Ageing is one of those inevitable things in life and as we do so, I find I pay more attention to my family’s health and well-being more than ever. Last year, Mr C and I made a resolution to walk around our estate for 30 minutes each day during lunch time, weather permitting, and we achieved a little each day. But we didn’t have any measure of how beneficial this was for us, such as how many calories this was burning and we didn’t know how many steps we did either.
Therefore, we were fortunate to get invited to take up Epson Pulsense challenge for a month and write about our experience. I have received the Epson Pulsense PS-100 (available in turquoise and black, RRP £129.99) while Mr C received the PS-500 (available in black, RRP £169.99). They are available to buy from Epson, Selfridges, Amazon and Very.
Both Pulsense features an Epson-developed optical sensor, which measures tiny changes in light reflecting through the skin as blood passes through the vessels. This features means it will provide users with highly accurate information about their lifestyle, 24 hours a day. During the first few days of testing, we both had a small round imprint on our wrists from the sensor, but we discovered we didn’t need to have on too tight. After loosening a notch or two to our comfort zone, we find we barely get an imprint now but it still reads well.
Using the products is straightforward. When you receive your Pulsense, you first need to charge it via the docking station provided. The LED will turn blue when it fully charged (1.5 to 2.5 hours). Next, install the Epson app and register your information like height, weight, target etc. Do take your time to set it up properly with all the targets you wish to achieve.
In the app, you can configure target setting and tracking. By setting your desired weight and how quickly you want to reach your target, Pulsense will automatically set daily targets for the amount of calories consumed, calories burned and time to exercise in the fat burning zone. Personally, I didn’t set this up, but I do regularly monitor it. This is my chart from last month:
There are 5 different types of metrics:
- Count of steps
- Amount/type of exercise (below; fat burning; aerobic; anaerobic; maximum)
- Calories burned
- Quality of sleep (light; deep)
- State of your mind (elevated; relaxed)
You can change the time periods of these metrics to either a day, week or month on the website and on the app or get a weekly summary report email to help keep you focused and motivated!
During activity, an LED light system indicates which heart rate zone the user is in so that they can maintain their level. By using Epson’s app, wearers can review the amount of time spent in five detailed heart rate zones or three simplified zones. The app displays clear and easy to use progress charts. In addition, the app’s instant heart rate meter means that during a work out the user can monitor their heart rate to ensure they are in the correct zone for their training purposes. Mr C tried this out during his regular badminton sessions. He found that during warm up, he would go into the aerobic/anaerobic zones, then during normal doubles play, it would be predominately in the fat burning zone. A few times, it did drop into the below zone but he was able to recognise this and increase the level of intensity.
As mentioned earlier, the Pulsense can monitor the quality of your sleep. I didn’t use this function as I don’t like to wear watches while sleeping. Mr C tried it and he was interested to see he had relatively more light sleep than deep sleep when work deadlines were looming and also after an evening playing badminton. Must be the stress and the adrenaline, respectively! The Pulsense can detect when the user is sleeping and observe quality of sleep. They monitor the sleep cycle and detect when users are in a period of deep restful sleep and when they are in a light restless phase, based on their heart rate. An alarm can also be set to wake up the wearer at the optimum time according to their sleep cycle.
After a month of taking up this challenge, I am able to understand what sort of normal activities will help me to burn more calories. My normal resting heart rate is around 83 bpm which is still within the normal range (60-100). It tells me that my heart is working hard for my body. If I exercise more regularly and have a good BMI, my heart will need to work less hard. This is something I would like to work with on. Also I find that driving elevates my heart rate, quite rapidly at times, including doing the school run! This is definitely my stress window! I need to find a way to keep calmer.
Also I find that out of my regular household chores, vacuuming is the best for burning calories and was even better than going for a gentle walk. I needed to walk quite briskly to get to an equivalent calorie burning rate. However, if I really want to lose weight, the key is to exercise more regularly and making use of classes at my local gym will definitely be of great benefit.
I am very pleased with my PS-100 and equally Mr C is very happy with his PS-500. They are easy to clean with a cloth as they’re not waterproof and they’re lightweight enough to exercise with. For mine, I do find that the strap could be improved as I regularly have to adjust it. This mainly occurs during exercise where it slips slightly. The PS-500 has a different strap design and Mr C has had no problems with his. Occasionally I find that I forget to charge my Pulsense and the battery would go flat (36 hours of battery life), so now I try to charge it every night. Mr C has the benefit of being able to see how much charge is left on the LCD display of his but one area that has caught him out is that he’s forgotten to press the button to start tracking after wearing it (the PS-100 starts tracking automatically when you wear it). We both wouldn’t trade for each others though. I love the size of mine and I don’t need the distraction of the instantaneous readout of my data – I can get all the info I need via the app, whereas Mr C loves all the instantaneous data!
The app is easy to use and just last month, Epson updated the app to improve the Bluetooth connection so it’s nice to know they are continually improving. I love the data and motivation it gives me and it also helps provide insights into what how I can improve my well-being.
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Features |
PS-100 |
PS-500 |
| Built-in continuous, 24 hour Heart Rate (HR) and activity monitoring |
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| Target setting based on user weight objectives, including motivational daily goals based on long or short-term targets |
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| Sleep phase wake-up alarm |
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| Keeps track of calorie intake from meal logger and calories burned based on heart rate data |
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| HR-based sleep cycle tracking |
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| Measures steps taken and calculates distance walked |
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| Smartphone and web apps translate user data for easy review and analysis |
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| View your heart rate in real time for heart rate zone training |
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| Receive weekly summary emails from Epson |
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| Track how your state of mind effects you heart rate |
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| Weight |
31g |
44g |
| Water resistant 3 bar |
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| Battery life (with continuous heart rate monitoring) |
36 hours |
36 hours |
| Hours of data storage |
480 |
480 |
| Vibrate function, alerts |
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| Alert notification for incoming phone calls, emails and calendar entries |
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| Connection to PC |
– |
USB |
| Sync with Bluetooth Smart |
Bluetooth 4.0 |
Bluetooth 4.0 |
Disclosure: We received the sample for the purposes of writing this review, however, all thoughts and opinions remain our own. We have included an Amazon affiliate link to the product. If you click on this and buy, we may earn a small commission but at no additional cost to you.