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Misfit's Shine 2 is a thinner, more colorful activity tracker
Misfit took a roundabout approach towards releasing a sequel for its svelte Shine activity tracker: It announced the cheaper, plastic Shine Flash last year, and it stepped into the connected home with the colorful Bolt smart bulb back at CES. Now, we finally have the Misfit Shine 2, and it should look pretty familiar to Misfit fans. Once again, it's made out of smooth aluminum, but it's a tad thinner and wider than the first Shine, which wasn't exactly a clunker in the first place. In addition to tracking your steps and basic sleep patterns, the Shine 2 now has a 3-axis magnetometer for slightly more accurate activity tracking. Misfit also swapped out the white LEDs on the front of the device with 12 colorful lights, and it now supports capacitive touch, which means it should be more responsive to your taps and swipes. You can nab a Shine 2 in either rose gold or black for $100 later in November.
Misfit's Flash activity tracker will soon control connected devices
We first heard of Misfit's plans to move beyond activity-tracking with its wearables at CES, and today the company took its first step. With the $50 Flash, you'll soon be able to control a range of connected devices with the unit's Smart Button. As you might expect, Misfit's light bulb, Bolt, is top on the list of supported items. But in March you'll be able to play or pause a Spotify playlist, or even set the perfect bed-time temp with Nest. In addition, the company is working on making Flash play nice with over one hundred behaviors through the automation service IFTTT, Logitech Harmony smart home tech, Yo messaging, the August Smart Lock and others. There isn't an exact arrival date for any of those just yet, but you can catch a glimpse of what the wearable will do on the other side of the break.
Misfit's new activity tracker is a cheaper, plastic version of its first
This week, Misfit announced its second wearable activity tracker... or did it? It's called the Flash, and essentially, it's a clone of a product the company already makes: the Shine. Both are small tokens capable of recording steps and sleep, as well as figuring out when you're doing more vigorous activities like cycling, swimming or playing tennis. So, where's the incentive? Well, that lies in the price, as the Flash costs half as much as the Shine at $50 or £50 -- or it will, anyway, when it launches in the US mid-October and in the UK a month later. Catching up with Misfit in London, we had a chance to check out the Flash, which is just that little bit bigger and fatter than the Shine. The front and back are also flat this time 'round, rather than convex, but the main difference is the materials used to make it.
Misfit Shine teams with Lose It! calorie-counting to keep your diet on course
Just last month, another sleep-tracking option came to Misfit's Shine activity-logging app, and now, users can couple caloric burn with the intake. Thanks to a cooperative effort with Lose It! -- a nutrition monitoring app/service -- you'll be able to log what you consume and keep track of all the corresponding stats across the web, Android and iOS with the diet-minded outfit. From there, send over Shine's collected data to calculate your overall progress. As you might expect, Lose It! offers barcode scanning to enter foods and customized plans to keep things simple, but a $40 annual subscription is required to leverage the skills of the activity tracker (Jawbone's Up line, Nike FuelBand and Fitbit devices are already supported) or a fitness app.
Misfit Wearables releases Shine Android app, outfits Bluetooth 4.0 devices with activity-tracking prowess
Until now, the dapper stylings of Misfit Wearables' Shine activity tracker have eluded the Android faithful for logging steps, calories and sleep. The outfit has announced a version of the Shine app for devices running Google's OS (4.3 and later) that also sport Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity to be used alongside the aluminum-clad gadget. This bit of software allows users to sync the $120 clip-on wearable, set goals and monitor visual summaries of their progress. Now that Misfit's mobile software is no longer iOS only, the holiday shopping list for those looking to quantify daily routines just got a bit more crowded.
