Over the past 8 weeks, our founders Elan and Eric have been testing the new 1life Pulse offering from 1life Insurance and posting about their experience in the community. Today they review their experience in detail.
We love it because the goals of 1Life Pulse strongly align with what Sleekgeek is trying to achieve with our vision – inspiring everyday real people to make better lifestyle choices and improve their personal wellbeing.
“We can’t all be athletes or go to the gym, especially now with social distancing – but we can all do the activities of ‘life’ well and this is what the 1Life Pulse product and eco-system encourages,” says Laurence Hillman, CEO of 1Life.
“We want to help ordinary South Africans on a journey of positive change, helping them make better choices around their wellbeing and to be rewarded through real-time increases to their life insurance every month.”
In a nutshell: If you sign up and take the actions necessary to improve your wellbeing you can grow your cover up to an additional R200,000! Plus you get a Samsung Galaxy Watch Active 2, chipped against your life insurance policy to track it.
In this review, we will elaborate on how the product works in practice and what we loved about it.
The Watch
At Sleekgeek we love to geek out about the techy side of things, so let’s take a look at the Samsung Galaxy Active 2 Watch.
This is the watch that all qualifying new 1Life policyholders receive to help them grow their life insurance cover by making better healthy lifestyle choices.
Isn’t it gorgeous?
This is seriously a top-end smartwatch with a beautiful display, more than 30 different workout modes, a heart rate and ECG sensors, as well as stress and sleep monitoring.
The watch gives you precise health insights into things like your heart, activity levels, and sleep, and so much more in a clear and sophisticated manner.
My personal experience using it? – Eric
It’s FUN! Like, really fun!
For more than 10 years now I’ve been focusing on my health and fitness every single day. Things inevitably get a bit boring after a while… But using the Samsung Galaxy Active 2 Watch has breathed new life into my goals and daily routine.
I love the simple added bonuses too, such as the prompts to get up and move around every hour or so.
You can find out more about the nitty-gritty specs of the Samsung Galaxy Active 2 Watch over here on the Samsung website.
My personal experience using it? – Elan
I am very aesthetically focussed and I have never liked how most ‘fitness’ focussed devices are shaped or styled. They look like fitness devices and I have always found that limiting or one dimensional. You cannot wear them as easily to the boardroom or on a date as when you are out for a long run.
Often when we partner on projects and there is a device involved to test I am a little nervous that I will not enjoy wearing it. Not this time. I love this watch shape and aesthetic look – and will happily continue wearing it after this review is done.
On the flipside most ‘smart watches’ are full of features but not always appropriate to meet my health and fitness needs.
I found the Galaxy 2 Active was a perfect marriage for my healthy lifestyle. Sexy, light to wear and perfect to track my runs, workouts and health.
It is a beautiful watch and I feel proud to wear it for any occasion. I found a sophisticated watch face on the app store and that rounded off the experience for me.
As someone who has only owned ‘fitness’ watches or trackers, this was my first experience with a smartwatch and I have been blown away with all the additional features.
I love the clear full colour display and the universe of apps and smart functions I have access to. It’s opened a new world to me beyond tracking my activity and heart rate trends.
So far the battery has also performed well for me.
The App
As part of the 1Life Pulse policy, you get access to the VeoSens App.
VeoSens, developed by Samsung and LifeQ, brings life insurance, technology, and science together in a simple way to help you make better health choices.
Every day, you’ll wake up and know exactly what to work on in order to grow your wellbeing, improve your scores, and get even more life insurance cover from 1Life.
This is all connected to and tracked by your Samgsung Galaxy Active 2 Watch.
When you first start using VeoSens, you’ll need to wear your watch at least 18 hours a day for 7-10 days so that it can track your behaviour and calculate your initial scores.
While you won’t see your scores immediately, you will be able to see some of your stats for the day that it will use in it’s calculations. These are things such as how many intensity minutes you’ve had today (which is a measure of how active you’ve been), how many calories you’ve burned through exercise, your heart rate throughout the day, and how well you slept that night.
Over time, your healthy activities will add up to create health scores that range from 0 (very low) to 100 (excellent).
From then on, whenever you open the VeoSens app, you’ll get a snapshot of your current scores and how well you’re doing.
You’ll even be able to see how your scores have changed over the past 1, 3, or 6 months.
Most importantly, you’ll also be able to track your bonus life coverage which starts at R50,000 just for signing up and can be increased to up to R200,000 over the course of 2 years by wearing your watch and achieving good scores.
The Scores
Let’s dig into what exactly the VeoSens scores are that 1 Life uses to assess your wellbeing and grow your life cover.
There are 4 main categories:
Activity – Your activity score is based on how active you’ve been throughout the day, compared with recommended guidelines for someone of your age and sex.
We love that rather than steps, the score is focussed on “Intensity Minutes” where you are awarded scores for light, moderate and vigorous activity. This means the intensity of your exercise adds up rather then scoring simply for moving.
