Intro, screen, battery and build quality
The Runtastic Orbit entered a busy market in July 2014, as a host of brands from Garmin to Samsung to Huawei put out a tracking band at around the same time.
The Runtastic Orbit landed at a key time, about a year after the frontrunners like the Fitbit Flex, but just before the faster brands spun out second-generation products. So a year after launch, and a few price drops later - to about £80/$70 - how does the Runtastic Orbit stack up?
Screen and battery life
The screen, according to Runtastic, is an OLED number, measuring about 14mm square. You hit the single silver button to experience the off-white-on-black OLED dot matrix display.
It's bright enough indoors, but outdoors it's not only tiny, but so washed out as to be all but useless. The fact that the company's logo is slapped beneath it like a sticker that needs removing doesn't add much to the experience, either.
Battery life is claimed to be 'up to 7 days', which based on my using but not charging the band for over a week or so, seems about right.
Build, comfort and strap
Runtastic has ingeniously created a range of accessory straps and pedometer-style pods for the Orbit device. Like a Fitbit Flex or a Samsung Gear, the screen unit pops out to allow your sense of personal style to take over in choices of strap (as long as it's one of the six mandated colours). I landed the standard black and blue straps, and they're a little underwhelming.
The strap is a slightly hard, rubberised texture that doesn't telegraph quality to your senses. That said, I've not had any mysterious allergy rashes from wearing it over a week.
The strap is fastened with a double stud arrangement that skewers the strap in a way that's identical to Samsung's Band. It's a simple system that works well in practice, especially given the super-lightweight mass of this device, a mere 24 grams in band mode and 18 grams in pedometer pod mode.
Run and step tracking, and the Runtastic app
Run and step tracking
The point of the Runtastic Orbit is to track your movement, and as a general 'wellness' band it's pretty strong. It logs steps, active minutes, sleep and ambient lighting (in your room while asleep) fairly accurately, distance and calories burned not so accurately, and there are optional inactivity vibration alerts to spur you into action.
There's enough storage to track these stats for 7 days before syncing with an app - and as noted, 7 days is also the quoted battery life.
However, Runtastic is primarily a run-tracking brand (the clue's in the name) yet it's on the running front that the Orbit is a let-down.
Tracking arm movements is less useful for monitoring running, and there's no built-in GPS, so the Orbit calls on the power of the Runtastic running app, syncing seamlessly over Bluetooth to bring up your in-run stats.
Put simply, the app is using the device as a second screen. What Runtastic calls Orbit Connect. It's not a bad idea, but the execution is a different matter.
I tested the app on a Samsung S6 - Android, iOS and Windows Phone are all supported - and using the phones GPS and Exynos processor got handy distance, time, calories, current/average pace and average speed on the screen at a press of a button each. There's also the option to display heart rate if you've synced a compatible pulse monitor.
The good news is that the screen locks to the item you leave it on, so you don't have to keep scrolling round in a loop to keep an eye on your distance. The bad news is that you can barely see it.
The Orbit is simply mirroring a limited version of the app's data set, which is in turn using your phone's considerable tracking abilities. The app also has a load of functionality that the Orbit lacks, including automatic voice prompts after each kilometer or mile plus a range of voice coaching options, if you sign up for the Pro package. If you run with headphones plugged into your phone you'll get pace information audibly, again meaning you don't have to peer at the Orbit.
And that's just as well.
The Runtastic Pro's screen is tiny, and in direct sunlight it washes out almost entirely, making it almost impossible to read on the move. I found myself stopping mid-run to read the display in testing, which is far from ideal. It's hard to see why you'd try and use this as a serious training tool on the move.
In addition, there's no heart rate tracking involved in this setup, which is pretty essential for anything like serious training. Runtastic's Bluetooth HR belt is under £40 and fills this gap, and you can use any other third-party Bluetooth HR chest strap. The Orbit will then display the pulse stats that are piped into the app, as mentioned above. But again, you can barely see them on the watch.
