Spire Stone Mindfulness, Stress & Activity Tracker
Meet the Spire Stone, the world’s first stress and activity tracker, now with improved sleek design. Spire Stone helps you keep in sync with your mind and body by measuring your breath patterns all-day and notifying you to sudden changes. When your breathing becomes rapid or erratic, the Spire Stone will send you a gentle notification with actionable next steps. Your state of mind affects how you breathe, but how you breathe can also change your state of mind. Studies have shown how slow, deep and consistent breathing can lower blood pressure, reduce stress and increase the flow of endorphins in your blood stream. Start reducing your stress through breathing with the Spire Stone.
- Stress Control: Spire’s patented respiration sensor measures your breathing patterns all-day to help you keep control and manage stress
- When You Need It: If your breathing becomes tense or erratic, a gentle notification gives you actions you can take to help you relax
- Calm Down: Unlock the calming power of your own breath with visual exercises and guided meditations
- Keep Track: Follow your health progress through activity, steps, calories, and more
- Know Yourself: Learn where and when you’re tense, calm, or productive
- Built to Last: Washer-resistant, charges wirelessly, and lasts 10 days on a single charge
- Scientifically-Proven: Spire is recommended by 1,000s of health professionals worldwide
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Conejo23 –
I’ve been using Spire for about 3 weeks now and I’ve been debating about how to review it. I’ve decided to give the product 5 stars. If I could, I’d give it 4.5 but that’s not an option, and I genuinely believe it deserves more than 4 stars. I won’t describe what the product does, if you’re reading this then presumably you already know that and you’re trying to figure out if it actually delivers. I’ll list what I really like about the product, and what I want to see change.Positives:- getting real-time notifications when I’m not breathing properly is simply huge. I was just on a phone meeting and got a notification on my iPhone that it had been awhile since I’d taken a deep breath. Sure enough, Spire was right. It was just a nice little nudge, a reminder, to get back to doing what I know is important, full and functional breathing.- being able to track through my day when I was calm, when I was in focus, when I was tense, it’s really helpful information. Spire can do better on this count and I’ll talk about that in a moment. The data presentation and tracking is not as dialed in as I’d like it to be, but is it better than what I was doing pre-Spire (which was, namely, nothing)? Oh heck yeah.- alerts are great. You set them up within their parameters and now the app gives you real time feedback. If I’ve been tense for 3 minutes, Spire will tell me. If I’ve been in an extended period of calm or focus, I’m going to see that, too. And that’s helpful for determining what I was doing/thinking/focusing on to create that state.- the boosts. Those are recordings you can listen to in order to increase a sense of calm, or focus, increase energy, etc… It’s a nice library of resources. And they have a nice ‘foundation pack’ teaching you some elemental breathing techniques along with getting to know your device and the app.- last but not least, I like having such a modest device to track my steps. I don’t wear a pedometer, I don’t wear a fitness watch, so it’s nice to have Spire do this for me.- some of the problems others have noted have not been a problem for me at all. I wear it on my waistband and initially thought it would bug me. And it did bug me, absolutely. For about 45 minutes. After that I literally forget I have it on. It’s just not an issue. Connectivity is not an issue, either. Setup has been easy and it stays connected to my iPhone 6+ without issue.Things I’d like to see improve:- there are times where I feel like I’m tense but Spire doesn’t recognize it as such. I get that my perspective is a thought while Spire is measuring actual breathing patterns. I suppose this means that even when I emotionally feel tense, I’m still doing a credible job of breathing well. Cool. I do wish I had the ability to adjust the sensitivity of the algorithm, or increase the ‘challenge level’ so that it takes more to register as Calm, but that’s a relatively minor quibble.- I cannot stand the way the foundation pack in the Boost section handles unlocking the next boost after you’ve listened to the prior one. Instead of making it immediately available, it waits until 9am the next business day. So if I listen to one boost Friday afternoon, I don’t get the next one unlocked until Monday morning. That’s just a brain dead design.- could be easier to get more actionable data out of the app. For example, when I just had a Calm streak or a Focus streak, I’d love to be able to add a tag noting what I was doing during that streak. That would be helpful from an analysis perspective.And good news, these last two issues? They are directly remedied in the next version of the Spire app. They are in beta testing on it and I took a look at it, and while it’s still rough around the edges it has great promise and it directly addresses these two points.Bottom line: I think the device and the app are very useful as presently constructed. I emailed some thoughts, criticisms and suggestions to the company and was impressed to receive a detailed and thoughtful response from one of the company’s founders and chief science officer. We’ve had a nice dialogue such that while I’m impressed with what the app can do right now, I think where it’s going is simply going to get better and better.So, do I recommend this for purchase right now? Yes, I absolutely do. I genuinely believe this is one of the few wearable technologies that doesn’t just give you a bunch of data that is essentially meaningless, but can actually improve the quality of your life in important and meaningful ways.
