Fitbits and alternatives - any ideas?

[zico]

I've never had a Fitbit before, but considering buying one. I presume there are quite a few alternatives about, so just wondered whether there are better value for money things around.

I'd mainly want one for checking my heartrate, but it would probably also be useful to have a feature to track my walking speed, distance and routes, because I do quite a lot of country walks.

[scrumpyjack]

I've never had a Fitbit before, but considering buying one. I presume there are quite a few alternatives about, so just wondered whether there are better value for money things around.

I'd mainly want one for checking my heartrate, but it would probably also be useful to have a feature to track my walking speed, distance and routes, because I do quite a lot of country walks.

I got a Fitbit, having previously had a Huawei one. I needed it for heartrate monitoring whilst exercising, having had coronary problems. Both were woefully inaccurate compared to the chest heart rate monitors, which are apparently far far more accurate.

[ReformedCharacter]

I've never had a Fitbit before, but considering buying one. I presume there are quite a few alternatives about, so just wondered whether there are better value for money things around.

I'd mainly want one for checking my heartrate, but it would probably also be useful to have a feature to track my walking speed, distance and routes, because I do quite a lot of country walks.

OH uses one of these:

https://store.kardia.com/products/kardiamobile

She rates it highly, as does her GP. It's not wearable but I imagine you can prpbably get a separate walking speed, distance and routes app for a phone.

OH also has a Fitbit, as Scrumpyjack says, they're not accurate.

RC

[AF62]

I'd mainly want one for checking my heartrate, but it would probably also be useful to have a feature to track my walking speed, distance and routes, because I do quite a lot of country walks.

If you use an iPhone, than an Apple Watch does all of this (and a lot more besides).

[Infrasonic]

Google bought out Fitbit a while back so I'd imagine there will be a lot more integration (Google Fit et al) between the two going forward. I'm hanging on for a bit...

[scotview]

I have a heart condition and have had about 4 low cost fitness tracker watches. Each iteration seems to get better. My latest one is an AUPALLA, bought from Amazon

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B08 ... =UTF8&th=1

Mods, please delete the link if not allowed but I think it appropriate to the discussion.

Monitors;
Heart rate (with Heart rate alarm, currently set at 80 BPM for me). More accurate than previous versions.
Blood Pressure, fairly accurate against my Omron cuff BP device.
ECG chart trend which I have not used but looks good.
Also, between the hours of midnight and 7 am it tracks:
Blood oxygen
HEV Heart Rate Variability.
Sleep Apnia.
Lorentz scatter chart tracking.

All on a nice app for Android or Apple.

Additionally it will track daily steps and you can record walks via an app function with GPS track recording on Google maps.

All data is saved weekly, Daily, Monthly on the cloud.

Astonishing, I paid £59.99.

The downside is that it needs recharging after 2 days but it can be shut down when not needed.

Technology eh ?

[servodude]

I'd mainly want one for checking my heartrate, but it would probably also be useful to have a feature to track my walking speed, distance and routes, because I do quite a lot of country walks.

If you use an iPhone, than an Apple Watch does all of this (and a lot more besides).

It's one of the few of the market that went through medical approvals so if the results really matter to you it's a good option.
If you only want to dip your toe in, so to speak, I was impressed by the results given by the Xiaomi Mi Band 6 for a fraction of the price (though the app is a bit clunky - and Xiaomi)
- it takes a bit more thought when putting it on than the Apple watch (the back of which is well milled to position the sensors) but the results that you can get from it can be surprisingly accurate

-sd

[scotview]

Just to note that I am not recommending the above AUPALLA device and I cannot vouch for it's accuracy but it provides adequate data for my personal requirements.

[servodude]

Just to note that I am not recommending the above AUPALLA device and I cannot vouch for it's accuracy but it provides adequate data for my personal requirements.

I'm intrigued by its chest mount - it says they are electrodes (rather than just reusing the LED light sensors) but I've learned to take stuff read on Amazon with a big pinch of salt
- if so that's "quite interesting"

Have you tried it this way? are you able to tell if it is measuring through the pads it has or if they're just for sticking it to you (so to speak)

- sd

[scotview]

It did come with a chest strap and adaptors for the watch body but I haven't used it because it would be uncomfortable for sleeping with it attached.

