Fitbit Charge HR Wireless Activity Wristband (Plum, Large)

I have to admit to reading a ton of reviews from various websites before pulling the trigger to purchase this device. Most of the reviews either slammed the step counter, the heart rate monitor, or both. But for me, it is all about what you really want to get out of the Charge HR. Before continuing with my review, allow me to state exactly what I have been doing since wearing it to better give you an understanding the "tests" it has gone under. Over the past week and a half, I have sat on my ass all day one day, worked in the yard for several hours on another day, been on a ton of walks, ran a 5k, did some wood working in my garage, and climbed a bunch of stairs getting to and from my 8-5 desk job. This device rests primarily on your wrist (comfortably, I might add), so naturally every time your wrist makes a motion, the Fitbit is going to count that motion as a step. If you want more accurate readings, you are welcome to keep it in your pocket. In fact, I recommend this when doing yard work or anything else that will have you using your hands much more than using your steps. But then again, you won't be able to take full advantage of the HR monitor if you do so. Speaking of the HR monitor, there is a lot of complaining about its inaccuracy. My experience over the last 10 days has been very good. The instructions tell you to wear the Charge HR loosely on your wrist. But, I have ignored that and instead wear it tight enough to not let any of the light escape from underneath yet loose enough to still be comfortable. I have found by wearing the Fitbit Charge HR in this manner, the HR readings have been quite accurate. I have not experienced crazy HR readings AT ALL. Nor has my heart rate been either extremely high number when being active or extremely low when I've been doing nothing as hard as I can. Compared to my Polaris chest strap, the HR readings are nearly identical, mostly only off by about 4 beats or so. Lastly, I do not tend to do high intensity workouts, unless you consider taking it to the heavy bag after work high intensity, so those people who have complained about inaccurate readings under those circumstances may be right. But, then again and as I said earlier, it is all about what you really want to get from buying this device. For me, it was something to help motivate me to be better and live a more active life. Ever since purchasing the Fitbit, I have become much more conscience about my effort in living an active lifestyle. And that was the largest reason I wanted to purchase this device. For example, my wife, dog and I tend to go for walks together most evenings after work. The Fitbit's default step goal is set at 10,000 steps. Sometimes, when my wife and pet are ready to conclude the walking session, I will tap the screen twice to show me how many steps I have taken for which the number will be close to but ultimately under the 10K step goal. Seeing this gives me the motivation to walk those extra couple of blocks until I reach my goal and my Fitbit starts vibrating and giving me a smiley face icon. Those extra few steps add up to a lot of extra steps over the course of a week, month, or even a year (now I have The Rembrandts song in my head...). I also must admit the first Charge HR I received kept resetting and/or turning off from day one. The product itself was definitely busted. After learning Amazon was not going to be able to replace it but rather offer a refund, I sought out the help from the Fitbit team directly. Their website says they will contact you in 2 days if you email them and like clockwork I received an email two days later. Fitbit was willing to replace the device free of charge. Thankfully, I checked Amazon again the day after emailing Fitbit and the option to get a replacement became available so I took advantage. My experience through this process was all I could ask: transparent and open communication to set the right expectations on behalf of me, the customer. Another great feature is the double tap display. The Charge HR can show you not only your number of steps and your HR, but also how many stairs you have climbed, the date and time, how many miles you have gone, when your next alarm is set, and number of calories your body has burned thus far in the day by pressing the button on the side of the band. Through your phone app or online, you can change the sequence in which these items are displayed as well as which of them you would like to have displayed when you double tap the band. For example, I usually have my Charge HR tell me how many steps I have taken when I double tap it. However, for my 5k run, I set the display to show my heart rate when I double tapped it. The app is extremely user friendly and very intuitive. The online portal is great, too, as it has various tiles that give you various information, including how many hours you have rested and of those hours how many times the Fitbit believes you were either 'restless' or 'awake.' All in all, I absolutely love my Charge HR. I love that it syncs with my Endomondo account which then syncs with MyFitnessPal. I love the user interface, the customization, the caller ID display when someone calls (if the inbound call is someone from your address book, their name will pop up in lieu of just a phone number), the comfort of the Fitbit itself, and the overall boost I get knowing when I hit my goals. As soon as the Plum one comes out, I'm getting one of these for my wife, too. CONS: The only con I have is that the strap does not appear to be interchangeable. This could be problematic if the band breaks. Since I have only had the Charge HR for under 2 weeks, I really cannot speak to its durability. My bet is the next generation will probably have an answer for this.

