Review: Adidas miCoach Smart Ball
I really can’t remember when was last time I kicked a soccer ball… In fact, I can remember and it’s been a few years ago. This is now past time when I went to football training and practice shooting. Now, because of other commitments I have no time or will to play soccer.
But this week I got a special Adidas ball for which I had to put on boot once more and visit soccer playground. This special ball goes by a name miCoach smart ball and I just had to see for myself how smart really is this ball.
I knew about the existence of Adidas miCoach smart ball from the moment it was introduced and was always interested to see how does it work. Now I had the chance to experience it firsthand, thanks to miCoach ambassador program.
The packaging in which the ball arrives looks like it’s from future and I do not know why, but it reminds me of Alien egg. There is something in that green and how does ball stand on a podium. Fortunately, this ball does not contain any Facehugger!
The first mystery that I was interested in, whether the ball can be inflated like a classic ball or not. The answer, of course, is yes, and this is in one way like any other classic Adidas soccer ball. Before the first shooting, the ball had to be inflated a little bit.
With the ball is bundled stand and charger. Yes, I didn’t write wrong, this ball needs to be charged before you can use it. In fact, you need to charge the battery that powers the ball sensors. To charge a full battery it takes about one hour. On the front side, stand contains two pulsing green lights that pulse until the battery is fully charged. Charging the ball looks very attractive at night.
As I have already mentioned the ball contains a lot of different sensors. All sensors are located inside the ball. To active sensors, you need to link ball with a smartphone via SMART BALL application that is available for all mobile platforms. As my Nextbit Robin runs Android system, I was looking for an app in the Play Store and very quickly find out that it’s not available in Croatian Play Store. For some reason, the application is available only to those local Play Store stores where the ball was available for sales. To find the application, it was necessary to download APK from pages that host such files. I hope that Adidas would correct this problem and until then you can download an app from this link.
Download: SMART BALL 1.2.0 APK
SMART BALL application is actually the brains of the smart ball. All data from the ball are downloaded via Bluetooth protocol. Also, I was pleasantly surprised when I first connected ball with the application, the message appeared that I need to upgrade ball firmware. Welcome to the future! Today, in addition to the computers, you need to upgrade the software of soccer ball. Upgrading lasted only a few minutes and then the ball was ready for the first challenge.
The application offers several options — Kick It, Get Better, Challenges and Record Book.
Kick It option is used to measure free kick. It is necessary first to determine with which foot will be used to shot, then we click on Kick and after we hear a whistle we make a free kick. Also here we have the ability to record our kick. Recording starts from the moment we hear a whistle and lasts for 7 seconds. Enough to take a shot and to ball to hit the goal. To record good video it is recommended that someone else is holding a cell phone while we perform the kick. I recorded my own kick and you just need a little practice to shoot good video.
After we took the shot, the SMART BALL application will download data from the ball and then we can learn — ball strike, spin, flight path and our recorded video. This is also the most interesting options with which I played the most. When you have this kind of statistics, you start to look at kicks in a slightly different way and you start to think how to make best out of every new kick.
Get Better option contains the instructions and videos which we can improve our kick technique. So let’s say we wanna work on our shooting through the defensive wall. This is an option that will use all those who want to improve their strikes. Each option you choose here is a visually well-explained.
If we are satisfied with our kick or just wanna have fun, we can choose Challenges option to see how fast we can kick or try to match a pro’s kick.
Record Book option will show all our kick that we have made, our favorite and balls statistics.
Testing Adidas miCoach smart ball, I was thinking it was a pity that I didn’t have it when I was in the soccer mode. This ball is very helpful to anyone who wants to work on they kick and make them better. It is enough that you connect the ball to smartphone and go to the field to practice. The miCoach personal trainer will take care of the rest and try to show you how to correct your kick and make it better in the simplest way.
From running applications to this ball, smart technology is more and more available to us and the possibility that with it can help us to improve our capabilities and that we are alone responsible for our success. Sometimes it’s hard to find a good coach, and therefore it is a good that these virtual are always available and very rarely make mistakes.
Adidas miCoach Smart Ball is Price balls is available for purchase through the official Adidas store for the price of $200 dollars.
