I can also attest to the poor quality of the UP bands. I'm currently on my 5th band in 3 years. One lost band and 4 replacements later, I'm really only using them to continue with the sleep tracking.

I discovered early on that the step counting wasn't really that great of a feature or selling point. I made it a habit to inform people around me that really the best feature and the only reason why I continued to use the UP was for sleep tracking.