Microsoft Health Update Adds Heart Rate Zones to Microsoft Band

Yesterday I told you about an update on the wires for the Microsoft Health app. The majority of the features added in the update are for Android, talked about HERE, that includes Cortana support and bug fixes. In fact, the Android version of the update started rolling out first.

But, there’s a new feature called Heart Rate Zones that is available as an option to turn on (or off) in the Run, Bike, and Exercise Tiles. It’s absent however in Guided Workouts – which seems strange.

According to the What’s New tile on the Band, here’s how it works:

Track your heart rate zones on Band: Improve your workout health with notifications for heart rate zones. When you're at 80% maximum heart rate, the heart rate on Band turns orange. At 90%, it turns red.

The intent, of course, is to use the Band 2 as a tool to help maintain higher heart rate zones for cardio improvement. It’s easy to just “dial-in” workouts sometimes. A feature like this should give you more incentive to keep improving. There's been a growing number of complaints from Band owners that HR just isn't accurate enough, so the timing of this features is interesting. Let's hope that a fix for the HR accuracy issues are included in this update so that new Zones features works right.

I joked on Twitter yesterday that the Microsoft Band team seems to watch my travel schedule and release new updates only when I’m in transit, so I want to thank the team for letting the update loose just prior to my trip next week. I’ll be checking this feature out today and throughout the following week. I’ll be running in Vegas next week in the extreme, dry heat, so this new feature will be interesting to watch.