I’ve been using my Fitbit for about half a month now. I’ve been pretty good at using it constantly, just taking it off to shower (it’s supposedly waterproof, but there is a tiny hole for the altimeter which can possibly let water in if the water pressure is too high). Here are some of my observations:

• The step tracking is not accurate at all. I even changed to setting so that it’s on my “dominant” hand even though I’m wearing it on my non-dominant hand. It records steps even though I am just working at my desk. The Fitbit marketing material even says that it’s not the actual number that counts, but the trend. I think this is why some competitors (like Nike) don’t show the actual steps.
• The initial 10,000 step per day goal is really tough. I can only make it on the weekends when I walk around a mall for a few hours or have to run a lot of errands
• The floor climbing seems to be pretty accurate, assuming you know two things: 1) It tracks entire flights and not individual stairs), and 2) It only tracks flights that you climb (not decline).
• Living in a house, the initial 10 flight goal is way too easy. I increased it to 25 flights, and I can still surpass the goal on most days
• The sleep tracker is pretty neat. Initially, I thought it was pretty accurate, but I’m not entirely sure that it is true. For example, when I’m trying to sleep, I don’t move my hand around so I’m not sure how it still knows that I’m restless/awake.
• I think the sleep tracker and the stats that come out of that (how long you sleep on average, how many times you wake up etc) are the most interesting data that I get out of the Fitbit

For the most part, the Force is still interesting to use. I’m not sure whether I’ll continue to, or remember to, turn on/off the sleep tracker every night after awhile though.

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: fitbit, quantifiedself