Last year I went on a girls’ trip to Washington, D.C. and we walked EVERYWHERE! One of my friends had a fitbit One (electronic fitness / health tracking gadget) which intrigued me, and I ordered one for myself before I even got back home. I’ve been using it for almost a year now and I love it.
As you can see, it is small, it clips onto your clothes (bra, waistband, etc) and Along with its dashboard tracks calories expended, distance walked, vertical steps climbed, sleep pattern, food (calories in), weight gain/loss. I found it to be a good tool to incent, remind, and update me on where I am versus where I want to be. It doesn’t work magic – when I don’t expend more calories than I take in, I gain weight. But my experience has been that if i use it that way I’m supposed to (i.e., keep the food tracker updated and actively try to achieve my daily targets, every day) I am a better fit-izen 🙂
My 2 cents on why I love my fitbit:
- Usability: It is easy to wear and forget about. I clip it onto my bra (sports or frilly) and it usually is undetectable. It is very easy to keep continually on my person 🙂 I’ve even forgotten about it and worn it through a TSA checkpoint at the airport several times – without getting stopped. I tried using the little wristband it comes with to wear the fitbit at night but gave up and now just clip it to what I’m wearing to bed. I don’t even know it’s there.
- Durability: It’s water-resistant. It’s definitely not bothered by lots of sweat. It is not advertised as being water proof. BUT it did go through the washing machine once and still works. My washer is a High-Efficiency one wrt how much water it uses – maybe that’s why my fitbit thankfully didn’t drown. But, you should have seen the number of steps I logged during the spin cycle overnight!
- Battery life: I have found that the battery lasts two weeks or more for me on a given charge. It warns you when it is low. And to charge it just requires using the short cord in the picture above – USB on one end, and attaching to the end of the fit bit with the adapter on the other end.
- Ease and flexibility of uploading data from the device: You can choose to sync the bits of data from the fitbit device to the dashboard for viewing by either (or both) of two methods. The fitbit One can talk to/sync with the fitbit Connect application (that runs on your laptop) via the smaller USB wireless sync dongle thingie in the picture above. And/or it can talk to/sync with the fitbit mobile app (that runs on your phone) via a bluetooth-enabled interface with your phone. I use both. I like that if i go on a trip where I don’t want to lug my laptop, I can still sync with my phone for the time I am gone and view the dashboard from there. Syncing is where things might get a little less intuitive, but there are lots of FAQs to explain the ins and outs of syncing.
- User interface: The web dashboard can be accessed via either a web browser on a laptop, or through their mobile app. Both are easy to use, customize, and display lots of info to glean.
- Customer service: I have found most of my questions are easily answered by info found in fitbit’s online help, or the fitbit community forums. I did have a problem recently where my wireless syncing dongle simply stopped working. I quickly found the phone number online – it’s posted on their twitter feed: (877) 623-4997. (I’m old fashioned – there are online methods to get support here). After less than 10 minutes on the phone with the support person I had an email in my inbox documenting that a replacement fitbit wireless sync dongle was on its way to me – free of charge. I was back in business a few days later.
- Value: for me, it’s worth it. I’ve worn it pretty much every day for almost a year. I’ve actively used it the way I should for probably 75% of that time. I fall off the wagon from time to time. I think I paid a little under $100 dollars for my fitbit One. But I struggle with my weight, and any tool that helps me stay on the path to fitness is worth it. And that’s what my fitbit One helps me do.
Oh, one more thing….I did misplace my fitbit once. I knew it couldn’t have gone far, though. I googled online for an app that communicates with bluetooth devices nearby… and it was able to pick up the signal from my fitbit One and eventually zero in on its location under the couch about 10 feet away. The free iphone app I used was called Bluetooth Smart Scanner, but there are others out there that should work as well.
Sheila365 