Myo Gesture Control Armband Review: Great Idea, Underwhelming Implementation

It has been decades since we’ve been usingkeyboardsand mice to interact with our devices, and time tested though, it may be, it’s definitely not the most natural and intuitive way to interact with technology. That is why touch screens are making their way into everything, from smartphones to laptops, and even to smart refrigerators; touches put us closer to the device and makes the interaction feel more, for lack of a better word, interactive. Still, it leaves a lot to be desired.

Wouldn’t it be amazing if we could interact with our devices using gestures, then? Gesture control is obviously a more natural input method, and since we have been using gestures in our everyday conversations, it is also (usually) more intuitive, to some extent.Thalmic Labs’ Myo Gesture Control Armbandseeks to bring this very form of control to our everyday devices. It’s an exciting gadget, and we love out of the box thinking like that, here at Beebom. We decided to take Myo for a spin and put it under our proverbial lens. The following review is a result of a week long use of Myo, and is aimed at casual users who might (or might not) want to use Myo to control their devices.

Note:If you’re just looking for our personal thoughts on using the device, feel free to directly scroll down to “Usability and Recognition Accuracy”.

Inside The Box

Myo comes packed in a nice cardboard box with a transparent plastic cover. Thecolour choices are perfect, and give the box a look worthy of holding a device thatretails at $199. Inside the box you’ll find:

Myo Tech Specs

Build and Looks

The armband itself is made ofplastic, withrubbercasingon the edges, and at93 grams,it’s not too heavy on the forearm. TheUSB cableis definitelynot the best qualitycable we’ve seen, but it’s decent enough that we are not complaining. Same goes for the Bluetooth Adapter. The colours of both the USB cable and the Bluetooth Adapter are the same shade of blue that is used on the box, but, while the box pulls it off, the cable and the adapter simply don’t.

One good thing about theBluetooth Adapteris that itsthin enough to remain low profile, connected into a USB port on your laptop. We also have one major complaint about the adapter, but that’ll be discussed in the “Connectivity” section.

The weakest link in the entire box, are thesize adjustment clips. I didn’t have to use them, but they look like theymight break easily. Even if they don’t, even if they are sturdy enough, they sure don’t look like it.

There areeight“modules” on the armband, out of which three are wide (for reasons unknown), and the rest are comparatively narrow. The main module, the one with the lights, is the one in the middle of the three wide modules. It might not be easy to see when powered off, but this module also consists of aThalmicLabs’ logoand a nice, narrow, straightLED indicator, both of which light up.

On the bottom of the main module is a small lid that covers themicroUSB port. In all the devices I have used, ranging from earphones to smartphones, the lids covering these ports are always the weakest parts on the device. It came as a surprise to me, that the lid on Myo’s microUSB portdoesn’t feel flimsyat all. Overall, the device has a good build.

Connectivity

Myo usesBluetooth 4.0to connect with devices, although for the first time setup, you will have to connect it to your computer using the USB cable; then again, to turn it on, you have to connect Myo to some sort of power supply. There isno physical on/off buttonon the device, which is something we found annoying. After all, a gesture control armbandshould not have to be connected with wiresevery time we want to turn it on.

Even worse, is the Bluetooth Adapter. Myo connects to Android and iOS devices directly over Bluetooth, as long as your device supports Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity; so why do we need aBluetoothAdapterforconnecting it to a laptop? Almost every new laptop (and by new, we mean old, as in from 2011 onwards), hasBluetooth 4.0support built in to its Bluetooth chip; and if Myo can connect to smartphones without any external adapters, why must wewaste a USB port to plug in a Bluetooth adapteron a laptop? Sure, it makes sense to use it on desktops without Bluetooth, but it makes less than zero sense to have to use an adapter to enable what a laptop already has by default. Unless you’re using a laptop with a whole armada of available USB ports, using one to connect a Bluetooth adapterseems redundant, and a waste.

Charging and Powering On

Oh, the powering on! It’s absolutely terrible that we needed to connect the Myo band to our laptop/power outlet every time we wanted to turn it on. Sure, it only takes a second, but thehassle of connecting a USB cableis not what we expected from a gesture control armband. That’sone of the two main complaintswe have about connecting the USB cable into Myo.

The second, and we may sound nit-picky here, is that themicroUSB plugs in upside downinto the main module on Myo. This doesn’t really affect the device, per se, but itreflects a poor design choiceon an otherwise well designed gadget. In our opinion, this goes straight in the category of Samsung not even bothering to align the ports, mics and speaker grilles on their flagships. It’s just really sad to look at, and while it doesn’t matter to the performance, it does reflect on how much thought went into the design process of something they expect us to use intensively. On Myo,it’s not that noticeable, thankfully, but it’s something that we found irksome, nonetheless.

Plug Myo in to a power outlet or a USB port on your laptop, and it begins charging. The indicator LEDs blink subtly, and look really good. The main indicatorLED turns greenonce the charging is complete, while theThalmic Labs’ logo is always blue.

