Round Timer: a fitness and martial arts timer

Round Timer is a fitness and martial arts timer. It started with boxing, where everything runs on rounds, but it works just as well for kickboxing, Muay Thai, circuit training, HIIT, or anything else built from work and rest.

The job sounds simple. Tell you when to work, warn you when the round is nearly over, and tell you when to rest. The hard part is doing that from across the room, while you're tired, breathing hard and your gloves are on.

Your rounds, your rest

You set it up for the way you train. Choose how long a round is, how long the rest between rounds is, how many rounds you want, and how long the warning before the end of each round should be. Three-minute rounds with a minute off, or short bursts with shorter rests, are both just a few taps. Then press start and get your hands up.

Readable from anywhere

The whole screen changes colour with the stage, so work, warning and rest each have their own colour. You don't need to read the numbers to know where you are. A glance is enough, even from the far side of the room. That was the part I cared about most, because squinting at a small clock between combinations isn't training.

You'll hear every change

If your device has a speaker, a bell rings at the start and end of every round, and a short chirp tells you the warning has started. You can keep your eyes on your partner, the pads or the bag, and still know exactly where you are in the session.

No speaker? The colours do the work on their own.

Small screens are fine

Round Timer runs on small screens as well as big ones, and its store page lists the supported devices. A small screen propped on a shelf by the bag is often exactly the right size for this.

Why not just use a phone?

You can, of course. But phones ring, lock themselves, dim the screen at the worst moment and generally want your attention. A small device on the wall does none of that. It shows the round, and you get on with it.

There's a trial, so you can set up your usual session and run through it once before you buy.