Most of us need a little motivation to keep up with our workout regimes. While fitness buffs turn to fitness trackers to track their pace and distance, others only need to don a pair of earphones and listen to some catchy tunes to spur themselves on during a workout.
The Jabra Sport Coach is a pair of wireless earphones and fitness tracker rolled into one. Its motion sensor not only captures workout data such as distance, pace and number of steps taken, helping you achieve your fitness goals, it also keeps you humming along with the music you love.
The weather- and sweat-proof Jabra Sport Coach offers a choice of ear-gels and wings to suit the contours of your ear. The medium-sized ear-gels were a good fit for me, though the right side felt a little loose – perhaps due to some differences in the contours of my ears. In any case, the earphones stayed in place during a run. Design-wise, the earphones, with grey and yellow, red or blue accents, live up to their “sport” moniker.
Pairing the Jabra Sports Coach with my Mi Note via Bluetooth was a no-brainer. Once that was done, I downloaded the Jabra Sport app to set up the earphones. Within a minute, I was ready to go.
Much of the ‘coaching’ is done through the Jabra Sport app that gives you a choice of workout activity, such as running, walking, hiking, cycling, cross-training and skiing, among others. You can also set goals ranging from distance and time, to calorie burn and pace. Setting a pace goal would be useful for guys training for the 2.4km run in the IPPT.
For this review, I set a running distance goal of 4km. During the run, the app delivered voice prompts at regular intervals on my cadence (number of steps), pace and how much farther I had to go to reach my goal. The details of the workout could be shared with friends on Facebook.
If you’re game, try the app’s cross-training programmes such as CardiCore, a set of exercises that includes high knee running, squats, push-ups and crunches – good for those training for the new three-station IPPT. However, the app doesn’t seem to be able to record reps like sit-ups and push-ups automatically, so I had to manually tap on the tick icon after completing an exercise.
The Jabra Sports Coach isn’t too shoddy when it comes to audio quality. While the bass lacked oomph, the highs and mid-range vocals sounded crisp and pristine in songs streamed from Deezer and Google Play Music. These music services can be directly launched through the Jabra Sport app.
There’s also an in-line volume controller, pause button and microphone for taking calls. To skip tracks, I had to hold on to the volume up or volume down button for two seconds – not exactly second nature to most people.
All in, the Jabra Sports Coach offers a rich set of features for those who are serious about working out. But like all fitness trackers, it won’t make you as fit as a fiddle overnight – you must want to keep fit to begin with for this device to be of any use. Otherwise, it will be nothing more than a pair of wireless earphones.
