Undercounting steps

Owlfan88

My Charge HR seems to be undercounting my steps. For a while it seemed to be fairly close to steps counted by my iPhone, but now, it seems the phone is counting fine (about 2000 steps/mile) but the fitbit is missing steps. I took a walk of 2.1 miles (counted by MapMyWalk) this morning, plus some random walking and my phone is saying 4602 steps and the FitBit is at 3956. It seemed to change a couple of weeks ago.
Do I need to change my stride length (I wouldn't think so. I adjusted it months ago to get the distance close to correct, and at that point steps seemed ok) or what can I do to get it closer to correct?

annc3333

I have the same problem, my husband and I walk together and his fitbit comes back with about .2% more steps than mine in spite of him being taller with longer legs (and should therefore need less steps in the same distance). This has been true through two sets of fitbits. I have no idea why.

NancyN795

It looks like your phone and your Fitbit disagree by about 14 percent. That's pretty significant. I guess if I were suspicious that my Fitbit wasn't accurately counting steps, I'd go to the trouble of testing it over a fairly significant distance. So, I'd get to wherever I was going to start the test, note the step count, then walk as normally as possible while manually counting the steps - at least a hundred steps, probably more - then stop, and look at my Fitbit step count.

It seems to me that this issue is separate from stride length. Not that you shouldn't recheck your stride length. I check mine every once in a while because I have found that it does change over time. But, you can't do that unless you've got an accurate step count, so verify that first.

If it does turn out to be significantly off, I'd contact Fitbit.