Editors' Note: We first published this review in November 2014, and the Basis Peak remains one of the top-performing fitness trackers we've tested. In August 2016, Intel recalled the tracker for overheating issues known to cause discomfort, burning, or blistering on the skin. It is no longer available for purchase, and Intel is offering exisiting users a full refund for the tracker and any authorized accessories. As such, we have removed our original 4.5-star rating and no longer recommend this product. (The original review is below.)

The Basis Peak ($199) is the best fitness tracker you can buy on the market today. It looks like an ordinary watch, and a slightly sporty one at that. But the magic is in how it automatically detects when you're walking, running, sleeping, and bicycling to measure all those activities when you do them. And "automatically" is the operative word there. You never have to put it into sleep mode or running mode. It does that part for you.

The Basis Peak also records your heart rate throughout, plus skin temperature, perspiration, how many calories you burned, and more. In the case of sleep, the Basis Peak breaks down your light, deep, and REM sleep cycles, as well as your restless and waking moments. The device, which is an updated version of the venerable Basis Carbon Steel Edition (that device is no longer being sold), will support some smartwatch functionality, namely incoming text messages and phone calls (although it won't be active at launch; the feature will be pushed to devices by the end of 2014, according to the company). For its effortless tracking, comfortable design, and excellent data collection, the Basis Peak is our new Editors' Choice for fitness activity trackers.

Design and Compatibility

The Basis Peak is a watch-style activity tracker available in two colors: matte black and white. It has a large, high-contrast LCD screen, which shows either dark text on a light background or vice versa depending on the light conditions around you. You won't find any buttons on this watch, as all the navigation happens via a touch screen. The housing is forged aluminum, topped with Gorilla Glass.

Petite people will likely find Basis Peak too big. I have wide wrist bones, and it's a comfortable fit for me, but barely. Because the Basis Peak has an optical heart rate monitor (HRM) behind the watch face, it helps to wear it slightly higher on the arm than in the wrist bone divot, especially while working out.

A silicone band feels more sporty and casual than business-like, but it's comfortable and has ridges that encourage some airflow to the skin. The straps come off, and the device is compatible with other standard watch bands, so you can change the sporty look to something different if you like.

The Basis Peak has a waterproof rating of 5ATM, so you can take it in the pool, no problem. The battery lasts anywhere from two to five days, depending on use.

The watch ships with a cradle and charger, and one detail I'm happy to see is that the cradle and cord are separate. The cord is a standard micro USB-to-USB, making it easy to replace if you lose it. The cradle snaps into place courtesy of a simple magnet, without you having to remove the wristbands, which you had to do with the old Basis. These are the kinds of little improvements that make the new watch better, but not wildly different from the old one.

Your options for syncing, however, have changed. The first Basis watch could sync via a computer when you connected the USB charger, but not so with the Peak. This activity tracker requires a mobile device, either iOS or Android, and can't sync with a computer. You can still access all the information the Basis Peak collects about you via the website, MyBasis.com, but getting that data to the Web requires a mobile phone or tablet. More about the mobile apps in a bit.

Automation and Features

As mentioned, the real selling point of Basis Peak is the automation. I can't tell you how many times I've put on some activity-tracking device, set out on a ride or run only to realize five minutes in that I forgot to turn on the special tracking feature. This never happens with the Basis Peak. When you run, it knows. When you ride your bicycle, it knows. When you walk, it knows. Fall asleep? Ditto. No other activity tracker works this way.

Hop on your bicycle while wearing the Basis Peak, and within a few seconds of pedaling, you'll see a bicycle icon appear on screen. Peak shows your time in this activity, calorie burn, and other relevant stats. It just works, and it shows you it's working via the icons on the screen. That's unbeatable.

Plenty of other activity trackers support a range of activities, but you have to put them into the right "mode" before you start. The Misfit Flash ($58.13 at Amazon) is one example. It's very inexpensive and works well, but its display is a cryptic dial that takes some time to learn how to read, so if you forget how to enable your special tracking mode, it's almost impossible to figure it out on the spot—like when you're already outside and suited up to hop on your bicycle or jump in the pool.

A lot of activity trackers give you a stopwatch option for tracking any activity other than walking, but this is one feature notably missing from the Basis Peak. Not having a stopwatch is one reason the Peak is not the most evolved in terms of it being a sports watch or runner's watch. (On a forum recently, a company official said she can't rule out that there will never be a stopwatch feature pushed to the watch via a firmware update, but that there is no plan to add one at this time.)

If you're just getting into running, I would recommend checking out the Garmin Forerunner 15 , or anything else in the Forerunner series. The Forerunner 15 is something of an entry-level runner's watch, but it's great and also counts your daily steps.

There are so many other runner's watches, too, from the TomTom Multi-Sport to Magellan's Echo ($39.99 at Amazon) , but most of them don't do general activity tracking (i.e., daily step count). It all depends on what you want to track.

Basis Peak: Seeing Your Data

The other noteworthy feature in Basis Peak, which was not a part of the previous Basis Band, is that it supports push notifications, though only for incoming texts and phone calls at this time. The feature was not enabled during the pre-release phase when I tested the Peak. If you're looking to dabble in smartwatch functionality, but are afraid a full-featured device will only create more distractions, using the Basis Peak could be an easing-in.

