Nike Fuel + Band

by Nike

• synthetic
• Ideal for monitoring calorie burning.
• Helps weight loss
• Recommended by professional athletes
• Conform fitting

Product Description

NIKE NIKE+ FUEL BAND Style# WM0075 Size: L UNISEX

Product Details

• Shipping Information: View shipping rates and policies
• ASIN: B007FSEMPY
• Item model number: Fuel + Band
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (193 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,834 in Sports & Outdoors (See Top 100 in Sports & Outdoors)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

577 of 607 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Spartanly euipped no nonsense highly practical accessory. April 27, 2012

By Tanner

First off, there are alot of bad reviews for this product from people who received broken ones, and while that's unfortunate and really poor business on Nike's part, those reviews really shouldn't be counted against this device's product rating. I, however, was lucky enough to receive a working one.

If you want my review summed up in one sentence here it is: This thing is absolutely fantastic for the non-fitness nut who wants to improve their health with exercise.

So here's why I say that.. First off, if you run, bike, swim multiple miles a day, or play on a high school sports team, you're not gonna need this. You get loads of exercise and all this thing is gonna do is tell you you exercise a real lot. Yes, it will allow you to set even higher goals for yourself, but when you're at that level you probably have other reliable ways of tracking your progress.

But if you're only hitting the gym a few times a week, or are getting even less exercise than that, as I am, this simple thing can provide you with some surprisingly useful tools, and you'll get more than your moneys worth out of it. I, for example, am recovering from Cancer. I used to run every day, but after cancer and multiple cases of pneumonia due to a suppresseed immune system, i'm lucky to stand up for more than 2 minutes, and that will leave me gasping for air. I have a physical therapist who comes to see me, and parents and doctors who encourage me and remind me to keep moving, along with my own desire to get better and return to my former athletic prowess. Exercise, for me, is often a very brief activity, like getting up and going down a flight of stairs.

With the fuelband, I can see an actual number to gauge how active I'm being during the day, and at the end of the day. I press one button and there it is on my iPad.. the number that tells how hard I've worked today at getting myself better. When I see that number, I can raise the bar if I feel like I'd like to do more the next day. I can also see my progress for the week, month, or year in the form of simple graphs comparing your activity level to your goal. The iPad app, iPhone, or your computer will give you a bunch of different graphs that help you gauge your progress. You can share the data on facebook or twitter, but your main competition should obviously be yourself, and this thing makes comparing your present self to your past self extremely easy and pretty fun. I like seeing which times of day I was most active and trying to remember what I was doing at that time.

Having the fuelband data is really useful to me. I feel tired often since my illness, so it's nice to know if I'm tired because I've been very active, or if my body is just having a bad day.

This isn't only for sick people though. I'd recommend it to anyone who wants to add more exercise into their life. Like I said, it's probably not what a full time athlete is looking for, but if you're an average person who enjoys being healthy, or if you want to get healthy, this is your thing. When you see it, you think "exercise". When you see a low number on it, you think "exercise more". It's that simple.

I've seen a few reviews where people complain about this thing's usefulness for the price. These I do not understand, because even without all the movement tracking, the band is great. I've never had a watch that was this light and comfortable, and the display is just plain cool looking. Oh, and speaking of the display, yes, you can see it easily even in bright sunlight.

386 of 417 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Tried for 3 months. Unreliable, poor software updates, poor quality. August 15, 2012

By Alf

Amazon Verified Purchase

Great idea, low profile system with a nice display, simple to use, custom-fit, hooks into mobile devices. Here's my two cents.

Quality of Construction:
I bought a Fuel Band in May. I wore it for about 3 months. I wore it every day, to track my fuel points, which is the system Nike built to measure activity.

The Fuelband fit well. There were problems with the interface, and I had to reset it after a week because the firmware update didn't work right, it wouldn't connect, so I lost all that data. I talked to a service rep and got it fixed. Then I synced it to my iPad and it worked for about 3 weeks, I tracked my workouts, and then the sync stopped working, and it asked me to go to the Nike website and update my account. I did that, and it started working again, until today, and now it appears to have finally given up, just telling me to plug it in over and over, sometimes with a firmware update, sometimes not.

Then there's the LEDs that display everything. They started to burn out after the first month, line by line. I'm down to about 75% of the lines working at this point. Its unreadable now. I was pretty gentle with the thing, so I don't know why they are burning out.

So the quality of my $200 band withstood 3 months of moderate use, and was maintenance heavy throughout that period, and now it is pretty much useless and I'm looking for a new watch. I've done 3 factory resets, the past two haven't done anything and its just giving me the "Error returned from Nike+" when I plug it in to the computer, and the display is giving me the "plug me in to the computer" symbol.

Quality of the Fuel Point system:
The whole idea of this is a minimalist system that tracks activity constantly and passively, without a whole lot of button pressing for the user. Nike put an accelerometer in a rubberized wrist band, told it to record accelerations in any direction, and then puts that data through a formula that spits out Fuel Points, Calories, and Steps. Calories is completely inaccurate. Steps is probably pretty close. Fuel points appear to be based entirely on duration. The longer you are moving, the more points you get, regardless of intensity. So if you run 5 miles in an hour, its worth as much as walking 1 mile around the mall for an hour.
This was proven to me when I did an 8 mile run on a Saturday, and then the next day, I played with my kids for 2 hours on a golf course trail. Vs. the 8 mile run, the kids scored about double points (who knows?), double calories (not true), and double steps (probably true). I was carrying one daughter on my shoulders for a short stretch, but I don't think the FuelBand knew that. A few weekends later, I did a long walk up Mount Whitney. About 22 miles. I got about 3000 calories for that, over the 11 hours it took me, and 11000 fuel points. I'm no scientist, but I'm pretty sure I burned more 3000 calories in 11 hours of effort. I understand it can't take into account elevation, but it recorded 57,000 steps that day, and it gave me very little for it in terms of calories. Even at 1 calorie per 100 steps, I should have gotten 5700.

