Let's face it, most fitness trackers are for runners. It's a natural progression for a smart pedometer to go from tracking steps to tracking a lot of quicker steps during a certain period of time. Some devices like the Microsoft Band are trying to break away from that bubble, incorporating guided workouts that include moves like crunches and mountain climbing. But really, what most of these devices do best is monitor fast movements that involve the swinging of arms and jostling of legs.

Enter Atlas Wearables, a company that's been attempting to make something different for the past couple of years. Its first product, the $250 Atlas Wristband, doesn't even track steps nor does it want to. Using a blend of accelerometers, gyroscopes, and inertial sensors, the wristband can recognize typical gym-based exercises, such as barbell calf raises, burpees, kettlebell swings, and more. It counts reps and monitors muscle exertion, and it keeps track of heart rate as well. Even though it currently excludes popular workouts like running and cycling, the Atlas Wristband's unique features and potential for growth could make it the device that gym rats have been waiting for.

Design: Are we playing Tetris?

Atlas Wearables' first product may be a wristband, but it doesn't look like any of the other wrist-bound monitors currently on the market. The band is about an inch wide, and it has a central module sitting on top of your wrist. This sticks out perpendicularly, giving the wristband a blocky, Tetris-like feel. You can remove the module from the band—and you must, for charging via the hidden microUSB port—and it magnetically snaps back in place. The Wristband's traditional, watch-like clasp makes it easy to adjust on your wrist.

The module itself has a 128×64-pixel PMOLED touchscreen on top and an optical heart rate monitor on the bottom. While it is a bit thick, it's pretty lightweight and doesn't feel any heavier than other fitness trackers. Of course, there's no denying its bulkiness—combine that with its unique shape and you will get some looks in the gym wearing this device (I definitely did).

That said, this is not a tracker for all-day use. It won't track your daily step count, focusing instead on logging specific exercises and workout routines. It's only water-resistant up to 30 meters, which makes it splash-safe but not pool-safe (and it doesn't track swimming anyway). Atlas says the band is "designed for left wrist wear," and the company's CEO Peter Li explained that this is because each exercise was programmed using hours of training data with the band on the left wrist (Li hopes to expand and include the right wrist sometime this year). Since you won't be writing or doing any menial tasks with this band on, even lefties shouldn't have an issue wearing it in the gym for a finite period of time.

The Atlas Wristband's 120 mAh battery is also not meant for all-day wear. It's best when used for short bursts of activity, specifically one-hour workouts. Atlas claims the band will last up to a week when used each day for one hour. When not in use, the company suggests turning off the band completely or switching to Power Save mode in the "Device and Tips" section of is display. I found that turning off the display helped preserve battery life. At first, I didn't realize that the display, which shows the date and time by default, will stay on for at least 10 seconds until you press its side button to turn it off. Leaving the screen on for too long like that will drain the battery quickly—mine lost over 50 percent of battery life in just a few hours when I was playing around with it without turning the display off using the button.

Features: Get ready to build some muscle

Let's start with a breakdown of how this thing works. The Atlas Wristband, powered by two 32-bit ARM M4 processors, uses a tri-axis accelerometer, tri-axis gyroscope, and inertial sensors to track your wrist movements while you work out. The company paints a clear picture of how this works on its website: "Each exercise motion has its own inertial fingerprint. Imagine a glowing dot on your wrist that leaves a 3D trail when you move. Atlas recognizes the unique path of this dot and associates it with the correct exercise from our database."

Valentina Palladino

Valentina Palladino

Valentina Palladino

Valentina Palladino

Valentina Palladino

Valentina Palladino

Valentina Palladino

Valentina Palladino

Valentina Palladino

Valentina Palladino

Valentina Palladino

That database currently has about 50 trackable exercises, and you can save 15 of them to the band at a time. Your saved exercises are the ones the band will automatically recognize and record when you're in Freestyle Mode. In this setting, you can do any of those moves, in any order, and the band will track all your reps, sets, heart rate fluctuations, and workout duration. The other setting is Coach Mode, where you can select a number of pre-made workouts (think routines like "Strength Week 1" and "Core Blaster") or a workout you've customized. The band will walk you through each step of the workout while tracking the same metrics.

Since the device is a wristband, you might think you're limited to arm and chest workouts, but you're not. Many of the trackable exercises target other areas of the body, including abs, legs, and glutes, because the device can track anything that involves wrist movement. Some exercises, like dumbbell curls, obviously require you to move your arms, but you do move your arms in different ways during other exercises such as crunches, sit-ups, and push-ups. By tracking the 3D movements of your wrist no matter how small, the band's world of exercises opens up dramatically.

I first tested out Freestyle Mode and was immediately impressed. I picked up some weights and started doing dumbbell-curve-to-overhead-presses. When I finished my first set, the Atlas Wristband had counted all 16 reps. Next to the rep count on the display is a weight number, which you can tap on to edit how heavy the weights are that you're using. Then you can tap the Save button right next to it, and the wristband records that as your first set.

I switched between dumbbells and kettlebells during my first freestyle session, and the band just knew. There's no way to indicate a switch in equipment, but the band can tell by your wrist movements what exercises you're doing. You don't have to stop in between every set, add the weight, and press save—if you take a small break in between sets, the band recognizes that you've paused and automatically saves the set. Later, you can add how much weight you used in the app. And if you ever forget which 15 exercises you have synced to the band, you can tap the "start exercising" screen on the device and hit the Back icon that pops up. There, it will show you a list of all your synced moves.

Sometimes the band did get tripped up. During an ab workout in Coach Mode, the band didn't recognize half of my Russian Twist reps about midway through the workout. It continued to miss a few dumbbell exercises after that, and Peter Li acknowledges that the Atlas Wristband may not pick up motions that are slightly different from what their trainers recorded initially during programming.

The two main factors of this appear to be grip and motion, which is why the Exercise Guide in the Atlas app is so important. It has all of the trackable exercises you can perform and shows you a short video on how to do the move with a step-by-step description and descriptions of the body parts involved. The Exercise Guide quickly became my best friend at the gym since I didn't know how to do many of the moves in the first place. And given my tracking experiences, I wanted to get my motions as accurate as possible so the band wouldn't miss any reps or sets.

Aside from those hiccups, Coach Mode basically takes the brainwork out of Freestyle Mode by giving you pre-fabricated workouts to target certain areas of the body or meet specific fitness goals. There's no audio component to Coach Mode, so the band simply guides you through various exercises in a certain order using its display. Currently there are only seven Coach Mode workouts available—fewer than the guided workouts available for the Microsoft Band—and you can create your own guided workout by choosing exercises from the library. Atlas is going to have to come out with more of these guided workouts to keep up with the likes of the Microsoft Band, but I really enjoyed the available list because the routines take the guesswork out of those particularly groggy gym mornings.

During any workout, the Atlas Wristband's optical heart rate monitor captures how your heart rate changes throughout. It's a standard wrist-bound heart rate monitor in the sense that it works just fine if you have the band strapped on tight and positioned correctly, just above the wrist bone. You can use it to take isolated heart rate readings at any time, but once you start the monitor, it begins recording time as if you were beginning a workout (this is also the only way you can currently track running, as the band has no specific mode for it). When randomly checking your pulse, make sure you're standing still—I tried to turn on the monitor in the middle of a treadmill run, but it took forever to take an initial reading because I was moving.

Listing image by Valentina Palladino