Nike - Sportsband Review

The Nike+ Sportsband is a watch-like device that monitors your pace, time, and mileage while you are running. There are three pieces that come with this device: the band, the chip (which goes in your Nike+ shoe), and the little USB device that plugs into your band. Using the device is simple. Charge it on your computer, plug it into your band, press the button, start running. While you are running, you can toggle between pace, mileage, total time, and calories burnt (it bases this on your distance and weight). When you are done with your run, you unplug the USB device from your band, plug it into your computer's USB port and it uploads the data to Nike's website, where you can see performance graphs on your run. Nike also exposes a webservice where you can get at this data from third party websites (like runnerplus.com).

I have found that, at least for me, having my run data exposed publicly (it is private by default) forces me to run harder, which is one reason I really like the device.

The reason it gets 4 instead of 5 is that it's impossible to calibrate. Theoretically you can get third party software that does it, but I don't really like to download it to my computer. I am not convinced that it is completely accurate (have yet to actually test this on a known distance). I think it is low-balling me about 5/100th's of a mile per mile. Have yet to verify this.