User Interface: Myo Connect

To get started with Myo, you first need to head on to theirwebsiteand download their client “Myo Connect” for your OS. It supports Windows and OS X (nowmacOS, although the website doesn’t reflect the change, yet.).

The app will guide you through the setup process, which is easy enough to follow.

Note:There was one difficulty that we encountered while setting up our Myo unit. The app doesn’t prompt the user to give it the permissions to control their computer. So, you’ll have to manually do it by going intoSystem Preferences -> Security and Privacy -> Privacy -> Accessibilityand checking the checkbox next to Myo Connect.

Once the setup is done, the app gives the users atour of how to use Myoon their computers. It’s a little hard to remember the gestures, but if need be, one can always check the guides again. The app alwaysopens as a menu bar icon only, after the initial setup, and it is there that the users can find various options related to their Myo unit.

Gestures

Myo supports six gestures:

These gestures are used to perform different functions in apps on the user’s computer. For example, in iTunes,Making a Fistand rotating itleft or rightcorresponds toincreasinganddecreasing the volume, respectively, whereas Spreading Fingers controls the music playback, allowing the user to play/pause music with gestures.

Myo uses “Myo Applications” to understand which gesture should perform what function on different apps. There are Myo Applications available for iTunes, VLC, YouTube, among a lot of others, that can be downloaded from theMyo Market.

Usability and Recognition Accuracy

This is obviously the most important part of Myo. This is also where Myodrops the ballthe most. Gesture recognition on Myoworks like magic, when it does; but, more often than not, Myofails to recognise the gesturescorrectly, and sometimes it doesn’t even recognise them at all. We are not saying that Myo doesn’t work. It does; but it alsoleaves a lot to be desired. In our use of Myo, we noticed that while iniTunes, the gestures tocontrol volume(making a fist and rotating left or right)work flawlessly, but the gesture tocontrol playback(spreading fingers), and toswitch between songs(waving in and out)don’t work nearly as well.

This could be attributed to the default gesture recognition profile that Myo comes calibrated with, but wetrained our own profileand calibrated Myo to that, and while itdid improve performance, it was stillnowhere near decent enoughto be used regularly. This was not only on iTunes, as we had hoped, it is acommon occurrence across all the appsthat work with Myo. We tried VLC media player, and again encountered the same issues with gesture recognition.

One of thebest use casesthat we had in mind regarding Myo, wascontrolling music playback on our phoneswhile walking or driving. It would be extremely helpful if we didn’t have to constantly take our hands of the steering wheel to change music or adjust the volume, and we had hoped that Myo would help alleviate those problems. We would have given a stellar review (well, probably not stellar, but a better one at any rate) to Myo, had it worked well with phones. Oursole aim on mobile devices was music control, and since Myo worked the best with iTunes on our Mac, we thought it almost obvious that it wouldwork well with music controlson our smartphones as well, only to be proventerribly wrong.

If anything,Myo works worse on mobile devices. It recognises gestures when we don’t make any, and results in random rise and fall in volume, skipping songs and pausing playback. The only way this could be stopped was to not move the armat all.Not a really viable solution when we’re driving or walking. Do you have any idea how weird it looks to be walking with your hand held tightly on your side? Not to mention dangerous while driving.

As a last resort, we decided to playMyo Pongon an iPhone. All that we found out while playing it, was that it would have been a mildly fun game, had Myo worked properly. Most of the time, Myodidn’t recognise panning, resulting in me losing spectacularly to the computer in the first… three games.

All in all, Myo’s gesture recognitiondefinitely needs a lot of improvementbefore the device can become a mainstream gadget for gesture recognition.

Myo Gesture Control Armband: Prototype Worthy Performance

In our use of Thalmic Labs’ Myo Gesture Control Armband, we wereunsatisfied with the consistency of gesture recognitionthat it offers.Plugging it inevery time we needed to turn it on, seems like anunnecessary hassle, as does the fact that we need to use a Bluetooth adapter to use it with a laptop. If you are an enthusiast, and have the$199to shell out for Myo, go ahead and buy it. However, if you’re looking for a gadget that will allow you toproperly control your devicesusing gestures, Myoisn’t quite there, yet.

Myo has thepotential to be an amazing gadget, and this is only Thalmic Labs’first iterationof the product. Here’s hoping they improve upon Myo’s many faults and come up with a groundbreaking gesture control armband in the near future. We havehigh hopes from the technology, because, no matter the performance that Myo offered, one thing is definitely clear: Theidea is simply great, it justlacks quality implementation.

Akshay Gangwar

Greetings, tech titans and fellow literary time-travelers! I’m Akshay, your tech-whisperer and Harry Potter’s number one stalker – seriously, don’t ask me how many times I’ve read those books; it’s borderline unhealthy.

Working in the tech journalism industry since 2016, I have 7 years of experience covering everything from technology news, to well-researched resource articles. Now the Content Strategist at Beebom, I often pen down op-eds for our website, sharing expert commentary on the latest in technology, AI, and electric cars.

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