Motiv Ring Battery Lasts Six Months at Best So Far…

…and still no real support response after 23 days.
…a replacement ring was sent 15th February (updated 20190222).

I want to write about how good Motiv fitness ring is. And it is. It is completely innocuous, the app is great, the information useful, the sleep measurement really quite good. But in a form factor this small there is still in my experience a serious battery failure rate.

 


I bought this ring in February 2018. I had it replaced under warranty in August 2018. The battery is again unreliable – the charge drops randomly from 50+% to zero. Once I put it back on the charger it is suddenly fine and back at 84% after 15 minutes. So – flakey.

OK. The ring is actually valuable enough in use to me to be worth $200 if it lasts 18 months. That would be three rings, actually, but ok.

The problem is warranty support is non-existence right now. No one responds. In August when I contacted for support, I received a response from support within 24 hours. This time – not so much. I sent an email – 15th Jan. No response, except for an automated one saying while we try for 24 hours, actual response time right now is 48 hours. 72 hours later, no response. After 5 days I started emailing but also looking for a phone number. No phone number. Anywhere. Not good, guys. Now we are at 22nd January…

At present I can’t reach anyone there. I just started pinging their twitter feed, to see if anyone is actually listening there at all at this point. You never know.

Too bad. Nice ring. But unless you potentially want to spend $200 for a six month life, don’t. Not yet.

— doug

20190125 Friday
I did finally receive a reply from customer support and the ring will be replaced under warranty. But, really, so far that support is saving the product. — doug

20190207 Thursday
I received a reply directly from Motiv support saying they apologized, the ring needed replacement, send address and ring spec and a new one would be on the way. This was after posting on Twitter to the Motiv account. Since that email, not a word.

I submitted another support email yesterday without any reply beyond the automated response. Started 15th January 2019 – so that makes this 23 days to attempt to get support.

The ring has deteriorated further. Battery starts at 99%, lasts about four hours, stops communicating, and when placed on the charger has dropped to 1%. IF I manage to place it on the charger and retrieve it before falling asleep it manages to measure sleep through the night, but is always at 1% on waking. Very close to inoperable now. Still under warranty, but that’s not a lot of use unless Motiv support actually functions. So far, that’s not the case.

Just tweeted again…

 

 

Sigh. Damn shame.

What’s the next tweet? I call bullshit on support?

20190220 Wednesday

I received a replacement ring about a week ago. So, that worked. The tech I spoke with said no way should the battery last less than a year. O. K.

Anyway, I discovered that they had set up a replacement ring in support as a version 1.0. They don’t actually make 1.0 rings anymore, so it sat there, neglected, waiting in the queue. Until I tweeted agin. A tech reached out and phoned, and I had the ring 4 days later.

I love this form factor, and I find the data useful. So, ok, this is what you put up with. You’ll have to judge for yourself. But at least support does exist, even though they are swamped, trying to hire more and have a two day response time.