The Microsoft Band isn’t just a health tracker, it’s a mentor too

The Microsoft Band has been around for a few months and, while offering a useful collection of fitness and health tools, there isn’t much that separates the $200 gadget from the numerous other smartbands out there. Microsoft wants to change this and to do so the company is working on some new features that use the data the Band collects on you to make smart observation and give useful device. 

Microsoft’s first foray into wearable activity tracking will go beyond collecting and analyzing exercise and sleep patterns to, say, telling you how stressed out you get before an important meeting and offering breathing exercises to calm you down. Released in October, the Microsoft Band costs $200 and houses a variety of sensors including a microphone, a GPS location sensor, motion sensors, an optical sensor that measures heart rate, a sensor that tracks skin conductance, which can reveal levels of stress, and even a UV sensor to calculate sun exposure, all encased in a black, rubbery bracelet with a rectangular touch screen. The band communicates with your smartphone via the Microsoft Health app, which itself communicates with Microsoft’s cloud-computing service to analyze the data you collect.