Band v2 Enhancements: Better Bluetooth Connection

The force is strong with this one.

One of the things that plagued Band v1 was a truly poor Bluetooth connection experience with the smartphone. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes, the connection would go off in left field for absolutely no apparent reason at all. And, of course, if your Band v1 was suffering from the corroded connector problem (mentioned HERE), trying to manually sync fitness activity was sometimes completely useless.

If you’re a v1 owner, you’ve no doubt experienced the “cannot find the Microsoft Band” message. Some suggested they were successful just turning Bluetooth off and back on, but that never worked for me. When it entered this state, I could fix it only by rebooting the smartphone completely. And, believe me, it became exceedingly frustrating when this would happen after a flight since the Band’s clock is tied to the smartphone and it needed to sync to update with the local time zone.

Band v2 has a persistent and stronger Bluetooth connection than v1. I’ve yet to have an instance where I’ve found Band v2 not connected to my Lumia 735. Additionally, the connection is a strong one. When I wake in the morning, I grab my HP Spectre x360 and head downstairs to get caught up on the day, leaving my smartphone on its wireless charger beside my bed. We have a two story home with a basement. The basement is filled with exercise equipment, so on Mondays, Wednesday, and Fridays, after catching up on overnight email (my boss likes to work extremely late), I’ll dip into the basement for a 45-minute weight workout. With my smartphone still sitting bedside two stories above, Band v2 still produces alerts as if the smartphone was sitting 5 feet away.

This is an unexpected benefit of moving to Band v2.

Microsoft Band v2 on Amazon.com: Microsoft Band 2