Razer has been active in the gaming scene for more than 10 years, each year since their existence branching into new areas. My current mouse is still gliding over a (now ancient) Everglide Giganta has served me well, today however the product is less gaming/PC than previous products coming from their staple.

 

The Razer Nabu lying on top of the Everglide Giganta  mouse pad

 

The Razer Nabu is a fitness band with stylish gamer looks and innovative social features added. It comes in a high end packaging, unboxing experience is close to that of Apple products.

 

 

The device is made out of a combination of soft rubber and hard plastic, while the magnetic clasp holding the band together is of black ionized metal. There’s a 128x16 pixel monochrome display hidden behind a layer of hard transparent plastic on the outside.

 

 

A small button sits at the center of the band, main purpose is to cycle through the different information screens as well as discard notifications. The Nabu is meant to be worn with the display at the underside of your arm (unlike a watch). It comes in two different sizes small/medium and medium/large. The difference lies in the size of the clasps provided as they determine the total size of the Nabu. Changing clasp is quick and easy and they provide for a good fit.

 

At the inside of the Nabu you’ll find a charging port, a short USB charger cable with custom connector is provided, lose this cable and you’re device is as good as useless!

 

Charging goes very quick through USB port charger, measuring 5.20v , 0.36W and 0.07A during full charge which takes less than a good hour.

 

After a quick charge the device is powered on and ready for sync with your smartphone, either iOS or Android phone is supported. Your device needs to support lower power Bluetooth (Bluetooth LE) which is iPhone 5 and up, or Android phone with 4.3 (and up) with Bluetooth 4.0 spec. The compatibility list is thus quite large. 

Setup is very straight forward, the different steps on both platform are very similar, Razer's software team made sure to have as much consistency across multiple platforms as possible.

 

iOS initial setup screens

 

 

Android inital setup screens

 

Once the sync is setup the Razer Nabu app will check firmware version check (and update if required)

 

 

After the update you are asked to set the goals you which to achieve each day in regards to steps taken, distance walked, calories burned and active minutes

 

a healthy goal is 10.000 steps per day, the other metrics are less important

 

The configuration screens of the Nabu are quite straight forward, the most important ones depicted below. What type of notifications are sent to the device from your phone is managed by the smartphone OS. You can set vibration strength and scroll speed and how to dismiss the received messages (button or shake). Under Display settings you set clock style, screen time-out and screen brightness, as well wrist placement which dictates how the screen display is orientated. Last but not least the selling point of the Razer Nabu is found under Social Settings tab where you can enable the Handshake and Pulse function that automatically adds friends/contacts on Twitter / Facebook if you physically shake hands with another person wearing a Razer Nabu.

 

 

The battery charge state information is shown on iOS natively on the notification screen, on Android you have to open the Nabu app to check this. On the other hand you do get a nice Home Widget on Android that you can put on your home screen that shows step count without having to open the App, something which iOS lacks.

 

 

 

The Razer Nabu main function is step tracking, which it does accurately, compared to the build-in gyroscope of iPhone 6S and Samsung S6 the differences were negligible. The device can support a lot of abuse and is quite solid, you don't have to worry about bumping it, the rubber protection does it job well. I asked a colleague to test a second Nabu with his Samsung 6S and we came back with almost all positive news, he found the Nabu to be solid design, easy to read screen for messages and ok battery life. He did have some remarks regarding usability of the button when trying to skip music on Android, which required extra setup steps and was a bit cumbersome to use. 

My experience with the Nabu's notification screen was mostly positive, even in direct sunlight the text appears clearly. When you receive several messages in sequence without dismissing them from the band, the orderi in which they are shown on the Nabu is reverse of that on the phone, which can be confusing at times when notifications are coming in from chat applications. 

Playing around with the device the first week we both found the battery to last up to 5 days max, after reducing brightness and toning down vibration to medium/low I could squeeze out 7 days, while this didn't help for my counterpart who received a lot of chat/facebook/whatsapp messages during the day, battery life remained max 5 days for him.

