Are fitness watches worth it???

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  • anl90
    anl90 Posts: 928 Member
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    I have the Fitbit Blaze, and I personally really like it. From what I can tell, it is quite accurate. My husband used it first, and he also was really happy with it. I know they do not make that particular model anymore, but anyone I know who has a Fitbit really likes it, so I will always recommend it. It could also depend on what you are looking for in one, too.
  • cheryldumais
    cheryldumais Posts: 1,907 Member
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    I bought a Garmin Vivofit 2 a few years ago. I was just starting out with my weight loss efforts and didn't want to spend alot of money because honestly I didn't think I would use it. I was wrong. I love my device. I happen to be one of those folks who loves electronics though so that's part of it but it does motivate me to move more and I love that it tracks my sleep patterns. This has been helpful to get me to pay attention to these things. I could have lost weight without it but I do believe it helped me to stay motivated. It's an individual thing.
  • thezenarya
    thezenarya Posts: 38 Member
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    I have the Polar A300 because I wanted a fitness watch, NOT a smart watch. I wanted a heart strap and only upgraded from my Polar FT4 because of the connectivity to the Polar app and MyFitnessPal, and the sleep monitoring. By far the best purchase I've ever made related to my fitness.
  • sarabushby
    sarabushby Posts: 784 Member
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    I think the reason there are a lot of devices on the second hand market is that the brands are clever at releasing their latest and greatest devices so people upgrade to the newest version with an extra feature or nicer aesthetics and sell on their old unit second hand to offset some of the outlay.
  • heybales
    heybales Posts: 18,842 Member
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    jessiedawn8400 wrote: »
    heybales wrote: »
    Fitness_is_dope wrote: »
    I've heard they're pretty inaccurate and that Apple is the only one worth investing in if at all. I would just like to know how many calories I'm burning and my Heart Rate because I am pretty sedentary apart from going to the gym a few times a week.

    I don't mind to spend the money but they're not cheap so just want to know your experience and if it's worthwhile purchase.

    Thanks :)

    Actually, the name brands are all decently accurate at average daily activity type stuff.

    The studies where they slap a device on someone for 4 hrs or a day show failure because these newer ones with HR require 1-2 weeks getting to know personal stats to improve estimates.

    They have to try to figure out your resting HR, used for workout calories.
    They have to figure out the point or range where you have moved from daily activity to exercise, in order to not use HR-based calorie burn when you would get the most inflated calculations, but stick to step-based calories.
    They hope you have tweaked the stride length correctly for those step-based calc's using distance from the steps, which doesn't matter if you get low steps - but would be worse as steps go way high.

    Apple does all those same things, and people have shown it can be just as untrustworthy in out-of-ordinary average situations too.

    The all measure HR through light which has inaccuracy potential depending on your hair/skin/vessels, and depending on your body varying degrees of accuracy as the exercise intensity goes up - which can influence calories.

    During a month of training for triathlon where I really nailed the food logging, my weight changes was around 3% of what the logged numbers would say should have occurred. That's really good.
    I also logged all my workout calories from more reliable sources replacing whatever the Fitbit saw (and now same for Garmin) - and I tweaked a setting so it was using closer to tested BMR than calculated, so that the daily activity burn was best estimate.

    @heybales What setting did you tweak so it's closer to the tested BMR? Mine fitbit is almost 200 calories higher than the tested one, so I've just been mentally deducting that, but if there's a setting that can be changed, that'd be great. I've tried to find one and couldn't, other than changing my height from 5'2" down to 4'3" and I'd rather not do that.

    That was exactly it - height.
    And of course manually set stride length so the daily activity was still good estimate - which was the brunt of using it.
    Since all my workout logging came from better sources (Garmin & powermeter, swim site), height being different didn't matter.
    For HR-based units height would matter for calorie burn estimate.
  • ximenavictoriaxo
    ximenavictoriaxo Posts: 113 Member
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    Fitbit Flex 2 is so worth it! I'd buy it from eBay though, get it for like $30.
  • jessiedawn8400
    jessiedawn8400 Posts: 37 Member
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    @heybales What setting did you tweak so it's closer to the tested BMR? Mine fitbit is almost 200 calories higher than the tested one, so I've just been mentally deducting that, but if there's a setting that can be changed, that'd be great. I've tried to find one and couldn't, other than changing my height from 5'2" down to 4'3" and I'd rather not do that. [/quote]

    That was exactly it - height.
    And of course manually set stride length so the daily activity was still good estimate - which was the brunt of using it.
    Since all my workout logging came from better sources (Garmin & powermeter, swim site), height being different didn't matter.
    For HR-based units height would matter for calorie burn estimate.[/quote]

    @heybales I was considering overriding some of the calories from the middle of the night while I'm sleeping with an exercise entry of 1 calorie so the Fitbit would show less calories for the day and I wouldn't have to remember to mentally deduct it when reviewing all the numbers. You seem to know a lot about Fitbits... what are your thoughts with doing this? I'd have to do the math to see how many minutes I'd have to overwrite to cover the difference in BMR numbers. I'd rather not change the height setting since it is an HR-based unit. I have the Charge 3.

  • fuzzylop_
    fuzzylop_ Posts: 100 Member
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    Instead of putting a ton of faith in calorie burn estimates from fitness bands, I personally prefer to just track it based on average weight relative to calories consumed using something like 3suns adaptive tdee calculator (see https://www.reddit.com/r/Fitness/comments/4mhvpn/adaptive_tdee_tracking_spreadsheet_v3_rescue/). I think fitness products are generally close enough, though, although the longer you diet, the lower your neat goes so how much you burned acutely during exercise doesn't really tell you the full story.

    Admittedly, tdee is not the typical way mfp is set up to work.
  • bobshuckleberry
    bobshuckleberry Posts: 281 Member
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    I have had expensive and cheap ones. One was 23.00 on ebay and worked just as well and almost as long as the one I got from Samsung. In fact the cheap one had pulse and bp, the expensive one did not. Anyway if you are looking for medical equipment type accuracy you are not going to get it. If you are looking to make sure you moved enough during the day and have easy access to information on your phone without picking the phone up (i.e.: in a meeting and don't want to look like you are playing with your phone, get one. Also it is nice to be able to know the time without always having aphone in your hand.
  • heybales
    heybales Posts: 18,842 Member
    edited April 2019
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    jessiedawn8400 wrote: »
    @heybales I was considering overriding some of the calories from the middle of the night while I'm sleeping with an exercise entry of 1 calorie so the Fitbit would show less calories for the day and I wouldn't have to remember to mentally deduct it when reviewing all the numbers. You seem to know a lot about Fitbits... what are your thoughts with doing this? I'd have to do the math to see how many minutes I'd have to overwrite to cover the difference in BMR numbers. I'd rather not change the height setting since it is an HR-based unit. I have the Charge 3.

    Excellent method, sadly the really nice way of like creating all the workouts on say Sun for the entire week should not work (you could test).
    Since Fitbit is a replace-only method, if you entered one the night before, then the data from a sync the next morning should replace it.

    But easy enough test, you know what the wake up values are normally.
    Tonight just create that workout for 1am to whatever with 1 calorie, and see if the morning is down by that much.

    200 cal adj / (BMR/1440) = min to use in your workout, probably approaching 3 hrs.

    Since I don't think that will work, just have to have that workout created in the morning upon wakeup.
    At least it's an easy one.

  • jessiedawn8400
    jessiedawn8400 Posts: 37 Member
    edited April 2019
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    Good call on the 3 hours ... Comes out to about 175 minutes. I think just doing it in the morning will be best for me. I always open the app to get my lunch ready for the day.

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