The Sportline 360 Fitness Pedometer is an easy to use hip-clip pedometer with a flip-down interface. While it should be a great little unit, various flaws keep it from being useful.

First, the basics. The unit is very small, about the size of a marshmallow. It clips easily at your hip. The face of the unit is protected by a plastic shell that you flip down, so you don't have to worry about it scratching or being damaged by general activity. Then you flip it open and it tells you all the stats.

It keeps track of the steps you've walked since last reset, steps per minute, calories, and so on. However, for it to know how far you've walked, you have to enter your stride length. While you might say this is tricky to determine, it's something you're going to need for any pedometer, since the only thing it can count is your steps :) So I don't ding it for needing that information - however the method for entering it could certainly be easier.

However, the real problem here seems to be with how it counts your strides. Or doesn't count your strides. It goes into "sleep mode" if it senses no activity, to save battery power I imagine. Then it wakes up if it senses movement. It doesn't seem to do these transitions very well. So if you are really hoping for accuracy, you're not going to get it with this unit.

Also, while the plastic clip works fine for me on my thin sweatpants I wear, I can easily see that this would be less fine on thick jeans or other thick fabrics. You probably want to get some sort of a loop to hook on a belt loop, and then clip this unit securely to that.

But really, I bought this unit maybe in 2003 or 2004 and paid probably $40 for it. In current times you can buy a MUCH superior pedometer for half the price. So while it might have been "rather good" for its time, other units have by far surpassed it now and would be a far better value.

Shop around and look at the alternatives.


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