Michael –
I am writing this in-depth review due to the lack of comprehensive reviews at the time of posting. Thus far, it seems that this is one of those “love it or hate it” devices. Hopefully, this review will help you decide if this is the device for you.** Who is this device for? **I purchased Spire because I was looking for a way to analyze my stress levels throughout the day. As a full-time college student and part-time worker, I experience my fair share of stressful moments. I was looking for a device to monitor my stress so I can learn my triggers. Spire tracks your daily steps, but I wouldn’t consider this a fitness tracker by any means.** Comfort/Device Aesthetics **Spire is gorgeous. The back of the device is soft and I never feel it rubbing up against my skin during daily use (most of the time, I completely forget I’m wearing it). I typically attach Spire to the inside of my jeans (right where the front belt loop is). Placement of Spire is incredibly important to get accurate readings, so I suggest you play around with the placement until you get it right. The included charging pad is completely wireless; to charge Spire, you simply place it on the wireless charging pad. The clip is strong enough to latch onto your clothing with ease. The device is also “washer-proof”, so if you forget to take it off your clothing, it won’t get destroyed.** Functionality **The real question that you’re probably wondering.. DOES IT WORK?! Well, let me tell you my experience with Spire (and why I absolutely love this device). I’ll admit that the first day I used Spire, I was completely unconvinced that it was correctly tracking my breathing patterns. Day 2 comes around. After leaving my morning class (which Spire told me I was focused and to keep up the good work), I got stuck in some traffic on the commute home. After about 15-20 minutes of sitting in bumper-to-bumper congestion, my Spire began vibrating. I checked the iPhone app upon arriving home, and Spire told me that I was in a state of tension for 20 minutes. The app presented me with several options for reducing my tension including (but not limited to) a quick relaxation boost exercise and an extended guided-meditation. After finishing the guided-meditation, Spire told me I was now in a calm state. These experiences happen nearly every day. Spire gets it right 9 out of 10 times and always provides recommendations for getting me into a calmer state-of-mind.** Final Thoughts **This is not a fitness tracker or a quick-fix to to achieve a less stressful lifestyle. This is, however, the best (and only?) device out there to help accurately measure your level of focus, calmness, and tension. I have been using Spire for several days and it has helped me achieve a calmer state-of-mind.
Icarus –
The device is fine, but I’ve had lot of trouble getting it going. It takes several hours to sync the device with the App on my mobile phone. The company has not yet been able to solve the problem.
Reni King –
This is definitely a very useful tool, and is able to track your breathing properly and let you know when you are tense. HOWEVER, for some reason, the Spire still shows that I am “breathing” when in fact, the stone is resting very still on a table, so I have no idea why it is doing this. When I tried to contact customer support, no one responded for days, and still hasn’t. Strangely enough, it doesn’t record the breathing patterns when it is left on a steady surface, but it just shows that there is breathing. Something is still very buggy about this, which I am fine with since it is a new product. But, it is unacceptable to ignore my requests for help/explanations.
Janay Jacobs –
FANTASTIC. Use it every day.Thank you
Ev Smith –
Love it. Would highly recommend for anyone who suffers from anxiety or panic attacks. Also love the activity tracker.
