HTC and Under Armour enter the fitness wearable field with 'Health Box'

To kick off CES, Under Armour and HTC announced their take on an entire “fitness system.” It’s called the UA HealthBox and it’s a combination of products that includes a fitness tracker, heart rate monitor, and scale, along with the UA Record app, to give you a total fitness picture.

The fitness band is called the UA Band. It sounds like a pretty standard fitness band that tracks workouts, steps, sleep, etc. It syncs with the UA Record app and even has an LED that “indicates heart rate zone” when paired with the heart rate monitor. Under Armour has spent the past couple of years building out and buying up popular software applications, including MyFitnessPal, MapMy Run, Endomondo and UA Record, and claims 157 million users across all of its apps now. Within those apps, the company advertises its other products.

Unlike the HTC Grip, which was shelved for the UA band, it doesn’t have built-in GPS. But it does have wrist-based heart rate sensors, for both all-day heart rate monitoring and recording during workout sessions. You can pair a heart rate strap with the Band, too. It tracks daily activity and sleep, as well as a variety of different workouts, including running, cycling, weight lifting and walking. More activities can be added to the Band through the UA Record app, which is where all of this data gets logged. It nudges you to move if you haven’t been active in over 60 minutes. Battery life lasts between five and seven days. I feel as though I may have just described a half dozen different activity-trackers, for what it’s worth.

As for the UA Heart Rate, which is the heart rate monitor, you get a HR sensor and chest strap that are compact, but hopefully accurate as well. With the UA Record app, you can customize your heart rate zones.

Finally, we have the UA Scale, which is a WiFi enabled scale that syncs with UA Record to track your progress. It features an “iconic circular design” along with LEDs that hide when not in use. It can support up to eight users with their own profiles. The scale can recognize each user just by them stepping on the scale. Not only will the scale track your weight loss (or gain) progress but body mass index (BMI) as well.

The UA HealthBox runs $400 and will go up for pre-order today at Under Armour’s site. The “box” will officially be available on January 22.