The Sunu Band, A Review

Today, let’s talk about a device called the Sunu Band. It is a wearable device that uses radar and augmented reality to enable blind people to navigate around obstacles by means of advanced haptic feedback. I purchased one of the Sunu Bands a few months ago, and here is my review of the Sunu Band.

The Sunu Band came out almost a year ago in October 2017, and while I had interest in it, I put it on the back burner since I really did not want any further devices to keep track of or have to remember to charge up. Well, back in June of 2018, I purchased one, and it is one of the most useful devices I have. I am a guide dog user, and I put the Sunu Band on my right wrist so it will not detect the harness or the dog and so that I would not have to move my Apple Watch. It fits very comfortably on my wrist, and once it is on, I tend to forget it is there because it is comfortable to wear. Even wearing it all day, it is easy to forget I have it on. There are many situations where the Sunu Band is great including when in lines, navigating a crowded store or NFB convention, as well as on sidewalks and in restaurants. Here are just a few examples of how I have found it useful.

As I previously mentioned, I am a guide dog user, and when there is an obstacle on the sidewalk, Belto has to come to a complete stop, and then I ahve to figure out what it is and how to get around it. The Sunu Band has an Indoor and Outdoor mode with the Indoor range being four feet and the Outdoor range being fourteen feet. There are a couple spots in the town I am frequently in where trash cans are on the sidewalk, and remember what I said about Belto having to stop for them and me having to then figure out what it is and then how to get around it? Not so with the Sunu Band. Since I was outside, I had it in the Outdoor mode, and the Sunu Band could detect something was coming up that was in the way. So, as I am getting closer to the obsticle, I moved it around a bit until I found a clear path. While Belto still had to stop, I already had a plan in mind by that point, and there was no guessing about which way was the clear path. The Inside Mode works well as well. Last year at the NFB convention, it was rather hard to tell when the line had moved at the coffee shop. Not so this year. The haptic feedback works really well, and when it was really strong, i knew that the person I was behind was standing still, and when he moved, the haptic feedback became less, which ment I could move forward. It also came in handy to be able to tell rather easily where people were around me and to be able to, for the most part, be able to avoid colliding with other people. The NFB convention was the big test for the Sunu Band, and it did amazingly well even though I was probably asking it to do a lot with how crowded it was and with people going all over the place in every direction. It really allowed me to focus on what my dog was doing, and in turn, finding the holes to make it through became much easier. I have also used the Sunu Band to find the mailbox where I live since usually my cane is swinging the opposite way from the mailbox or I just miss it with my cane entirely. The haptic feedback again saves the day and lets me know when I am close to it. Now for the things I think could be improved, and there is really nothing I dislike about the Sunu Band.

My biggest thing I would like to see is some way of locking the touch pad. It is icy too sensitive I think, and one thing I find happening often is it switching between the Indoor and Outdoor modes with no indication of that. The only other thing I would like to see improved is if the app is not actually running on your iOS device, the Sunu Band itself should give some kind of indication when it is switched between Indoor and Outdoor mode.

I am excited to see any improvements and/or redesigns and new models of the Sunu Band as they come out. Overall, the Sunu Band is a great device, and if you have been wondering if the Sunu Band works as well as it claims to, it definitely lives up to what it claims to do and more. As I said earlier, I think I pushed the limits of what it could do at the NFB convention, and it still worked great. More information about the Sunu Band can be found by visiting http://www.sunu.io