MS Band Health is a supplemental app for evaluating and monitoring data collected by your Microsoft Band. Available for Windows 10 PC and Mobile, this free app provides detailed charts for your daily activities such as steps, calories, distance and more. The Windows 10 app also offers support to synchronize data collected from a Fitbit Aria SmartScale.
MS Band Health does not sync directly with your Microsoft Band or Fitbit Aria SmartScale but instead synchronizes with information on the Microsoft Health and Fitbit servers.
While MS Band Health isn't a replacement for Microsoft's Band app (formerly known as Microsoft Health), it's a nice supplement to monitor and visualize your daily activities.
The first order of business when MS Band Health is launched is to set up permissions the Windows 10 app needs to access your Band or Fitbit Aria data. This is a painless process that involves logging into your Microsoft and Fitbit accounts and giving MS Band Health permission to access the data.
Once permissions are established, MS Band Health synchronizes your data and presents your current daily totals in a series of tiles on the app's primary display. These tiles include steps, distance, calories, floors, active time, UV exposure, heart rate, weight and sleep time.
Also present on the primary display are tiles to access MS Band Health's settings and a donation tile to tip the developer. Settings cover options for units of measurement, the various goals (steps, distance, etc.), logging into/out of the Microsoft or Fitbit accounts, and the typical feedback/developer credit information. While I was able to change the units of measurement, I was unable to change the various goals listed. This could be a bug in the app or the developer designed this for viewing only.
MS Band Health's strength comes in the visualization of the Band data. Tapping on a category tile sends you to a detailed page for that activity that breaks down your monthly performance. For example, the step data determines the average, maximum, minimum and total steps taken for a thirty-day period.
A bar graph illustrates the performance for each day of the month. Tapping a specific date, breaks down your activity per hour, along with the average, maximum and minimum performance and the times these measures were achieved. You also see the total performance for the day.
The visualization that MS Band Health provides for your Band data makes it easy to see where your active days and hours rest. You can use this data to manage your active hours more evenly or find times of the day when you need to step it up.
MS Band Health isn't a complicated app and presents the information in an easy to use fashion. It lacks the ability to export your data, which would be a nice feature, and I did experience a stability issue when launching the app from a Lumia 950. MS Band Health occasionally crashed on launch as it attempted to synchronize the data and it required a restart of the phone to correct things. I did not experience any stability issues when running MS Band Health from a Windows 10 PC and hopefully, the developer can iron out this bug.
MS Band Health does have some room for improvement, but overall the free app is a nice supplemental Windows 10 app for reviewing your Band activities.
Download MS Band Health from the Windows Store
