This £19.99 Misfit Flash Link activity tracker has all the features you need

I’m sold on the Misfit Flash Link. Paying less than £20 for an activity tracker that syncs up to your iPhone or Android is a bargain. A bargain that’s about to cause a major headache for the likes of Jawbone and Fitbit, which sell similar devices at five times the price.

So what do you get for £19.99? In pure activity-tracker terms, the Misfit Flash Link provides information on calories burned, distance travelled, steps taken and minutes slept. It’s also water-resistant – not just splash-proof – up to 30m.

The tracker itself is a circular disk that you clip on, to which you can add a sports band and clasp so you can also wear it on your wrist. The circular disk is about the size of a 50p piece, featuring 12 LEDs ingrained in its surface. These LEDs can be used to tell the time, and also display how close you are to hitting your steps/activity target for the day.

There’s also one more killer feature: the Flash Link’s battery life is an amazing six months. This is thanks to standard Bluetooth 4.1/BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) syncing and because it uses a disposable CR2032 battery; you’ll have to buy a new one when it dies. A quick check on Amazon reveals that this will set you back only £1.02 – and that’s for a two pack!

The Misfit Flash Link can also be used to control Spotify and Nest – and for taking selfies, which is a little bizarre.

It’s hard to figure out how Misfit has managed to keep the price so low; all that’s missing from a hardware point of view is a rechargeable battery and a heart-rate monitor. For £19.99, however, I’d suggest that you can make do without.

The Misfit Flash Link represents a huge leap in the activity tracker market. I mentioned above that this product will cause a headache for the likes of Jawbone and Fitbit – and it will, in the short term at least, since its price offers customers a cheap way to try out the technology.

Long term, it’s a different story. This device is an affordable entry point into the market. If customers buy in to the technology and find it genuinely useful, a £100+ device with a few more features won’t be such a scary prospect.