Full disclosure, I ordered the Fitbit Charge HR only after I gave up on Jawbone fulfilling my preorder for the Up3 and once I realized the Fitbit Surge was like having a VCR strapped to your wrist. Further complicating my decision was the reviews that were all over the place on Amazon. Either people loved it or they thought it was the biggest piece of crap ever. I am writing this review to try and offer a realistic perspective for those looking to buy the Fitbit Charge HR. First, disregard the reviews from all the "personal trainers" and "hardcore" gym goers out there. It's amazing how everyone becomes a trainer or gym rat when reviewing a piece of workout equipment. Wrist based heart rate monitoring is still in its infancy and if, and I stress if, you are so hardcore that a possible 5-10 beat variation is so critical then you need to stay with chest based HR monitoring for awhile. The Charge HR isn't for that. Not to mention, I haven't seen that it is off like others have said. I was skeptical and I have a Garmin Running GPS watch with a chest HR strap and I see the two being pretty consistent. Second, I cannot stress enough the quality of the Fitbit app and web based dashboard. They are motivational and intuitive and they give you goals to shoot for. I have yet to see any sync issues or any of the other nonsense I have seen in other reviews. Finally, $150 is a lot of money but it less than other comparable products out there. To me this is the perfect entry level device. If you like the concept and are disciplined, then you can upgrade to another device. if you are trying to get a snapshot of what you are doing on a daily basis and how you can make some life and fitness improvements, this device is a perfect way in. If you are a "personal trainer" or just "crushing it" beyond what the Charge can handle, you should probably do another set of burpees, stick with chest strap HR monitors and save your "insightful" reviews for Flex magazine. Bottom line; the Charge HR is well worth the money. No product is perfect but this one does perform as promised. Amazon has the best customer relations of any company out there so if you don't like it you can send it back anyway. I hope this review helps. I know when I was looking, these reviews can be ridiculous, contradict and misleading. Give it a shot! You won't be sorry!

After much online research of fitness trackers that have a heart rate monitor component, I decided to purchase the Fitbit Charge HR. I decided to go with fitbit despite having read some reviews indicating it was not as accurate with heart rate monitoring as a chest strap would be (such as paired with a polar or garmin activity tracker), but I really liked the idea of not having to wear the strap and I liked the style of the fitbit much more, so I went for it. I was very excited to open up the package, and get started... and that's about when my excitement over this thing ended. I really wanted to like this item... but I cannot believe how terrible this product is at completing even the most basic tasks... like tracking steps or distance...not to mention heart rate. I rarely take the time to write a review on amazon... I am doing so because I was so surprised at how terrible this product turned out to be! I was able to sync it to my phone easily... this is THE ONLY PRO I can offer for the Fitbit. From the very first time I put it on and for every time over the course of an entire month, I could not get it to track steps accurately...for example, I drove in the car and gained over 500 steps while sitting in a car for 7 minutes. Walking just 20 steps would give me 120. I read the entire online manual, tried making adjustments as suggested (changed the dominant/ non-dominant hand setting, measured and tried manipulating the setting for length of my stride)... these adjustments only made the fitbit inaccurate significantly in the other direction... I got on the treadmill and jogged 3 miles... fitbit said I'd covered 1.25 miles. At this point, I was curious as to how many miles would be equivalent to 10,000 steps… I was shocked to find that this should be 5 miles… because on the day that fitbit said I’d walked just over 10,000 steps, it also said I’d covered only 1.5 miles… (you can see this in the screen shot of my fitbit stats)…I don’t understand how that’s mathematically possible? I’m a 5.5 person, with normal stride, moving arms at normal rate, no reason it should be off like that. Another day, I’d logged over 6,000 steps, but fitbit said I’d only covered .03 miles. I attempted to resolve accuracy problems through fitbit customer service… which I found nearly impossible to locate contact info for. On the entire fitbit website, you are constantly directed to the fitbit “community” which is other users of the product (which I did try, but did not get any suggestion that helped) or you are directed to read the FAQ’s or manual….VERY difficult to find actual contact info for customer support. I had to do a google search for fitbit customer service, which is when I found out that they direct customer service thru twitter… (I thought that actually quite hilarious really… limiting all complaints to 144 characters!) This was when I began to understand the full story of what I now think fitbit is all about… all image, but no real expertise in the product…it’s just a pretty package. They are very responsive to you on twitter, suggesting you read the manual… but if that doesn’t work, they want you to resolve your issue offline, asking you to contact them via email to open a “case