The best fitness trackers help you keep up with fitness goals you set for yourself, such as getting enough activity each day, sleeping well at night, and monitoring your weight. For $49.99, the Nuyu Personal Activity Monitor from Health o Meter is on the less expensive end of the fitness tracker spectrum, but it shows. While the Nuyu tracks steps, distance, and sleep well enough, it has some holes in its functionality that make it tough to recommend. Plus, one of the best low-cost options, the Misfit Flash Link ($17.99 at Amazon) , costs even less, making it our Editors' Choice for entry-level fitness trackers.
Price and Compatibility
Fifty dollars used to mark the starting point for worthwhile fitness trackers, but a competitive market has pushed the price bar even lower. Misfit has really taken command of the bargain market with two products, the Misfit Flash ($74.99 at Amazon) , and the same device without a wristband, the aforementioned Misfit Flash Link. Both are very good products, with a lovely design and reliable accuracy. The biggest difference between the Nuyu and the Misift Flash or the Misfit Flash Link is that the Nuyu has a proper display where you can see your step counts, whereas the Misfit devices only have indicator lights.
To use the Nuyu, you need an Android or iOS device with the free Nuyu app. Only in the app can you see the data the device collects. There is no option to pair the device to a computer, and you can only see a limited amount of information on the Nuyu itself: steps taken, miles traveled, and calories burned since the beginning of the day. It also shows the percent of your daily goal you've reached so far.
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When you sync with the mobile app, you see much more information, including your sleep report, how many steps you've taken each day of the week, your weight tracked over time, and more. Weight tracking works either with the compatible Nuyu Wireless Scale or by manually typing your weight into the app. The way to enter weight manually in the app is not intuitive, and a simple + icon or pen icon edit button would go a long way to making the tool apparent.
Design and Specs
The Nuyu is a small black device measuring 1.18 by 1.18 by 0.47 inches (HWD) that pops into a wrist strap or clip, very similar to the Misfit Flash. The device is waterproof to 30 meters, so you can wear it in the shower and the pool.
Since the tracker relies solely on its touch screen, you'd think it would be adequately responsive, but it's not. And it doesn't stay illuminated indefinitely, so if you want to see the time or your step count, you have to wake it up by swiping vigorously until it responds—which never happened on the first try in my testing.
The OLED display itself is visibly pixelated, with faded greenish squares assembled into letters, numbers, and symbols. The quality looks similar to that of Fitbit devices four years ago (remember the Fitbit One ($229.99 at Amazon) ?), before that company moved to a sharper screen.
A coin cell battery, like the kind you'd find in a standard watch, powers the little Nuyu. These batteries are a double-edged sword. On the one hand, you never have to charge them. On the other hand, you have to buy a new battery every nine months or so. Some people, like those who always forget to charge their devices, prefer the coin cell, though I'm personally a fan of trackers that are USB rechargeable. I find it easier to plug in a tracker after it dies rather than figure out exactly which model battery the device needs, buy it, and swap the old one and the new one.
The wrist strap and clip aren't super high-quality, but I do like that they are thin and light. The Nuyu looks fairly unassuming, even on small, feminine wrists. The band and clip are not made of pure silicone, however, so they don't feel as soft and pliant as the band on the Garmin Vivoactive ($229.99 at Amazon) , which I wore the entire time I had the Nuyu for comparative testing.
To fasten the Nuyu wristband, you thread one end through a loop on the other end and snap it into place with a prong-in-hole design. It's fine, but not as secure as a belt-style clasp. The Fitbit Flex ($114.99 at Amazon) has a similar closure, and the problem is that, over time, it stretches and the fastener becomes loose. I don't even know how many Fitbit users have told me they lost devices after a few months of use when the clasp eventually failed.
Fitbit learned from that mistake, and newer models, like the Fitbit Charge HR ($133.88 at Amazon) and the Surge ($249.95 at Fitbit) have traditional belt buckle closures now. It's too bad Nuyu didn't learn from Fitbit's mistakes.