Fitness – Your fitness score is based on your cardiorespiratory fitness, as measured by your VO2 max, and compared with what’s considered healthy for someone of your age and sex.
Heart – Your heart health score is based on your heart rate throughout the day and your resting heart rate. It indicates your heart health compared with recommended guidelines for someone of your age and sex.
Sleep – Good sleep is vital to your health. Your sleep score is based on the consistency and amount of sleep you get.
These scores provide you with a real understanding of your current state of healthy behaviours and the influence that changes in your lifestyle can have on your overall wellbeing.
Even the smallest lifestyle changes like going to bed at a more consistent time or taking some time out of your day to destress can make a difference to your wellbeing and simultaneously grow your life insurance cover.
This is why we love 1Life Pulse. It encourages you to improve your health through small incremental changes that add up over time. So you don’t have to be an athlete or the world’s healthiest person to get a good score and receive bonus life cover.
For example, when it comes to improving your Activity Score, you’re wanting to look for ways to move more throughout the day and be less sedentary in general. Some of the things you can do is:
- Take a daily walk at lunchtime.
- Take a longer walk with your dog than usual.
- Take the stairs instead of the elevator.
- Add an extra set to your workout.
- Choose some kind of active fun on the weekend.
- Stand up and move around every 1-2 hours.
Improving your Exercise Score is somewhat similar, but it’s all about increasing the intensity of your exercise a bit more than normal, such as:
- Adding in an extra exercise session to your week.
- Adding an extra 10 minutes at the end of your exercise session.
- Increasing the speed on your treadmill or resistance on your bike for the last 5 minutes.
- Turning one of your low- or moderate-intensity cardio session into a higher intensity interval workout.
When it comes to your Heart Health Score, there’s a lot that can directly or indirectly contribute to it. Some ideas include:
- Practising positive self-talk at least once a day.
- Exercise outdoors at least once a week.
- Meditate or do breathing exercises regularly.
- Spending quality time with friends or family.
- Reducing your sugar intake.
- Adding a meat-free day to your week.
- Reducing your alcohol intake by adding in at least one non-alcoholic drink in between alcoholic drinks.
And then there’s your Sleep Score. My favourite. Some ways to improve your score include:
- Going to bed just 30 minutes earlier than usual.
- Setting a “shut down” alarm to remind you to start getting ready for bed on time.
- Waking up at the same time every morning without snoozing.
- Avoiding electronic screens 1-2 hours before bed.
- Avoiding caffeine after 2pm.
- Doing a gentle yoga, meditation, or deep breathing session before bed.
These are all example of DOABLE strategies that you can start adding into your life TODAY to both improve your health and improve your scores so that you get more bonus life insurance.
You don’t have to overhaul your lifestyle overnight. You don’t have to become a completely different person and say goodbye to all of the fun or enjoyable things in life. You just have to start moving forward in the right direction. These tiny changes, when done consistently over time, add up to massive results.
Growing Your Life Cover
The beauty of this program is that it is extremely reasonable and doable to grow your life cover. One does not have to run marathons or exercise themselves into submission to keep earning. One does not have to be the epitome of health to increase coverage either. Progress is all that is required.
Perfect for everyday people just try to be healthier.
Without over simplifying or going into too much detail one already earns a large portion of the additional coverage available simply by participating and staying engaged with the program.
You win right at the start too. In fact, as soon as they take up cover, they earn an immediate R50 000 towards their life cover.
Next just by signing up, downloading and activating the VeoSens App by Samsung and LifeQ, policy holders can start growing their life insurance. 1Life Pulse is a sophisticated lifestyle monitor and management system that tracks and guides heart, activity and sleep – monitoring overall wellbeing.
Every time you choose to get a little extra sleep or go for a walk, for example, you’re likely to grow your life cover by up to R216 per day, or up to R6 560 per month, starting from day one.
At the end of each calendar month you will receive your additional cover and see your cover grow on the app.
Each time the watch is strapped on, policy holders can grow their additional life cover in two ways; 50% by simply monitoring their activities and another 50% by making positive changes. So effectively just for wearing your watch each month you will gain at least R3,280 additional coverage regardless of your performance.
Over two years, policyholders are able to grow their additional life cover by up to R200 000, as they grow their wellbeing
Something that we really like about the 1 Life Pulse program is that they don’t keep moving the goalposts further ahead each time you reach them.
If a certain score got you a certain amount of bonus coverage last month, the exact same score this month will get you the exact same bonus coverage this month.
So you don’t need to keep stretching further and further to get the same benefit, you simply need to maintain a reasonable level of healthy activity.
Overall Experience
In a nutshell we enjoyed the overall simplicity of the experience end to end. The program is simple and intuitive yet powerful and impactful.
The Samsung Galaxy 2 is a pleasure to wear, the Veosens app works in an intuitive way and as long as you participate by using the watch and make healthier improvements you WILL grow your cover – no catches and no shifting goalposts.
It is a win-win and we think the program is excellent.
Well done to 1Life and we recommend the experience.
Elan and Eric.
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