number”…which I did. After a few days, they responded with (direct copy and paste of the message they sent): We're sorry to hear that your having data discrepancy on your steps and mileage with your Charge HR. Thank you for trying different troubleshoot to fix the issue prior to contacting us. We'll be willing to assist you with this matter. Upon checking, we had confirmed in our system that your Charge HR last sync was 25 minutes ago via Android with a medium battery level. In the meanwhile, if you haven't already done so, please review our troubleshooting article. If you're still unable to sync after following the step-by-step instructions, please let us know. Please note that if you recently upgraded to OS 6.0 (Marshmallow) you must have location services turned on to sync your tracker. With this latest update, Google changed the permissions for Bluetooth syncing, requiring the use of location services. We are hard at work trying to find a work around for this new change from Google to ensure you can sync your tracker. (end of email response) This response just made me laugh…I had NOT had any trouble with the tracker synching… and also, I do NOT have the Android 6.0 Marshmallow update on my phone… and I DO have location services turned on at all times. Up until this point… I had assumed that somehow it must be me that was the problem…something about the way I move that’s not able to be picked up accurately or something. But when I got this email where they acknowledged my complaint about the inaccuracy of the tracker, stated they’d be handling it, and then in the next sentence, completely avoided addressing it and instead brought up something that was not a problem for me and that I did not complain about…I started to see that maybe there is another thing going on with this company. At this point, I decided to give up on the idea of tracking steps and instead just focus on heart rate monitoring since that was really the reason I’d bought it and I didn’t feel like going through however many more emails it was going to take to figure out the step thing anymore. Only one problem…I kept finding that the heart rate monitor was very unreliable… sometimes it seemed to function well and record my heart rate for the duration of a work out with accuracy (as compared to the heart rate monitors on the treadmills)… I’d have a nice set of stats/details to look at afterwards in order to compare workouts. Other times, it would show my heart rate on the tracker (during my work out), but then later, when I went to look up my workout stats online or on phone app, it would show the workout was logged but it didn’t capture my heart rate (and of course… not my steps or distance either!). On one of those work outs, I was jogging outside and tracking my run with “map my fitness” app on my phone… I have the exact date and times matching on that app’s log and my fitbit log… you can see for yourself in the screenshots that I included, map my fitness says I ran (actually it was just a walk) for 1.87 miles and it calculates over 4,000 steps… fitbit says I’m either a zombie or the heart rate tracker didn’t work and it logged zero steps and miles on this exact workout date and time. By the time I had decided it was time to return the fitbit because it was not able to do anything at all that I would have expected it to do, my daughter’s activity tracker had arrived (a Garmin Vivofit) and so I decided in one last attempt to determine…is it the fitbit or is it just something funny about the way I move that makes it so inaccurate at tracking my steps and distance… I decided to test the Fitbit HR charge against the Garmin Vivofit 2 (she didn’t order a chest strap, so no heart rate monitoring possible on this Vivofit). I put one on each wrist and jogged at my normal pace for 2.75 miles on the treadmill (according to the treadmill). Garmin said I’d taken over 6000 steps and jogged 2.73 miles. Fitbit said that during that workout, I’d added just over 3700 steps and covered less than half a mile. Case closed… the Fitbit HR Charge is the thing that’s not working… not me or the way I move my arms or my legs or my ability to sync or operate activity trackers…it’s Fitbit that doesn’t work correctly! Thank you Amazon for letting me return it!! And it looks like I’m ordering a Garmin Vivofit 2 with a chest strap! One other strange thing that started to happen with the fitbit… the last 2 times I wore it for a full day, I noticed that my arm was getting very sore and achy. The first day, it wasn’t connecting in my head that it would be related to the fitbit, I was just assuming my arm was tired or I’d slept on it wrong or something. The next morning though, it was worse, my arm was really sore and felt like it was burning from the inside… only the arm where I wore the fitbit, right about the spot where it sits was hurting. So I took it off and it took the entire day for that pain to go away. I decided to look up online to see if anyone else had had such a strange problem after wearing the fitbit… guess what… there are many people who’ve had this problem…some suggest it is related to radiation from the electromagnetic field that is created from the constant Bluetooth communication/ synching between the fitbit and the computer or cell phone. I am not qualified to propose any reason why it would cause my arm to hurt so much, but I do know that it certainly would have prevented me from wearing the tracker, even if it was accurate, if that pain would have persisted… so it’s something to be aware of if you’re considering a fitbit.

