Fitbit steps question

My Fitbit HR, Charge 2, and Charge 3 have regularly counted SOME hand waving and keyboard typing, and car driving steps and under-counted some shopping cart pushing and very fast walking and very soft walking or less than 12-15 steps at a time in the house walking steps.

And in spite of all these errors, consistently time and again, over months and over years Fitbit TDEE estimates and my results have been within a few percentage points. Let's just say that restaurant food logging is way more variable than Fitbit activity logging, at least for me.

Are the extra steps your HR counts really affecting anything? Is your Fitbit providing a closer indication of your general activity level than your selection of one of the four activity levels MFP offers as a choice?

(you can always login to your fitbit page and enter a car riding activity at BMR calories. however I note that car driving and riding are NOT actually 1.0x BMR activities. The compendium of physical activities lists them at >1.3 MET going from memory. So is the occasional step really introducing an error? )

Pickcupcakes wrote: »

It's giving me about 1000 extra steps for a half hour car ride. I do a fair bit of driving so it soon adds up. For e everything else it seems pretty accurate. If I'm sitting and wave my arm around it doesn't count that as steps.

You can create an Activity Record for that chunk of time.
Use your 24 hr graph to get start and end times for a drive.

Now look at the activity details.
You know the steps it sounds like.
How many miles?
How many calories?

Be aware that calorie count is total during the chunk of time - it includes BMR, perhaps approaching 100 per hr for you.
How many extra calories was really extra now?
For what period of time?

I know this isn't what you asked but as someone who has used Fitbit for many years and had a Charge 4, I want to issue caution against it. I actually preordered it back in April and noticed within a week of receiving it, there was a rather noticeable gap between the Fitbit pebble and the band. Since it was simply cosmetic, I didn't care and kept using it. Once in a while debris would get caught in the gaps but I always kept it clean.

After 2.5 months, while jogging, it randomly flew off my wrist; not only did the band break off the pebble but it took the plastic connector with it. I had to send it back to get a replacement and that took a month. I just got it back a few weeks ago and, within a day, the gap issue occurred again. It's a known issue all over their forums; pages upon pages of people returning it due to the issue.

I actually took advantage of their recent Back to School sale and "downgraded" back to an Inspire HR which is what I had before but I gave it away when I got the Charge 4. It's an upgrade in my opinion, as many of the Charge 4's advertised features weren't ready on launch and the built-in GPS has several issues.

If you only care about steps and HR, I'd go with an Inspire HR or the Charge 3. The Charge 4 isn't worth the price point and I say this as someone who has always been a Fitbit fan and have praised their devices on this forum.

I have had Fitbits for year (my current one is a Versa Lite) and I can honestly say I never noticed extra steps for car rides.

I had this with an old garmin tracker. I used to take it off for driving, not ideal.

My fitbit definitely counts hand waving and some movement it shouldn't, but overall I have been able to rely on the data and use it to make my goals and lose weight. I do not drive, though (and am almost never in a car).