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"Nike&amp;#039;s FuelBand tech has become as much a fashion accessory as it has a fitness gadget. Now in its second iteration, the FuelBand SE, hopes are that the new Nike will fix the multiple gaps the original left in terms of functionality. It&amp;#039;s certainly a good looking thing, but can the FuelBand SE genuinely help us to get fit? Read on to find out. What time is it? The Nike FuelBand SE makes a great watch. The way the time flashes up on the device&amp;#039;s 100 white LED light display is very cool. For those who haven&amp;#039;t seen a FuelBand before, they will notice whenever you check the time. It&amp;#039;s also more compact than most watches and easily clips on and off your wrist. In fact, as a timepiece alone, we really like the FuelBand SE.  The only fault we can pick with its time-telling design is how you need to tap the FuelBand button itself to kick the display into life. It makes checking anything on the FuelBand an issue whenever you are doing any exercise, which isn&amp;#039;t hugely logical. But the FuelBand SE isn&amp;#039;t supposed to be just a device for telling the time, it&amp;#039;s designed to bring a bit of a smart-watch feel to your fitness. As such, along with the LED display, the FuelBand measures the total number of steps you take each day, the calories burned and the amount of &amp;#039;Fuel&amp;#039; you accumulate. So what&amp;#039;s Fuel? For those not in the know, &amp;#039;Fuel&amp;#039; is described by Nike as a &amp;quot;single, universal way to measure all kinds of activities - from your morning workout to your big night out&amp;quot;. We see it as a pumped up version of calories, giving you bigger numbers for the exercise you do, in turn adding more of an incentive to get fit.  The bottom line is though, the FuelBand provides you with a set of numbers and a visual goal to aim for each day with your exercise. You can then tweak the number of Fuel points you are aiming for, should you want to work harder. Anything new? New for the FuelBand SE is something called Hours. This helps to compensate for the fact that for most, they aren&amp;#039;t doing exercise all day. As such you can set specific Hours within which to achieve a specific Fuel goal, the idea being you work harder when you do exercise. The starts of hours are signified with a visual &amp;#039;Go Hunter&amp;#039; - or whichever name you choose - message scrolling across the FuelBand. In practice, we actually found this function particularly handy. Office jobs mean the only time we really work hard is our run to work and our evening run with the dog. The rest of the time we are sat inside DS towers. This means we would often let ourselves down with our Fuel score on previous devices, but now we end up winning far more &amp;#039;Hours&amp;#039; with the FuelBand SE. Starting a &amp;#039;Session&amp;#039; Also new is a &amp;#039;Sessions&amp;#039; mode, which is what really takes the FuelBand SE to the next level. It&amp;#039;s now possible to record specific periods of exercise on the device, say going for a cycle or a run and then store data on the FuelBand smartphone app to look at later. Sessions show you a more accurate snapshot of just how much Fuel or calories were burned during exercise, rather than a ball-park figure for the day&amp;#039;s fitness.  The type of exercise done during a Session can also be marked within the app. Say for example you go for a two-hour cycle, then the FuelBand itself will have moved a lot less than a two-hour run, so the app will top you up on Fuel points to fill in the gaps. It does highlight one of the shortcomings with the FuelBand though, which is that it simply can&amp;#039;t measure all the different types of exercise you do. In some cases, this is because of where it is positioned on your body, but in others, it&amp;#039;s because of hardware limitations. The FuelBand for example is now water-resistant, but not water-proof, so you can&amp;#039;t go swimming with it. It&amp;#039;s nice to know that taking a shower won&amp;#039;t be a problem, but the FuelBand won&amp;#039;t be measuring your weekly swim. And this is where the biggest problem we have with the FuelBand becomes apparent. While it aims high, it just isn&amp;#039;t feasible to make a single super slim device to sit on your wrist and hope it will track every single bit of exercise accurately.  So what you have instead is a device that spurs you on to do more. Fitness tracker it isn&amp;#039;t, but fitness enabler it is. A better app Nike has also updated the FuelBand app to go along with the SE. This means a slightly new look UI and specific areas of the app being updated to take advantage of the added SE functionality. You can now track data from sessions as well as easily compare yourself against friends. It&amp;#039;s also possible to put together groups within the app so you can work together towards one single goal.  Without the FuelBand app, the device itself really leaves a lot to be desired. Taking all your stats beyond the 100 LED light display on your wrist absolutely requires you to have an iPhone, which is an issue for a lot of people. Verdict Nike&amp;#039;s FuelBand SE is an interesting development over the original, but not the one-stop-shop that we so hoped it would be. The new Sessions and Hours functions are logical takes on real-world fitness and make the FuelBand feel far more accurate than it once did. Battery life is good and the water-resistance a bonus, but it should be water-proof. The device looks just as good as the original and the splash of colour (unfortunately not pictured on our test model) is a nice design evolution applied to what is essentially a black band wrapped around your wrist. That said, the fact the device is tied down to your iPhone and the lack of truly meaningful data beyond simple calorie, step and Fuel measurements leave us wanting a more in-depth and accurate FuelBand experience. It&amp;#039;s still our favourite piece of wearable tech, but Nike needs to push itself harder to produce a truly compelling gadget.  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/tech/hands-on/news/a532027/nike-fuelband-se-review-can-it-keep-you-fit/>