New app means you don't need a full tracker to get football stats
Playr has launched a new app for the Apple Watch, letting players track their football positioning and activity during matches and training.
The app means there are now two tiers to Playr’s tracking system – the Apple Watch version, and its in-house tracking vest, which costs and offers more detailed monitoring.
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The app is simple, allowing you to begin either a training session or a match tracking session on you wrist, and to pause that match for half-time when needed, before resuming.
During play, you can glance at your wrist to see total distance, top speed and average heart rate on screen. Once the session concludes, your Apple Watch will sync with your smartphone for more detailed metrics, including heatmaps and comparisons to other players.
You can link accounts to your teammates to create a team account and track your stats against each other, and measure personal bests and targets to beat.
However, some of the features that you can access using Playr’s smart tracker unit and vest are not available for the Apple Watch. These include load and intensity metrics and the ability to compare your stats to a pro’s equivalent details.
We were really impressed with Playr’s tracker when we tried it out, but that cost of entry was undeniably high, so the Apple Watch app makes a lot of sense, as far as getting more users is concerned. It’s built on a subscription model, with a much lower up-front cost.
Playr’s offering a month’s free trial for users to try out the service, and we’ll certainly be having a go with it at our weekly five-a-side games to see how well it works. After that month, it costs monthly. You can download the app here if you want to give it a try out.