Tuesday 22 September 2015
I've had a love hate relationship with my Mio FUSE since I got it in late February. Basically, it is a wrist worn activity tracker that also does heart rate. This sounds good on paper and even the specs look good but it has been let down by poor implementation, limited function and buggy software. I've had so many issues with mine that I have bought a Garmin vívoactive and relegated the FUSE to just a heart rate monitor.
The Mio FUSE is one of a line up of heart rate wristbands and watches. They all actively monitor the wearer's heart rate using electro-optical cells which sense changes in blood volume under the skin. The FUSE adds to this by tracking steps all day and using this information to estimate active calories.
Based on the description and specifications on the Mio web site the FUSE is a great device for people wanting to keep fit and track their heart rate and daily activity. Unfortunately, the device falls short of the promise in a number of areas making it immature as a product. Hopefully, Mio can address these issues with software and firmware updates.
The area I most found lacking was the all day activity tracking. It only tracks the number of steps and not when they occurred, unless they are part of a workout. The calories estimates seem way out compared to other devices.
While the heart rate monitoring can be used with other devices such as Garmin sports watches and other smart phone apps, the band and its accompanying smart phone app, Mio GO, do not integrate or sync with other apps (e.g. MyFitnessPal) other than Apple Health and you cannot export the data from Mio GO.
The documentation that comes with the Mio FUSE is pretty sparse. You get a Quick Start Guide in 13 languages, a Warranty & Regulations booklet (also in 13 languages) and a double sided sheet of paper with graphics on wearing and charging the band. The Quick Start Guide is only 4 pages and is very basic. More detailed users guides are available at the Mio Fuse - Support Center.
I believe you need to download and read the full user manual, especially for troubleshooting. I'm surprised Mio Customer Support did not suggest I download the detailed manual and/or provide some of the troubleshooting tips. (See my discussion on Mio Customer Support below)
I have very thin wrists and so went with the Aqua unit which supposedly fits "regular" wrists (the Crimson is for "large" wrists). In my opinion the Aqua is probably a bit small for me, especially when wearing the FUSE with my Garmin Forerunner 310XT.
The battery life seems pretty good. Due to the issues I'd had with heart rate monitoring, Customer Support had requested I drain the battery. I had charged the around noon on Wednesday 4th March and started to get the low battery warning on the morning of Sunday 15th March. That's 11 days and included 4 running workouts, 8 walking workouts as well as all day step tracking. The total time for the workouts was around 6 hours.
Once the low battery warning appeared it was not possible to start heart rate monitoring or to sync with the Mio GO app.
The battery was finally drained drained in the early afternoon on Sunday 15th March and the band reset itself. All the data on the band was lost and it was like starting with a new band. This appeared to trigger loss of data over subsequent days (see Data Loss Issues below).
I strongly recommend charging the band before the low battery warning appears but of that is not possible it should be charged as soon as possible after the warning appears.
The Mio GO app is one of the biggest let downs of the system. It provides very limited information and is very buggy. I have lost all my data on at least two occasions due to issues with the software. Customer support don't seem all that interested and I doubt the developers know what they are doing.
One of the features of the Mio FUSE is all day activity tracking. According to the specifications, it "tracks steps, pace, distance and calories to provide a complete assessment of your daily effort".
As can be seen from the screen grab from the Mio GO app, pace is not displayed. Pace is displayed for a workout but certainly not part of the daily activity tracking. That's fine as it would be somewhat meaningless anyway.
To be accurate in its current firmware version it is little more than a step counter and does not really track daily activity. The FUSE does not track when the steps occurred throughout the day nor does it track inactivity. It is really only useful to understand if you are reaching your goal of 10,000 steps per day.
The Mio FUSE will track your steps through the day. The step count appears to be quite accurate. If I have the FUSE display my current steps, take 10 steps and display again, the number increases by 10 steps. Note that sometimes it is 9 and sometimes 11 but I believe that is probably getting a step part way through the measurement. This will be more than accurate enough for measuring against a daily goal of 10,000 steps.
The FUSE does not track when the steps are taken so it won't tell the difference between going for a really long walk in the morning and being inactive for the rest of the day versus being active the whole day. Being inactive for long periods can be unhealthy even if you achieve your goal of 10,000 steps.
