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Misfit’s $60 Flare is a fitness tracker for people who just want a fitness tracker

Misfit’s $60 Flare is a fitness tracker for people who just want a fitness tracker

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Misfit Flare
Misfit

Misfit is introducing a bare-bones fitness tracker today that brings its devices’ core tracking functionality down to a much lower price.

The new Misfit Flare sells for $59.99 and is capable of tracking how many steps you’ve taken, how far you’ve traveled, and how many calories you’ve burned. It can also track how well you’re sleeping at night if you keep it on.

For people who want nothing more than a fitness tracker

Aside from that, the Flare keeps its price low by ditching most of the other features you’d find in a typical Misfit fitness tracker, like movement reminders and the ability to receive call and text alerts. But Misfit trackers with those features start at $99.99, so the Flare really does offer a much cheaper point of entry for people who want a device for tracking fitness, and not much more.

The simplicity and lower price could help Misfit better address competitors like Fitbit, which sells a basic step- and sleep-tracking band called the Flex that can be found for around $49.99.

Hitting a lower price point also fits in with the strategy employed by Misfit’s owner, Fossil, which makes a huge range of devices to fit different needs and budgets. Fossil actually has some fitness-tracking devices of its own, but they’re all watches and start at more than double the Flare’s price.

Misfit Flare
Photo: Misfit

The Flare does get one of the fancier features its more-expensive siblings have: a button that can be programmed to make your phone do a number of different things. The face of the device is basically just a giant touch-sensitive button that you can customize to do one of several different actions, like starting and stopping music or snapping a photo with your phone’s camera.

Like other Misfit trackers, the Flare relies on a replaceable battery, which may or may not be a positive in your book. While it means you’ll never have to charge the device, you will have to replace its battery every so often — Misfit says it’ll last up to four months.

The device is also waterproof down to 50 meters, but you’ll have to pay an extra $9.99 to unlock swim-tracking features inside Misfit’s app, which is a standard but still frustrating business model across the company’s line of fitness trackers.