Hands on: Acer Liquid Leap Fit review

Continuous heart rate monitoring that lasts a week

What is a hands on review?
Acer

Early Verdict

Acer's Liquid Leap Fit is a promising wearable for the health and wallet conscious, but lacks charm.

Pros

  • +

    Continuous heart rate monitoring

  • +

    Great battery life

  • +

    Range of bands to choose from

Cons

  • -

    Interface is very basic, a bit hard slow

  • -

    Jury's still out on quality of heart rate tech

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Healthcare is going to be vital to the growth of the wearables market. Wearables that can deliver meaningful, context-rich information - blood pressure, glucose levels, reminding us when to take medications, or when we've not had enough water - are the ones that will thrive.

It's for that reason that Acer is focusing on health for its latest wearable, the Liquid Leap Fit. It's a small device that lacks the grandeur of the Apple Watch; it's not a smartwatch, but a fitness wearable with a couple of smart features thrown in.

Oddly, Acer announced the Leap Fit last year but held it back from launch. Now it's letting us play with it, with an aim to get it on the market in Q3 this year. But the Fit could easily blend into the crowd of other similar devices on the market, not to mention that it's very similar to Acer's Liquid Leap and Liquid Active - so what's the USP here?

The big selling point is continuous heart rate monitoring, which Acer says won't impact on the device's battery life. In fact, it promises a week of battery life from one charge, during which time your heart rate will be continually read.

Acer

The Liquid Leap Fit connects to an iOS and Android app which collects this data and presents it in graph form, so you can keep an eye on it over time and have something meaningful.

Another nifty feature is the health-based notifications. These will let you request, via the app, to be reminded to drink water at intervals through the day, take your medication, or do a number of other health-oriented activities. You can also tell the wearable directly how much you've had to drink (for example) and it will log it.

Acer

Again, all this information is fed into the app and the Cloud, which gives you useful charts in return.

As well as measuring steps, calories burned, sleep - the basics you'd expect from even an entry-level fitness wearable - the Leap Fit also has a smart coaching feature. I wasn't able to give this a proper workout in the limited space, but Acer says it will offer useful feedback.

Acer

Acer

The Leap Fit has one of the best performing batteries for a device that continually monitors heart rate, but the trade off is screen and interface. The UI is very simple, monochromatic, and, I found, often unresponsive.

It's far from a joy to navigate, but the lack of a flashy touch display will probably mean that Acer can keep this below the £100/$100 mark again, or at least not much above it.

Acer

The other problem I found was that the Fit struggled to actually find a heart rate reading. I double checked - no, I wasn't dead, it really was the band's fault. Hopefully this is just because I was using an early production model; there's no point in Acer singing about the continuous heart rate monitor if it's unreliable.

The rest of the Liquid Leap Fit is attractive enough, helped by the range of different bands you can choose from. Some of them are really nice, even the slightly odd choice of camouflage.

Early verdict

A continuous heart rate monitor that gets a week out of the battery? Impressive, even if it lacks charm. Beyond that, Acer's wearable has a few extra tricks that we're keen to test out in a full review. Right now, this looks like one for the health conscious and the cost conscious.

TOPICS
Hugh Langley

Hugh Langley is the ex-News Editor of TechRadar. He had written for many magazines and websites including Business Insider, The Telegraph, IGN, Gizmodo, Entrepreneur Magazine, WIRED (UK), TrustedReviews, Business Insider Australia, Business Insider India, Business Insider Singapore, Wareable, The Ambient and more.

Hugh is now a correspondent at Business Insider covering Google and Alphabet, and has the unfortunate distinction of accidentally linking the TechRadar homepage to a rival publication.

What is a hands on review?

Hands on reviews' are a journalist's first impressions of a piece of kit based on spending some time with it. It may be just a few moments, or a few hours. The important thing is we have been able to play with it ourselves and can give you some sense of what it's like to use, even if it's only an embryonic view. For more information, see TechRadar's Reviews Guarantee.

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