Sony SmartBand SWR10 Review

Introduction

The Sony SmartBand SWR10 is a wearable fitness bracelet that is light, elegant and that works with Android phones of all brands. It’s also simple and water-proof, with easily interchangable bands, and long battery life. Its main goal is to track your steps during both runs and walks, but it can also track your sleep and wake you up with a silent alarm. Moreover, you can use the tracker when your phone is not around and it will sync up all its data to the phone later on - all things that allow you to just wear it without thinking too much about anything else.

The SmartBand SWR10, however, does not have a display, so you cannot even check the time on it. If you are fine with such limitations, the SmartBand has all the right ingredients for a pure fitness tracker. Join us below as we explore all its features in more depth.

In the box:

• Two bands in the box
• Tracker itself
• MicroUSB cable
• User Manual

Design

The SmartBand looks elegant, but it’s biggest plus is that you can practically forget you’re wearing it - it’s that lightweight and compact.

The most notable thing about the design of the Sony SmartBand SWR10 is actually not its looks, but it’s how light it feels. We almost forgot we had it on, and we’d count this as a huge plus as this is a device that you’re supposed to be wearing not only during the day, but at night as well, if you want it to track your sleep and wake you up silently in the morning.

In terms of the actual design, we ought to separate the two pieces that make the SmartBand what it is - the band and the core computation module inside it. In terms of looks, the core module is slightly curved and boasts a huge Sony logo. To achieve its lightness, Sony’s bracelet has got a core that is very tiny (7.8mm thick) and truly featherweight (0.21oz, or 6g on its own, and around 0.42oz, or 21g with the band), with just a single button on it, and three LED lights that indicate charge. It has also got a microUSB port for charging on the side, so you don’t need proprietary connectors.

The core fits securely from the inside of the flexible band. When inserted in the band, the core module faces your hand, and it’s practically impossible for it to fall out. Swapping bands is also easy - it does not take much effort to detach the band from the core.

The bands themselves are made out of silicone rubber and are very flexible, and feel well on the hand. The only slight downside of wearing the silicone rubber band all allong is that your hand might sweat a little bit more around those places, but that’s about the only slight issue we can think of. The actual device ships with bands of just one color, but you can purchase additional ones coming in a variety of different colors: yellow, blue, red, green, etc. We should note that there are two band sizes: large (250mm) and small (214mm), the large ones would most commonly be used by men, while the small ones would fit ladies better.

We should also say that the SmartBand is protected from the elements. Sony’s fitness-tracking bracelet is IP58-certified, meaning that it can withstand submersion in up to 5-feet (1.5-meter) deep fresh water for up to 30 minutes, and it’s also protected from dust.

Lifelog companion app

Sony’s LifeLog companion app is rich in functionality and looks beautiful.

The centerpiece of the SmartBand fitness tracker experience is the Lifelog companion app. Sony has made the application compatible with all brands of Android devices (not just Sony devices), and this kind of interoperability is a very welcome development that many fitness trackers sorely lack.

The Lifelog companion app is much more than just a step and calorie aggregator, though. It is an app that truly wants to give you an overview of your mobile life and fitness in a single window. For this, it tracks all the time you’ve spent browsing, listening to music, and watching videos on your devices, and shows it all along with your walking/running/cycling activity in an interactive timeline. This way, you can see exactly what pictures you took on which day without ever having to enter the gallery, for instance.

And for its other, fitness side, it uses your personal data to set step goals and show you your progress towards them. Speaking of personalization, we ought to complain about the unnecessarily tedious process of installing Lifelog and getting it to work with the bracelet. In order for all this to happen you need to install three separate apps (Sony Connect, LifeLog, and SmartBand SWR10), plus, in addition, you need to register a Sony Entertainment Network account via an interface that is not very well optimized for mobile. We wish Sony would decrease the number of necessary apps for all this, and make the registration simpler.

Pairing and functionality

Getting the SmartBand SWR10 on, pairing it and getting it to work is a quick and easy process, once you’ve got all the apps in place. Sony’s fitness tracker comes with NFC, which makes pairing a super simple process. Just make sure you have Bluetooth enabled on your NFC-enabled smartphone, and touch the phone with the tracker, to have it all paired and completely hooked up. The technical requirements for the app and the band are Android at version 4.4 KitKat or newer.

You have just one button on the SmartBand, and here’s what it does:

• single press to check if you’re in day or night mode
• press and hold to switch between day and night mode
• double press to add Life Bookmark

The one button is all you have to interact with the device. The SmartBand lacks the display that some other fitness trackers have, and that’s basically its biggest limitation. You wear it 24/7 anyway, so it would be nice to be able to see the time on it, rather than having to check your smartphone, or having to wear one more thing on your wrist - a traditional watch.

With this in mind, and now that you know how to operate it, it’s time to take a look at what the SmartBand actually does.

SmartBand as fitness and sleep tracker

The SmartBand will track your steps and runs, and it will monitor your sleep and wake you up gently, but it won’t be of much use for sports other than running.

The SmartBand is an excellent fitness monitor that tracks your steps, and automatically detects whether you walk, run, or use some other form of transformation. Our testing showed its pedometer works very well, rarely missing steps when it comes to your walks or runs. We should, however, note that the SmartBand is not a device that can track your activity during say, a basketball game, or even less so, during gym workouts. We tried wearing it for a 1-hour pick-up basketball match, but it did not seem to track the whole exercise correctly, recording an inaccurately low step count.

With this in mind, when it comes to walking and running, the SmartBand is capable of telling the one from the other correctly most of the time. Quite neatly, your travels are also put on a map, so you can see where you went and at what exact time. You get reading of steps taken and calories burned, but what’s notable is that the number of calories burned when you are passive (sitting or sleeping, for instance), is also taken into account.

In addition to being able to track your steps, the SmartBand also monitors your sleep, but you need to manually press and hold the single physical button to switch to night mode for the tracking to kick in. With this kind of tracking, you can see how much time you’ve spent sleeping, but probably the biggest benefit is the silent vibration that gently wakes you up in the mornings in the right time, so that you feel refreshed after your sleep, and not awoken mid-sleep and still grumpy.

Music control

The other functions of the SmartBand: control your music

One final special feature of the Sony SmartBand that is worth your attention is its music control capabilities. Getting the hang of music control is a bit tricky, but after a few attempts we got it working. You have to press the physical key once and then tap on the top of the SmartBand to control music playback on your paired device. Tap once to play or pause the current track, tap twice to skip to the next song, and tap three times to go back to the beginning of the song, or reverse back to the previous one. Note that this kind of control works best with native applications, and may not work with third-party apps.

Battery life and charging

The Sony SmartBand SWR10 ships with a miniature, 35mAh Li-Ion battery that theoretically can last up to five days on a single charge. In real life, those numbers are about right, and you should not expect much less. Recharging the battery takes about 1 hour, which is not all that much, but it’s just strange to see such a small battery charge up for so long.

You charge it via a regular microUSB cable, and good news is that you’d need that cable for charging only - all the syncing happens wirelessly.

Conclusion

The Sony SmartBand SWR10 is now sold for $100, a price that is not too high given that the competing FitBit Flex is also sold for $100, while the Nike FuelBand+ is priced significantly higher, at $150.

For all it aims to do, though, the SmartBand delivers. It’s a good fitness tracker that will please stats-obsessed runners, and just those who want to improve their health by walking and running more. The LifeLog app is also a great effort by Sony. All in all, if tracking your daily activities is something that you want to do, the SmartBand won’t disappoint.