Bought 2 of these (one for my wife and one for myself) and received them a couple days ago. We use them to earn points for our health insurance and my Polar HR monitor just died again, so I needed something quickly, and not having to wear a chest strap was EXCELLENT! .Got large for both of us because the choices were "small" or "large". My wife's fits her fine, but mine is on the 2nd last hole and is snug, and just above my wrist bone. I'm not a big guy and don't have huge arms or wrists, but I have no hope of wearing this "2 or 3 fingers above the wrist bone for exercise" as recommended. When I went to the Fitbit site, I saw THEY offered them in XL. I called their customer service and someone who spoke only broken English first put me on hold then told me I should send my Charge HR back to Amazon for a refund, then order an XL from Fitbit. After hanging up, and checking Amazon's return policy, I figured I would go for it, but order the XL from Fitbit first. Guess what? The XL Fitbit charge HR is out of stock until June. And after checking around on the internet, it looks like you can only get the XL directly from Fitbit. This would leave me without a working HR monitor for 1-2 months. So while they seem to work great, so far, and the app appears to be a pretty impressive tool, I'm either stuck with a too small Fitbit, no HR monitor at all for 1-2 months, or will have to quickly find a different product. Too bad. I really like this thing and would have given it 5 stars based on first impressions if it weren't for the sizing thing and Fitbit customer service not even mentioning the XL was out of stock . . . Disappointing . . . Why would you not offer XL on Amazon - or Kohl's, or Target, or LL Bean, or anywhere else??? Edited 5/1/15 to add; I've been in phone contact with Fitbit today and they have agreed to exchange my Large for an Extra Large Charge HR. I've changed my review from 2 stars to 4 based on my most recent contact with their customer service. We've been using our Charge HR's for 11 days now and both my wife and I are still very pleased with them and the app. So far a great tool, and aside from the size issue on mine, we've had no problems with either of them. I would offer 2 suggestions: 1.) If I were FITBIT, I would make it clear on all the other retailer's sites and in their other retailer's stores that an XL size is available directly from Fitbit. Though I may have purchased something from someone else due to the lack of availability of the XL size from Fitbit, it would have saved a bunch of contacts and misunderstandings. 2.) It took me a number of contacts with Fitbit's customer service (both through email and over the phone) to get them to understand my issue. I wrote very detailed descriptions and included photos, and yet until my last contact (by phone), it was as though they either didn't read my email or they were not fluent in English and didn't understand what I was trying to explain. The last email reply I got referred to a completely different Fitbit product. I'm not sure how this could be fixed. I live in central US, but understand it's a global market. Perhaps I just need more patience . . . .

EDIT 12/30/16--I hope this is my last edit! To address the treadmill accuracy I wrote about below: I have managed to get this tracker attached to my ankle, and get very accurate results this way. I have no idea if the heart monitor works on my ankle, but I'm guessing it probably does to some degree? I think you can take your pulse on your ankle, but I'm not sure. It is a tight fit and is not always comfortable, but it is how I am making this tracker work in the parameters that I need it to. They need a medium size option for this issue, or an adapter that works on your ankle! A large would be ridiculous on my wrist. EDIT 12/4/16: I became suspicious about the accuracy of the treadmill steps I was periodically taking over the course of a day to get to my 10,000 steps since the weather is disagreeable outside. At the rate I was walking, I should have gotten about 120 steps per minute. After a 10 minute walk, the FitBit only counted 500 steps and it should have been about 1200 give or take. I didn't quite believe it, so I started testing it with exact steps. When I was walking 200 steps, it varied from counting 130 to 150. I completed this experiment about 6 times. Then I went to Google to see what was going on and found out that I'm not the only one. I tried 3 different suggestions--1) restarting the tracker 2)putting the tracker on my inner wrist 3) attaching the tracker to my shoelaces. None of the 3 made it accurate, but attaching it to my shoe got it closer--170 steps were tracked out of the 200. Mind you, I paid extra for the heart rate monitor--which is not tracked attached to my shoe. DO NOT BUY THIS TRACKER IF YOU WANT TO USE A TREADMILL. Some people on the FitBit forums say they don't have an issue with treadmills. For $150 (what I paid) it isn't worth the risk. I am not happy about this. At least