A lot of popular fitness trackers aren't very active at all. They sit on your wrist counting each step you take, how long you sleep, and maybe a few workouts here and there. Jaybird's $150 Reign tracker is trying to do something a bit different. Instead of focusing on steps, Reign gets to know your body when it's both fatigued and recovered from strenuous exercise. It uses heart rate variability to tell you if your body is ready for physical activity, and it determines how much activity you should aim for when you want to push yourself further each day. Since it's not your typical smart pedometer, there is a slight learning curve when first using Reign, but it's an interesting option for those who believe stagnancy is just as harmful to your health as immobility.

Design: different, but not too different

When the Jaybird Reign monitors daily activity from your wrist, it looks futuristic without making a bold statement. It's made of a silicone band that comes in two parts: one that holds the module and the other than comes in three different sizes so you can get the wristband as tight as you want. They fit together using magnetic pins, so you can stretch the bottom part of the band to fit your hand through it and it won't pop off or go flying when you do so.

The module houses all the brains of the operation, including a tri-axis accelerometer and a ECG heart rate variability sensor. A strip of small LEDs sits on the top of the module, and they're visible when the module is secured in the band. These LEDs indicate many things including the time (though in a weirdly complicated way, this band really isn't a watch replacement), progress to your daily activity goal, and battery life. You're supposed to be able to tap the LEDs to have it show your goal progression, but this barely worked for me. Often I sat there furiously tapping my wrist like a crazy person waiting to see glowing lights.

The Reign's design is refreshing because while you can tell it's some sort of wearable device, it doesn't look like the other fitness trackers out there. It's also versatile, coming with a bike ankle strap so you can track cycling simply by putting the module into the strap around your ankle. I appreciate that Jaybird includes multiple band extenders and even some heavy duty sport bands with the device no matter what—you don't have to pay extra for them.

Valentina Palladino

Valentina Palladino

Valentina Palladino

Valentina Palladino

Valentina Palladino

Features: Is your body ready? Reign will tell you

You're supposed to start your day off with Reign, and it'll tell you how ready you are for your next workout. Every morning, you can use the band and the app to measure your "Go Zone Score," which is Reign's way of telling you how prepared your body is for activity. It's measured by using the information you inputted at setup about your daily activity level, and by monitoring your heart rate variability. The two-minute test has you pressing down on the module's LEDs with your index finger, so much so that the bottom of the module presses into your wrist. The app then counts down from two minutes while the band's ECG heart rate variability sensor measures how many milliseconds pass in between each heart beat.

Everyone has a different heart rate variability, which is based on both genetics and general health status. After about 10 days, Reign and its Go Zone Score tests learn your HRV and can tell if your body is a bit more sluggish than usual or if you're fully recovered from previous activity. It uses all of this information to create your daily Go-Zone Score in about two minutes per day—a score from zero to 33 means you'll want to take it easy as your body might not be in the best shape for vigorous exercise, while a score from 33 to 100 means you're ready to hit the ground running.

Jaybird acknowledges that there might be a difference in how you feel versus how your body actually is. In its helpful video tutorials, it explains that while you might be feeling tired and not ready for your morning workout, your heart rate variability might tell another story—one that has you running laps in a few minutes. Jaybird recommends giving exercise a try even on those days where you're feeling worse than your Go-Zone Score suggests, because you might do just fine once your body gets moving. I certainly feel groggy and noncommittal when I wake up some mornings, but following this suggestion has helped and I've always felt better after I pushed myself out of bed and got moving. The hardest part is getting up, but once you are up, things get a lot easier.

I already wake up at 6am each morning, and while two minutes earlier doesn't seem like a lot of time, it is when I'm trying to catch up on sleep. I wish you didn't have to do the Go-Zone Score test right when you wake up, although I understand why. Any kind of physical activity or eating could throw off your body's balance. In a way, this is like measuring resting heart rate: it's best to do so when your body is just waking, without any outside factors obstructing the measurement.

After you get your Go-Zone Score, you don't have to interact with the band at all for the rest of the day. Reign tracks your activity by categorizing it into a few genres: walking, running, cycling, swimming, and general sport activity. Depending on how active you are, you'll gain activity points that contribute to your overall activity score goal for the day. The activity goal is calculated when you tell the app how often you exercise each each week, and you can change it at any time if you feel it's too high or too low. I lowered mine a bit because even if I already work out six days a week, the app gave me an activity score above 1700, which would take about two and a half hours of walking each day to complete. Even with my daily workouts, I would never be able to complete that score working from home.

However, I like how Reign does goal-setting because it removes most of the leeway you might give yourself if you were setting your own step-count goal. You could easily set a goal of 10,000 steps per day knowing you will achieve that, but Reign creates your activity goal based on how active you are on average. It makes it harder for you, as the user, to rig the system so you always meet your activity goal without really trying.

That being said, even when I lowered my activity goal, I rarely ever achieved it. Reign's goals are meant to push you forward and to encourage you to be more active than you usually are. For those who rarely have the time to do extra workouts each day, this can get frustrating. However, it is a good incentive to find small ways you can move more throughout the day, even if you don't add an extra half hour to your exercise routine.

One thing I wasn't happy about was that different activities, such as running and cycling, give you more activity points than others. This makes sense in comparison to walking—running obviously requires more effort than walking—but in comparison to the general sports category, it won't necessarily be an accurate representation of your activity. If you send one day only lifting weights and doing strength training, Reign will capture it as general sport activity and it won't be worth as many activity points as an equal amount of time running.

Reign also automatically tracks sleep. It was quite accurate in monitoring when I fell asleep, how often I woke up at night, and how restless I was. Each morning it suggests a new sleep time for you based on how much sleep you got the night before. While this is not meant to help you catch up on sleep, it is meant to help your body best recover for any activity you do throughout the day.

Listing image by Valentina Palladino