Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I purchased my UP a week ago. Bought for $100 @ Best Buy (only 2 were in stock for my size). On the jawbone website they have a sizing guide which you can print out and wrap around your wrist - I found this to be accurate. When sized right, the bracelet is about as comfortable as a watch to wear. The way it looks I thought it would just wrap around my wrist like a wire but it's actually an ellipsis that is pretty firm. Only the bottom part is flexible enough to move, so you have to bend it a little to fit it around your wrist. No worries about it falling off. The one button interface is pretty simple. You press it to see what mode you are in. Push-hold to switch modes. Press, Press-hold to shift to mark a workout in day mode. I didn't find these things obvious but software guides you to this stuff pretty quick. Which brings me to my next point. This is worthless without the software. You can set inactivity alerts (vibrate every X minutes when I'm idle) or wake up alarms (wake me up around 5:40 to 6am). But to do any of this you have to "sync" with the software. To sync you take it off your wrist, remove the cap and plug the thing into your headphone jack of your iDevice. Your choices for alarm are what days do you want your single time - so if you have a very repetitive routine that isn't so bad. Otherwise you have to sync anytime you change a setting. Change an alarm? Need to sync or that is gone. Change inactivity alert, sync. There is no concept of local vs device data - so you can't set everything and then sync. This is where the lack of bluetooth is most evident. That would make a big difference for this device (also easier to work with things like Android). The sleep monitoring worked well enough. I have a wakemate as well, and although I like (as does my wife) the vibrate to wakeup feature - I think the UP was waking me up at the wrong sleep cycle - I felt more groggy waking up with the UP than with the wake mate. That could be the alarm style - but I suspect it's where in my sleep cycle the alarm catches me. The food tracking was stupid. I didn't even bother diving into that. It seems to be more of a journal of what I ate instead of "how many calories I ate", "how many grams of carbs/protein/fat". Sites like dailyburn work much better there. I really liked the idea that the device is water resistant. Not taking it off to shower makes it feel more like a ring/necklace that you wear all the time. There are some other misses here where the UP could be better. Like a button (sequence) that: turns off your alarm... sets the alarm for XX hours from now... turns off the inactivity stuff.. I read that jawbone employees were being encouraged to wear this. In the software world we call this "eating your own dog food". That is one of the things that made me more eager to purchase this. After a week, I have to wonder if they (the employees) were really just thrilled with getting a free iPhone as part of the project and didn't bother adding ideas here. I mean with an honest 3 months of use you could add alot of ideas of "things that would make this better". Another miss is the charging cord. You get about a 2" USB cord that you plug the wristband into. Ok, I guess that goes to the computer? But the USB isn't used to sync data - just to charge - so it's kindof worthless if you aren't often in front of a computer. It's also something I'd think is easy to lose. The cap is another element I was afraid to lose. Once secured, I wasn't worried - but you take it off to sync and to charge. I had wondered how quickly I'd lose mine. Who knows what it would cost to replace it - but it's something you'd want to replace.. I've seen a number of people review this device on how it stopped charging. That is what happened to me after a week. Most common response in forums was "did you shower with it?" which makes me think they aren't as confident in the water resistant claims that the product advertises. I was just happy that I could return it after a week - I'd be bummed if I got this and 40 days out it died like this. Product was completely unresponsive. There is only 1 button to push and I tried different variations of that after charging etc, no dice! For $100 this would be a nice device if it worked with BT and perhaps had some more versatility with the alarms.