Fitness trackers are all the rage right now, with companies like Adidas and Nike having both released fitness tracking devices within the past few days. Because of this there are a number of devices that you will have to take out during a workout sessions – your fitness tracker, media player, headphones, and possibly even your phone, especially if that’s your media player. But what if you didn’t have to take out all those devices? What if your fitness tracker and headphones was one device? That’s exactly what iRiver is aiming to do with their new device – the iRiver On.
The company iRiver has been around for a while, having made a number of great mp3 players back in the day when people used mp3 players to listen to music. Since then, however, iRiver has kind of been laying low. Until now.
According to iRiver, the iRiver On monitors “more real time fitness from a single source than any other personal monitor”. In fact, the iRiver On can monitor heart rate, speed, distance traveled, aerobic fitness level, and the number of calories burned. It can also monitor things like your location and the elevation that you are at. This information is all obtained through a small sensor located in the right ear bud. This sensor uses infrared and an accelerometer to be able to detect blood flow and physical activity.
The iRiver On doesn’t eliminate the need for you smartphone to work, however. In fact, if you don’t already take your phone when you work out, you will need to in order to use the iRiver On because of the fact that all the data is displayed through the use of an iOS or Android app. The headphones can also take calls through Bluetooth, which is an added plus.
The app is somewhat of a personal training app, and it recommends things for you to consider when training. It also allows for you to input goals, and lets you know when you’ve reached your goals. Using the GPS in your smartphone, the app can also track the distance you’ve gone and it records all your fitness data in real time. When this data has been recorded, you can view it in a number of different ways, with different options for graphs, and so on.
The iRiver On is available from the iRiver website for $199.99. It’s certainly not a cheap device, but the ability to have less things to carry around might be worth it to some people. Otherwise, the number of things that the On can track, and the app, which seems to be pretty good, might be worth it for others. Either way, iRiver is back in the game with these new devices, and is definitely a company to keep an eye on!
