This Christmas is going to be huge for wearable tech and that fact that hasn’t gone unnoticed at Misfit HQ. The makers of the Misfit Shine today revealed the Misfit Flash, a sub-£50 activity tracker in a range of eye-catching colours.
The key difference between the Flash and its older brother is the material. Made from plastic instead of metal, the Flash is cheaper to make, enabling that super-low price, though there’s likely to be some pay off in terms of the look and feel.
Essential reading: Misfit Flash review
Other than the material, the feature set is exactly the same. There's activity tracking and sleep monitoring, and the Flash uses the same app as its more costly predecessor. Everything you can do with the Shine you can do with the Flash, and for around half the price - that's a compelling proposition.
The Misfit Flash carries over the same design cues of the Shine, with a circular dial made of LEDs, which displays the user’s daily step goal progress.
Unlike the Shine, however, the front of the Misfit Flash will be a physical button rather than a touch-sensitive plate. A Misfit spokesperson confirmed that the choice of using a button was from user feedback, and that some people had found the previous method fiddly and slightly unresponsive to use.
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The Flash isn’t reliant on its wrist strap and can be placed anywhere on the body to track daily activity, and will even monitor cycling and swimming – aided by its 30m of water resistance. It also features the same 4 months of battery life using a replaceable watch battery, rather than rechargeable lithium-ion.
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Another upgrade from the Shine is the design of the attachments, which were prone to falling out. The Misfit Flash has a slightly adapted wrist-strap that only allows the tracking unit to be placed from the back, which should keep it securely in place when snug to your wrist.
“Flash is the only fully-featured activity and sleep tracker in the world for under £50, making it incredible value,” said Tim Golnik, VP of product and design at Misfit.
Misfit’s goal is clearly to shift a lot of Flash trackers at Christmas, and has chosen seven funky colours, which are guaranteed to appeal to users who might have ignored the more muted Misfit Shine.
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James is the co-founder of Wareable, and he has been a technology journalist for 15 years.
He started his career at Future Publishing, James became the features editor of T3 Magazine and T3.com and was a regular contributor to TechRadar – before leaving Future Publishing to found Wareable in 2014.
James has been at the helm of Wareable since 2014 and has become one of the leading experts in wearable technologies globally. He has reviewed, tested, and covered pretty much every wearable on the market, and is passionate about the evolving industry, and wearables helping people achieve healthier and happier lives.