Fitbit which one?

cyberblonde

kanorbryhn wrote: »

I recently got the Fitbit Surge. I both like it and have some reservations with it.

What I like:

• Heart Rate Monitor built in the wrist. I've used chest straps that pair with a watch, but I didn't like the inconvenience of having to wear the strap. I love being able to see my Heart Rate tracked through the entire day. I didn't realize when I worked out my heart rate stays elevated for a couple hours afterwards. I recently played 90 minutes of racquetball with an average HR of 146, it then to about 3 hours for my HR to get back to my resting HR of 50-60. It is also nice to see what your resting HR is, which they take from your sleep/early morning HR. So far the HR seems accurate, as it matches my Blood Pressure monitor within a few points. I will say, (and the online reviews do as well) that it is a lagging monitor, so if you jump down and rip out 50 push-ups and stand back up, you probably won't see much of a difference, then about 15-30 seconds later it will move up to your actual hr. I think this has something to do with the LED technology as well as the wrist placement versus a strap on your heart.
• GPS built in. This is why I bought the Surge and not the Charge HR (which I bought for my wife). I like hiking, running, biking so it is nice to have a GPS on your wrist so that I don't have to carry my phone and use Strava. If you don't want or need GPS, I'd go with the Charge HR.
• I like the way it looks. I can't lie, the other HR monitor watches looks really 80's. Something that your Dad would be wearing in an old family pic. The Surge has a nice modern look, and I don't feel weird at all to wear it to work or in public. (I do work as a professional in the Tech world, so I guess these gadgets are probably more accepted.)
• Ease of use. The touch screen and simple buttons make the usage very simple. You can quick flip through your stats (HR, Cals Burned, Floors, Steps, etc) and jump into exercising tracking mode.
• Calories burned during an activity (run, lift weights, etc) jive with calculators online and seem to be accurate. It's nice because my intense workouts show that I burned more calories, while easy workouts show less burn. Therefore, I feel like I can moderate my calorie intake better.
• Link with your phone. I like that watch alerts me when I receive a text or call. I'm bad about leaving my phone on silent, then missing important calls. With the Surge, I can leave my phone on silent permanently and when I get a call, my Surge will vibrate allowing me to see if I need to answer or not.
• Water Resistant. While I wish it were water proof!! it is only resistant, I did fall into a river while fishing the other day (fully submerged the watch) and jumped out and dried it off immediately. It has not had any issues, so it is fairly resistant.
• Sleep tracking is.

What I wish was better:

• Water Proof - I can't swim with it on.
• Calories burned throughout the day seem ridiculously high. The activity burn seems great, but just working, walking and normal daily activity adds calories to my BMR to the Tune of 1000-1500 calories, which seems crazy. I want to lose 2 lbs a week, 1000 cal deficit, with those extra calories I would be eating 3000 calories a day. Hopefully they can adjust their algorithms in the future to adjust these. If you look at any BMR calculator that adds in guess calories from daily activity (think sedentary, moderate, physical) most only add about 1000 calories if you work a very physically demanding job.
• They don't currently have a Biking exercise mode! Why have a GPS that can't track your biking... LAME. Support page says this feature is coming, and it will be able to link to your strava account.
• The MFP link works great. It's automated, and adjusts your calories according to your cals burned. However, I wish there were more options. The only setup they have is that your Food logs push to Fitbit app, and your Calories Burned push from FitBit to MFP. Theoretically this is good, but because I don't believe the calories burned through normal activities is correct, it ends up offsetting my daily MFP allowance to be wayyyy to high. If they let you only sync logged Fitbit activities that would be awesome. Which is what I do manually. After a few days having my accounts synced, I disconnected them, and just add work out calories from FitBit and track food and calories left from MFP.
• I wish that the activity summaries had more

Overall, I would buy the Surge again.

Really really useful, thank you

cyberblonde

Thank you everyone for some great advice, I really appreciate it.

walruslike

walruslike wrote: »

One week of Charge HR and I love it.

I keep seeing accuracy complaints but mine seems pretty good. The position on arm is critical if exercising.... Pushed up arm it's been pretty right every time I crossed checked with manual pulse count for ten secs. But I don't get over about 128 because I'm a fat old fart so maybe in higher ranges it's different??

I've now tested it against a MIO Alpha watch which has LEDs that are waaaay brighter.... and it has a rep of being accurate. I bumped my rate up to 115 (that's all I could manage...) and they both read within 1 beat of each other. The difference was the MIO got there pretty well instantly and the HR is only pulsing every 5 secs so there was a lag.

Within the constraints of optical HR it seems pretty good to me.