Ah, the Fitbit. I'm not exactly sure when this craze started, but it finally hit my household just before Thanksgiving of 2015. The husband decided he needed a way to track his real calorie burn rate and beyond just his time spent on a treadmill or elliptical machine during workouts. He has a pretty physical job and knew that he burned quite a bit of calories during the work week.
Of course the first thing he had to do was figure out just which Fitbit he was going to be purchasing. Lucky for us Fitbit actually has a comparison chart so you can find the right tracker for you. Now, if you are serious about your tracking and want it to be super accurate you are going to want to jump right to the Charge HR, Surge or the New Blaze for your perfect fit. The other models do not track your heart rate so your burned calorie stat will be more of an estimate based on averages. Your heart rate is the most accurate way to see what your calorie burn is during a workout; that is why a lot of machines have heart rate monitors either in the handles or in a more accurate chest strap that you wear during your run.
If you look at the Charge and the Flex models you will notice that the Charge is about $30 more (The Flex is listed at the website aas $99.95 and the Charge at $129.95). What do you get for that price difference? Both supply you with a step count, distance traveled and an estimated calorie burn based on those steps taken. They both offer a sleep tracker, silent alarm, and both keep track of your active minutes. The Charge offers a clock and tells you how many floors you climbed and caller ID (when paired with a compatible phone).
Now to me, that extra $30 isn't really worth it because my phone will tell me the time and has caller ID and I don't really care that much about floors climbed. (Disclaimer: I am a stay at home mom and I live in a single story home, so I don't really need to keep track of that sort of thing)
Now when you jump up to the Charge HR, which is listed at $149.95 you do see quite a difference in features offered. It comes with all the things the Flex does and the Charge and has a couple features the others don't, like it Automatically recognizes when you are exercising. How does that work? You set up a time frame-say 15 minutes-where if your heart rate is up at a certain level it will detect that you are working out instead of just doing your normal day to day thing. The kicker for the Charge HR is that it monitors your heart rate all day long. That comes in handy because if you are walking all day, say around a hospital, construction site or restaurant, you burn more calories that the average person just trolling around at a leisurely pace. I may take as many steps in a day as someone else, but their heart rate may be elevated and therefore they will burn more calories. When you are trying to maintain a certain diet and calorie intake to burn ratio, this can be really helpful since you won't be guessing based on averages, you'll be using real data based on your heart rate on any given day. you can also compare the Charge HR to the Surge (at the time we purchased our Fitbit, the Blaze was not available for pre-order and therefore not a contender).The surge is listed at $249.95 and at $100 more, while it does offer more features than the CHarge HR, it was more than the husband needed. Features the Surge has includes a multi-sport function, text notifications, music control and GPS tracking. IT wasn't worth it to us to have those features since he never runs outside, doesn't usually listen to music during the day and has a stereo system for his work out room. Now, if the Surge were waterproof and could be used in swimming pools we would have been willing to pay the extra money since the Charge HR is merely splash resistant and should not be used while swimming or showering. But since none of the Fitbit products are suitable for swimming, we opted for the Charge HR.
THe Charge HR is great. It fits comfortably, and is simple to use. It helps my husband keep track of his steps and calories burnt which helps him plan out his meals for the day. He can really see in his charts (found on his fitbit dashboard) that show him his heart rate and when it hits the fat burning zone and then goes into the cardiovascular zone. He can accurately track how many calories he eats and compare them to what he burns, thus allowing him to stay on track in his fitness goals.
How accurate is the heart rate monitor? Pretty accurate actually. At first he was frustrated when it did not match up to his heart rate monitor strap he wore during work outs, but then he realized the placement was incorrect and the Fitbit needed to be moved to more accurately read his heart rate. Once he did that it charted his heart rate with the same accuracy as his chest strap. (Note: you may notice a difference on the screen of your fitbit, but rest assured that once you look at your dashboard you will see the more accurate numbers in your chart. This is because the number on the screen does not change as quickly as the Fitbit reads your heart rate.)
Another big selling point to me was the fantastic customer service. At one point the Charge HR stopped reading my husbands heart rate. We turned to the community boards and the users manual to troubleshoot, even resetting it and nothing worked. It even stopped tracking sleep. Everything else worked fine and it linked up fine with our devices. I got a hold of customer service and explained what we had already done and what was and wasn't working. You know what they did? After finding out that we purchased it in November of 2015 and at the local Target, the service rep asked for our shipping info to send a replacement FREE OF CHARGE. That's right. The tracker stopped working properly and they are sending us a new one. And the cool thing is we don't have to go through the hassle of sending the old one in. He just asked that we recycle it properly at a facility that will do it right. The husband s replacement is due later this week and I will update the post after he uses it for a few days. But at this point, the company gets high marks for their prompt and awesome service.
I highly recommend their products and am considering getting one myself to see how many calories I burn on a given day running around after my troop of kids. At this moment I am wearing the broken one since it still tracks steps and estimates the amount of calories burned. I may end up with a cheaper Flex but I am highly interested in knowing how my heart rate changes throughout the day (like when I just sit down after a long day and one of the kids comes out asking for yet another glass of water.)
So head over to their website to compare trackers and shop around for the best price. The trackers are available at varying prices at Target, Walmart, Best Buy and Amazon.com. In fact, right now Amazon has it for a good price. I just typed in Fitbit Charge HR and saw this good deal on a size large Be sure to check out the other models on Amazon to see if you can get good deals on those to. A wonderful benefit to Amazon (if you have Prime) is that your Fitbit can be on your wrist and tracking calories in a few days with free two-day shipping!
*There is a price difference between the black size large and small.*
No comments:
Post a Comment