I’m just gonna shake shake shake, shake it Up, shake it Up24

After Thanksgiving Break, my dad took advantage of all those Black Friday deals and got me a Jawbone Up24.  Since then, I’ve been wearing it and using it to keep track of my daily activities….well, for the most part. Sometimes I take it off to charge it and then forget about it for a few days 😦

However, during the times I have it on, I really like it!  Before I used to use an app (called Argus) to keep track of myself; the biggest issue with that was (at least when it came to the pedometer), I didn’t always have my phone on me.  The Up24 just stays on my wrist and I don’t have to worry about carrying anything alone with me.

The Up24 has a few main features and functions that I want to review with you: pedometer, sleep tracker, alarm clock/reminder, food journal, weight tracker, exercise/activity manager.

Pedometer

I know that I mentioned this earlier as well, but the best part of the pedometer is that it’s a wearable band that’s synced with an app.  That way, I don’t have to carry around my phone, I just wear the band through the day (which after a little while, just becomes habit and feels pretty natural).  The app also has a Smart Coach that analyzes how much you move on average and creates goals based on that.  It’s worked pretty motivationally for me, telling you how much you accomplished the day before and asks whether you’re ready to take on a new challenge for the next day.  To be honest, I don’t really think about it that often, but I could see myself getting up and walking around just a bit more if I knew towards the end of the day that I was close to my goal.

The band also has an Idle Alert that you can set.  The Idle Alert pretty much keeps track of how long you’ve been sitting.  This is really, really good for people who have sedentary jobs, like I do.  You can set how frequently you want a reminder to walk around.  For me, I had it set to 1 hour, so that if I didn’t walk around for an hour, my band would vibrate softly and remind me to walk around.

Sleep Tracker

Another function of this band is the sleep tracker.  By pressing and holding the button on the band or by turning on sleep mode in the app, you can track the quality and time of your sleep.  It’s been pretty accurate regarding tracking, considering I wear it while I sleep so it tracks it all based on my movements.  It records how long it takes you to fall asleep, how long you sleep, and supposedly when you’re in a phase of deep sleep versus of light sleep. I’m not exactly sure what the science behind all of this is, but I’m ok with blindly believing it for now; or at least until I have reason to not believe it.

Alarm Clock/Reminder

I don’t know if you all know this about me, but more than sleeping, waking up is my actual problem.  This is probably one of the best ways that the Up24 has had an actual, significant impact on my life: the alarm clock.  I used to be the type of person that could sleep through unintentional noises in the night, alarms, smoke detectors, fire drills, you name it.  Pretty much the only way I could be woken up was when someone would shake me awake.

Living alone though, I don’t have that luxury anymore.  Enter Up24.  The alarm clock feature on here syncs with the sleep tracker and wakes you up within a certain range of the set time.  You essentially put in a range—I have 20 min—and an I-absolutely-need-to-be-up-by time.  And when I say “wakes you up,” I mean that the band vibrates on your wrist continuously until you press and hold the button to tell it you’re awake.  It’s almost like someone is shaking me awake in the morning!

There’s also a Power Nap setting that you can use that uses your sleep data and wakes you up at the optimal time before your maximum nap time that you set.

The band-vibrating can also be set for reminders.  You can set a reminder for a certain time with a message.  At the time of the reminder, your band will vibrate and the message will display on your phone.

Food Journal

This is one of my least used features, because I’m just really bad about keeping track of what I eat.  But for people who can do it, it’s really nicely set up.  Sometimes there are a few syncing issues or the app will crash when you’re adding a meal, but to be honest, what app doesn’t have its issues, you know.

Anyways, it has a record of the nutritional data for nearby restaurants and the meals they offer, for the times you eat out.  And for the times that you make prepared meals, you can just scan the barcode.  And for those times that you cook something from scratch, you might have to do a bit of individual tracking for the food, but it’s not that bad.

It does keep track of calories you eat and how much you have left for the day.  This is displayed on your home screen, along with your step activity and sleep details.

Weight Tracker

The weight tracker on here is extremely minimalistic, but it’s pretty much exactly what I needed.  All you do is manually input your weight whenever you weigh yourself, and the app keeps a small graph of your weight over time.