 

When you reach 15% battery life you'll get a notification to connect the Nabu to its charge cable

 

When pressing the small button on the side of the Nabu you can dismiss notifications as well as cycle through the different information screens. You can also add camera/music control options to the cycle which will either trigger the shutter button on the camera, or skip the current playing song (or pause/play, depending on how you configure this). While the idea behind these extra controls is great, the execution with only one physical button the Nabu makes it a cumbersome experience. Before you skip to the next song, you first have to cycle through the screens, most of the time taking your phone out of your pocket will be quicker. On iOS music controls worked with any currently playing media, on Android you have the specifically select in advance what music playing app you want to control. Overall the extra information screens are a nice to have, but hardly essential. The screen is mostly used for checking to see what time it is (quick flick of the wrist) and reading any incoming notifications, the Nabu excels in that area.

 

 

 

Another feature of the Nabu is sleep tracking, when you don't move for more than 10 minutes in the evening/night sleep tracking mode is enabled. Every movement is recorded and synced to the application, in the morning you get an overview of much time you spend sleeping/awake. My colleague sleep tracking went quite well, I did notice a lot of flukes with this functionality, sometimes the Nabu stated that I slept less than 3 hours, while I was actually in bed from 22:00-06:00. Was it due to my wife moving around at night? Me being a restless sleeper(?), remains to be seen, tracking with iPhone 5 and 6S in the bed was more accurate for me; the Nabu showed me some weird data on some days

 

Sleep tracking not always working perfectly for me with the Nabu.

 

Lastly we come to the Social features of the Nabu smartband, the Social Settings page in the app allow you to link your Facebook and Twitter account with your Razer Nabu, when you do this, you authorize the app to add contacts on these social platforms when you shake hands (or just wiggle your hands) with another Razer Nabu owner. This Handshake feature works exactly as mentioned, no issues with iOS<>Android cross platform here; Twitter send my colleague a message that I started following him (and he following me). 

 

Another Social feature is the "Pulse" option which will notify you when another Razer Nabu owner is in Bluetooth range. The Pulse is done through notification center which in turn lights up the Nabu display and activates the vibration mode. We found this feature to be mostly useless, and even disturbing. Sure when just passing by this Pulse will only be sent once, but when you remain in the vicinity you will get flooded with Pulses, every few seconds. So that option needs some tweaking from Razer to become useful!

 

 

Real Life Handshake translates to me following my colleague on Twitter (and vice-versa).

Keeping Pulse option disabled as the added value is quite low

 

 

 

Tracking stats after a few weeks of wearing the Nabu

 

After several weeks of using the Razer Nabu and walking close to 100.000 steps we can form an informed opinion on the device. The build quality of the Razer Nabu in its most raw form (being step tracker) is top notch. The Nabu slips on without issue and is secured until you decide to take it off, it sits comfortable around your wrist and even with the display on the underside of your arm we were never concerned about damaging it. And we did try. The extra feature of the Nabu is that display which gives you an idea of the current time and shows you notifications for both iOS and Android. The display is protected with a hard plastic, that does show signs of scratches when put under the microscope; the scratches don't impact the usability and are hard to see with the naked eye.

 

The display material is made from hard plastic that does scratch, but these are only visible from way up close

 

Conclusive Thoughts

At the end of the day the decision to use a computer wearable such as the Razer Nabu comes down to personal preference. If the Nabu's only purpose would have been step tracker, we would have had a very hard time recommending it to anyone, the added benefit as pure step tracker over just putting your phone in your pocket is negligible (if there is one at all) seeing as Nabu is not water proof (it is only splashproof). Where the Nabu does shine is in its simplicity to quickly show you the current time as well as notify you of incoming messages from your smartphone (and display them on the small display as good as possible). 

Competitition in "putting smarthphone notifications on your wrist" space is fierce, the Razer Nabu with its €100/$100 price tag doesn't make it clear cut winner. It faces stiff competition from Pebble and similar smart watches (which have more features) and Bluetooth pedometers (which are half the price). Razer tried to set their product apart by featuring a robust and unobtrusive design which favors function over form; which can be considered a plus for gamers and IT minded folks alike. The social features added through the Nabu app make for a nice gimmick but it remains to be seen how useful this can become.

Overall we can commend Razer for bringing out an innovative product which doesn't cost you an arm and a leg, and still provides you with a good line-up of interesting and useful features. 

 

 

We like to thank Mark from Axicom and Razer for allowing us to test drive the Nabu smartband.