Considering a Fitness Tracker

zamphir66

I'm thinking of diving into the world of fitness trackers, but it's a bit overwhelming.

It's probably best to explain what I do right now: I primarily run, and I track my run by strapping my big-kitten phone to my arm. Apps on my phone sync the calorie burn to MFP automatically. I can look on the phone, or PC, and see how far I've ran, where I ran, etc.

What I want is something much smaller that does exactly what I described above, without having to take my phone along with me. Can a fitness tracker do that? If I had to manually pass data from one thing to another thing, that would be a dealbreaker. I imagine the tech is pretty smart.

Anything else it can do/track is just a bonus.

Also, I sweat quite profusely... ha ... so waterproofness is a big must.

ETA: One more thing -- the apps on my phone will tell me, audibly, when I hit certain numbers (distance, time, whatever I want). That's important. If I could at least see these kinds of metrics on a tracker, that would be enough.

NorthCascades

Almost any Garmin will do this, and as a runner a Garmin is your best bet.

Many of them track swimming (pool and sometimes open water), sweat is not a problem. I wear mine in the shower.

zamphir66

So, do I put apps on the Garmin -- or does it have proprietary apps that will sync to MFP? Is there a web-based backend where I can see all my data forever?

NorthCascades

Garmin watches are background activity trackers, but also data recorders for exercise. You tell it when your run or whatever else begins and ends, and it takes a lot of data for you during your activity.

Here's a bike ride I recorded with mine, the last one that doesn't reveal my address. 😉 Obviously it'll record different data for running. What it records depends on what sensors you use with it, for running you can get things like left/right balance, vertical oscillation, and ground contact time, even running power, bit those don't come out of the box.

https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/3961466503

shbarbor

Apple watch is fantastic for this. I am a runner and used to use a garmin but have switched to Apple watch and love it. You can swim with the series 3 and up.

OldAssDude

Apple watch is a smart watch with some basic fitness features, and only works with the iPhone.

Garmin is mainly a fitness device with some smart features, and works with android and iPhone.

If you want it primarily for fitness I would recommend the Garmin. They have many models at every price point, and are much better suited for fitness.

I have been using Garmin devices for about 5 years now, and they are king of fitness devices right now.

Their website has a comparison tool so you can compare the features.

Good luck.

emmamcgarity

Most of the runners in my run club use Garmin and it appears to have a lot of great features for runners. If I wasn’t socially invested in the Fitbit platform with friends and family members I’d likely be switching to Garmin now that I am more serious about running. Just so that you’ll have an idea how Fitbit works, I’m happy to share my experience below. I have the Inspire HR and I like it very much. I do have to pair it with my phone for GPS tracking but there are a few Fitbit models that don’t require this.

The Fitbit Inspire HR has auto detect for different exercises. It has detected when I’ve done aerobics DVD workouts and when I’ve spent 30 minutes doing heavy gardening it detected it as “sport”.

For running, I open the Fitbit app in the background on my iPhone and slip it into my running belt after having started a podcast or music that I want to listen to while running. I then click on the “exercise” button on the Fitbit and select “run”. Within a few seconds it confirms it has connected to my phone’s gps. I click the start button when I am ready to start tracking the gps for my run. At that point the wrist display will begin showing the distance of the run in real time to the 0.1 mile and the time elapsed. I set it up to display my running pace every half mile. This causes the Fitbit to buzz my wrist at each half mile and o can glance at my wrist to check my pace. I find this helpful for pacing my runs and making sure I don’t wear out by running too fast at the beginning of my training runs. At the completion of a run i click a button on the side of the Fitbit twice to stop tracking then tap the finish button on my wrist to save the data. Once refresh the app on my phone it displays a map of my run and gives me data about my splits and heart rate. I have it set to sync my gos runs to both Strava and Runkeeper so that I can analyze my running data. For calories burned my Fitbit is automatically set up to sync with Myfitnesspal and it does a good job of estimating my calories.

emmamcgarity

Adding a few screenshots in case you are interested in how the data looks on the Fitbit platform

zamphir66

So I pulled the trigger and got a Garmin Forerunner 35. And I have to say, I should bought something like this a long time ago. I know it's a basic sort of model, but it does so much more than I would have thought it would do. I wondered if I could adapt to wearing a watch again (I haven't in 20 years), but now I feel odd taking it off.