*note to self* stop trying to come up with titles for my posts.*
From now on, I’ll have a new category on the blog for reviews on different things I come up with. I’ve been thinking about this for a long time now, but well.. life gets in the way — the up side to this is that I already have a few products that I own and want to review! yay! So let’s get on with this!
In a previous post I mentioned a little device that I promptly now call my new best friend, the Fitbit One.
This tiny thing is, in short, a very awesome pedometer. But it doesn’t just count your steps, no sir. It can tell you how sedentary or active you are throughout the day, keeping you in check with your fitness performance. It records and analyzes that information giving you real time feedback, so you can act on it immediately and try to make changes if you want/need. Sometimes people need a little push to be more active and remind them that they need to get a move on to achieve a certain level of fitness, and that’s where Fitbit comes in handy.
It comes with a silicone clip on that enables you to wear it on your waist, your pocket or your bra, and it’s very discrete, people don’t even notice you’re wearing it. At night, you can put it in a wristband to wear it comfortably during the night, while you sleep. Yes, it can also track how restful was your sleep.
What does it do?
Fitbit tracks steps taken, calories burned, distance traveled, hours slept, quality of sleep and stairs climbed. I’ve been wearing it for a week now and I can honestly say that it definitely keeps me motivated to achieve certain personal fitness goals. The device syncs wirelessly with your iPhone through bluetooth and whenever it’s close to your computer (when you have the usb thingie plugged in) and both the apps and the web based dashboard are brilliantly designed to give you the most information in an easy and pleasant way. It also works together with different other apps for, let’s say, track what you eat and how much you eat like Fitnesspal, and how much you run with Runtastic, but the beauty of it all is that it is able to do all of that in one single app (Fitbit app)! And the syncing is effortless.
Another very awesome feature is its sleep tracker. When you put the device in the provided wristband and you hit the app to start tracking your sleep, it can tell you how restful your sleep actually was, letting you know how many times you moved around or actually woke up. The most brilliant thing: a silent alarm. You can schedule to wake up at a certain hour and the Fitbit One will vibrate you quietly awake — it works like a charm.
I couldn’t be happier about the battery life. It takes about a week to completely discharge, and only two hours plugged to your computer to charge back to life. It’s brilliant.
The Fitbit One operates with a single button control that you press to get data on the different things it tracks. It also shows you a flower that grows the more active you are at the moment. I could easily live without this one. It does give you a sense of accomplishment to see the flower big when you check the device, but I find everything else much more important.
There’s a lot of word out there about its accuracy and the way it works. The Fitbit One has a three-dimensional accelerometer and altimeter that senses movement and measures your motion, like a Wii controller, making the counting of steps and the travelled distance an easy task to record. The stairs climbed are related with the altimeter, which means it will count a floor of steps if your elevation gain was roughly 3 meters (~10 feet).
The tracker is water resistant but not water proof, so you cannot wear it while swimming or showering (like you can with the new Fitbit Flex wristband), and it is also a little troubling to track your activity while cycling. Mainly because it counts steps and not your real overall movement. But that’s why the integration with other apps is great! You can use Runtastic to track your cycling and sync later with the Fitbit app or the Fitbit dashboard and the steps counted will be discarded and counted as a cycling activity.
You can also edit all of your goals. If you have a steps’ goal to achieve in a predetermined time frame, then you can edit that and that will be the number of steps you’ll need to walk. You can also use this, as pretty much everybody else in the community, to track your weight and achieve your weight loss goals. I am not trying to lose weight, so I can’t exactly tell you if it works or not in that department (and also I’ve only been wearing this for a week), but for me true weight loss (I’m thinking of people trying to lose more than just a couple of pounds) has to come with a different set of devices (like a whole gym) and a proper meal and nutrition plan. I do not have any doubts that the Fitbit One can help! It certainly can keep you more motivated to be more active, but I don’t think you can solely rely on that.
What are the downsides?
The only disadvantages (if I really have to think of some!) is the size of everything. The usb cable is very tiny and easy to misplace and also the USB receptor is even tinier, making me have it plugged to the computer all the time, just so I won’t lose it. It also would be nice to have a GPS system in there, just so it could sync with the app and show me exactly where I was. Also you need to remember to put it on you, of course! This is probably the main disadvantage. Because it’s so discrete even you forget you’re wearing it and you can also forget to put it on.
Verdict?
Bottom line, I went from various fitness tracking apps to just 3 that I know will most accurately record all my data and display it in a comprehensive and motivating way either on my computer or my phone (which I’m basically attached to). Also the sleep tracker is one of the gems I like more. I always wanted to track my sleep and had tried different iPhone apps, but this one is certainly the best — and I found out I’m sleeping an average of 5 hours per night, no wonder I get tired easily!
I have often looked into the Nike+ Fuelband, but the idea of having to wear a big bulky bracelet all the time makes me flinch, so this is a great option! If, at the end of the day I didn’t walk the distance I should have, then I just take Akira out on a walk trying to achieve that goal.
I have never tried a different activity tracker but there are other popular choices, like the Jawbone band and the Nike+ Fuelband.
Fitbit One is lightweight, beautifully designed, with a nice OLED display, the clip on is sturdy and won’t come off easily, and it’s discrete. And the sleep tracker is definitely a winner for me.
So far I’m really enjoying the experience of knowing how active I’ve been throughout the day and know how well badly I sleep, it’s been giving me new insights about myself, definitely. Will it make me run a marathon in a week? No. Will it make me stop lazying around on a weekend? Definitely not. But it will surely make me move a lot more and get happy about it.
You can buy Fitbit One through the official website or through Amazon.
Hope you enjoyed my first product review and have a nice day!
Leave a Reply