Microsoft has revealed a bunch of updates for its Microsoft Band fitness tracker, just in time for the holidays. The new bits include better music controls, activity reminders, and more. Basically, the stuff that folks actually like beyond basic features just got a facelift.
For the music controls, the Microsoft Band's touchscreen will now display the song title as well as several buttons to play, pause, and skip forward or back. As with a lot of similar devices, users can connect to the Band via Bluetooth with their smartphone to play music.
The other big update, activity reminders, includes the ability for the Band to remind users when they've been still for too long. The exact intervals for this can be set to whatever the user desires, as can the days where it's active. Additionally, certain periods of time—like, say, when sleeping—can be marked so that the Microsoft Band doesn't try to stir users into activity in the middle of the night.
There's also an updated Exercise Tile that's intended to make it easier to track stuff like calorie burn during exercises. Specific kinds of exercises, like yoga, will then be grouped together for more in-depth statistics when reviewed via the Microsoft Health app. In short, it should be easier than ever to actually figure out what results, in terms of numbers, users are getting from their exercising.
The Microsoft Band is currently available in three different sizes with an estimated retail price of $249.99.
