Review: Hi-Tec Trek Plus Activity Tracker

Years ago (and I do mean many years) I bought myself a Silva pedometer, as I had an idle curiosity about how far I walked every day (I had an outdoor job with a hefty commute to London every day for three years) and the fascination stayed with me for about a month or so, until eventually it was put in a box of precious things for safe-keeping, never to emerge in anger again.

And then, those awfully nice chaps at Mustard PR and Hi-Tec got together to ask me if I would like an early birthday present. As a sucker for presents I accepted with alacrity and so a couple of weeks back I received in the post a "Hi-Tec Trek Plus Activity & Sleep Tracker + Smartwatch with Heart Rate," to give it its full title, that is printed on the box it came in. It is a far more jazzier version of my old Silva pedometer; That's a bit like comparing a Typhoon fighter with the Wright Brothers' aeroplane, really...

It looks like this:

HI-TEC TREK PLUS

Recently I have noticed that quite a few of my friends have devices called 'Fitbits' and they regularly post on Facebook about how many steps they manage each day/week/month/year. It all seems highly competitive (but always in a good fun sort of way) and having once been a competitive sort, I thought it would be interesting to compare notes, from the sidelines, using my own data collector - for that is what the device is.

As you will have noted from the device's name, once strapped to your wrist, it tracks the number of your steps, converts this to distance (using your height and assumed stride length - which I'll get onto later), the calories you've burned walking this distance (it also takes into account your weight), the cumulative time you have been 'active' and, as long as you remember to tell it to do it, how long you have slept for. And on top of all that it connects to your smart phone (which may be buried in your jacket pocket) and vibrates on your wrist when things like emails and phone calls come in, which, surprisingly, I have found to be a very useful feature. Oh yes, it also measures your resting pulse during the day and lets you know the following day what it was - which I'll talk about later.

Ah - I have forgotten to let you know that it also tells the time and date: Handy, as it's on your wrist.

How do you extricate all these data from the thing? It's connected by bluetooth (I'm at the ragged edge of my techno-geekery here, I hope you'll understand) to your smartphone, when you remember to turn the bluetooth on on your phone.

I'll show you now in pictures what information it provides:

HOME SCREEN

So from here, if you tap the 'steps' button, up pops the following screen:

STEPS SCREEN

Haven't I been a busy boy! Now, swipe to the right and up pops how far you've walked; I've chosen to do this in kilometers:

DISTANCE SCREEN

Swipe again to see how long I've been "active."

TIME ACTIVE

It looks like I was a bit of a slug on Thursday - but the truth is I had forgotten to strap the watch on until late in the afternoon. (I am currently wandering about with a wristwatch and my tracker. I feel slightly over-gadgeted...)

And swipe again to see how many chocolate bars you have metabolised...

CALORIES SCREEN

And again:

RESTING PULSE

Quite what I was doing on the Sunday to have a resting pulse of over 90, Lord only knows!

SLEEP SCREEN

It appears that I have massively erratic sleep patterns... (More later)

If you now go back to home screen and swipe upwards, you will find this screen:

2ND HOME SCREEN

It is possible to link up with friends who have these Hi-Tec trackers to see how you compare to their efforts. But I don't have any friends. Well, none that have this device, so I'm a sad Billy-No-Mates who has no-one to trounce or be trounced by. Quite what the "Chat" is for, I am at a complete loss.

And that's a problem. This device came with the very bare minimum of instructions. All the written instructions tell you is how to charge it up, (it comes with a separate USB charging cable and adapter) how to do the strap up (which I find irritatingly fiddly) and that you have to download the Hi-Tec App to your phone. Of course, those brighter and younger than me will, in all likelihood, scoff at my dinosaur-like predilection for written instructions. But I struggled (yes, I know, we all have our struggles...) getting the device to do things.

Which leads me on to the sleep screen. Boy, have I struggled with this! I have deliberately chosen a week to display where I was moderately successful with the sleep function. Mostly, I am not. Setting this up to work seems to be a pretty random process. I have followed the 'tips' link from the drop-down menu at the top of the screen for instructions, but I have pretty random success with it.  I put the watch on in the morning after my breakfast & shower, and so the watch, sitting on my bedside cabinet, thinks I am blissfully sound asleep and gives me up to ten hours in the land of nod.

