Fitbit, Apple Watch Or...

JaiNicole7

Fitbit and Apple Watch users please chime in. What makes you like it? I had a Fitbit Charge HR last year and it stopped working after a few months. I do not feel like my tracking apps on my phone: iHealth and MapMyWalk are very accurate for cals burned. I will walk 2-3 miles per day @ 3.3 mph and it will say less than 100 cals burned. While I definitely do NOT want to overestimate, I wonder if that is right. I know nothing is over 85% accurate or so (sure do miss the Bodybugg). But for someone who has neither, but is both challenged and motivated by numbers, what would you recommend?

KaleiAlanaSmith

I’ve had the Charge HR for 2 years now and LOVE IT. I know you said yours stopped working... but did you like it when you had it? I plan on getting the Charge HR 2 in a couple weeks to upgrade. I find the calorie tracking is highly accurate. I’m in a deficit and eat my calories back that I burn and I’m still making some progress. Over the course of 2 years it’s been amazing. Compared to the Apple Watch I’m not sure.... it’s a nice gadget. I asked my friends who own the watch what they feel about it. One said the calorie tracker isn’t very accurate and the steps are off sometimes. The battery life is also alooooottt less than the Fitbit. I guess it’s because of the connection with cell and internet! But to each his own.

Sabine_Stroehm

I had the fitbit flex, then the Charge HR. My Charge stopped working after 13 months during one of the over the air updates. They replaced it. That one stopped working after 11 months.
I switched to an Apple Watch.

fitbit pros: the app has a great UI
cons: people commented on the HR lights

apple watch pros: much more robust fitness features, fast charging.
cons: if you like "challenges" you need to find a new cross device platform. My friends and I ended up using UA Record for Challenges since several of us got apple watches, and several stayed with fitbit.

angelb1983

I agree with Kalei. My husband has lost around 40 pounds in 4-5 months because he ate back what fitbit said he could. He rarely goes over but sometimes does eat 3,000+ calories because of his activity level. It has been really accurate. I think its all about finding something you can stick to and trusting the process.

collectingblues

I love my Watch. But a big part of that is that it's waterproof, and has swim tracking. Plus, I'm an Apple girl.

macgurlnet

I loved my Fitbits, but I wanted something more than what the Blaze offered and I didn't love the look of the Ionic.

The Fitbit Versa may be on-par (ish) with the Apple Watch once it's released, and I totally would have gotten it!

I found the calorie burn information to be accurate, if not a little bit of an underestimate. My Apple Watch is comparable.

For me, the calorie burn information doesn't transfer over to MFP accurately, and I haven't figured out why. I set a custom calorie goal, so it's not a big deal for me. I never had that issue with Fitbit. Occasional syncing delays, but those were rare and nearly always sorted themselves out within a day.

~Lyssa

jbrown2339

I've had a fitbit and now have the watch:

Fitbit pros:. Does fitness well, and the competitions can be fun! Doesn't go for the Swiss army knife approach so options are focused on fitness, which they nail. Good integration with mfp.

Fitbit cons:. Limited functionality. Like i would love to put in intervals for running vs use my phone, since I'm often pulling out the phone from a zipper pocket to see how long I have in current interval. No integration with apple health. Kinda plain, some are just ugly.

Watch pros:. Broader capabilities beyond fitness. Control songs, volume, tracks from wrist (many Bluetooth headphones do as well). Able to check watch vs pull out phone to check on workout status. Respond to texts from watch. Lots of bands to custoize looks.

Watch cons:. Shorter life means I no longer track sleeping stats, but that was never useful to me. Less focused stats than fitbit in core workout app. Lack of competitions, but I use my phone as mobile tracker now in Fitbit app so I can still compete. Mfp stats for me are a mess, I get negative adjustments for steps for some reason, so have to do that math in head. More expensive.


Both are good in different ways. I had Fitbits for years and loved them, but got bored and do enjoy the wach, but the integration with mfp is wonky for me.

healthy2700mfp

I hated the Fitbit charge it overestimated my steps and calorie burn and it only lasted 6 months. I love my Apple Watch it is accurate in my exercise time distance and steps, plus it has more features

lois1231

I love my fit bit charge 2. It has already helped me improve my life.

Maxxitt

I had the fitbit One for a few years. The tracking of steps was great and manually adding in other non-step exercise calories seemed to be reasonably accurate over the long haul (I kept CICO data going). It clipped on my bra and I liked not having a wrist band. I stopped using it because I stopped caring about "steps."

