I recently tried to improve my fitness levels. I decided to pick some simple options that required little in the way of equipment: swimming and jogging. After a while, I wanted to better track my activities and started looking at what gadgets were available. My requirements were simple and cheap (less than £50), ideally tracking heart rate as well as steps. Waterproof would be nice to have so I could swim with it too.

This wouldn’t be my first attempt. A few years ago I had one of the original Jawbone Up bracelets. It tracked my steps and sleep. It synced with my iPhone using the headphone jack, which was a bit fiddly but worked. How has the market progressed since then?

FitBit seems to be the leader if you discount the Apple Watch (which I did, for price reasons). Their gear seems to be well regarded but was a bit pricier than I’d hoped. Then I stumbled on this MPOW bracelet. I’d had good luck with MPOW before (with these wireless headphones) and decided to give it a try. It met all my criteria: cheap, waterproof, step and heart rate monitors. And, like most modern trackers, it synced using Bluetooth. It was about half the price of the cheapest FitBit and a third of the price of their equivalent unit that has a display and heart-rate monitor. Too good to be true?

First impressions were good. It fits well on your wrist and the display is clear. The step counter seems accurate and the heart-rate monitor fairly closely matches the (less convenient) equipment in the gym. The sleep tracking seems a little dubious but works about as well as the Jawbone Up I had a few years ago. I get about a week’s usage on a single charge.

Contrary to some of the comments I’ve seen, the software does sync with the Health app on the iPhone.

The biggest complaint I have is that, despite being waterproof, it doesn’t really understand swimming; it records your heart-rate but it doesn’t register as exercise. You may also be disappointed if you’re hoping to be able to see notifications from your phone. I found that it didn’t work reliably. Maybe it works better on Android?

Finally, the app sometimes appears to go a bit crazy and takes a ridiculous amount of my phone’s battery.

I’m not clear what triggers it but it’s annoying.

Overall, though, they’re really just quibbles considering the price. Is it as good as the equivalent FitBit? Probably not. But it’s great for the price.