The increasingly saturated fitness service market has made it difficult for Wondercise to get my attention in the past, but the company's new motion-tracking sensors that can gauge detect arm and leg movements while working out are too interesting to ignore.
Announced during CES 2021, Wondercise's Live Multi-Point Motion Match Fitness Training System (yes, that's the official name) is the big-kid's version of Nintendo Ring Fit Adventure. The existing program offers a strong sense of gamification, while the new hardware uses a three-point wearable system that straps to your person to track your movements.
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Like Ring Fit Adventure, one of the live motion matching straps goes around your leg. Wondercise ups the ante with another strap that goes on your arm.
The third point comes from your Apple Watch or Garmin Watch, both of which are already compatible heart rate monitors and movement trackers for Wondercise's workouts.
With these three motion data sources, Wondercise says it can accurately track whether you're keeping up with the movement of Wondercise's fitness instructors. During the on-demand classes, which are no longer than 10 minutes a pop, you're assigned a fluctuating score based on how well you're following along throughout the session.
The idea is that the more you work out and more you work on your form, the higher your score will get over time. You can go back and view your scores from any point during a completed workout, and see which movements you could improve.
Besides the appeal of this system for users who either need help with or are acutely mindful of their form, there are two factors Wondercise has that make me think it has potential to battle Apple Fitness Plus: First, it offers compatibility with Apple Watch and Garmin activity trackers, with more partnerships in the pipeline.
Second, it's half the price of the $9.99 per month Apple Fitness Plus. Wondercise costs just $4.99 per month or $35.99 per year, which is affordable compared to services like the Peloton App and Fitbit Premium, too. Of course, Wondercise's program has neither the same class frequency nor class length of these contending names in fitness, but for the price of dinner you can get your sweat on for a year.
I haven't tested Wondercise's classes yet, which are filmed out of a professional-grade Miami studio with both athletes and fitness influencers, but I'm intrigued. There's no shortage of ways to get in shape these days, so it'll need to impress in-action if it hopes to succeed.
Wondercise has not shared exact price and availability for the Live Multi-Point Motion Match Fitness Training System, but it should arrive sometime in 2021.