Bobby Fisher –
Great product! Works really well. Seems very accurate at tracking the steps and forces me to take deep breath during the day with gentle reminders.I had a minor issue with the clip. I contacted service and instead of sending me a clip, they sent me a whole new Spire. They were amazing to work with. Would definitively recommend the product.
Fey P –
I got this to aid in managing my anxiety. I wear a lot of sports bras and clipping it there wasn’t working out well – I’m not sure why, but that bugged me.I wore it for a few days along with a Fitbit Charge 2. I got 2-3 notifications a day that seemed steady enough but none during major stress periods such as driving. Except for once when I was extremely stressed and got a notification about a calm streak???What made me return it is that I forgot it at home one day, on the charger. That day I got the most notifications. Calm streaks, busy streaks, whatever kinds of streaks I had a bunch! That’s when I knew this is bogus. If the app can feed me data when I am 45 miles from my Spire then obviously the data gathered by the device itself is irrelevant.I forgot it again and had the same issue happen later that week. No thanks 🙂
michael –
I am not much into gadgets. I find life is full of too many distractions already, who needs devices that just feed you with more useless information. I thought maybe Spire would be different. It does inform you of when you are stressed and in need of a deep breath which was really cool. But it does not take long before your like “duh, I know this already”. Less than a week after owning I returned it. I knew it would just become an expensive dust collector.
Karen E –
It’s cute but the clip is not strong enough & does break!! Poor strength!
DavidS –
I’ve been using it for a year. I use the app tool to calm myself when i need it. I can now quickly go into a calm state using the tool in the app.
ELeS –
This device seemed like a good idea, and I gave it a try despite mixed reviews. I was hoping that it would give me direct feedback when I became tense so I could learn to be more aware of when I need to take a breath or recenter before speaking or acting. Sometimes it congratulates me for being calm when I actually am, but that’s not very useful feedback. At other times, it also congratulates me for being in a calm streak when I feel obviously tense, and it warns me that I am tense, when i’m feeling joyful. Perhaps it is more accurate with other users, but i’m getting a refund so that I can invest in something else that might help me reach my goal of increased awareness and timely feedback
Paolo S –
A++++++++++
Lee –
Bought this the other day as I always have bad stress and anxiety. It paired to my Galaxy S9+ no problem and seemed to track my breath fine. I was watching Shin Lim the magician perform on Jimmy Kimmel and when it ended my phone popped up saying “you were just tense for 2 minutes!” So I thought wow it totally works since I guess I was tense watching the magic trick. But then a few times that night it would say I was tense as well when I really was feeling fine. I wore it all day yesterday and it showed I was tense 15 times but for some reason never notified me of it.My biggest issue though is that it constantly disconnects from the phone even if I set the Spire app to not use battery optimizations and to stay always running. The other problem is the app freezes and crashes constantly. So half the time when it does notify me that I’m tense, if I click the notification the app just freezes my phone phone and I have to restart the app. It always shows the stone is disconnected so you have to reconnect it and wait. Will give it a few more days to try but most likely will return it as I don’t find it that helpful.
Chantal Harrison –
Great little device
Harvey B –
Won’t charge after 2 weeks. Was hard to get it to charge in the beginning. Couldn’t get a sweet spot on the charging pad. Next time was worse and now nothing.
Rachel –
I liked that it does make you more aware of your breathing and stress. It does track your breathing. The texture and the product are very attractive.I don’t like that it takes such a long time to sync up with your phone. When you don’t have the app open and your phone in your pocket or bag (like when you’re at work) it has to sync. It can take 30 mins to sync.The packaging on arrival was CRAP. You pay soo much money and it’s literally in a blister pack with no instructions or explanation or website to follow on. It’s a bit of a joke.I would reconsider my purchase now that I’ve used it. It’s such a steep price for what it does. If you need mindfulness try mindfulness apps. They’re less expensive too.
RUSSELL L SHARP –
The thing works at vibrating when breathing changes to indicate anxiety…but there were times it missed the mark – but other times I was very surprised by it going off to tell me to slow down. Clever product needs executing a little better I think