Microsoft Band review: advanced and earlier and cheaper than Apple Watch, but not as beautiful

It can't really compete on style, but does what it's made for very cleverly

Apple and Microsoft have long been rivals. Once, Apple was the tiny upstart competitor, now it’s the big brother. But while everyone’s waiting for the Apple Watch to go on sale, Microsoft’s smart watch and fitness monitor, the Microsoft Band, has just hit UK stores and at a much lower price.

Of course, it’s not a direct competitor. This is much more directly focused on fitness, though you can see emails arrive and reply to texts with pre-determined responses. And it’s a lot cheaper, at £169.99, than Apple’s entry-level Watch Sport model.

And it’s no competitor in style, either. Frankly, it’s not attractive: a thick, black, rubbery strap with a gloss-black edged screen and a secure fastening which keeps the optical heart rate monitor against the underside of your wrist. Put it on and your wrist feels clamped into place, though it’s not uncomfortable.

There are ergonomic issues of a different kind: the clock is horizontally displayed along a wide, low display. This means it’s easy to read the time if you hold your arm up vertically in front of you, bur much less so if you swing your arm up horizontally like, you know, everyone does with a watch. It’s much easier to read if you wear the Band with the screen facing down. The time is displayed digitally only.

The oblong display has a coloured background and you can choose between a variety of bright shades, but this is not a full-colour screen in the traditional sense. It probably doesn’t need to be as it’s not there to display photographs and so on. Note that unlike the Apple Watch and more recent smart wearables that turn their screens on when your raise the watch, for the Band you have to press a button to see the time.

The Band is compatible with the three main mobile phone platforms: iPhone, Android and Windows Phone. Some elements, like the voice control feature Cortana, are only available on Windows handsets, not iPhone or Android.

Cortana mostly works well, just as Siri does on Apple Watch. You can set reminders, take notes and check the weather easily enough. A reminder is sounded on both phone and Band. However, simple commands such as “Set a timer for 15 minutes” repeatedly insisted I went to the phone to sort this. The equivalent on Apple Watch would have simply seen a countdown timer appear on screen.

There are lots of sensors built into the Band. Most importantly, GPS is included, unlike on the Apple Watch. So if you go for a run and really don’t want to be weighed down by a smartphone, you can leave it behind and rely on the GPS to ensure super-accurate measuring of your efforts. Indoors it uses an accelerometer to count your steps.

But there’s also a skin temperature sensor to see how hot you are, as it were, and an Ultraviolet light sensor to monitor your exposure to UV light. Not always essential in the UK but, hey, summer seems to be on its way.

It can even measure your emotional stress, Microsoft says, thanks to a galvanic skin response monitor which measures changes in electrical resistance in the skin. Most importantly if you’re going to use the Band’s fitness elements – and you probably are – there’s an optical heart rate monitor which takes regular measurements of how your heart’s doing.

The Band promises 48 hours of charge, so you can wear it overnight, handy if you want to monitor your sleep.

There’s also integration with fitness companies such as Nuffield Health who have provided workouts that can be done with the Band on. These work well, though fitness apps such as Runtastic Six Pack which show videos of the exercises on screen are even better.

This is not the most attractive smart watch or health monitor on the market, but it’s one of the most advanced in terms of its sensors and the way the software integrates the information it gets from the sensors.

If you like the look of it, it’s an advanced, capable and affordable fitness band – though you do need to press a button to tell the time.