Biostrap

There are several reasons that My wife and I like using BioStrap. My wife likes using it for both tracking her exercise and monitoring her sleep cycles. For exercise I prefer my iWatch but for sleep monitoring I like Biostrap the best. I am a 72 year old male and I have been struggling with memory issues partially because of age, partially because of bad diet choices and partially because of not enough deep sleep. Biostrap has a number of excellent monitoring tools that provide you with significant feedback regarding the amount of deep sleep vs light sleep vs awake time per day, week or month. Also resting heart rate and heart rate variable as well oxygen saturation and many other measurements. The hardware and software have helped me to drastically improve the amount of Deep sleep that I get each night which in turn is helping to improve my memory, thinking and clarity. I have it a rating of 4 instead of 5 because they are not very clear on how they determine the sleep score and recovery score so it’s difficult to understand how I could best improve those scores.

I have been extremely happy with this device. The information is very helpful for achieving my health goals. HRV is a measure that few devices give, and it’s valuable for understanding the impact of workouts and how well you are recovering so you know if you need more rest or are ready to hit it hard. Or, if you are getting sick! It’s also valuable, along with resting heart rate to understand the impact of your diet on your body. This has really opened my eyes and as a result, caused me to think twice about what I eat and drink. Sleep is another valuable data set, and again, you can see how lack of sleep, or great sleep affects your body in multiple ways. It’s important to understand this is not “instant gratification” data, the value is in the trends, and the trend graphs are very good. Finally, the app is constantly improving and additional features are being added. There is a vibrant group on Facebook that the developers monitor and respond to. They do the occasional Facebook live so questions can be asked and answered, and they take action on the feedback. It’s a great team to work with, and a great device!

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I’ve had my Biostrap for more than six months now. My biggest complaints are: 1. Automatic sleep processing. For whatever reason, it seems to think I’m sleeping at times when I’m not.. and sometimes doesn’t detect when I am actually asleep. Those inconsistencies cause skewed data which definitely doesn’t make me want to subscribe to the sleep lab service. 2. Activity tracking. Training exercises can be a major pain and frequently fails. I have tried trading things like box jumps, cleans, clean & jerk, snatch, etc.. and all failed. I’ve performed 12-15 reps only to have the app report that no repeatable reps were detected. I’ve completely given on workout tracking, especially CrossFit, as it is completely useless. (This includes using the Shoe Pod, which I no longer even take off the charger. 3. Background sync doesn’t seem to work. I have to open the app for the band to star syncing. I bought a new phone a few days ago and the problem happens with it as well. I have background sync enabled in settings, but it doesn’t seem to matter.

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This is useful for night time tracking of oxygen levels, heart rate and respiration rate only. Calculates night time hrv. Night oxygen at 2 minute intervals cannot provide useful info about sleep apnea according to my sleep physician a professor at a major medical school. Sleep tracking is useless.. it totally misses wake time during the night ..camnot differentiate betqewn wake and sleep.. forget sleep stage trackng. Daytime: useful only for step count. Heart rate, spo2 and breathing rate do not really register during the day. While company show tens of activity tracking settings for every sport imaginable, it does not track anything but heart rate during sport and nit nearly as well as the chapest fitbit ir garmin type strap. The snore tracker doesnt work.. snorelab is 1000x better at $12/yr. Battery life is very short, sometimes less than a day if worn all day. Their site has only 4 and 5 star reviews...strange.. that definitely doesnt square with our experience. Bottom line.. uaeful for spo2 if thats accurate, hrv maybe but cant validate those. Cant imagine this product surviving long term

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I'm playing with this for my first time today and my unfortunate impression is that I will return it unsatisfied. This only records heart rate and oxygen saturation every 10 minutes!! That's very disappointing and to me, completely useless. It shouldn't even measure these if it's not more frequent, in my opinion. I set a function to make it record more often but it's poorly documented on how frequent it will measure. To the company, "please hold your breath for 10 minutes and if you can't, tell me how useful the oxygen saturation test is. " Exercise and sleeping both cause big changes to heart rate and oxygen saturation. For example, sometimes in a stressful exercise tend to hold our breat. Sleeping with snoring or apnea issues can cause you to stop breathing too. In either case, heart rates increase and oxygen levels decrease but these are very brief and never going to be recorded if the recording interval is 10 minutes. Personally I think you should record these continuously if a user wants them but every 30 seconds is about a minimum to me. I will continue looking for a device that can properly track my heart rate, oxygen and movements with better granularity. Update - I may have spoken / reviewed too soon! I tried manual recordings last night and it appears they're may be more frequent recordings when you records at least sleep manually. I can tell how frequent but I can find the clear fluctuations.