But I am very glad it has.
I am what you might call a spasmodic exerciser but although I am not a gym bunny, I do make sure that I am active every day.
As it turns out, the TomTom Touch tells me I am nowhere near active enough!
The TomTom Touch is a water-resistant and comfy-to-wear fitness tracker which sits in a flexible silicone strap that you wear like a watch.
It is a great gadget to use when you want to overhaul your daily routine to include more exercise.
It captures steps, active time, calories burned, heart rate and sleep time. You can use it to measure your fat and muscle mass percentage and monitor your heart rate throughout the day to get an idea of your fitness level.
You need to press a button to wake the screen up. Then you scroll up and down on the front of the tracker unit to get to the other screens.
Swipe up for current step count, calorie count, distance travelled, last sleep duration and exercise duration.
Swipe down for the body fat scanner, heart rate sensor and exercise logger.
The TomTom Touch syncs with an online app to track your progress and for the body composition logger, the result can only be read on the app.
It is water-resistant so you could wear it in the shower but not go swimming wearing it.
The TomTom Touch does not have GPS so if you're looking for a tracker to go running outdoors with, this may not be the right choice for you.
I found the tracker great for my daily school run trips and family outings to our local parks and nature reserve. I definitely found myself wanting to walk further to rack up those steps!
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| My Coaching Squad - Tough But Cute |
The heart rate monitor is only really designed to check your resting heart rate so, again, if you want to check your hart rate during vigorous exercise, you may need a different TomTom tracker.
I did struggle a little with the fat scanner. To get it to work you have to place your finger on the sensor and hold it there for 10 seconds. You then get a reading of the amount of fat and muscle in your body which you can see on the app.
It took us a while to work out that your finger needs to be parallel to the screen rather than vertical and it sometimes takes a couple of attempts to get the tracker to acknowledge the reading.
It does this by giving you a tick if it has worked or a cross if it hasn't.
I was, I confess, mildly horrified by my fat reading of over 30% and if that isn't an incentive to back away from the Welsh Cakes, I don't know what is!
It also has a vibration motor, which can signal very basic call and text notifications from your phone.
The app "MySports' allows you to track your heart rate readings and set goals for your sport activity. via a selection of pie charts and graphs.
The only function I didn't use was the sleep function as I dislike the idea of wearing a tracker while I sleep but I may yet try it out for the odd "mum nap"!
Whilst this tracker may not set the world on fire, for those of us who are getting on track with fitness trackers, it's a great entry-level unit which doesn't cost the earth and presents the information in basic, but easy to understand ways.
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| Training intensively at The Star Inn, Dinas Powys |
An addition I would like to see which the FitBit Alta has is an alarm for when you have been sedentary for too long.
I also found the TomTom Touch very comfortable to wear and not too chunky to cause a problem with sleeves in coats and jackets.
It is a great little tool to literally have up your sleeve throughout the day to keep an easy on how mobile you are being.
It isn't a high fashion item but it does look quite stylish and it does have a comparable price tag with its rivals - £89.99.
One small gripe, although the battery charge is supposed to last up to 5 days, I found I had to recharge it every 3 days or so but the USB cable is permanently attached to my laptop so I can easily charge it each day if needed.
In summary I would say this is a great 'entry level' fitness tracker and ideal for someone who is flummoxed by too many bells and whistles and just wants something to "do what it says on the tin".
