Mio is teaming up with Lenovo for a new version of the Lenovo HW01 Plus fitness tracker. The band will feature Mio's PAI technology, which was outed back in 2016 but hasn't made an appearance since the Mio Slice.
Why's that interesting? PAI stands for Personal Activity Intelligence, and is a single score based on your age, weight and heart rate data that tells you how healthy your heart is, and whether you're doing enough exercise to keep it that way. The idea is to keep your PAI score at 100, and it's recalculated on a weekly basis, and adapts to your level, so it's personalised and grows with you.
Mio has undergone some serious changes recently, and has ditched its hardware plans to purely focus on delivering its PAI platform and algorithms to partners.
Read this: We're on the verge of something - and it's all about sensors
"Lenovo has world class expertise in producing hardware, so it's a good match. It's also an example of next generation of wearables being introduced at a different price point," Peter Taylor, the new CEO at Mio, told Wareable in an interview.
"The 'give it a try' entry point enables the corporate wellness and insurance premiums and helps the proliferation of sensors," he continued.
Mio made a big noise about about its PAI technology back when it was revealed at CES 2016 alongside the Mio Slice. But this is far from the big roll-out that Mio would have liked. The current-gen Lenovo HW01 sells at bargain basement prices (you can pick one up for under ). The new Lenovo HW01 Plus is only slated for release in India at a price of 2,499 rupees but it's already on GearBest for international buyers for .
Still, it's a start. We've had a full chat with Mio's new CEO, and it's clear the company sees a vibrant future for health platforms over simple step tracking – especially in the insurance and corporate wellness area.
It's a strategy similar to Jawbone, which has also ditched its hardware ambitions and is focusing on its health platform as a new company, Jawbone Health Hub. Whether either can attract brands to adopt these third party ecosystems, or whether they'll simply be limited to those looking to shave some cash off their premiums, we'll have to wait and see.
How we test
James is the co-founder of Wareable, and he has been a technology journalist for 15 years.
He started his career at Future Publishing, James became the features editor of T3 Magazine and T3.com and was a regular contributor to TechRadar – before leaving Future Publishing to found Wareable in 2014.
James has been at the helm of Wareable since 2014 and has become one of the leading experts in wearable technologies globally. He has reviewed, tested, and covered pretty much every wearable on the market, and is passionate about the evolving industry, and wearables helping people achieve healthier and happier lives.