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The Band isn't "useless", but it's more of an activity/lifestyle level fitness tracker. I don't know why anything would have convinced you otherwise. Of the continuous HR tracking general-purpose devices, Band v1 was better than the competition at the time [1], but things have progressed significantly in the past year (everyone's building their own PPG stacks w/ multi-wavelength LEDs now). If you need ANT+ and more advanced tracking of course you'll need a more specialized device. You won't get powermeter support on a Garmin watch until you get into their triathalon range, like the $450 Forerunner 920XT. The tradeoff there is that there's no optical HR/continuous HR support. For Garmin, optical HR is only on the newest FR235, which doesn't have powermeter support either - that doesn't make it "a fun gadget for a teenager" - power meters are specialized, expensive (is there any <$800?) devices for a single activity. If you know that you need support for it, you should know what you need to look for, but don't expect the majority of people to care about it, especially since it's obviously not the Band's target market. I will say the thing that's a real shame is that there's no of the "pro" fitness device manufacturers (Polar, Garmin, Suunto, TomTom) that has 1) built anywhere near a decent API/platform for consolidating fitness data (something that MS, Fitbit, Jawbone, etc have done a much better job at) or 2) at the very least, allow multiple of their own devices to work together - ie, Garmin now has a decent activity tracker w/ the Vivosmart HR (no GPS) coming out, and a whole range of more serious/specialized fitness trackers, but you can't seamlessly use and sync both into Garmin Connect. That's just embarassing (also, Garmin charges a $5K fee for API access. wut?) BTW, for those seriously interested in their fitness gadgets, I recommend visiting, which has great reviews and an interested community, although sadly, not a forums: http://www.dcrainmaker.com/ [1] http://www.theverge.com/2014/11/12/7193493/7-minutes-in-hell... |