I'm not crazy--I couldn't figure out how I was still so low on my steps after doing a 26 minute 5K trainer and then walking on the treadmill for an additional 30 minutes, 3 different times for 10 minutes a piece in addition to my normal walking around the house and cleaning. *******end of 12/4/16 edit******* This has been a motivating purchase, which is exactly what I had hoped when I purchased it. I chose the Charge HR over the FitBit without the heart rate monitor mainly because I liked how it fastened. I also had high hopes that the heart rate monitor could give me an accurate idea of how many calories I'm burning in a day, and possibly negate the need for my Polar heart rate monitor with a chest strap. I need to do a comparison while wearing both for a workout and see. If I remember, I'll post an update on here after. Some observations, good and bad, now that I've had it for about 5 months: The size small is still big on my wrist. I can fit my pinkie in the space that doesn't wrap around my wrist with no problem. The top of the device (the display part) is 2.5" of flat, inflexible material which goes into the flexible wrist band. The thickest part of the display sits up "proud" off the wrist 3/8". In other words, this thing is not inconspicuous. I have worked around this a little by leaving my sweater sleeves over it and then wearing a different bracelet lower on my wrist on days I don't want to have my FitBit the center of my accessories. It does not do a good job of tracking your steps when you are pushing a grocery cart, which is a huge bummer. I walk a lot at those massive grocery stores, I don't like grocery shopping anyway, and now I have to either push one-handed or walk in front of the cart while pulling it. Because if I have to grocery shop, then my steps are going to count <bleep> it. **UPDATE!! I paid closer attention to this the last few grocery trips and it appears to be counting the steps, so I was wrong about this initially. It does count a lot of steps when you are folding laundry. I can't quite decide if this is good or not--I don't feel like folding laundry is the equivalent of taking steps. A friend pointed out that you are exerting yourself, but is it apples-to-apples? I'm thinking not. I do two loads a day every day, so it might be throwing off my steps in a significant way if it is overshooting my steps. Maybe I shouldn't worry about the grocery cart and call it good ... The first couple of days are uncomfortable until your arm gets used to the spot where this hits. I'm guessing it is the heart rate monitor part of the device, but it sticks out a little and dents your arm. I am not wearing it too tight. I attempted to move it to my dominate arm once, and decided it wasn't worth it since my other arm was already desensitized. This will tell you that you are burning way more calories than you actually are. Period. Please do not attempt to use this in order to figure out how much food you can eat to lose weight. I highly recommend that you look up meal planning on muscleforlife.com instead (I am not affiliated with this site at all--just a fan) and use this device in order to motivate yourself to move more. You will be shocked at how little you actually move in a day. It becomes easier to hit 10,000 after awhile. You will not longer get irritated when there are no close parking spots. You WILL be irritated when you forget to put your FitBit on in the morning and there are no close parking spots. Just remind yourself that your steps still count even if your FitBit isn't actually counting them. Do not walk around at a fairground antique event holding something in the crook of your FitBit arm. After walking around for 6 hours you will be pretty peeved about the number of steps recorded. Ask my mom. The FitBit app is awesome. I love to see the data and the trends. I haven't participated in a contest yet, but I recently friended someone and it is motivating to know someone can see your steps. You don't want to get beat by your mom, I mean friend, daily. I had to turn off the option for the display to automatically turn on every time I brought my arm up. It eats up the battery in no time. I also do not have it synching all day long--I synch it at night when I take it off to get ready for bed. After the first few days I don't wear it to sleep either. I'm not sure that having that thing on 24 hours a day is a good thing. I do think it would be a good way to track how many hours of sleep you are getting and would be eye-opening how many nights are less than they should be (at least for me). I'm just ready to take it off once I get to bedtime. **UPDATE--I may start wearing this to bed for a week or two in order to REALLY see how much sleep I'm getting. I'm tired, wondering if I've some unknown health issue that is causing it. Before I bring it up to my doctor, I want to see how much sleep I'm actually getting, because it's probably less than I think I am. So the sleep tracking is a nice thing to have right now!

