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3Plus Elite Lite review

Just before Christmas I was gifted a 3Plus Lite by my father when I mentioned the Leaf tracker. He found this one on sale and though it's not as pretty, he thought it would be a good tester to see if I would really benefit from such an expensive tracker in the future.

So how's this test run been working out?

Short answer: Horribly. Don't ever buy 3Plus products.

Long answer: The watch itself seems functional at first glance (now with an actual 3Plus accuracy review) and I think it looks pretty nice too as it's just a standard black band that doesn't clash with any every day clothing I can possibly think of. It functions as a watch, counts your steps in the way all wrist worn trackers do – registering arm motion, not actual steps – and translates that into calories burned and miles walked as long as you have accurate height and weight put into the settings.

The battery life also seems acceptable, only needing charged every 4 days or so. And charging seems to be quick, showing that it's done after a shower.

But that all sounds great for the $30 price tag so what's wrong with it?

The app. The app is the most nonfunctional app I have ever come across. First it would randomly disconnect the wrist tracker every couple days. I'd have to resync the two and it would erase all my old data that hadn't synced yet (so obviously it would choose to do this after I had exercised for the day to be as inconvenient as possible) and would reset my weight and height to the default. The default is around 5'10 and 400 pounds, if I remember correctly. I was willing to work around this though because at least everything still functioned otherwise.

After a February update it finally stopped disconnecting itself, but they broke other things instead. Now the watch won't give set alarm reminders and won't notify you of incoming calls or texts. After trying to unpair the watch from my phone and redo it all, it now won't let me change my daily goals either.

And the cherry on top, it won't track sleep. I was actually rather excited to use the sleep tracking tool in conjunction with some of the pills I use for the 30 day challenges, especially for an upcoming ACE stack, because so many are so high in caffeine it would be nice to see if it's having an effect on sleep patterns. But with that feature broken, I have to just keep guessing.

I contacted 3Plus about these issues and got a form letter saying they are aware of the issues. That was more than a month ago. Reviews of 3Plus on Google's Playstore share the same annoyance with these bugs and that form response. The iTunes store reviews are no better in case you hoped that would work.

If you've been thinking about getting a tracker to help keep you on the right path, pass up the 3Plus. The price point seems good, but the app makes it utterly useless as anything but a pedometer, and you can get a good one of those that rides the hip for a couple bucks.

If you've already bought a 3Plus and you're still in your return date window, I suggest taking it back.


If you've already got one and you're stuck with it forever, me too. I'm sorry for both of us.  

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