Cycling vs Running with the Microsoft Band

Last week we told you about the big update that Microsoft released for their wearable the Microsoft Band.

Among the additions made on the band was a new cycling tile to measure your exercise sessions on your bicycle.

Previously, the only way to measure cycling activity was to use the running tile on the Band which worked fine but still lacked the kind of information that differentiates the two activities.

So last night I took my updated Band out for a short cycling session so that I could compare the data it provides against a cycling session to that it gives when you cycle but measure the activity with the running activity tile like we had to do prior to last weeks updates.

I would have used the Microsoft Health web portal to get these charts/stats however, the cycling activity is still not a part of the portal. So instead the screenshots are from the Microsoft Health app on Windows Phone.

First up a cycling session using the run tile:

Next the results of my cycling session using the new cycling activity tile

As you can see the running tile focuses on your splits, average pace and still reports the duration, calories burned, average and ending heart rate from your activity.

When I used the cycling tile to measure my biking session I got all of that information but two additional items – my average and top speeds in miles per hour.

The splits for each activity are also measured/displayed differently with the run session being focused on the pace for each mile and the cycling showing splits for each mile based on speed in miles per hour.

I imagine there are also some different calculations of calories burned based on heart rate and pace/speed of the activity since running and cycling are two very different styles of exercise.