Silva Tech 4 O Accelerator Pedometer Watch

Silva Tech 4 O Accelerator Watch

The Silva Tech 4 O comes in several versions, including men's and women's styles -- one of them is pink! They all work the same and only vary in appearance. This watch allows you to set up to six daily on/off times for recording your total daily steps, or you can use it to manually record a specific walking/running workout. The watch is really counting arm movements rather than steps, so you must use arm motion in coordination with your walking step for it to count accurately.
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The accelerometer estimates steps, speed, distance and calories burned. I say that it estimates steps because it is counting arm motions, not steps. A pedometer worn on the hip is more likely to be recording actual steps. You can adjust the sensitivity of the pedometer if you find it recording too many or too few steps.

Because of the on/off function, this pedometer watch is more suited to recording bouts of walking or running rather than counting total daily steps. You will need to remember to turn it on when you want it to start recording, and it will turn itself off if it doesn't record any activity. You can set the delay on the turn-off function for 1-30 minutes.

You can also schedule the pedometer to turn itself on and start and stop recording at specific times, up to six start/stop times per day. This is a handy way to ensure you are capturing your most likely times to be walking each day. You may want to try to set it to come on and remain on all day, but remember that it will turn itself off if you are inactive (no arm motion) for the turn-off delay time you set. That's 30 minutes at most. To not lose data, you would need to remember to turn it on each time you get out of your chair.

Once you turn it on, you can view your steps, speed, distance, calories burned, time of day, or exercise time in sequence.

You can save your exercise data into memory. It saves 7 daily totals and 10 weekly totals. For each day and week you can see totals for steps, calories, speed, distance and exercise time.

The standard watch view includes day of the week, date, and time including seconds. It has a dual time mode for viewing other time zones.

The sports watch functions include a 50-lap chronograph, countdown timer and daily alarm. The watch has a backlight.

I found the step recording to be fairly accurate for a dedicated walking workout where I was using an easy arm motion. Your distance and speed readings depend on measuring your stride length accurately and giving the watch that setting. Then you need to be consistent with that stride length during your walking workout. In that regard, it's only as accurate as any non-GPS pedometer for distance and speed. I think that the fact it is recording arm motion rather than hip or foot motion adds another layer of uncertainty. But if you just want a close estimate of steps and a rough estimate of speed and distance, this watch will work fine.

If you have a hip pedometer that you trust, I suggest wearing it along with the Tech 4O for a few workouts and see how they compare. You can then adjust the sensitivity and stride length on the Tech 4O to more closely match your traditional pedometer.

For those who want to leave behind a hip pedometer and simply wear a sports watch that will do both functions, this is a likely choice.

Negatives:

• Must remember to turn it on for each bout of walking you want to record.
• Doesn't upload to your computer
• They suggest you have a jeweler replace the battery rather than doing it yourself.
• If you don't use arm motion during your walk, it won't record your steps. Any time your arm is inactive while your feet are still moving, it won't record steps

Positives:

• A good solution for those who can't get consistent readings from a hip pedometer or who dislike wearing a hip pedometer.
• 7-day and 10-week memory
• Good sports watch functionality.
• Comes in a variety of styles and colors