Fitness trackers - Are they accurate

mikeysthoughts

Hi all

My OH wants a fitness and sleep tracker, but as a new consumer in this market I'm sceptical about their capabilities.

What works, and what evidence is there to support the claims beyond just user reviews and marketing hogwash?

What sort of budget starts to buy something that actually works rather than a well marketed piece of drosswear?

Thanks .

Wardy257

They all vary in accuracy and can be accurate(ish) in one area and terrible in others. You can use them to gather trends, if you increase your step count you have most likely taken more steps. You just might have done 15890 steps for example.

sim12

I find that the step counters can be out by as much as 10% daily, I.e you could a 6 mile walk and clock up 10000 steps and yet if you run 6 miles it will only rack up 8000 steps.

But if you are new exercise they are great way to motivate a person to move more, and the more you move the more calories burnt and so on.

raymondo77

I've used a Fitbit Charge (first HR, then 2) for the past three years, they're very good and go up to 4 days on a single charge.   

Seem reasonably accurate for sleep analysis and steps, although the latter is easy to cheat; some digging up at the allotment can see me quickly rack up steps I haven't taken.

Moreover for general fitness awareness having a heart rate monitor on the wrist is really useful, at a glance I can see how the exercise I'm doing affects my overall fitness as my "resting heat rate" starts to lower. Testing the wrist based monitor against an in-ear (on my earphones) I can see the fitbit can be as much as 20bpm out but is on the whole within that. I think there's a limit to the accuracy with wrist-based heart rate monitors due to the way they work (although I'm no expert so could be wrong).

As mentioned above they are great for motivation. If you know other people with a Fitbit you can add them to your "friends" list and challenge each other, see who is doing better/worse and give each other encouragement. I imagine it's the same with other brands too.

I haven't tried the new model, but it looks pretty good and if I hadn't foolishly switched to an Apple Watch I'd most likely be buying one of them.

Shop for Fitbit Charge 3 Advanced Health and Fitness Tracker

mikeysthoughts

Thanks for the input all. I picked up a fitbit Alta HR on Sunday and she seems pleased with it. The heart rate monitoring and step monitoring both seem to be within 10% or so, going by manual counts.

The sleep monitoring is quite interesting too... It detects a spike in her heart rate (thus: lighter sleep) when I get up to go for a piddle in the night after a beer or two. Now I need a tracker that proves once and for all that I do the bulk of the housework!

sebastianshaw

What about Fitbit Charge 2 vs Charge 3? What do you think about that comparison - is it worth to upgrade it to Charge 3?