Wearing the Nuyu
Out of the box, the Nuyu only takes a few minutes to set up, as long as you have a coin or some other thin, flat object handy to pry open the back of the device and pop in the coin cell battery. Once the battery is in place, you need to launch the mobile app, create an account, and pair your phone with the Nuyu. The pairing procedure is simple, though I made one tiny mistake and hit Cancel when I should have hit Save, and the whole process froze. I had to remove the battery from the Nuyu to force it to reset so I could start over again.
Once the Nuyu and app connect, you can go about your day and the device will track your activity. Swiping the device wakes it up and lets you cycle through the data it shows on screen: steps, distance, calories burned, percent of daily step goal reached so far, and the time.
In the app, you can set a weight goal and personalize your step goal. The app suggests three step goals at the beginner, intermediate, and advanced levels, ranging from 4,000 to 10,000. Seeing as the USDA's recommended minimum level of activity is 10,000 steps per day, Nuyu's suggested goals seem low.
According to the instruction booklet, the Nuyu supports activity tracking beyond just daily walking and movement, so if you go for a run, you can time it and track your distance. But figuring out how to use the activity tracker is not at all intuitive. There is apparently a double-tap feature on the device that you first have to enable in the mobile app, although in the mobile app, I didn't even see an option for it. You're supposed to be able to tap the tracker twice to pause, resume, and confirm activity tracking.
As mentioned, I wore the Nuyu alongside the Garmin Vivoactive, and I was pleasantly surprised to see their readings fairly close to one another. For example, my current readouts as I write this show 13,220 steps on the Nuyu and 13,598 on the Vivoactive.
What's Missing
Sleep tracking happens automatically, and over my first two nights with the Nuyu, it did an admiral job measuring my periods of restlessness, and light and deep sleep. On night three, though, I got out of bed at 4:30 a.m., but was asleep again by 4:40. When I synced the app the next morning, it didn't register that I went back to sleep for three hours, turning my luxurious eight hours of rest into data that made me look like a near-insomniac. There was no way in the app to manually adjust the wake time, which practically all other fitness tracking apps provide.
Another missing component is a calorie counting section, somewhere to log foods eaten or at the very least connect to a food-logging app like MyFitnessPal.
You also won't find a community of Nuyu users to commiserate with on your fitness journey. When using Fitbit products, connecting to the vibrant and active community is one of my favorite perks. Other fitness trackers, like those from Jawbone and Garmin, offer their own fitness communities, though Fitbit's is my personal favorite and the one I think is best for non-athletes.
Nuyu also doesn't have an altimeter to track stairs climbed, but most fitness trackers don't bother with one either. You can get that feature in the the Fitbit Charge, Charge HR, Surge, and a few other older Fitbit products if you want it. Some people like to count stairs because studies show you burn three times as many calories climbing stairs as walking on flat surface. If calorie burn estimates are important to you, I'd recommend getting a device that tracks stairs as well as heart rate. Heart rate is another data point that helps estimate a more accurate calorie burn. Needless to say, Nuyu doesn't have a heart rate monitor, and it doesn't have any ability to connect to Bluetooth or ANT+ heart rate monitors either.
Better Trackers for Less
The Nuyu Personal Activity Monitor isn't a great device, and its flaws became apparent after just a few hours of use. The activity tracker function is impossible to figure out how to use, and the screen takes some frustrating rubbing to wake up. There's no community, and no ability to track calories consumed or connect to apps that can. For $49.99, maybe you can overlook some of these shortcomings, but seeing as a few devices on the market are better and cost the same or less, why would you? If you're on a budget, go for the Misfit Flash Link, our Editors' Choice for low-cost fitness trackers.
If you're willing to spend more, you can get a tracker with more features or that works better for your particular needs. The Fitbit Surge is an Editors' Choice for upgrading your fitness regimen to include outdoor running and other activities. The Mio Fuse ($140.00 at Amazon) can help you with heart rate training. And Garmin has a fantastic line of devices that cater to specific sports, from hiking (the Garmin Forerunner 225 ($237.98 at Amazon) ) to golf (the Garmin Vivoactive).
The Nuyu Personal Activity Monitor from Health o Meter is a small, simple, affordable fitness tracker that can be worn as either a wristband or a clip, but better options are available for even less money.
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