MIO Slice and PAI at Wareable Technology 2016

MIO global were out in force at Wareable Tech 2016 ably supported by @action_PR and 2Pure – their UK distributor.

As well as a large and well-attended stand they had a keynote presentation on PAI. More of that later.

The MIO Slice + PAI was announced a while back.

I was thinking that it’s been a couple of years since MIO’s slew of products took the market by storm (MIO Link, Velo, Alpha 2, Fuse). Chatting with one of the MIO staff we both welcomed the impending Slice BUT at the same time we agreed that the Link and its variants are actually still pretty good. The Link is one of those straightforward products that is SIMPLE to explain, meets a BIG need in the market and, to make matters worse, it actually mostly WORKS!! Shock horror. FYI: It’s a wrist based heart rate monitor that’ll probably work with whatever device/app you want it to.

I can’t remember if the sensing unit in the Slice is new (to update) but what is new is the Slice is a noticeably narrower strap than its predecessors. The display is also a move forwards from the nice, but retro, FUSE.

The device I got my hands on in the photos is NOT a working model. However the app did appear to be working – although you couldn’t tell because the Slice was not working as I just said! (The phone was on the giffgaff network so probably not a screen dump from overseas!)

The USP of the Slice is the PAI. Personal Activity Index and revised aesthetics. It seems to be a variation on a theme put forward by Garmin, Polar and others. IE based around TRIMP, or similar, which looks at duration and intensity. The intensity bit is unique to the wearer. For a general healthy lifestyle PAI will get you to achieve XXX PAI points a day – which is a more refined and ‘correct’ version of the 10,000 steps a day goal of activity trackers.

I’m not so keen on the purple. But I’m sure it will look fine in black/grey or some other subtle shade.

MIO are suggesting that PAI is a new concept but I will need to be briefed a bit more on how this is different from the TRIMP stuff which goes back to research from the 1960s. (I’ve been using TRIMP for years as a measure of training load FWIW).