Product Review: Adidas miCoach Fit Smart

I am so happy to finally bring you an open and honest review of the Adidas miCoach Fit Smart.  Let me get the disclaimers out of the way.

Disclaimer:  I was provided a free Adidas miCoach Fit Smart to present in my 2014 Holiday Gift Guide segment on my local news station.  All opinions expressed in this review are my very own in all its realness.  This post contains affiliate links.

What can I say about this fitness tracker – I LOVED IT.  I know did that ruin it for y’all?  The fact that I expressed my utter delight and satisfaction with this wearable so early in the review?  Well I’m sorry, not sorry that I ruined it for you but you must know I really really really like this fitness tracker.

Before I get into all the reasons why I like it let me share that I first wore it to my workout with my fitness group at the gym with my personal trainer.  I was sent the white Adidas miCoach Fit Smart.  They come in only 2 colors (white and black) as of this date.  The first time I wore it to our session I received several compliments from the ladies telling me they really liked the way it looked.

The strap is made of silicon and is very soft and comfortable on the wrist.  One of the BEST things about this fitness tracker is the fact you do NOT need to wear a chest strap to capture your heart rate.  It has a MIO wrist-based continuous heart rate technology where it reads your heart rate from your pulse in your wrist..  I absolutely love this feature.  So much so I find it extremely difficult to go back to my regular heart rate monitor which requires a chest strap.

When I decided to try out this fitness tracker (this is NOT an activity tracker) set up was extremely easy.  Here are the steps to set it up:

• Download the FREE miCoach train & run app onto your phone (available in the Apple Store and Google Play)
• Turn on your Fit Smart
• Activate Bluetooth on your phone and select Fit Smart from “Devices” in the miCoach train & run app

Voila you are all set to GO!!!  You can also access their app via desktop HERE to help set up your profile including heart rate levels if you do not want to go with the defaults.

It comes with only 3 buttons.  The side buttons are for navigation and the center button either confirms a selection or takes you back to the main menu.  Very very easy to navigate.

Once you set up your profile and color-coded heart rate levels you are ready to work out with your Adidas miCoach Fit Smart.  There are 2 basic workout settings (Free Workout or Coached Workout).

A free workout means you are not utilizing the built-in coaching technology available to help you develop a particular skill or strength.  A coached workout means you are using one of the built-in workouts available in the coaching component of this fitness tracker.  For the purposes of this review, I only used the Free Workout setting because I would run outdoors or lift weights in the gym with it.  I do want to try the built-in coaching capabilities but just haven’t made time to do it just yet.

There are plenty to choose from depending on the sport you are working to build skill in such as basketball, running, football, tennis, rugby, soccer, and badminton just to name a few (actually it’s quite a nice range of sports).

Here are some of the other keen features of this fitness tracker direct from their website:

• Sensors: accelerometer, Mio continuous optical heart rate
• Data memory: up to 10 hours of workout data
• Wireless sync up
• Provides visual guidance of heart rate zone intensity

Let’s talk some more about the visual guidance piece – to me this is the piece de resistance.  As you work out the colors on the side of the watch tells you at which intensity level you are working besides simply looking down and viewing your actual heart rate.  There are 3 sets of zones you can set up and color code including:

• Pace
• Heart Rate
• Speed

I left Pace and Speed at the default settings and updated the Heart Rate Zones to display these colors when I hit that zone:

• Red:  173-181 bpm
• Yellow:  165-173 bpm
• Green:  145-164 bpm
• Blue:  127-144 bpm
• White:  Rest

Here’s how it looks on the actual watch.  Now I know what you may say – according to my settings My green zone should be blue and my blue zone should be green (while I was in the middle of conducting this review my husband reset some things on the watch which skewed my predefined heart rate zones).  Lesson learned – hide the fitness trackers until I am done reviewing them.  🙂

As you can see here, the face of the watch shows your heart rate number and the color on the side tells me which zone I am working in.

This is NOT an Activity Tracker

As you saw earlier, I made a point of making sure you did not confuse this fitness wearable with the daily activity trackers that are out on the market.  That is not what this does.  It will not track your sleep patterns, show you who is calling you on your wrist and is not meant to be worn all day.  It is meant to be worn during your workout and when it is done, synched up and taken off until your next workout.

Price Point:

The Adidas miCoach Fit Smart retails for $149.99.

Where To Buy:

You can purchase an Adidas miCoach Fit Smart at Best Buy or Amazon.com.

Customer Service:

Let me give a nice big SHOUT OUT to the Adidas miCoach Customer Service.  When I realized my husband was using the Fit Smart and my zones were skewed I went online to their forum to find out how I could get things back on track.  I also started having trouble synching the last free workout to the app on my mobile phone, AGAIN because my husband was using it and resetting everything to his profile.  I asked my question on the forum and within an hour I had a thorough response to my question with a workable solution and even 5 days afterwards, customer service reached out again to make sure I was totally satisfied.  Now THAT’S customer service.  Doesn’t matter if something goes wrong because something always will, it’s how the organization deals with it and helps you recover which is the important part.  They get a BIG KUDOS from me.

Rating:

I give the Adidas miCoach Fit Smart a 10 out of 10 stars (as if you didn’t know after reading the first few sentences of this post).  Here are the primary reasons why:

• Attractive-looking watch
• Has a traditional watch face with nice big numbers so you can see the information easily
• Has color coding visually showing you which zone you are in
• Easy to wear
• Accurate – with certain workouts I know where my heart rate is/should be and when I looked down the Adidas miCoach Fit Smart was capturing it accurately
• No chest strap – this by far is a VERY big plus to me.  Only 1 piece of equipment to worry about, the watch
• Easy and simple navigation.  If in doubt keep pushing buttons – you are bound to figure how to get to where you want to go.  LOL!

There’s a lot more I could share about this amazing watch so just because you don’t read about a specific feature here doesn’t necessarily mean the Fit Smart can’t do it, I just didn’t want this post to go on and on so I will stop here.  Feel free to leave a question if you want more specific information.

Which tracker do you prefer to wear when you workout?