Activity trackers help people come to grips with how much (or little) movement and sleep they get in a day. Figuring out your current habits of walking, exercising, and sleeping can be the first step toward making big changes to your health, because it gives you a baseline to beat and helps you set new goals that are truly within your reach. At only $49, the Jawbone UP Move is a very good entry-level activity tracker and is in many ways on par with the equally priced Misfit Flash ($35.00 at Amazon) . Comparable in many ways, they have two major differences: The Jawbone UP Move has a better app that gives you more information about your habits, but the Misfit Flash is much better looking.

The Jawbone UP Move would make a great gift for someone using a fitness tracker for the first time—and the price is right—but it would likely disappoint a more experienced user looking to upgrade to a product that could provide a richer experience. For that camp, my recommendation is the Basis Peak , our Editors' Choice. It's much more expensive, but the automatic tracking and all-day heart rate monitor just can't be beat. More options will be available early next year (look for devices from Fitbit, Mio, and Apple), but until then, the Peak is the product I would recommend for most people. Serious runners, swimmers, and other athletes would probably want a device that tracks their specific activity in greater detail, and there are certainly other choices for them. The Jawbone UP Move, however, is best suited to entry-level users who don't mind its looks.

Design and Specs

When you buy a Jawbone UP Move, you get a small disc-like tracker, a coin cell battery that the company claims lasts several months, a wristband that holds the tracker, and a clip holster if you want to wear the UP Move somewhere other than on your arm. The benefit of the coin cell battery is you never have to remember to recharge it, and it lasts nearly a year. But if you're the kind of person who is lazy about buying a new battery when it's needed, then you'll probably be better off with something you can plug in every few days.

The tracker comes in five colors: slate with yellow accessories, ruby with red accessories, grape with purple, blue with white, and black with black. You can buy additional clips and wristbands of different widths and colors for $14.99 each.

The tracker measures a hair more than 0.38 by 1 by 1 inches (HWD), about the size of three or four quarters stacks on top of one another, and weighs less than 0.24 ounces.

In the box you'll also find a quick start guide that will help you set up your device and sync it with an Android or iOS device. Unfortunately, you can't see any of your statistics on the Web, as compatibility is with mobile apps only. All syncing is wireless over Bluetooth 4.0 BLE.

As mentioned, the device itself is, well, not that attractive. Something about the bright colors and textures on the device just looks cheap. It's just not as sophisticated as the Misfit Flash or its even more stylish predecessor, the Misfit Shine . I have yet to see a tracker as lovely, although both Misfit devices are a little tougher to learn how to read and use because they lack the helpful, if tacky, icons that give the UP Move greater utility.

Press the UP Move (the whole thing is a giant button, really), and a dial lights, spinning around the perimeter to tell you how close you are to reaching your steps goal for the day. You'll see a little orange running man icon light up, too, so you're sure of the data you're seeing. When you put the device into sleep mode by pressing and holding the device, a blue moon lights up. Double-tapping causes the dial to indicate the time by lighting up the hour marker and flashing where the minute hand would be on a traditional clock.

Tracking Your Steps and Using the App

When you set up the Jawbone UP Move, you'll have to download the app, tell it a few things about yourself, and enable syncing. Once the app and device know your age, weight, sex, and height, it can begin estimating how many calories you burn throughout the day, based on activity and inactivity. Of course, it's little more than informed guesswork. Better calorie burn estimations only happen with more data points, such as heart rate and skin temperature, that provide additional information about what your body is actually doing minute to minute. The Basis Peak, with many more sensors than the Jawbone UP Move, is likely to be more accurate.

As with any activity tracker, you really need to dive into the companion app or Web dashboard to get a good look at all the activity the device is tracking. The Jawbone UP app is easy to use and provides a good overview of your day, showing a graph of different times when you were active, and letting you add notes to activities that you completed. For example, if you rode your bicycle for an hour at 4 p.m., you can go into your timeline and note that activity after the fact.

The app also has areas for tracking your weight, mood, and foods you eat. One really fascinating companion app that can sync with Jawbone's fitness-tracking app, called UP Coffee, lets you track caffeine intake specifically and shows you how it affects your sleep. I was downright shocked to try it out and empirically see that even one extra caffeinated drink in my day could nibble away 30 or 45 minutes of sleep. A few minutes of lost sleep here and there can really add up.

UP Move for Entry-Level Tracking

The Jawbone UP Move is a very good activity tracker for entry-level users, with helpful indicator lights and an app that's easy to use. My main quandary is that I don't like to be seen wearing it because it looks cheap and childish. The Misfit Flash is a little more sophisticated looking, but slightly harder to learn to read, and its app doesn't have the very neat ability to look for correlations between caffeine intake and sleep.

When it comes to choosing a fitness tracker that's right for you, looks really do matter. If you don't like wearing it, you won't, and then you can't quantify your exercise. The Basis Peak, our Editors' Choice, is styled like a modern watch and therefore makes sense being on your wrist all day. I also wouldn't overlook the subtle Garmin Vivosmart , which has a screen that disappears when not in use to masquerade as a simple bangle. 

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