Cameraperson: Sumit Badola
Video Editor: Prashant Chauhan
Recently, Under Armour, a sports accessory brand introduced a series of smart shoes that come with fitness tracking sensors and we got to try one from the series, the Under Armour HOVR Phantom SE.
We also got our hands on the Garmin Forerunner 945 smartwatch which boasts of fitness tracking sensors and comes at a whopping Rs 60,000 in India.
To test which of these fitness trackers offers more utility we strapped them on and went for a run. To make things more interesting, we downloaded a free fitness app on our smartphones and ran with the phone to see how accurately it’s able to read my fitness activity.
The Under Armour HOVR Phantom SE comes with low energy Bluetooth modules inside which power the fitness sensors in the shoe. The sensors are said to last longer than the shoe the company has said. When the user is not wearing the pair, the chip automatically shuts down saving power.
The shoe pairs with the MapMyRun applications which shows all the details and stats of your fitness activity. It records different inputs like stride length, distance covered and even calories burned.
The Garmin Forerunner 945 is loaded to the teeth with a bevy of sensors. It not only gives you a detailed report of the fitness activities but also measures temperature, altitude, and even stress. The watch also connects via an app that shows all of the statistics in a more comprehensive manner.
The Runtastic (now Adidas Running app) is a free-to-download fitness app that can track your workout via GPS and sensors onboard the phone. The only problem with that is you’ll have to carry the phone with you all the time.
It does not record your heart activity but gives generic information like step count, calories burnt and even total distance covered.
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