Fitbit Charge HR Review

Hello :)

Today we bring to you a little review of Fitbit HR, we haven't had the chance to try it out ourselves, but we had an interview with a proud owner of this product and she was kind enough to allow us to write about her experience in our blog, since we do talk about health and fitness related topics quite often, so here we go.

Here's also a little introduction to the product from their homepage: With Fitbit Charge HR™ you can track your heart rate, steps taken, distance traveled, floors climbed, active minutes, exercise, calories burned, and how long and how well you sleep. In addition to tracking your stats, Fitbit Charge HR also features a clock and silent alarm. 

Question: Why did you buy this product, what motivated you to buy it?

Answer: I had been admiring different activity monitors. I read a variety of reviews and I liked the idea that something tracks how much I move around during the day and how active I am. Since I have a rather sedentary job during the summer, then there isn't a lot of time to be active. I'm not the type of person that wakes up early to go for a jog or run and when I get home from work, then I find it difficult to find motivation to not just lay in bed. So all in all I just wanted to track how active I am and motivate myself to be more active.

Q: Are you satisified with the product?

A: This far I'm happy with the product. In addition to the activity monitor, I use the Fitbit app, which it is connected to. I also connected the apps MyFitnessPal and Endomodo, to get an even more accurate result. MyFitnessPal is a great app to track nutritional information and Endomodo can be used to track activities such as cycling, that the Fitbit activity monitor isn't capable of tracking.

Q: What are the cons/downsides of this product?

A: There are indeed some downsides, as I previously said, the monitor can not track cycling, it is mainly used to track walking, hiking and running. There are types of activity monitors can also track different aerobics exercises etc, but those come at a much higher price range. Luckily thanks to the heartrate monitor, it is still possible to track the lenght of the time, during which the body is in a fat burning zone. The other downside is that there isn't a particular Fitbit app, at least in my phone, it's not possible to scan the bar codes, to keep track of the foods I'm consuming. It will not focus. That's on of the reasons I synced it to MyFitnessPal, which has a huge food database.

Q: What about the pros/good sides of this product?

A: The functuality of the product is amazing. I count my steps, resting heart rate, distance I've walked, how many stairs I've climbed and how many calories I've burned daily. I also like the sleep tracking mechanism. Every night, unless the fitbit is charging, it is on my wrist and tracks the quality of my sleep: how long I sleep, how many times I wake up or am restless during my sleep. In general my goal is to sleep for 7 or 8 hours and I manage that.

I also use the built in alarm. I set my alarm in the app and in the morning it starts to vibrate on my wrist. For someone who is more of a heavy sleeper, it might not be enough, but I don't find it difficult to wake up to that.

It is interesting to point out that my resting heart rate went up quite a lot during my first week of work, which most likely points out, that I have more stress and am still getting used to the new enviorment.

Q: Have your habbits or lifestyle changed since buying it?

A: I don't have any precice numbers to copare to, but I can say that my habbits have changed. Already on the first day that I got my Fitbit, which was around five in the evening, I reached 10 000 steps.

Since it is constantly around my wrist, then every time I ceheck the time, I also check the steps I've taken and depending on that I see how long of a walk I go for in the evening. I've had Fitbit for 11 days now and out of all of them there have been only two days during which I didn't reach 10 000 steps. One day it was 7500 and on the other one I was only short of 20 steps. On the other hand, there have been days that I've made over 20 000 steps.

I am also now the one that encourages to go for a walk, even if it's rainy or the weather isn't the best. These walks have given me the chance to get to know my neighbourhood better and yesterday I even saw a hedgehog looking for worms. Once I did manage to get lost, but eventually I did find my way home and got an extra long walk out of it.

Q: Are you happy with the price and quality ratio?

A: Before I bought it I had my list of things I wanted the activity monitor to have and Fitbit Charge HR suited my requirements the best. I didn't need the most accurate heart rate monitor or touch screen. I needed something that would track my acticity levels and would motivate me to be more active. I quote a very good review, which I will link HERE: “No heart-rate band costs this little, feels this small, and connects to as good an app. Fitbit folds nutrition-tracking, sleep-tracking, heart rate-tracking, and social challenges with friends into one pretty clean phone experience -- and syncing is fast and easy.

The Charge HR fits well and has impressive battery life for its size: over four days, beating most continuous heart rate-tracking bands. And its little LED display-slash-clock is basic, but it's easy to lift your arm and see the time, or tap the display to see steps and other data.”

Q: And lastly, your favourite thing about this product?

A: All the good things I previously mentioned are my favourite things. However, one of the best feelings is when the Fitbit starts to vibrate when I reach my 10 000 steps of the day.

That's it for our little review and interview, hope it was interesting and helped those of you, who are thinking of buying it. I definitely think it's an interesting product and I love the idea behind it.

Kaiela :)