Why I’m desperate for our best fitness tracker to be replaced

Through a combination of functionality, style, features, design and price, the Moov Now is currently in the top place in our best fitness tracker guide. It has been a long time since TechRadar first reviewed it, but it's still a solid bit of health tracking kit.

TechRadar Editor Gareth Beavis said in his original review, “The Moov Now is still incredible value for the breadth of tracking that it offers. It might lack a screen but for the low price you can run, swim, cycle, box and do crossfit with accuracy.”

That still hasn’t changed – the affordability of the Moov Now is how it has fought off new additions like the Samsung Gear Fit 2 Pro, Huawei Band 2 Pro, Garmin Vivofit 4 and many others.

All of those are great products, but the combination of the value that the Moov Now offers paired with everything it can do makes it our number one… for now.

The Moov Now was announced three years ago this week, when fitness tracking tech was in a very different place. Fitbit was obviously a big name, but its main rival in 2015 was Jawbone and that's a company that's now nowhere to be seen in the fitness space.

Despite that three year gap, we’ve yet to hear even a sniff of a follow-up product from Moov.

You don’t need to update your fitness tracker every year or two like some people do with their phone, but it’s curious that the company hasn’t seen fit to update its wearable considering it received almost universal critical praise and – at least from the outside – it seems to be a popular product.

If Moov made another fitness tracker in 2018, I think the company could make a far more impressive product that would be an absolute must-have for those starting out in the world of activity tracking.

What could come next?

One of our biggest criticisms of the Moov Now was the repetitive exercises it supports.

HIIT and circuit workouts on the Moov Now were one of the highlights as the tracking for reps is so good, but the selection of exercises it provided wasn't that plentiful.

The original Moov Now is limited to just six exercises, but we believe Moov could now include more on a future release.

GPS technology is also becoming more ubiquitous with fitness trackers and smartwatches. It allows you to track your location without taking your phone on a run or cycle, and it would be a great addition to the Moov Now 2.

It's not an unrealistic addition either. The Huawei Band 2 Pro (which includes GPS) may have been fairly expensive at launch, but now it's almost a year old the tracker is a lot less and around the same price that it would cost to buy a Moov Now.

So that might mean that Moov would be able to put GPS tracking into a new wearable without pushing the price up too high.

The same goes for heart rate tracking tech. The new and very affordable Xiaomi Mi Band 3 has a heart rate monitor, so surely Moov would be able to include the tech on a new product?

It's not just Xiaomi either. Many cheap trackers with screens can now monitor your heart rate, so we'd love to see the Moov Now get a successor with this sort of tech, making for a fuller fitness tracker.

Will it ever happen?

Fitness trackers and smartwatches don't always come on a yearly basis like a lot of smartphones and other gadgets.

Fitbit, for example, often announces new products when it sees fit. The Fitbit Charge 2 - one of the company's most popular fitness trackers - is going to be two years old next month, and there's no guarantee the company will release a Fitbit Charge 3.

Moov is even more of a mystery. The company announced the Moov HR in October 2016, but that's a different product that works like a sweatband that wraps around your head and has fitness tracking tech built-in.

Moov hasn't yet confirmed anything for a future release, but I have my fingers crossed we'll one day see a brand new tracker from the company. If we do, let's hope for expanded HIIT workout tracking as well as GPS, a heart rate monitor and perhaps even a complete left field surprise.