A year before I purchased my first GPS watch, I used a Striiv Smart Pedometer. It was inexpensive and at the time, I saw the combination of playing games, walking steps to donate water, donate polio vaccines or money going into saving the rain forests as a reason to purchasing this device.
Nowadays, you can purchase the bundle for $19.99-$29.99 but at the time when I purchased it, it was under $40.
The bundle comes with the Striiv Smart Pedometer, Keychain + Quick Release, Micro-USB cable/adapter, a hard clip-on case and a green gel protective case and quick start guide. The device lasts for up to 1 week of use when is built-in rechargeable Lithium-Ion is fully charged, charging takes about two hours, while on a computer via USB, it takes up to 4 hours.
The device features a 2.0 inch color touch display screen and has a 500MHz Dual Core Processor with Vector Graphics Support and has a 3 Axis Accelerometer and Altimeter. Buttons are Home, Back and Power on/off buttons.
But who is this device for?
Really, it’s for those who are looking to get started into walking/jogging/stairclimbing but doesn’t want to spend the money for a Fitbit or Garmin Forerunner. It’s also a device that pushes people who never really wanted to get fit, to get fit by walking steps to earn money for its onboard video game. Video game? Yes, you got that right.
The Striiv Smart Pedometer features a high resolution, color touchscreen with built-in apps. No smartphone is required and you can get up and running.
First, you need to get your information on the device, so you can upload the information to the Striiv Sync device.
But once you get started, you will see a screen with the time, battery power, menu button and the main screen which consists of green for steps, amber for calories burned, blue for stairs, purple for miles walked and red for minutes.
On the bottom are menus to let you donate safe water drinking water for 40 schools in Bolivia (via SODIS Foundation), conserving 250,000 acres of Tanzanian Rainforest (via the African Rainforest Conservancy) and also to End Polio Now by the Rotary Foundation of Rotary International in India.
You can also get trophies by taking on challenges, which you can accept or decline. Reach 310 stairs in five minutes, walk 500 steps in so many minutes. You can also race with your friends.
But what most people will probably get into is “myland”. This allows you to build buildings, trees in areas and earn money. To earn money, you need to walk steps, the more steps, the more money and so you can open new regions around the entire map.
The more you walk, the more money or things you can purchase through the game.
The main menu features access to myland; challenges; walkathon (which you can select if you want to donate water, polio vaccines or save the rain forest); race allows you to race against Waddles, Sir Bacon or Walkatron; Friends is if you want to compete with friends; trophies allows you to see the trophies you won that day, all time and future; charts displays your all-time charts; stats showcases your all-time stats, daily average, all-time best (it does not keep daily records).
As for any problems I have had with the device, it’s primarily when I run out of battery. Sometimes, if I haven’t used the device in a long period of time, it won’t turn on. I have to plug-in the recharge USB cable and hold down the power button for more than twenty seconds and set things up again. Fortunately, there are no multi-day records and fortunately, because it syncs with the online website, your all-time best totals are not lost.
Also, I do recommend that if you purchase this, add a little velcro strip to the back of the device and the clip on device as there are times I have seen the device fly out of the clip. I’ve lost this device many times while walking in the office, to have a co-worker call me and let me know that they found the device.
Overall, the Striiv Smart Pedometer was my first exercise device. While my friends were buying Fitbit, I was not motivated at the time to purchase one.
At the time, I really didn’t work out as much either and this Striiv Smart Pedometer actually did motivate me to go out and walk and try to get as many steps I can throughout the day. So, as a beginner’s exercise device and for those who are casually getting into walking, the Striiv Smart Pedometer is good for those people who want to make exercising fun.
After that and once you start walking, jogging and running the miles, that is when you want to look into getting an activity watch or similar to me, to purchase a simple GPS watch and then later on a GPS+Cardio fitness watch.
If anything, you need to start somewhere and this device served my needs at the time. For me, at that point in time in my life, I needed motivation and I needed to get my butt out there and start working out. I enjoy video games and this device helped motivate me in the beginning and it really made me active, as I was bringing it to professional ball games and wanted to see how things were when I climbed steps and it becoming part of my beginning workout life.
This device worked well for me. It never broke down or needed replace. I admit it gave me a scare at times when it wouldn’t start up due to letting the battery die and lack of use, but I was able to fix that quite easily.
But for the year I used this device, it worked well for me and really was the first step in me getting back to walking/jogging/running again.
For $20-$30 and are on a budget, for those wanting nothing but a pedometer and altimeter for basic workout and just starting out and need that little push of motivation, to get out there and walk/jog/run, you really can’t go wrong with this device.