According to Mio, "FUSE measures distance using it's internal 3-axis accelerometer". For daily activity it is difficult to tell how accurate the distance estimates are but for workouts when compared to GPS measurements the estimates are on the low side. (See Workout Mode below)
One of the readings provided by the Mio Go app is calories and it provides two daily values: "Active Calories" and "Total Calories". According to the MIO FUSE FAQ, "Active calories are the additional calories burned through physical activity." i.e. they are reporting an estimate for the calories burned on top of what would be burned if completely sedentary.
While the above definition makes sense, the Active Calories estimated outside a workout (which uses heart rate) appears to be very low. On one day the FUSE reported I had covered 7,654 steps for the day but reported only 14 active calories. On this day I had taken a 30 minute 2.5 km walk. This seems very low. On another day I was clocked with 7,062 steps but the 30 minute walk I did as a workout which uses the heart rate monitoring and my active calories for that day was 66 of which 58 were attributed to the walk workout. I appreciate that calorie estimation is going to be more accurate when using heart rate but the active calorie estimates without heart rate are not even in the same ballpark.
There's an iOS app called Pacer which uses the accelerometer in the iPhone to track steps. It also estimates active calories without using heart rate data. For example, for a daily total of 7,731 steps it estimated 255 active calories (as reported by MyFitnessPal). On another day with 6,248 steps it estimated 198 calories. These numbers are much higher than those from the FUSE. Interestingly, the estimates from Pacer without heart rate data are even higher than those from the FUSE using heart rate data. For example, the FUSE reports 53 calories for a walk of 2,715 steps.
My wife has a Fitbit Flex. She is less active than me but her Fitbit estimates between 200 and 600 active calories per day. The estimates of 200 active calories were for days she walked less than 2,000 steps. So the Fitbit is estimating active calories higher than Pacer.
It is difficult to know whether the Pacer or Fitbit estimates are high but it is clear than the FUSE estimate without heart rate data are low. Additionally, when heart rate data is used, the FUSE estimates for active calories are much less than for other apps and devices which are also using heart rate data (See Workout Mode below).
These low estimates for active calories will not be of much value for people tracking daily calories.
Later versions of the software have tried to address the low calorie estimates but I think they have gone too far the other way and now over estimate.
The Mio FUSE can be switched to Workout Mode by holding the central Heart Rate/Timer Touchpoint. It will then attempt to detect your heart rate. Once the heart rate has been successfully detected, a workout can be started and paused by touching the Heart Rate/Time Touchpoint once. i.e. start the workout by touching it and pause the workout by touching it again. Workout Mode is terminated by holding the Heart Rate/Timer Touchpoint.
The following data are recorded for a workout:
Elevation gain for all my workouts is 0.00. I suspect this datum will only work when recording a workout using the Mio GO app itself on the phone which has access to GPS.
In workout mode the FUSE monitors heart rate. The data is sent to Mio GO with a sync. Mio GO includes a graph but it is difficult to read on a phone and without the ability to export the data the only value is average and maximum heart rate.
Heart rate readings were also problematic for me - see below.
When in workout mode, the FUSE estimates the calories burned using the heart rate data it measures. The estimates also use age and weight. This should give a more accurate estimate of calories.
Even with the heart rate data the estimates from the FUSE are quite low when compared to both my Garmin Forerunner 310XT and the Wahoo Fitness app.
A recent update to the software means the FUSE now over estimates calories. On a recent run the FUSE estimate 555 calories. For the same run the Garmin vívoactive estimated 360 calories for the same run. (The vívoactive estimates are compareable to what I was getting from the Forerunner 310XT.)
As mentioned above, the FUSE uses its 3-axis accelerometer to measure distance during activity. Knowing distance it can determine speed and pace.
Comparing workout data from the FUSE to that from my Garmin Forerunner 310XT (GPS based) or Wahoo Fitness app on my iPhone 4s (also GPS based), the FUSE distance estimates are on the low side. This results in a much slower speed and pace being reported. The tables below show some sample workouts comparing the numbers between Mio FUSE, Garmin Forerunner 310XT and Wahoo Fitness app.
