Amazon.com: Spire Stone: Stress Management and Activity Tracker for iOS & Android

I've been using Spire for about 3 weeks now and I've been debating about how to review it. I've decided to give the product 5 stars. If I could, I'd give it 4.5 but that's not an option, and I genuinely believe it deserves more than 4 stars. I won't describe what the product does, if you're reading this then presumably you already know that and you're trying to figure out if it actually delivers. I'll list what I really like about the product, and what I want to see change.

Positives:

- getting real-time notifications when I'm not breathing properly is simply huge. I was just on a phone meeting and got a notification on my iPhone that it had been awhile since I'd taken a deep breath. Sure enough, Spire was right. It was just a nice little nudge, a reminder, to get back to doing what I know is important, full and functional breathing.

- being able to track through my day when I was calm, when I was in focus, when I was tense, it's really helpful information. Spire can do better on this count and I'll talk about that in a moment. The data presentation and tracking is not as dialed in as I'd like it to be, but is it better than what I was doing pre-Spire (which was, namely, nothing)? Oh heck yeah.

- alerts are great. You set them up within their parameters and now the app gives you real time feedback. If I've been tense for 3 minutes, Spire will tell me. If I've been in an extended period of calm or focus, I'm going to see that, too. And that's helpful for determining what I was doing/thinking/focusing on to create that state.

- the boosts. Those are recordings you can listen to in order to increase a sense of calm, or focus, increase energy, etc... It's a nice library of resources. And they have a nice 'foundation pack' teaching you some elemental breathing techniques along with getting to know your device and the app.

- last but not least, I like having such a modest device to track my steps. I don't wear a pedometer, I don't wear a fitness watch, so it's nice to have Spire do this for me.

- some of the problems others have noted have not been a problem for me at all. I wear it on my waistband and initially thought it would bug me. And it did bug me, absolutely. For about 45 minutes. After that I literally forget I have it on. It's just not an issue. Connectivity is not an issue, either. Setup has been easy and it stays connected to my iPhone 6+ without issue.

Things I'd like to see improve:

- there are times where I feel like I'm tense but Spire doesn't recognize it as such. I get that my perspective is a thought while Spire is measuring actual breathing patterns. I suppose this means that even when I emotionally feel tense, I'm still doing a credible job of breathing well. Cool. I do wish I had the ability to adjust the sensitivity of the algorithm, or increase the 'challenge level' so that it takes more to register as Calm, but that's a relatively minor quibble.

- I cannot stand the way the foundation pack in the Boost section handles unlocking the next boost after you've listened to the prior one. Instead of making it immediately available, it waits until 9am the next business day. So if I listen to one boost Friday afternoon, I don't get the next one unlocked until Monday morning. That's just a brain dead design.

- could be easier to get more actionable data out of the app. For example, when I just had a Calm streak or a Focus streak, I'd love to be able to add a tag noting what I was doing during that streak. That would be helpful from an analysis perspective.

And good news, these last two issues? They are directly remedied in the next version of the Spire app. They are in beta testing on it and I took a look at it, and while it's still rough around the edges it has great promise and it directly addresses these two points.

Bottom line: I think the device and the app are very useful as presently constructed. I emailed some thoughts, criticisms and suggestions to the company and was impressed to receive a detailed and thoughtful response from one of the company's founders and chief science officer. We've had a nice dialogue such that while I'm impressed with what the app can do right now, I think where it's going is simply going to get better and better.

So, do I recommend this for purchase right now? Yes, I absolutely do. I genuinely believe this is one of the few wearable technologies that doesn't just give you a bunch of data that is essentially meaningless, but can actually improve the quality of your life in important and meaningful ways.