Fitness Trackers - non Fitbit

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katiharrell
katiharrell Posts: 3 Member
edited June 2016 in Chit-Chat
What fitness tracker (other than Fitbit, I know that product) do you use and your review please?

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  • cprovenghi
    cprovenghi Posts: 118 Member
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    I have the garmin vivoactive and it is very useful for me. It tracks swimming, biking, walking/running, steps. Etc it is waterproof as well. The battery life is decent. It rates it at 30 days but i think that is with minimal use. With very frequent us i give it 4-7 days which is about average or slightly better than other trackers.
  • katiharrell
    katiharrell Posts: 3 Member
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    cprovenghi - that is the one I was looking at and also the Tomtom Spark Cardio but I can't decide between the two.
  • edjfreeman61
    edjfreeman61 Posts: 22 Member
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    Vivosmart HR is a nice little bit of kit. Better features than the Fitbit in my opinion being waterproof and all notifications for calls, emails and apps. Also I'm lead to believe the HR monitor is more advanced. Anyway seems a good tracker to me.
  • andrektan
    andrektan Posts: 196 Member
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    Over the past couple months I've tried out the new Garmin Vivoactive HR and I'm currently using a Fitbit Blaze (I know you're not interested in Fitbits, but I'll share for comparison's sake) after having used a Fitbit Flex for a while.

    I liked the Vivoactive HR in many ways. It provides some great data (deeper than Fitbit) and I feel that the GPS was solid, but the things that led to me returning it were -
    • Clunky user interface - The UI of the device itself seemed primitive compared to its capabilities. The Garmin app itself is better and had some good visualizations, but still had usability issues.
    • The backlight is incredibly dim - I had trouble reading the screen at night, even at the highest brightness. Of course, the battery life probably benefited from this. However, to be fair, readability was better during the day when the LCD was illuminated in direct sunlight and not backlit.
    • The device form factor - It's pretty bulky. I joked with people that it looked like I was under house arrest.

    As for the Fitbit Blaze -
    • It can be mistaken for a smart watch, but it's actually relatively dumb - It's effectively a standard Fitbit with a nicer display and watch form factor.
    • Charging is a little awkward - You need to take the device out of the band and place it in a proprietary charger. However, it charges VERY quickly (30 mins to an hour)
    • Data is dumbed down - Again, I feel that the Garmin goes a bit deeper. However, the Fitbit app and website is much cleaner and intuitive, so it's a tradeoff.
    • Caloric burn is inaccurate - To be fair, this might be specific to me, but I see double the calorie burn from activities than what I've separately calculated (and what the Flex reported, without taking HR into consideration). I discussed this a little in this thread.

    I'm still on the fence about keeping the Blaze. It's the one I've liked the best so far, but I'm still looking at other options.

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