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Jawbone's new Up3 is its most advanced fitness tracker ever

Jawbone's new Up3 is its most advanced fitness tracker ever

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Jawbone loves data. It loves collecting more data; it loves collecting better data. Data is what makes the Up platform turn, what helps it turn its product from simple trackers into devices that subtly nudge you toward a better, healthier life. Today, Jawbone is launching a high-end product designed to get better data, and a low-end product designed to get more. Meet the Up3 and the Up Move.

The Up3 is smaller and lighter than the Up24

The $179 Up3 is the most advanced tracker Jawbone has ever made, and yet it's smaller and lighter and more comfortable than even the Up24. In addition to the accelerometer for measuring movement, the Up3 has skin and ambient temperature sensors, plus a series of sensors to measure what's known as "bioimpedence." Jawbone can use microcurrents to measure bioimpedance, which lets it determine everything from heart rate to your hydration levels. It gives Jawbone an unprecedented amount of information about your body, and helps the company give you far more detailed insights about how to eat and sleep and live a little better tomorrow.

That's where Jawbone's new Smart Coach comes in. Armed with all this data, the Up3 is much smarter when tracking you: it can now figure out that not only were you exercising, you were playing tennis. It knows you're dehydrated, and it's because you didn't drink enough water after you played tennis. It knows when you were in REM sleep, and whether you sleep better or worse on days when you play tennis. Your coach puts all these things together and begins reminding you to drink water when you're done with a workout, or tells you to go to bed a little earlier because you ran this morning and you need the shut-eye.

Jawbone Up3

All these sensors are hidden inside a band that looks a lot like a classy Fitbit. It's thin and flexible on the band, with a solid piece at the top where most of the hardware lives. (There are sensors in the band, too, so it can collect data even when it's only loosely attached.) The bracelet comes in a multitude of colors and designs, as Jawbone pursues the same something-for-everyone approach Apple's taken with the Apple Watch. It's meant to last a week and is water-resistant up to 10 meters. It's small and simple and nice-looking, not to mention more comfortable than the thick and rigid Up24. It's not exactly jewelry, but it's a step in the right direction.

Jawbone Up Move

When possible, Jawbone wants to collect the best and most accurate data possible. But the company also recognizes that any data is better than nothing. So it created the Up Move, a small round puck that comes with a clip or a strap you can put it into. For $49.99 it's meant to be a dead-simple entry point into the ecosystem, made to go in your bag or on your belt or even in your pocket. The data won't be perfect, or even necessarily complete, but it's something — and Jawbone can work with that. The Move comes with all of Jawbone's rich data processing, all the benefits of the Smart Coach, and the same impressive activity and sleep tracking. (It comes in a variety of nice colors, too.)

Jawbone UP comparison

Andrew Rosenthal, Jawbone's group manager for platform and wellness, told me over and over that he's just interested in the data. He doesn't want users to care about data, though — his job is to turn numbers into experiences, to collect information and spit it back in the form of genuinely useful insights about how you live and how to live better. That requires working across all levels of consumer and user, and the Up3 and Up Move go a long way toward completing Jawbone's lineup. Now it just has to get people to wear them.