It is supposed to provide more accurate cardio data by taking measurement from the chest rather than the wrist but I looks like it still uses the green LED light.

For night time monitoring and cardiogram the wrist strap method still seems to give surprisingly good results but I haven't tested the belt method.

Hope this helps.

[servodude]

It did come with a chest strap and adaptors for the watch body but I haven't used it because it would be uncomfortable for sleeping with it attached.

It is supposed to provide more accurate cardio data by taking measurement from the chest rather than the wrist but I looks like it still uses the green LED light.

For night time monitoring and cardiogram the wrist strap method still seems to give surprisingly good results but I haven't tested the belt method.

Hope this helps.

Yes thanks - that's what I suspected
- sd

[scotview]

I've just had another look. On the side of the strap nearest the skin there are what looks like two round electrode circles.

On each watch adaptor there are copper "tongues". On the watch body there are two stainless oblong pads. It looks like these copper "tongues" make contact with the stainless oblongs. So it maybe it is recording like a true ECG. I'll have a closer look tomorrow.....need to get to sleep now !

You could always text the supplier, apparently their customer service is very good.

[Clariman]

I'm a great fan of Withings products. I particularly like the fact that their fitness watches look like watches! They also do scales, sleep products, blood pressure and ECG equipment.

[Hallucigenia]

I've never had a Fitbit before, but considering buying one. I presume there are quite a few alternatives about, so just wondered whether there are better value for money things around.

I'd mainly want one for checking my heartrate, but it would probably also be useful to have a feature to track my walking speed, distance and routes, because I do quite a lot of country walks.

Heartrate is a basic feature of this kind of thing, ditto an accelerometer that allows it to detect and count steps, and have a guess and distance. But GPS is standard in the step up from absolute basic level, which obviously gives you much better estimates of distance and speed, plus tracking where you've been. But bear in mind that GPS eats battery, so it's not the default mode, you have to remember to set it.

So if that's all you want, you don't need anything very complicated. OTOH, it might be worth a look at the feature list of the really high-end smart watches, to see if there's a feature you didn't know you wanted. A lot of the high-end stuff is more to do with integration with your phone than pure health stuff, but there's all sorts of clever things they can do it you're prepared to part with the £££.

I was given a Garmin Forerunner 35 which is a fairly typical not-many-frills-but-does-have-some-smartphone-integration - it gets texts and other notifications from my phone etc. It's fine, especially if you're just walk/run/cycling, but it doesn't cope particularly well with eg rowing, either in software or just the inherent problem of using a watch to record heartrate when your wrist is doing a rowing motion - it's way too hit and miss so I always use a chest strap when rowing. But for normal walk/run/cycling the heart detection seems pretty good in general. The sleep detection is a bit ropey, but AIUI that's pretty common. One thing that its successor the 45 has that the 35 doesn't is access to an app store, which is handy for "obscure" sports like rowing that aren't particularly well served by the main Garmin software. It sounds like that's probably not an issue for you, but it's worth mentioning.

The software also matters, depending on what use you want to put it to - the Garmin software isn't bad, and as a major brand it is fairly good at talking to other software like Strava etc. I suspect software may be a weak point of the Chinese clones, or they may just hand everything over to Strava.

JFTR, I saw a review the other day of the new £250 Samsung watch which said something along the lines of "get it if you have a Samsung phone that can take advantage of all the Samsung-specific features, otherwise you might as well get the (£100 Huawei)" - can't remember the exact model but I guess it must have been the GT2 - implying that would be the reviewer's default choice if they were spending that kind of money.

[Bminusrob]

As a runner, I have had a number of Garmin Forerunner devices, starting off with a second hand one, and graduating through a Forerunner 35 to my current Forerunner 235. The first one died after four or five years of service, and it was second hand to start with. The 35 is still in a drawer somewhere, and the 235 is attached to my wrist right now. I am very please with my current watch. It is smart enough to use as an everyday watch, as well as being used when I am out running.

I find the wrist based heart rate monitor on the 235 extremely accurate. Both the 35 and 235 can work with a chest based heart monitor, and since I had one of these with my original watch, I have tried it out on the newer watches, and it matches the wrist based monitor very accurately.

