric metrics, such as calories burned, distance covered, and stride rate.
It connects to phones over a Bluetooth Low Energy connection through Adidas’ miCoach apps, which includes training plans and semi-personalized coaching. Adidas was mentioned as a Google Fit partner at I/O, so this device could eventually contribute data to Google’s health platform, especially with its “fit” moniker. It’s important to note there isn’t an LCD screen on this device. Adidas opted instead for a matrix of little LEDs that should be more appropriate for simple stats such as calories burned or lap splits. Hopefully it’s easier to read at a glance, and it draws less power.
The Fit Smart will be available in two colors and sports a rubberized design with a lot of soft-touch silicon that looks pretty good and fairly durable, even if it gets drenched in sweat. It will cost $200 when it launches in late August, half the price of the Adidas running-focused smartwatch launched last year.
Disclosure: Fitbit is backed by True Ventures, a venture capital firm that is an investor in the parent company of this blog, Giga Omni Media.
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