But let me say that when I wore the Garmin Vivosmart , which supports all kinds of notifications—whatever you have enabled on your phone—I loved it. I still felt very much in control of the notification I received, because I could toggle them on or off, but I liked being able to glance down at my wrist and see that it was time to leave for an appointment, or that there was a chance of rain tomorrow. It could have been a distraction except that I could turn off, via my phone's notification system, any alerts I didn't want to receive.

Basis CEO Jef Holove told me that developers will be able to get their hands on Peak's APIs to enable notifications from any app, but that seems different than mirroring the notifications already coming from the phone, which is what Garmin Vivosmart does. (The Vivosmart only works with iOS, though.)

Seeing Your Data: App and Web Dashboard

The whole point of having an activity tracker, of course, is to track your activity both day by day and over time. One neat feature in the Basis mobile app and MyBasis website is a focus on habits rather than just single-day goals.

The more you use Basis Peak, the more Habit Cards you'll unlock. Habit Cards help you keep track of the consistency of hitting your daily goal, such as sleeping more than seven hours at night for more than three days in a given week. The idea is to put some focus on long-term changes.

The Web site and mobile app (iOS and Android) both give you detailed insight in your activity. In a large graph, you can zoom in on any point of your day to see your exact heart rate, skin temperature, perspiration level, calories burned, and more, at any minute. All the interaction is fluid. Pinch-and-stretch zooming lets you see more or less detail. And remember, all your activities are automatically recorded, so any running, walking, bicycling, and sleeping is tagged and categorized automatically.

In my testing with the new Basis Peak, I have yet to see an activity fully missed or miscategorized. With the old Basis Carbon Steel Edition, only twice did the tracker get something wrong (it thought I fell asleep at the movies once, when I swear I was awake; another time it mistook a very short bicycle ride for a run).

The Web dashboard and apps for iOS and Android work well, but they aren't as comprehensive as Fitbit's apps for helping you track other pieces of your health. Fitbit has a calorie-logging system, as well as an integration with MyFitnessPal so you know how many calories you burned as well as ingested—keeping an eye on that balance is crucial for people trying to lose weight. Fitbit's system also has a place to log your daily glucose reading, blood pressure, weight, and a place to note how severe your allergies were today. You can even add one custom item to track, which could be anything from pain levels to how much alcohol you consume. The Basis app and website have none of these features.

Among the Very Best

If you're in the market for a general activity monitor with HRM that can automatically track your walking, runs, bicycle rides, and sleep, order a Basis Peak without hesitation. It's really the best there is on the market now. Don't wait for the Apple Watch either. When it appears in 2015, it'll be a very expensive first-generation device. You'll be happier to have a device you love now, rather than wait for the waters to settle after an initial wave of reviews about the Apple Watch rate it extremely high and extremely low (it's an Apple product, so there will be fanboys and haters both).

The only other product on my radar that could rival the Basis Peak is the Fitbit Surge, which is due out in 2015. The Surge will cost a little more ($249.95), but it adds GPS and comes with the benefit of the Fitbit apps, which remain the most comprehensive one you'll find for tracking your fitness and wellness.

As much as I love the Basis Peak, I can't quite give it a five out of five rating. The lack of a stopwatch remains a mystery. And having a touch-screen-only interface might sound tech-forward, but in the heat of exercise, I'm a button masher. I need a button to mash, especially if I'm wearing gloves. Touch screens are too precious. Also: distance. Miles are more meaningful than steps, and I want to see how many miles I walk in a day, right on the device.

Is it the perfect activity tracker for fitness? Not quite, but Basis Peak gets almost all the important details right and packages them into a comfortable and fully waterproof watch with a highly readable display. The automated activity detection is really what sells it. What's missing is distance, an accounting of not only how many steps you took or how many minutes you walked, but how many miles or kilometers you covered. I find distance a more meaningful metric than steps, and I really like to see it. The Garmin Vivosmart tracks distance, as do three soon-to-be-released products from Fitbit. I'm also not crazy about the lack of any physical buttons on the Basis Peak. It's a touch screen only, which can be a pain in the neck when you're wearing gloves or moving vigorously, which I learned the hard way when I had a Samsung Gear Fit for a few days. Its sensitive touch screen required a steady hand; you'd have to be an Olympic biathlete to control it anytime your heart rate is elevated.

Compared with the first Basis watch, the Basis Peak doesn't have as much chutzpah as one might expect of a gen-two device. Sure, it's different with many improvements and several eye-catching new features, but not that different. The original Basis band, however, as a first-generation device, practically nailed it, and it didn't need much more than a few improvements and a little finessing.

All that said, there are so many other excellent activity trackers on the market, so if you're a dedicated runner looking for a device that will show your split times, or if your budget dictates you spend less than $99, there are other options that are sure to please.

For more advice on fitness technology, see how to choose a fitness tracker as well as my list of nine waterproof activity trackers.

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Further Reading