Striiv Fusion Sleep Tracker Smart Watch - Black

I won one of these as a prize giveaway at a conference. I wore it a few days and compared with the performance of my FitBit Flex. The list of stuff they get wrong is long. The list of stuff they get right is short.First, it only works if you enable both bluetooth and background app refresh at all times. This means that it is in constant communication with your phone and running the battery down as a result. I enabled bluetooth all day, but not the background app refresh. I need my iPhone for work and business stuff, I simply can't pay that much battery life just to count steps. Why can it not just keep the step count in the device, and sync up when I let it? This is a fundamental design flaw that is the main reason I won't continue using it. Its tracking of my steps was broken because I wouldn't do things the way it insisted. That, to me, is a UX fail.I never got the interface to light up on the first try. Double tapping it should light it up. I tried tapping lightly, tapping firmly, tapping quickly, tapping slowly. I never figured out the right speed and velocity to consistently get it to come up. I mean, after I tapped a bunch of times it would eventually light up, but I could not consistently get it to turn on with just a couple taps.I found the strap hard to use. I wore it on my dominant hand (right) because I already wear a watch on my left. Trying to get the clasp shut using my left hand was really, really difficult. I hated taking it off and putting it back on because it took so long to fidgit with it to get it back on.The box says it includes instructions. The instructions I got were nothing more than step 1: charge it. step 2: put it on. step 3: go to their web site. It comes with 2 different coloured bands other than the black. I had no instructions on how to change the bands and I didn't bother researching that. Perhaps some instruction book was missing from the one I got.Sleep tracking was underwhelming. I tell it when I got to sleep and I tell it when I wake up. That's it. It records what I tell it. It's not using the motion sensors overnight to estimate the quality of my sleep. It seems to have some notion of whether I was 'awakened' or not. But that always said I wasn't awakened. There's an iPhone app called SleepTracker that uses the motion sensors on the iPhone to estimate how good your sleep is. That app records variations in movement (little movement, big movement, etc.) It estimates how deeply you were sleeping by how much or how little you moved and that app gives you much more analysis of your sleep than the simple recording of when you say you laid down and when you say you got up. The striiv could do all that, but doesn't. The Striiv treats sleep like it treats steps. You're aiming for a certain amount and it tells you if you hit that amount. That's a pretty primitive approach to sleep analysis.The mobile app's interface is cartoonish and silly. And it includes "tiles" that can't be removed. I'm not the least bit interested in the social aspect of this thing. I am not connectiong my friends and I don't care how far my friends have walked, I don't care for games and stuff. I can't figure out how to remove those tiles from the mobile app. It's fine to offer all that to your users who like it, but let me get rid of this stuff if it doesn't interest me.Apparently there are "apps" that you can download and install on on the Striiv. That's cute, but it doesn't do its primary purpose well enough, so I'm not going to spend any time downloading apps that do secondary functions.Today I opened the app and got a "tip" saying "Happy Earth Day". Look: stay focused on your mission. Be the best fitness tracker you can be. Get those things right, then think about telling me "Happy Earth Day." And when you've thought about it, choose not to do it. I don't need silly, fun, happy stuff on my fitness tracker. It's a device. It measures things. I am not looking for some rich experience. I've got a zillion apps on my phone and a lot of gadgets and gizmos competing for my attention. The ones that get used a lot are the ones that aren't a burden and that deliver their value without pestering me. Everyone wants to be the center of your digital life. Sorry, Striiv, but you can't be it.My Fitbit Flex is a little tiny thing I chuck into my trouser pocket. I don't have to wear it on my wrist. I don't have to keep it constantly connected and talking to my phone. I can even go days without opening the fitbit app, and when I finally do, it will sync up a couple of days worth of steps. The FitBit connects to MyFitnessPal so that my steps integrate with the food and nutrition data I'm entering. I didn't see any such integration with MyFitnessPal for the Striiv. The Striiv Fusion just feels incomplete and poorly done. It's trying too hard to do so many things that it doesn't get its core functions right.