Friday, September 11, 2009

Omron Pedometer HJ-303

I recently switched pedometers, from my trusty Accusplit pedometer to a new Omron "GOsmart™ Pocket Pedometer with Superior 3D Smart Sensor Technology HJ-303". It's miles more advanced than the Accusplit, but I'm not 100% sold on it, to be honest with you.

Advantages:
- you can throw it in your pocket and it works. Supposedly you can put it in your purse or even wear it around your neck, but I haven't tried those. It's nice to not have to put it on your belt, though it does come with a little case so you can do that if you'd like.
- it saves 7 days of steps for you, resetting at midnight each night
- it also has a "trip counter", which I've used to keep track of steps each month
- enter your weight and it calculates calories burned, and also keeps track of "moderate" steps when you're walking at a certain speed
- it has a clock, and it displays the time and total steps for the day by default

Disadvantages:
- it's a bit big :/
- today it got screwy on me - I noticed around noon that it said "9:49pm" and had about 7k extra steps.  Grrrr.  So I call Omron, and the customer service girl tells me I need to replace the battery.  I've had this for less than two months - and the low battery icon isn't displayed.  WTF?  I ended up manually resetting the device, which lost my steps for the day and the "trip" counter and all that, and we'll see if it stays accurate for now.
- battery is expected to last six months, but they ship it with a "trial" battery?  Very, very lame.
- it's silent.  For me, I was so used to the quiet clicking of my Accusplit, it's taken me a long time to get used to not hearing any confirmation that the pedometer is actually working. ;)

The Omron is $45, more than $20 higher than the Accusplit.  Accusplit customer support was much more friendly - and it has their insane warranty policy printed on the device itself so if there is a problem, there is no problem. ;)

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