MIO’s Active Connect watch integrates with MyFitnessPal to help people lose weight effectively

MIO, the maker of the world’s first strapless heart rate monitor watch, is unveiling today its newest product, the MIO Active Connect. This new device is something the company considers to be the first weight loss wristwatch, that will accurately gauges how many calories you’ve burned in order to assess how to lose weight more effectively.

Users can wear this fitness watch, similar to what they would do with the Nike+ FuelBand or the FitBit, and just behave how they normally would. The Active Connect measures and records calories burned throughout the day, along with monitoring your heart rate through its EKG monitor, and measures your steps with a pedometer.

It will record both daily and seven-day calorie burns to help analyze any trends while also monitoring your speed and distance walked or run. Of course you can sync the watch to any PC to store the data right off the device and onto an online MyMIO health and wellness website.

In addition to all these new features, MIO has integrated with MyFitnessPal, the free cloud-based calorie counter and diet plan, to offer users some more resources on how to manage their weight. Users can go through MyFitnessPal’s food journals and extensive 1-million-food and calorie database in order to track their calories, activity levels, and results.

To offer support, MyFitnessPal allows Active Connect wearers to join its more than 10 million user community to help learn, gain insight, support, and offer feedback in order to make sure that you stay on track and meet your weight loss and fitness goals. Naturally there’s a social aspect to the whole thing as you can push your status to Facebook and Twitter so your friends can see it and cheer you on.

By looking at the Active Connect watch, you might think that it’s similar to the Nike+ FuelBand and the FitBit, and you would be correct. But the main difference is the intent of the device. For the FuelBand, it focuses on activity and exercise. For the FitBit, it does the same thing, but also monitors your sleep. The integration with MyFitnessPal is another difference — currently only the FitBit has this integration, but requires the user to manually link their account with the service.

But if you had to choose between the Active Connect, FuelBand and the FitBit, it might come down to two main selling points: design and pricing. The FuelBand is the most expensive at $149.00 and the cheapest is the Fitbit at $99.95 — the Active Connect is $129.99. In terms of design, the FuelBand is, well, an armband while the Fitbit is a clip that attaches to an article of clothing. The Active Connect is a watch that people would normally feel comfortable wearing — not everyone is used to wearing an armband or a clip on them all day, so it might be an issue about style and preference.

You can order the Active Connect online starting today. MIO is also having a promotion where you can get 25% off by simply using the promo code “GetActive” at checkout.

Image credit: RAUL ARBOLEDA/AFP/Getty Images