Fitness Trackers

sdgarcia83

What is the best fitness tracker to use to sync with My Fitness Pal, Fitbit or Apple Watch? I was going to go with the Apple Watch, but I wasn't sure if it synced good with MFP.

If you like Fitbit, which one do you recommend?

ttreit

I have a Fitbit Blaze - I love it! I really like how easy it is to read and it fits me very well. It seems to work pretty well with MFP so far.

heybales

Apple ends up syncing well with MFP - it'll even name the workouts a tad better than generic names like some do, or not at all like Fitbit does.

Fitbit merely syncs over the daily calorie burn, steps, and weight.
MFP will update it's weight, show the steps, and do math with the calorie burn to correct itself to that better estimate.
If you want workouts to show to your friends list - merely make a wall post about it.

Apple syncs over the same, plus any workouts you tagged on the Apple watch, as a workout for MFP to display and log as a workout.
Not a big whoop since MFP exercise diary and review leaves a lot lacking, Fitbit's is much better, as is Apples own review.
The adjustment MFP creates for the Apple daily calorie burn is lacking in info - makes any troubleshooting impossible.

At least with Fitbit, you can start figuring out what has gone wrong with missing syncs - which they both can suffer from since the issue is usually on MFP's side.

The real question is - what are you actually looking for from a tracker, since both are daily and not merely fitness trackers?

BingeNinjaNate

I can recommend Fitbit. I currently use an Ionic (their smartwatch) and a Blaze for backup and when the Ionic is charging. The big plus the Fitbit's have over the Apple watch is battery life, my Ionic can go around 5 days between charges (depending on usage) and the Blaze around 4 (mine is well over a year old so this is still impressive).

I can't speak for the Apple watch but my Fitbit syncs with Myfitnesspal well. One thing I do is set my MFP activity level to sedentary, I then let the Fitbit adjust my calories depending on my real activity level (Fitbit calorie adjustment).

Both platforms have their Pros and Cons, so you will need to weigh up the things you want the most. I mentioned the Ionic was a smartwatch, most consider it to be a fitness first smartwatch, whereas the Apple watch can be considered a smartwatch first fitness tracker. Also something to consider is that there is a Fitbit to cover many price ranges, budget to high end, whereas the Apple watch is mostly at the high end price wise.

The Fitbit community may also be something to consider. The biggest part of that is the step challenges which you can enter and compete with friends, these are fun and can encourage you to get steps in that you may not have had the motivation to do alone. I haven't used an Apple watch, so again I can't comment on the social aspects on that platform.

Good luck finding your tracker, I hope this may have helped you a little. Let us know what you decide on.

KANGOOJUMPS

I have fitbit charge 2 , love it!