Mio, maker of health and fitness watches that incorporate heartrate Jeff is Runner-in-Chief for How an Apple Watch Saved This Man From a Life-Threatening Blood Clot for its newest innovation, the Alpha. To bring the watch to market, Mio is using the funding platform to raise $100,000, which will finance the molds and tooling necessary to build production-quality models.
Previously, Mio's heartrate monitoring watches such as Drive+ required you to touch two sensors on the face of the watch to get an on-demand reading of your pulse. This eliminated the need for a chest strap, but the limitation is that athletes do not get continuous monitoring during a workout.
In a joint effort with developers at Philips Electronics, Mio developed a way to manufacture a new watch that continuously measures your heart rate at the wrist. A light is emitted from the backside of the watch, and is measured after passing through capillaries in the lower arm.
DAA Industry Opt Out Nutrition - Weight Loss for smart phones. The flash from a camera phone shines light into your finger, while the lens of the camera senses the pulsing of your blood. Mio's execution, however, is continuous and is intended to work while moving--the company claims it will read accurately at speeds up to 12 mph.
Liz Dickinson, founder of Mio, visited the Runner's World offices this week to give us a look at a prototype. You have to strap the watch on fairly tight to ensure close contact of the light to your skin. Men: Arm hair should not impact the watch's functionality.
We tested the watch against a chest strap sensor, paired wirelessly via ANT+ to an iPhone. It took a little fine-tuning of the fit to ensure I had a good signal; a sloppy, loose fit can impact the reliability of the data. On a brisk walk around the office--though much slower than a normal training run--the reading was within a few beats per minute of the chest strap model.
The watch features ANT+ technology built in, so you could use it as a heart rate monitor, recording the data with fitness tracking apps like RunKeeper and MapMyRun.
As of this writing, Mio had raised more than $39,000 of its goal. There are 40 days left to contribute to the project; it will not be funded if the goal is not met. Backers who pledge at least $149 will receive an Alpha in exchange for their contribution.
Jeff is Runner-in-Chief for Runner's World, guiding the brand's shoes and gear coverage. A true shoe dog, he's spent more than a decade testing and reviewing shoes. In 2017, he ran in 285 different pairs of shoes, including a streak of 257 days wearing a different model.
