Over the past year, I've been tracking the world of fitness trackers and the rapid launch of new products in this space. Monitoring the steps taken, miles run or any other form of physical activity is growing in interest, not just for fitness enthusiasts but for anyone conscious about health. Even for those oblivious of this space, the 'coolness' factor of owning a new gadget could be tempting.
This has turned into an interesting space with high competition. There are smart watches looking to offer value-added features to tap this segment, while the new fitness tracker companies have been graduating up with smarter sensors and smart watch displays. Smart phones aren't laggards here, with many apps being launched to leverage the inbuilt capabilities of phones (GPS, sensors) to double them up as activity trackers. Almost every hardware maker has thrown their hat into the ring and entered this market.
I've been looking at trying out a fitness device and my broad asks were as follows:
- Should be a nimble device that could be worn most of the day
- Battery to last a couple of days, at the least
- Must track steps, distance, stairs claimbed and calories spent
- Provide a decent interface to review metrics and importantly, allow raw data export
- Some good-to-have features would be time display, GPS, sleep tracking and idle time alerts
This ruled out mobile phone apps, while a full-fledged smart watch looked like an overkill, atleast as a first device. Amongst fitness trackers, after checking out Fitbit, Jawbone, Misfit and Garmin, I settled on Fitbit which has an impressive lineup of products, seemed to have a relatively higher score on accuracy and flaunts an impressive dashboard.
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| Fitbit line-up of Trackers. Source: Amazon |
'Fitbit One' seemed to suit the needs by ticking off all the key asks, however this device had to be clipped on to clothing as opposed to being worn on the wrist, and this increased the risk of misplacing it. 'Flex' lacked an altimeter, while 'Surge' appeared too bulky to be worn through the day. I zeroed in on the Charge HR, which seemed to offer the right balance amongst all options.
Its been a week now since I got my Fitbit Charge HR and have been experimenting with it. Expect a review on this soon.