Exercise/Activity Manager

In addition to the pedometer, you can use the app to keep track of your workouts.  There are a bunch of exercise type options, and you just pick one and put in the details.  This, in addition to the food journal, is a good way of keeping an estimate of your overall caloric intake and output.

Goal Tracking

There are three goals that Up keeps track of: Move, Sleep, and Weight.  Move lets you set goals on how many steps you want to take throughout the day. Sleep helps you set goals for how much sleep you should be getting.  And, Weight (as obvious by the name) is for you to set goals on your weight.  With your caloric intake information, Up can give you tips on what to do to reach your weight goal.  This goes for your move and sleep goals too.  Depending on what you set your goals to be, the smart coach on the home screen gives you tips on how to reach all of your set goals.

Syncing with iOS Health App

Another nice feature of the Up24 and the partner app is that if you’re running iOS 8 and you use the default Health App, the Up app can share data with that and you can view everything on your Health dashboard to see all the overall graphs.

Overall Opinion

I really like the Up24 band.  It helps me keep track of a lot of things, and actually also makes me consider more things that I really should be paying attention to, but usually don’t (…like the Idle Alert!).  There are sometimes general issues with syncing or with the app crashing, but it doesn’t happen frequently enough to the point of it affecting the general experience.  If keeping track of your activities and your life is something you’re trying to get into, I’d definitely recommend getting this.

It’s Time to Level Up

I know I told you guys about Mint. But that was like a year ago…and a lot can change in a year! (My shopping habits, unfortunately for my wallet, are not one of these changes.) I don’t want to say my loyalties have changed…but my loyalties have changed. Instead of using Mint, I now use an app called Level.

It’s similar enough to Mint, but it’s more of an overview of my finances. Mint.com is more about categorizing each purchase and seeing where you spend your money. Level just tells me—oh hey! You told me that you wanted to save $400 this month…if you buy that dress in your hands, while it’ll look amazing on you, you may not reach your savings goal for the month. It tells me exactly how much of my income is spendable and how much goes towards rent, bills and savings.

So, let me give you a little tour of Level.

Welcome to the home screen. When I open up my app, it tells me exactly how much money is spendable that day, week, and month.

If you don’t spend all your spendable money one day, then it rolls over and recalculates your spendable money for the rest of the week and month.

Also, if you go over, it tells you how much you’ve overspent. Of course, I’ve never ever seen this screen before……

To set up your profile, Level has you add all your bank accounts and credit cards, figures out how much you make, how much you spend regularly (like on rent and bills, etc.), asks you how much you want to save a month, and then takes the rest in its own hands and spits back how much money you have left to play with.

When I first started using Level, they had the standard banks and what not, but I looked at the list again recently, and MAN, they’ve really stepped up their game! (Or should I say leveled up LOL…I’m so sorry. Stupid jokes just happen sometimes.) Anyway, they have a bunch of banks to pick from; and if it’s still not on the list, then submit a request, and I think they’ll figure something out for you.

Back to the app—there’s another quite helpful view, other than the Spendable one: the Activity view. Which (as the name implies), consolidates all the activities going on amongst all your accounts. They also give you a combined balance, which is nice, because then you can see how much money you’d have left if you were to pay all your credit cards off right now!

I recently deposited all my monopoly money, so my balance is kinda high.

As you can see from the menu on top, you can see all of your transactions, or limit your view to any credits that have been returned to you or bills that you regularly pay, or a custom search through everything.

Another nice feature they have is that when you make unusual purchases, they don’t have to come out of your spendable. Those are things you’d probably be tapping into your savings account for. After all, what else are you saving all that money up for?

So, for example—I recently moved to a new apartment and had to buy a new dining table. But since it’s an unusual purchase, that’s not something I want it to deduct from my spendable. And to take care of that, I just swipe right on the transaction in my activity view and tell it to not count it. It’s perfect.

You can also swipe left if it’s a recurring bill, and it’ll add it to your bill section instead of being a spendable J

Level also has its Alert Center and you can choose which notifications you receive…and just speaking from personal experience, it’s always nice to get those push notifications that are like HEY YOU JUST GOT PAID!

Anyways, I’ve had a pretty good experience with Level. And I hope that I’ve been able to successfully convey my love and adoration for this app…and maybe convince you to download it J Since, after all, it is a free app…and available on Android and iOS.

P.S. – Word on the street is they’re going to have a new feature that calculates spending trends soon!