Balance by High Gear Basic Pedometer EC1600

Step by Step.... Slo-o-o-wly I turn...

Pros
flip-up display, calorie counter, reset delay

Cons
not the most comfortable clip when you're sitting

The Bottom Line
The New Balance Via Step is a nice basic pedometer for walking and light running. It's also convenient and easy to use.


Have you walked your 10,000 steps today? I already have - 10,000 steps is a fairly low day for me... and the reason I know that is because I've got a New Balance Via Step Pedometer clipped onto my belt. It's one of two I own - the other one's an old Sportline 340 Electronic model I got for free.

The Via Step is made for and imprinted with the New Balance logo by High Gear. It's one of several models with the NB logo, including such niceties as a pedometer with a panic alarm, one with an FM radio, and one that performs body fat measurements. Here's what you get for sixteen dollars or so:


The gray rectangular case with rounded corners is about two inches long and an inch high, perhaps half an inch thick. Three red buttons for "up," "down," and "set" are spread around the perimeter; a fourth "mode" button is on the face of the unit. There's a two-line LCD display, with the measurement (selected by "mode") on top and the current time or stopwatch reading on the bottom line. A broad spring-loaded clip with "teeth" at the end is mounted on the back. This clips onto waistband or belt. That may be the only disadvantage of the Via Step - it's rather chunky, and the edges of the clip have a tendency to dig into the wearer's waistline.

The Via Step counts steps and calories and measures both elapsed time and distance traveled; all controlled by the Mode button. You can also set a target calorie count and check how close you're getting on a bar graph across the top of the screen. That daily calorie count and bar graph automatically reset at midnight. One screen is a 1/100 second stopwatch (no splits, if anyone cares). And there's also an "odometer" that keeps track of how many miles the pedometer's been used since the last time the batteries were replaced. Battery-wise, it uses a single CR2032 battery - no idea how long it lasts, since I've not had to do it yet...


Some cool and/or useful features:

• the readouts are upside down so that you can read them when looking down at your belt.
• the body is mounted so that you can tilt it upward to look at the face while it's in use.
• the reset button must be held for two seconds to activate, so accidental brushes don't set the counter back to zero
• there's a sensitivity adjustment on the back, so the Via Step can be optimized for "power" of the stride, e.g., runners vs. walkers, men vs. women. Not much instruction on its use, however...


Over a few hundred thousand steps, I've noticed that the Via Step is pretty dependable. It rarely gets stuck - although it did do so occasionally before I tweaked the sensitivity measurement. It's only spontaneously reset itself twice, both times when I was running my garden tiller (could that be a coincidence?). Overall, a pretty good little basic pedometer: it doesn't have an FM radio, a panic alarm, or body fat measurement; and it's not GPS-enabled and doesn't hook up to upload my numbers to my PC. Those are all a big "Who cares?" in my book - this one just counts steps and keeps track of mileage, and that's all I wanted.