Other times, you will notice, I have not managed to turn the sleep timer on at all (even though I thought I had). If I were Hi-Tec, i would dump this pretty useless function. I can't make it work all the time and it is always only going to be accurate if you wear the thing 24 hours a day.

It's clear that the Steps, Distance, Time Active and Calories screens are identical in shape - only the vertical scale changes - which is to be expected, as all the results stem from the steps taken. Of course, everything comes down to your stride length. Hi-Tec estimate this for you, from your height. But you do have the ability to alter this manually if you know your real stride length. For my height (a smidgen under six feet) I have quite long legs (34" inside leg) and I'm pretty certain that it is underestimating my stride length. As an aside, Andy Walker, who has tiny little legs for his height has to walk zillions more paces than me to cover the same ground - He's a short-arse! Phil Lambert, on the other hand, is perfectly proportioned, or so Miss Whiplash claims. I need to be nerdy and go and count my strides over an exact known distance to work this all out. I expect the geeks amongst our congregation know this information already. I shan't tell. 

The Resting Pulse screen is interesting. Apparently the watch takes measurements when you are not leaping about being a mad young thing. However, the results are way higher than when I asked the watch to measure my pulse when resting - by about 10-15 bpm. It must choose moments to take the measurements when I'm swigging a gallon of coffee or staring at the internet of mad & crazy people doing and saying mad & crazy things. But, still, it is interesting to see that some days are obviously more stressful than others. I think a far more useful function would be a maximum pulse rate. That really would be thought provoking.

Battery life is about two days, which is a bit disappointing, as the blurb says it should last "up to five days between charges." Still - it's liveable and no big deal.


There is one niggle that I do wonder about: I've noticed a couple of times that I had an itchy rash under the wristband of the tracker. This only happened when I was changing the sheets of a bed - stuffing the bottom sheet under the heavy mattress and perhaps chafing my wrist. Another time I was carrying cardboard boxes around the place for a day. I had to take the tracker off and apply a cold flannel for a while to get the rash relieved. Could this be an allergic reaction to the plastic brought on by a sweaty wrist? I don't know, but am am now very conscious that it may be a problem.

So - the million dollar question: Would I buy this device with my own money?

I've worn it for over a fortnight now, (with some gaps when I forgot to put it on) and I am still interested to see how far I actually get around during the day. It would be far more interesting if some people I know had them and I could compare notes with them. Have Hi-Tec missed the boat here? Have Fitbit grabbed the market by the scruff of the neck? Who knows - only time will tell.

I shall continue to track my daily waltzes around the place, at least for a while. The Trek Plus won't be consigned to the 'precious things box' along with my Silva pedometer.

It's £80, all bar the shouting. There are cheaper versions, which you can find from Hi-Tec's site - click HERE to go there. I would probably go for the 'Hi-Tec Go', which doesn't bother with the pulse, but has all the other functions, at £60.

So, Yes: I would buy the Hi-Tec Go, but probably not the Hi-Tec Trek Plus. For £60, it's a good laugh and a bit of a motivational tool to get out more. Instead of sitting at home writing reviews, I would be out having a walk.

You can buy the Hi-Tec Plus on Amazon - see HERE for details - it's a penny below £80.


19th FEBRUARY 2016: UPDATE - DO NOT BUY!

It's been two months since I wrote this review and so now I have been living with the Hi-Tec Trek Plus for quite a while. I have to say that over time I have become more and more irritated with it. 

The reason for this is as follows:

• Certain functions have simply stopped working. The heart rate monitor has stopped - completely. I have no idea why, as there is not a web resource or email or phone contact  to find out how to fix it. The lack of this resource is a major flaw with this device.  
• The distance function is never correct when you connect to your smart phone (until the next day) and always lags behind the steps taken by a considerable margin. Again - I have no idea why as the calories burned and the time active *are* in sync. 
• Some days the device simply does not record any information at all onto the smartphone - even though during those days the device has been recording it all faithfully on your wrist.
• In sunlight the device's display is almost impossible to read. There is no way to increase the brightness.
• When tip-toeing along muddy footpaths in walking shoes I've noticed that the thing doen't record my steps. My guess is the thing isn't receiving the bump or jolt necessary to record a step. On a walk of eight miles - about half on muddy footpaths - it under-recorded by about one and a half miles. This alone makes it pretty useless.

So, to summarise, my advice after ten weeks or so of use is NOT to buy this device. It is unreliable and there is no way of sorting it out with Hi-Tec. All in all, very disappointing,