App
You're probably getting the message that this product is all about the app, and as we've said above, Runtastic's core running app is an excellent effort, delivering a full-featured running data experience for free or £5/$6 for Pro.
Another option is an annual subscription (£42.99), which gives you the Runtastic Pro app, an enhanced Runtastic Me app and more powerful online tools. These training plans, which cover a good range, from sub 3.30 marathons down to sub-5k runs, plus the ever-so-slightly sexist 'bikini body prep' plan.
Also covered by the annual sub is free access to Runtastic's 'story runs' (otherwise available as in-app purchases in free/Pro). These are themed audiobooks around 40 minutes long, designed to make interval training fun, in a similar way to Zombies, Run!
Backed by the app's tracking abilities this is a strong offering for enlivening otherwise dull, winter training trudge-fests. Pro also allows you to challenge your last time on a specific route, such as your run home, so you can endlessly compete with yourself.
Even in the basic free app you get mapping, distance, pace, average and max speed as well as elevation gain/loss. There's plenty of social sharing options, as well as a leaderboard to get some friendly rivalry going. There's also an option to sync a Bluetooth Smart heart rate monitor to add in the all-important HR stats.
If you're looking to sync a Runtastic Orbit with the Runtastic main app you'll need another app - Runtastic ME - to bridge the gap to the hardware, for some reason. With both apps installed you'll be able to get the stats flowing from one to t'other. Once you've managed this multiple-app scenario, the experience is pretty seamless. As I mentioned, the Orbit becomes a second screen for the Runtastic app, albeit one that's hard to see.
All controls are with the app, demoting the Orbit's button to a screen on/off button. The Runtastic Me app meanwhile deals with the step counting (default target: 8,000), calories burned and sleep metrics.
The step counting tracker is better than many, but don't expect to be able to check the display, walk 10 steps and see the figure increase by 10; it's just not that accurate. Over the course of a day, it gives results that feel about right, which is in line with most other step counters, to be honest.
The sleep tracker needs to be manually triggered by a long press on the Orbit's button, which after the first day is easily forgotten. It's slim enough to be worn through the night though, unlike some. The graphs of activity and sleep are pretty enough, but how useful they are is… Debatable.
Additional features and verdict
Additional features
One of the big party tricks the Orbit has up its sleeve is an ambient light sensor, which samples the quality of your light every three minutes. This info is then piped into the Runtastic Me app to create a little chart of your light exposure - the idea being that a dark sleeping environment and bright sunlight during the day is ideal.
It's a neat trick, but in our case merely confirmed that a day of office work isn't very good for your light levels. There are no smart notifications here; the Orbit is a slave device for a specific smartphone app, not your smartphone as a whole.
We liked
The Runtastic app is really rather good: download it now, if you haven't already. The ingenious multi- straps let you switch from pedometer to band, making the Runtastic Orbit the Optimus Prime of budget tracking bands. The battery life is excellent, too.
We disliked
The screen is all but useless, being hard to read outside while stationary, and impossible while running. The build quality in general is hardly awe-inspiring, come to that.
Verdict
The Runtastic Orbit is a fairly ridiculous device. It's supposed to work as a second screen for your phone when using the Runtastic app. So you can't leave your phone at home when running. But you can barely SEE said screen, so what's the point of that, then?
It does serve as a decent 'fitness band', but for pure running it's just too lightweight in terms of the data it shows, and the screen means it barely 'shows' anything anyway.
The similarly-priced Garmin Forerunner 15 is far more capable, and another 20 notes would get you the Polar M400 with a heart rate belt, which is a package that's on a different planet to the Orbit in terms of ability.
For fans of the Runtastic app who want a companion device we'd suggest the sub-£40 Runtastic Bluetooth HR belt, which as well as being cheaper will add in those missing HR stats.
from www.techradar.com
