Good fitness trackers

cara106

I'm wondering what people's choices are when it comes to buying a fitness tracker.
I'm currently looking at garmin or fitbit.

aismail85

I think the Jawbone UP24 is a very good choice (in terms of price and features). I've been using a number of 6 fitness trackers to compare the data and quantify myself for more than a year (and blogging about it at http://aismail85.tumblr.com).

My favourite features are:
* long battery life (14 days)
* able to track sleep quite accurately
* stylish
* vibrating alarm for the morning which wakes you up in light sleep. This is brilliant, I have used it for about 6 months

I have found the calorie reporting to be good enough to progress with weight loss (beware, it's not perfect, though). In terms of precision, I think the BodyMedia was the best (but they got bought by Jawbone and shut down, you can only find them on eBay now).

randomtai

I am waiting *impatiently* for the Jawbone Up3.

logg1e

Waiting impatiently for FitBit Charge HR.

(Off to Google the Jawbone Up3 - you can't do too much research, right?).

shadow2soul

I've had a Fitbit Zip. Loved it. I got it in April of 2013 and it still works even though it's been through the wash once. I gave it to my mom last year when I bought the Fitbit Flex. I had bad luck with the Flex and in December ended up getting a Garmin VivoFit. Along with Fitbit, I had also been using a Pyle Sports HRM ($30 HRM with chest strap) to help with calorie burns for activities that I needed to manually log.

I love the VivoFit band. It's an awesome tracker. However, I'm not sure how I feel about the software that goes with it. Garmin Connect (software that goes to VivoFit and other Garmin devices) has been having issues since Jan 1st. I'm waiting to see if it's from the overload of traffic this month or if it's a regular problem. If it's a regular problem I will go back to Fitbit and probably get the ChargeHR or Surge (models with built in HRM).

One of the things I love about the VivoFit is it's ability to be linked to a HRM. I actually bought my band and HRM separately (it was cheaper than the bundle because of sales last month).

I like the fact that the step goal automatically adjusts (if setting is enabled) depending on how many steps I've been getting. If I miss a goal a few days in a row, it lowers a bit. If I make the goal, it raises it a bit. Fitbit can do this too, but it's part of their paid program.

The sleep tracking function is poor compared to Fitbit and other devices like Jawbone. Fitbit will show you total time in sleep mode, how long you were actually asleep (little to no movement) and how many times you were restless. Garmin VivoFit just tells you total time in sleep mode with a graph of how much movement there was.

The badges are not as fun as Fitbit's. Fitbit would give badges for reaching 5k steps in a day and so on. On the page where you would view all your badges, if you hovered over say the 5k one, it would tell you how many times you earned it. Garmin's badges so far are just for lifetime steps traveled.

I loved that fitbit would send out weekly summary emails. The emails told you stuff like if your step count was higher or lower than the week before and how well you were following your calorie in/out plan. Garmin doesn't do this.

I love the move bar on the VivoFit. It's a nice reminder to get up and move for awhile. One thing I have noticed is that you have to do continuous movement to get the bar to go away. Anything that has you moving and then pausing for a few seconds won't remove the bar. Usually walking for about 60 secs does the trick.

It's a little hard to read the display at night since it doesn't have a back light. The VivoFit2, which is available for pre-order, however does have a back light. Essentially the VivoFit2 is the replacement to the original VivoFit where Garmin added in some requested features. The normal price for VivoFit was $129 last year and the VivoFit2 is the same price.

Both Fitbit and VivoFit can sync with MFP. Both also have issues syncing with MFP from time to time. I think just about every app that is partnered with MFP has issue syncing every once in awhile. When this happens, I just look at my calorie burn on the device dashboard and subtract the calories needed for my deficit. It may not look pretty on MFP, but at least I know that I'm eating enough to fuel my workouts and still have enough of a deficit to lose weight.

Sued0nim

What are you tracking?

If it's steps / general activity then a fitbit or similar

Steady state cardio then an HRM