GOQII Vital was launched recently and it was sent to us from the Goqii to review it. I had enough time with the band to test and experience the kind of service the company is offering along with the band to the users. The company’s focus is more on the fitness and coach system that their applications have rather than the Band or hardware that they are selling. The goqii band is clearly for those who want a complete fitness system along with the band which other bands present in the fail to offer. Presently the features are getting added to the band but the core of the smart band is vanishing day by day because of the new features being introduced. As a result of new feature inclusion, people are using smart bands for the purpose of fashion and notifications and not for fitness. While this is the case with most of the smart bands available in the market, Goqii is different from them. Goqii doesn’t sell you the smart band instead sells you a service which is worth more than they are currently charging for it. Will talk about it in detail later.
Goqii Vital is designed similar to most smart bands available in the market and has nothing new in apart from the Goqii Branding plus sign at the front. The display is OLED and has colors in it. The charging port for the Goqii band is present on the side from where you attach the strap to it. Charging the Goqii watch is super easy as it has the standard USB port which can be plugged into any USB port to get started with the charging. Both the straps are removable on the Goqii band but again the material seems to get loose fit after usage of just a month. The bottom of the Goqii vital band is where all the technology is present. The Vital band has the heartbeat optical sensor at the bottom with the ability to read the blood pressure from the band and heart rate monitor. The smart bands’ screen is made up of plastic and apparently gets scratched within 1 week of usage. The display is touch-sensitive: tap to wake up, swipe up to move between menus and tap to select with an on-screen button. A touch button under the screen works as a back button.
Goqii Vital comes with the rise to wake function but it is not enabled by default and you need to go to applications and band settings to enable the function. The functions sometimes work and most of the times don’t work at all. Battery life is great though: a single charge easily lasts 6 days and thanks to the built-in charger, you don’t have to carry a separate cable around with you — any powered USB port is enough to get a charge.
Goqii as smart fitness band does its job well compared to the previous version of the Goqii one and two. The vital helps you measure your steps, sleep and distance accurately and there’s hardly any error here. This makes it the perfect option over Mi Band 3, Honor Smart band and others. The new addition and much talked feature of the Goqii Vital band is the blood pressure monitor, trust me this feature works great and it gives you a fair idea about your blood pressure. This feature is not a complete replacement traditional blood pressure monitor. The band takes almost a minute to calculate the Blood pressure and it gives you information like systolic and diastolic blood pressure along with the heart rate.
As I mentioned earlier Goqii is not just about the smart band it is about the fitness and coaching. Goqii offers the smart band for 3 months, 6 months and 12 months of coaching. Once you purchase the band you need to create an account and activate the coaching membership in the application. The first few steps are very general questions that are asked to you enter like Name, Age, Height, and other personal details to create a profile of yours that will be used by the coach to determine your requirements for coaching and fitness. After filling the details you are shown with the coach details from which you can choose and opt-in how often you want the coach to contact you.
The coach interacts with you via in-app chat as well as voice calls. There is also option to consult doctors via the app, store your medical documents in a locker on the cloud as well as option to compete with your friends/colleagues on the app for various health goals. You get Goqii Cash for completion of targets and goals set by your coach — this can be used for discounts on the in-app store that offers a number of health products. The app has started offering a multitude of features like karma points, donations etc. This has actually ruined my user experience because the interface is itself a little buggy and cluttered.
In India many smart bands are available and GOQII Vital is trying to make difference by offering a complete ecosystem built around your fitness and the coaching system pushes you daily to take up tasks and complete them daily, the coach follows up daily and takes your feedback about your feeling and change you are seeing. GOQII has no challenger in India thanks to its coaching and fitness system. There are some problems with the smart band but those can be overlooked considering the features (heart rate and blood pressure tracking) and it’s coach system which pushes you to achieve your fitness goals.
