Product Reviews

Of all the Bond kit - cars that could swim, bracelets that spat poisoned darts, underwater breathing kit the size of a Mont Blanc pen - the most realistic was the little transmitter that fitted in the heel of his shoe, put to good use in escaping Goldfinger's Kentucky lair. So, it's not surprising that that's the first one we've seen make the break from the big screen into the big wide world, in the shape of Apple and Nike's iPod Sport Kit.

Admittedly this smart little two-part combo won't transmit your position to the nearest FBI field station, but it might get you one step closer to a tumble in the hay with Pussy Galore as it helps you stay slim and trim and motivated on your work-out.

To put it to the test, we took it to perhaps the most gruelling challenge any mere mortal is likely to undertake in their life - the 1500km hike from Le Puy to Santiago de Compostela - to cover the last six hours of the route.

Set-up is a no-brainer. Unless you're up for hacking a hole in your existing trainers, you need a pair of Nike+ shoes (we picked up a pair of black Air Zoom Moire), which has a small recess under the left-foot insole. This is plugged by a small foam placeholder when it arrives, but once removed perfectly houses the lozenge-shaped transmitter, so that the activation button points down towards the road.

The kit's second half is a small receiver, about the size of a postage stamp and slightly slimmer than a nano, the only iPod with which it will work. Plugging it in adds a new Nike+ iPod entry to the menu, through which you select your work-out type.

Here, you can customise everything, but there are lots of presets if you need a quick fix. These range from runs of 20 to 90 minutes, or 3km to a marathon, and fat-burning workouts to shed between 100 and 800 calories and demand that you dial in your weight. Pick one, choose the kind of music you want - either from the album you're already playing, an existing playlist or a random shuffle of your whole library - and hit the road. For purists, there's a 'None' option at the bottom of the music-picker screens, but that's rather missing the point.

Your progress is tracked both on screen and - this is the clever bit - through your headphones, with the music dipping wedding-disco style to make way for a calm voice (male or female, it's up to you) to tell you how far you've

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run, how far you still have to go, your pace and how many calories you've lost from your porky flab.

The best bit comes when you next sync with iTunes. You'll be prompted to register a free account at nikeplus.com, where your full workout history will be stored for later analysis. It's entirely flash based and, even on a corporate leased line, ran quite slowly at times, but the stats it spits out are a far better motivator than a hastily-hacked training spreadsheet. Here, you can set cumulative goals, such as running 100 miles over the next three months, and see how your individual daily workouts chip away at the mountain still to climb. You can also race against other nikeplus members anywhere in the world, setting tasks for each other like being the first to cover a set distance in multiple runs over a certain time. You'll see who is in the lead at any point and, because data can only be entered after syncing with a Nike+iPod-equipped nano, you can be sure that nobody is cheating.

Two of the world's coolest brands working together should see Nike selling more shoes and, more importantly, Apple selling more music. New Sport iMixes designed to 'motivate you through the most demanding workouts', and playlists chosen and introduced by top athletes (so-called 'Athlete Inspirations') will soon be supplemented by a specific Nike Sport Music section on the iTunes Music Store, and continuous work-out mixes developed for use with Nike+ iPod time- or distance-based workouts, peppered with motivation and training tips.

Our only complaint, beyond the fact that you're tied into Nike footwear, no pun intended, is that in our tests it was just as likely to play a chapter from an audiobook as it was to speed us on with one of our favourite tracks. Considering these were tagged with the standard Books & Spoken ID3 tag, as assigned through iTunes' dropdown list of genre types, we're surprised and a little disappointed that Apple didn't tweak the firmware to filter them. Genius though Tolstoy may have been, his witty descriptions of Anna Pavlovna Scherer's vapid, pointless soirees weren't nearly so effective as a-ha's Take On Me at keeping our aching legs moving.

Like the best technological innovations, though, this is a system that will grow as you do. As you become more confident, you'll be trimming the settings so that they are accurately calibrated to your stride length and weight for a more precise gauging of your fitness routine. You can also use the same receiver with more than one sensor, either because you're rich enough to buy several pairs of Nike+ shoes, or you live in a house full of fitness freaks, each with their own pair of iPod-compatible trainers.

So, did we like it? Yes, very much. It didn't make us run any faster, but it did keep us going longer, and in that respect was as close to a personal trainer as you're likely to get for less than £20 an hour.