Beast Sensor – Velocity Based Training Device – Not Ready for Primetime

[Porphyry]

This is a review of the new-ish Beast Sensor.

https://www.thisisbeast.com/en





I've had it for a couple of weeks now so I thought I’d post some observations and thoughts.

What is it?

I’ll let their promo video describe it

https://youtu.be/-hJQ7Mp_Yhw

Why?

I’ve been feeling kind of beat up lately and I think I’ve been doing too many grinders and allowing my workouts drag on. I hoped that this product would help me be more accountable to rep quality and volume.

Playing with velocity based training was another reason. I’m not going to discuss the efficacy of this technique or lack thereof – I have no skin in that game but I intend to experiment with it eventually.

What are some other options?

Push Band; A2P Bar Sensei; Atlas Watch; Form Collar; GymAware;

Observations

The product:

- The band is almost too big for my wrist on the tightest setting. I'm not a big guy (5'6") but my wrists aren't small for a female, so a significant part of the market could be off-limits. It’s OK for me, just be warned if you’re smaller. You don't need the band at all FWIW.
- The optional mount causes my phone to shut down. I think it's the magnet interfering with the proximity sensor. I’ve disabled it on the phone but it’s a bit annoying.
- The mount is just a Perchmount. You can find it cheaper on other sites. It’s OK…. The magnet isn’t always strong enough to resist the phone rotating to face up or down. It never feels unsafe, you just have to find the right spot and it sometimes requires wriggling and testing.
- At first I was getting a LOT of false rep counts when I would start due to too much pre-set jiggling. This is more of an annoyance when unracking something like a squat where you need to walk it out. But it turns out there’s definitely a learning curve to using it. You need to time the beginning of the set with the countdown timer (user customizable) and try to be ready and stationary. Once you figure out how long your set-up takes it's not that bad.
- I mostly get false reps now while trying to stop the set. For some exercises I find it seems to work better when you mount the sensor directly on the bar (it has strong magnets embedded in it for this purpose)
- I have seen some missed reps, even on hard, fast reps. I suspect certain force curves are harder to pick - maybe slow lock outs? It hasn’t been common, so I haven’t figured it out but it does happen.


App:

- The In-set interface mostly seems clean and well designed. I haven't found that using the sensor/app has added any time to my working out.
- I like the ability to delete and edit reps (for weight). I’d like the ability to insert a rep sometimes –even if it’s only an estimate I think it’s worth doing.
- Bug: The warning sounds and countdown timers frequently go missing. It will be working one set, then go silent the next. It was worse before the last update but it still seems to be happening.
- I’d like to set a warning signal when the velocity falls out of a user nominated range. I’d also like to see a landscape mode.
- The rep counting seems to have improved in the last update.

Web Portal:

- The Web Portal is incredibly slow and painful to use. Every action requires another call to the remote server – there’s no local caching of data to improve interactivity.
- Bug: Workouts seem to be tagged with a date and time that's incorrect (at least for US CST). I assume it’s the time in Italy. There doesn’t seem to be a way to fix it.
- Bug: I've saved workouts in pounds but when they get exported to the app they're listed in kg (on the initial workout load screen). It's fine in the raw numbers, it just get labelled incorrectly. It does make me question whether the output calculations are scaled correctly. I’m not too concerned since it’ll just be out a constant factor at worst.
- Bug: The computed figures don’t update after editing a set – the averages and totals remain the same.
- There aren’t many editing options either – you can delete a rep (which isn’t useful – see above) but you can’t change the weight or insert a rep where one was missed. Also, did I mention it’s slow?
- I'd also like to be able to add/merge workouts. Since I don’t always use the workout export functionality (did I mention the website is slow?) I sometimes just use the app to start counting – this means that every single exercise is listed as a new workout, with some dubious looking calculations on effort.
- It would be much more convenient if we could build a workout from a personal library of bookmarked exercises. The current list has both too few exercises (e.g. where are Dips?) and too many (i.e. I have to scroll a surprising amount to add Squats, which is something I do all the time). Why are squat jumps higher/earlier in the list than squats? Why do I have scroll past it every day? FWIW You can add your own exercises - I just don't like having to look at ALL of them ALL the time.
- Analytics: the analytics are pretty crappy and I can’t really make useful comparisons from it. You need to pay for a Trainer account to get the data in XLS format which seems a bit nickle and dimey since the only reason I’d want the raw data is because their analytics tool sucks.

Summary:

A major concern I have is that I’ve emailed them several times about various bugs and I’ve never gotten a response (other than an initial greeting when I signed up). It does worry me that they aren’t taking their product or their customers seriously and that the whole thing will eventually flop leaving me with a useless little box.

So it leaves me in a strange place. I couldn't recommend this sensor to everyone given the extreme ****tiness of the website, the bugs and the lack of service responsiveness.

But… I don’t want to return it either. I like the product and I’d like them to make it even better by fixing the software issues. I like the core functionality of the unit (velocity measurements, rep counting and set timings) which mostly seems pretty robust and the app is well designed. I personally have found it has helped me stay on track and my inter-set messing around times have dropped which was a major goal. So maybe a qualified recommendation to people with money and a desire to participate in a strange experiment with no feedback?

[jlhflex]

Thanks for that review! I have been debating and debating on purchasing this. I am a bit OCD when I buy a product. I have been reading reviews on every smart device I can find and trying to find the most efficient for myself. I already use apps such as JEFIT. Actually Ive used it for years now and I have never had a problem with tracking and be close to accurate. The problem with app alone, is sometimes you cheat yourself and the info you input can be a little round about. Thats my personal take. I think I am going to go with Gymwatch and Atlas band combo. In combination, it seems more suited to my needs. GymWatch had me on "design by Germans"... Thanks again fr the review. Unfortuanly Ive never used Beast Sensor to compare note, but I am seeing tons of reviews in regards to the same issues you mention.