Fitbit Flex

I've had mine since early May and love it. It depends what you're looking for, it's my first Fitbit. It's comfy, I wear it 24/7 minus the weekly charging. It comes with both a large and small band in black or slate. There are sites where people trade to get the same size of the opposite color. I've done that already. It's waterproof so you can shower and swim with it. There's no display which is the biggest critcism by people who have used other types. You pick a goal and you see little lights come on as you get closer. It syncs to the app or website when you're near your computer or phone. I find it easy enough to check it. When you hit that particular goal, the lights flash and it vibrates. I sync mine to MFP and whatever I log here, shows up immediately on the Fitbit site. It's got a great alarm feature, it vibrates to wake you up, no noise. You can track your sleep to see how efficient it is. I'm a long time insomniac so that feature is interesting to me, I wake up more times than I remember.

I like seeing my TDEE at the end of the day. I can see that since I've been more active, the number is increasing.

I am very happy I made the purchase.

I have a Flex, this is my Amazon review that I wrote. Hope it helps.

Expectations: the flex will track your number of steps and, once calibrated properly, give you a great estimate of distance traveled for the day. It will also guilt you into walking on days you planned to ooze into couch-cushions. Looking at the white lights on the band and seeing only one is tough to ignore for a full 24 hours. That said, if steps taken, distance traveled, and guilt-trips fill your primary goals for buying the flex you will love this device. If you expect it to know how many calories you burned, how high you climbed, or to provide college funding for your next child then you'll be disappointed (with the device).

The sleep monitoring is a nice touch, though I'm not sure how helpful it really is. When my flex says I was restless four times during the night I didn't see that information and come to any epiphany. I didn't sleep better the next night knowing my fitbit flex was watching. I either get a good night sleep and feel rested, or I don't. If you are waking up over and over again in the night and not sleeping well, you likely do not need this device to tell you as much. You know...you already know....

Onto Calibration, or as I say "Calibrating like an All-Star"

To have the best experience with the Flex, you will want to enter your own walking and running stride-lengths. This can be done by logging into fitbit.com, selecting the gear-wheel in the upper-right corner, and clicking "settings." Stride lengths are immediately available on the main settings page.

My suggested method of calibration takes into account the natural undulation of the terrain where you live and accounts for any added or missed step-counts the fitbit flex will inherently suffer from.

1. Go to mapwalk.com (or similar) and map a walk that you normally will take. Make the path exactly one mile.

2. Immediately before taking your mile walk, sync your device and write down your current step count.

3. Walk the mile.

4. Sync your device again. Find your new step-count and subtract the number of steps you wrote down prior to your walk. This is the number of steps fitbit thinks it took you to walk what you know is exactly one mile.

5. Use this info to determine your walking stride length. It is a simple but exciting opportunity to use math again: Distance traveled (5,280 feet) / (Number of Steps) = walking stride length

Example: fitbit thinks you took 2000 steps during what you know is exactly 5,280 feet worth of walking. Your equation will look like this: 5280/2000 = 2.64 feet per step. Note: remember that .64 feet is not the same as 6 inches. .64 x 12 is actually 7.8 inches. To enter your walking stride length in fitbit.com you'll enter 2 feet 8 inches (rounding up like any normal person would).

6. For your running stride length repeat above process but run the entire mile. If you cannot run a mile at a consistent pace then try 1/2 mile or the furthest you know you can run without stopping or falling over.

If you've done this correctly then you should congratulate yourself.

You're a calibration All-Star.

P.s. Clasp is rather a pain as many people have noted, but you learn and get better at using it. Plus you rarely take the band on and off so it's not a deal-breaker for me.

And I don't have to do anything with it for sleep. I've suffered insomnia since I was a little girl, and it has helped me track that I'm not doing real well with that right now and may need to make some adjustments. I wake up anywhere between 12-20 times a night. And am restless a lot more than that. This was the main reason I got it. And to get off my butt on work days.

Nice to know I'm not the only one, kind of. At first it was making me nuts that I was worse off than I thought. The last few nights, even my day sleep after a night shift, have been better. That's making me nuts now because nothing is different lol.

Nice Amazon review, Nathan. I wear mine nonstop too. Just got the extra three colors today and am currently wearing the orange band. I think it'll be fun to use a new color each time I charge it.

Now I know this is for the Flex but I have a Fitbit one, used it a lot at first but now never use it.

When you think about it and have ALL of your steps sync with MFP or just in general you have to remember to NOT log your workouts cause guess what, you step in them! I found it made a lot of my tracking confusing and I'd have to figure out the steps that were in my workout, subtract them, and update everything.

Now if you're into having it add all your steps or don't log workouts this is great, it gets it all in one little bow tied package for ya and can auto update at midnight to sites like Endomondo and MFP with your steps for the day.

I don't like having things on my wrist, person issue I know, so the flex was a turn off for me there. But my biggest issue, and reason I mainly don't use my fitbit anymore, is the sync. I found at first it worked great... than got a little harder, than harder, then it wont sync at all. I found lots of people having these issues with all of the different types offered by fitbit. I just got sick of spending a hour trying to get it to sync and went back to the old fashioned way of life. After all as long as you're moving who cares!

But in the end I think its all completely personal choice. If you want to wear a step counter wear one. Get one with all the extras you like or the simplest out there. Everything will have issues and nothing will be perfect.

**had my fitbit for a year before I put it somewhere around the house...

After waiting forever for it to arrive, I ended up cancelling my order and getting a Fitbit One instead. Just walked in and buy one, available everywhere. So far so good. Enjoy the calorie adjustment, but doesn't mean I eat more because of it, just consider that I am not as sedentary as I thought. Enjoyed the sleep function, told me I woke up 15 times in the night, probably just readjusting the pillow due to the heat.

Anyone wants to add me please do so: http://www.fitbit.com/user/26C9WZ

I own the Jawbone up and I'm having issue's having it sync together with MFP I'm wondering if I should trade in and get myself a FitBit Flex instead, are there any syncing issues with the flex on the app because on MFP it always shows "zero" for my jawbone up which is confusing me!