So, Nike, some free advice, which I'm also sending you directly:
-don't sell this as a professional workout system, its not, it isn't accurate enough and doesn't account for things like speed, intensity, elevation change, distance/time, activity type, etc.
-don't sell it to athletes as a performance tracking system, it doesn't track performance in any sort of reliable way, just a single number accelerometer and simple algorithm to put the data through
-I recommend you re-package the existing model as a healthcare device, for people who need to move more each day to maintain some basic level of activity: the sick, the old, the obese, anyone with an overly sedentary lifestyle who just needs to shoot for a number each day to get them off the couch or prevent muscle atrophy
-I recommend you add functionality and re-introduce a performance model, that maintains the low profile/simplicity factor, but includes distance covered (through net acceleration, kind of an inertial nav system, or GPS), workout intensity (possibly through heartrate), and is waterproof. An all-activity performance tracker, that isn't a huge beast of a watch. Nice form factor, now make it live up to the promise of "Nike+ FuelBand tracks your activity through a sport-tested accelerometer. Then translates every move into NikeFuel. Nike+ FuelBand tracks running, walking, dancing, basketball - and dozens of everyday actions. It also syncs up with a motivational web and mobile experience. So put it on and get moving."
-Maybe even hook this new device up to Fitocracy.com, and cross-reference the data with descriptive workout data to calibrate your fuel point system. That might actually get you the innovator/early-adopter demographic you're after, that you can expand into more mainstream audiences.

Hope this helps people on the fence,

-Jason W.

39 of 45 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Some good, some bad... be aware of what you are getting for your $ June 26, 2012

By Russian Blue

Positives: handy to wear on wrist, sleek, I like the clock, steps and NikeFuel features
Negatives: Quite a few. I have listed nine "dislikes" in detail below

I have been using my FuelBand for about two months. Although I find a lot of negatives, I do like the fact that because it is on my wrist, with me at all times (unlike my Omron pedometer which I am forever forgetting to carry). The Fuelband is a very good reminder to get out and move. I like the fact that is counts steps, Fuel, and gives me the time. Now, the negatives. 1) It is bulky and uncomfortable. It has little flexibility and is like wearing a wooden bracelet on your wrist; 2) The Android app is still not out, despite Nike's promise that it would be here soon (I talked to tech support awhile ago); 3) it bricked itself on me once already, and I had to call tech support, do a hard reset, and lost my data for three days - probably the most active three days since I have had it, dammit. 4) It will give you about 1,000 Nikefuel per day even if you sit on your butt all day, so set your goals based on that. It counts arm movements, so if you have a desk job like me and are moving your arms it will give you NikeFuel. 5) It counted about 100 hundred Nikefuel per hour *when it was sitting on the seat of my car* and I was driving cross-country. This is another thing you need to be aware. I talked to tech support about this and apparently the motion of the car triggers the accelerometer. It makes you wonder about accuracy. 6) I wear mine almost 24x7, and it is starting to looked banged up and scuffed, even though it is made of a tough material similar to that of a car tire, and I am not hard on it. 7) I used the Nike wrist measuring tool to measure my wrist before buying, and when it came, I needed to add BOTH the extensions to get it to fit decently. You probably won't like it to be tight because it will ride on that little wrist bone that sticks out on the outside of your wrist, and since the band is inflexible, that situation is uncomfortable. 8) You need to charge it every single day, and it takes quite awhile. 9) This is something I just discovered - It does not do a good job differentiating between walking and running (really?). I walked a mile and a half, then ran the same distance, and there was not much difference in the Fuel earned. Good grief.

Bottom line: I am not satisfied, but, 1) there is probably nothing much better on the market right now that fits my needs, and 2) I am going to keep using it for awhile, at least until the Android app comes out and I can evaluate the app and add a little more convenience to this process.

Nov 2012: I have now had my FuelBand approximately 7 months and I wanted to add a couple of things.

I recently took the smaller link out of my FuelBand and then had a very difficult time getting the large link, band and clasp to go back together. In fact I could not get the clasp to catch on the large link at all. I had to call Nike Support and they are sending me another large link. Nike Support is very good, by the way. However the catch/latch on the band and links is a poor design. It's not like I take it apart all the time (this is the first time since I first set it up). I googled this problem and I see that others have the same problem with the catch. Nike needs to re-engineer the catch.

Would I buy this product again? Perhaps, only because there isn't a better alternative for wrist wear right now. If Fitbit had one, I would probably buy and try it immediately. The best thing about the Nike Fuelband is the fact that I wear it on my wrist and it is there with me every day, wherever I go. It is much better in this sense than a pedometer or Fitbit. And the FuelBand has an attractive design. Just needs a few issues worked out.

Now a word to Nike: GET THE ANDROID APP DONE! You have been promising it "will be out soon" since before I bought my Fuelband 7 months ago. In fact one of the reasons I bought it is because the Android app "should be out by summer 2012." This delay is ridiculous. How can a company with the resources of Nike not be able to hire some good Android programmers and get 'er done?!