However, my understanding is that the wrist based heart monitors are quite sensitive to skin colour, so if you have pink skin, like me, they work well, but if you have olive coloured skin, they work less well. At least with the Garmin devices, you have the option of using a chest based monitor some of the time if you think it will give you more accurate results.

[bungeejumper]

Interesting. I've just ordered a Xiaomi Band 6 (https://www.techadvisor.com/review/xiao ... 6-3807999/), which cost me a paltry £25 and seems to score pretty well in reviews, apart from its step counter which is probably about 5% over-optimistic. But then, the reason why all non-GPS wrist bands tend to get walking distances wrong is that their step counts measure your arm movements, not your legs! I'm going to be looking out for GPS pairing through a mobile phone app, although TBH even that seems a bit keen and nerdy to me.

I don't think any of the wrist-type oxygen sensors are as reliable as a proper stick-it-on-your-finger oxymeter, but it does that as well. I'd expect pulse and probably blood pressure to be pretty good, though. And the sleep monitor will satisfy my idle curiosity, if nothing else.

Flipping heck, 30 fitness modes? Including volleyball, boxing and, errrm, yoga? All I really need is rowing machine and walking. Oh, and stair climbing. I probably climb thirty flights a day.

All in all, I'm not all that bothered about precision - the idea is surely to gather some comparative data that can tell you whether you're doing more or less than last week/month?

BJ

[servodude]

Interesting. I've just ordered a Xiaomi Band 6 (https://www.techadvisor.com/review/xiao ... 6-3807999/), which cost me a paltry £25 and seems to score pretty well in reviews, apart from its step counter which is probably about 5% over-optimistic. But then, the reason why all non-GPS wrist bands tend to get walking distances wrong is that their step counts measure your arm movements, not your legs! I'm going to be looking out for GPS pairing through a mobile phone app, although TBH even that seems a bit keen and nerdy to me.

I don't think any of the wrist-type oxygen sensors are as reliable as a proper stick-it-on-your-finger oxymeter, but it does that as well. I'd expect pulse and probably blood pressure to be pretty good, though. And the sleep monitor will satisfy my idle curiosity, if nothing else.

Flipping heck, 30 fitness modes? Including volleyball, boxing and, errrm, yoga? All I really need is rowing machine and walking. Oh, and stair climbing. I probably climb thirty flights a day.

All in all, I'm not all that bothered about precision - the idea is surely to gather some comparative data that can tell you whether you're doing more or less than last week/month?

BJ

The don't do blood pressure; but they are a surprising amount of tech for the money
- sd

[AF62]

Interesting. I've just ordered a Xiaomi Band 6 (https://www.techadvisor.com/review/xiao ... 6-3807999/), which cost me a paltry £25…

I don't think any of the wrist-type oxygen sensors are as reliable as a proper stick-it-on-your-finger oxymeter, but it does that as well.

Apparently the Apple Watch 6 (and now 7) oxygen sensor is pretty good - https://tidbits.com/2020/10/22/the-para ... -series-6/ but then one does costs £399 (and upwards) rather than £25.

[dionaeamuscipula]

If you have health insurance some providers (Vitality for example) allow you to earn some or all of the cost of a smart watch by exercising regularly. The smart watch comes first and the exercise second, and if you don't hit the exercise milestones you pay more.

I used to have a Fitbit but the pairing with my phone was so hit and miss I ditched it for a Samsung Galaxy watch which pairs at close to 100% consistency.

DM

[Hallucigenia]

However, my understanding is that the wrist based heart monitors are quite sensitive to skin colour, so if you have pink skin, like me, they work well, but if you have olive coloured skin, they work less well.

I suspect they're starting to sort this as it's become a bit of an issue with professional oxymeters. They were over-stating oxygen levels for people with dark skins, which was suggested to be one reason why non-whites had worse outcomes with Covid-19.

At least with the Garmin devices, you have the option of using a chest based monitor some of the time if you think it will give you more accurate results.

Just as an aside, if you're getting a chest strap and go to gyms it's probably worth getting one that supports both Bluetooth and ANT+, which is an older standard designed for gym equipment. Increasingly modern kit supports either Bluetooth or both, but it's kinda annoying if you find yourself on a bit of equipment that only supports one and your strap is the other kind, and the cost difference of going dual-mode is marginal.