Running workout on 11th March
| Distance (km) |
Compared to Garmin |
Average Speed (km/h) |
Maximum Speed (km/h) |
Average Pace (m:ss/km) |
Maximum Pace (m:ss/km) |
|
| Mio FUSE | 4.71 | -14.4% | 11.0 | 12.6 | 5:27 | 4:45 | Garmin Forerunner 310XT | 5.50 | 12.9 | 4:40 | 3:12 | Wahoo Fitness and iPhone | 5.75 | 4.5% | 13.2 | 4:28 | 3:12 |
Running workout on 13th March
| Distance (km) |
Compared to Garmin |
Average Speed (km/h) |
Maximum Speed (km/h) |
Average Pace (m:ss/km) |
Maximum Pace (m:ss/km) |
|
| Mio FUSE | 4.57 | -17.5% | 11.0 | 12.6 | 5:28 | 4:45 | Garmin Forerunner 310XT | 5.54 | 13.3 | 4:31 | 3:15 | Wahoo Fitness and iPhone | 5.65 | 2% | 13.6 | 4:26 | 3:02 |
Running workout on 18th March
| Distance (km) |
Compared to Garmin |
Average Speed (km/h) |
Maximum Speed (km/h) |
Average Pace (m:ss/km) |
Maximum Pace (m:ss/km) |
|
| Mio FUSE | 4.56 | -17.5% | 10.9 | 12.3 | 5:30 | 4:52 | Garmin Forerunner 310XT | 5.53 | 13.2 | 4:32 | 3:15 | Wahoo Fitness and iPhone | 5.65 | 2.2% | 13.5 | 4:27 | 3:07 |
Walking workout on 16th March
| Distance (km) |
Compared to Garmin |
Average Speed (km/h) |
Maximum Speed (km/h) |
Average Pace (m:ss/km) |
Maximum Pace (m:ss/km) |
|
| Mio FUSE | 2.17 | -9.6% | 4.5 | 12.4 | 13:13 | 4:50 | Garmin Forerunner 310XT | 2.40 | 5.0 | 11:55 | 8:55 | Wahoo Fitness and iPhone | 2.58 | 7.5% | 5.4 | 11:07 | 8:19 |
While the Garmin 310XT and Wahoo Fitness apps do not provide the same distance and pace, they are much closer to each other than they are to the FUSE.
One possible solution to the under reporting of distance would be to provide a calibration capability such as provided with footpods and other step counters.
Accuracy of heart rate monitoring is a important feature. If the unit isn't accurate there's not much point monitoring the heart rate. Mio claim it is EKG accurate but my initial experience it is somewhat less than that, especially when I'm working hard.
I have a lot of data showing the issues I've had with heart rate. Some appear to be the positioning of the FUSE on my wrist. I believe I have the right location for me and the right tightness. I still have issues from time to time, especially when it is warm. On a recent run it had my heart rate at over 200 bpm very early in a run when I was hardly pushing myself.
As mentioned above, the Mio GO app is very buggy. I have lost data just in normal use - the app just stops storing daily activity data and then starts up again.
The data loss issues seem to have been addressed in software updates however even worse problems have been introduced and on two occasions I had to delete the app and lose ALL my data to get it working again. On the second occasion, I strongly believe it was an app issue not correctly addressing the data but Customer Support didn't want to know and the developer didn't want to admit the problem and so I had to delete the app and all my data to move on.
The lack of data export makes these sorts of problems much worse. If the data was exported: a) it wouldn't be lost with app deletion and b) they could analyse the data for the cause of issues.
It has been said that the true test of a company is their customer support and how they handle problems. My experience with Mio Customer Support has been been poor and I would only list them as adequate: providing only the minimum support required.
I have been reporting bugs and problems to Mio Customer Support since day one and their response has only been adequate at best. At point I had to send my original unit back for a replacement. They wouldn't send me the replacement until they received the original unit which meant that I was without the device for over a week.
They also told me on a number of occasions that a developer would contact me to discuss the issues I was having - they never did.
I guess the only good outcome was that after my last issue when I had to delete the app and all my data was they refunded me the purchase price of the Mio FUSE. This allowed me to buy the Garmin vívoactive with which I am much happier.
The Mio FUSE still has the potential to be a great activity tracker but Mio Global have so much to do to make it of any value. I'm no longer prepared to wait.
I definitely do not recommend the Mio FUSE to anyone.
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