I've had apple watch 2 for almost a year. The "rings" are more motivating to me than counting steps ended up being. AW counts steps but I don't usually bother to look I initially used the various exercise options included with the watch but eventually went with another app, FITiv, which synchs up with the watch and apple health and MFP because of the intervals functionality, and the ability to set custom workouts and track heart rate/effort throughout them. It gives me both a numerical summary and a graph of effort and I find that way of presenting the data to be useful. I set the calories-out function on the FITiv app to record 75% of what the app estimates my "burn" to be. I am not convinced about that accuracy so as I keep data, I am noting total calories/day as well as "net" calories/day especially as I have upped my game in the exercise department.

Price-wise, the AW is the more expensive option, but I kept the actual cost down by recycling 2 decade-old, un-needed laptops and a barely functioning ipad2 and applied the apple credit to the watch .... even with buying a couple of additional watch bands my cash outlay was $89 - can't beat that!

JaiNicole7

Thank you all so much for the feedback. I think all things considered I'll be getting the Fitbit Versa when it comes out next month. I'm excited!

takemetosingapore19

Apple Watch

AnvilHead

I had a Fitbit for about a year. It logged all kinds of whacky activity, sometimes giving me up to 1300 steps when I drove a couple miles of bumpy roads.

I wore an Apple Watch every day for two years. It's a fantastic, well-made smartwatch and an okay/so-so activity tracker (mostly crippled by the lame software, which offers limited data, no cloud access from other devices and terrible archiving as far as referring to past workouts). It also requires charging pretty much every night.

I now have a Garmin 935, which I've been wearing for six months. It has far better battery life than the Apple Watch, is a much better activity tracker and has far better software which offers much deeper, more detailed performance stats/metrics - which you can access from the watch itself, the smartphone app, or via the Garmin Connect website from your computer/tablet, etc. It tracks/displays your PRs much better than the AW and the social features (if you're into that) are more robust than the AW.

The Apple Watch is a great smartwatch with acceptable activity tracking features. The Garmin is a great workout watch/activity tracker with acceptable smartwatch features. IMO, Fitbit is a tier below both of them as far as quality goes.

And I'll admit that it was difficult for me to come to grips with all the above, because I'm a big Apple fan, own a lot of their products and think very highly of them. I just don't think they've (yet) put sufficient effort into being a major player in the fitness/activity tracker market.

KatsFitNow

I’ve had Fitbits and I wasn’t sure if Apple Watch could do what fitbits could. But it does more! Especially because I swim with it... I feel like it fulfills heart rate/determining calorie expenditure accurately. I also love the motivation that comes from closing your “rings” on the Apple Watch.

the8BitGirl

I used to be a Garmin girl until I got a Watch a couple of months ago. My watch tracks my strength training, and does it really accurately in my experience. Also as others have mentioned it is waterproof, which is a huge deal for me. I can also control my 3rd party fitness apps (like Jefit) as well as my music. Love it!

jwilk241

I love my Apple Watch. I've never owned a Fitbit but my husband did and it stopped working shortly after we bought it. I like the watch because it's not JUST a fitness tracker. It's a fitness tracker, watch, can connect to apps, make phone calls, and texts. I only have the Series 1 but I'm trying to upgrade to the Series 3 sometime this year.

endermako

I'm a polar girl. I have a Polar A370 with 24/7 HRM among many other features. It's very accurate for me.

EMC85083

Apple watch! It is not as generous with calories burned during workouts but I would rather have it underestimate than overestimate. I found the fitbit to be very inaccurate... it said I was burning way more calories than I actually was. I also like that the Apple watch differentiates between active calories and BMR.

SaraTN

Definitely the Apple Watch and FiTiv. I saw a news segment where they tested the popular trackers at a University where people were also hooked up to the machines used for athletes and measuring calorie burn. Apple was the most accurate - less than 10% variation where the other trackers were closer to 30% off. I have been using AW with the health app but just downloaded the FiTiv app because I like seeing all the data in one place.

andreaen

I have the AW and used to have a polar M400, the AW is great for most things, but really sucks for measuring heart rate during weight training/crossfit as it con't pick up my heart rate from the wrist when I bend it a lot. For walking, running, biking and normal day-to-day stuff it is great though