I bought my first Fit Bit Charge HR through Amazon (Prime) in September 2015. My first HR arrived and would not track my heart rate at all. I contacted Fit Bit and spoke to a great customer service rep. He went through multiple steps and was able to see my tracker on the dashboard and we tried everything he suggested to no avail. He advised me to recycle the tracker at a local electronics store and they would be sending me a new Charge HR the next business day. The second tracker arrived within days and it worked great until I realized that this one was not holding a charge for more than about a day to a day and a half. I called Fit Bit again and they went through similar steps with me and then advised that the version of tracker I then had, had a known battery issue and that I should again, recycle it at a local electronics store, and they were sending me yet another, and my now current Charge HR. That being said, since my third tracker arrived it has worked like a champ. I love it and it has been a huge part of my fitness goal. I don’t think the charge holds as long as Fit Bit states but it’s a good 3.5-4.5 days usually. I wear it 24/7 and am exercising 3-5 days a week. I’ve had no trouble with it recording my steps at all. It seems the only thing it doesn’t really track well is Yoga or other rather stationary activities and almost never gets the flights of stairs correct-I wouldn’t bother even really tracking the stairs unless that was your main form of exercise. Then it could be a problem. Even on the rowing machine it’s giving me steps credit which is great because number of steps is a big part of my daily exercise goal. I do not wear mine in the shower or in the water, but my son has a Charge HR as well and wears it in the shower all the time with no issues. I especially like that Fit Bit links with Myfitnesspal.com and the two apps “speak” to each other. I will also say that the small really should fit most women. I was very worried when I first ordered the tracker that the small would be too small due to my weight at the time. It arrived and was plenty big. My wrist with a tape measure now is 6” exactly and I wear the tracker on the 7th hole loosely. When I first received it, I wore it on the 4th hole loosely. The holes are ¼” apart. I don’t think it is a particularly attractive or cool looking accessory but that’s not why I’m wearing it. The newer bands you can purchase for the newer models look OK but again, I’m not wearing for fashion. I understand people with a sporty lifestyle, or who are much younger than my 46 years, may like the different color bands and may switch out colors to match their outfits but I wear it to track my steps and help me reach my goals. It would be great if it looked more like a “real” watch but it is what it is… a fancy pedometer. I highly recommend the Charge HR over the Flex if you’re planning on using it as a watch like I do because the Flex doesn’t show the date or time on the face. The heart rate monitor is spot on but I’m also not really using that to its fullest benefit I don’t think, whereas serious athletes or those that are training or trying to get their heart rate into a specific zone can really benefit from the heart rate monitor. For me it is cool to see but I don’t track that as much as I could. Another thing I think you’ll find is generally people with Fit Bits are friendly to other people who use Fit Bits. It’s almost like the universal wave when you’re boating that you waive to other boaters as you pass by. People tap their Fit Bit and smile or walk over to you in a social situation and say “Don’t you just love your Fit Bit?” Overall, Fit Bit customer service has been great to work with and I definitely feel like they stand behind their product. Just realize that there are some buggy Fit Bit trackers out there and if you’re having a problem call Fit Bit directly. I am buying another Fit Bit product for other family members and would definitely buy another Charge HR if I needed one.

Being the shopper I am, I actually ended up buying all three of Fitbit's upper activity trackers: The Surge, The Charge HR and The Charge. They all have their very similar features, though each brings a niche to the market depending on your fitness needs. Ultimately it was this one, the Charge HR that I ended up keeping as my daily wear tracker. I will still use the Surge for certain types of exercising (biking and walking, especially when I want to use the GPS features). The Charge HR ticks off most boxes for me, though, and it is the one I would most recommend. If you happened to have read my review on the Charge, some of this will sound familiar. There are only two fundamental differences between the Charge and the Charge HR. One, of course, is the heart rate tracking feature. The other, is the wristband that is used. I have passed the Charge on to my adult son, who is young, healthy and fit and could honestly care less what his heart rate runs. I've warned him to keep an eye on the clasp. The good: ~ It's lightweight and feels safe on my wrist. I have never had it fall off or come close to losing it. ~ It tracks steps, miles, stairs, calories burned, sleep and heart rate. The last, using a relatively new technology counting beats through your wrist. I periodically check the heart rate reading against my own and it has always been within a few beats. Obviously it's not meant to be a medical device and I would not expect medical accuracy. ~ It has a very easy interface with multiple devices. I've used it with a Droid, an Apple iPad and a laptop with the wireless dongle. ~ The dashboard is user friendly and easy to access on any of your linked devices. It helps you set goals and cheers you in via push notifications as you near your daily goals. It also sends you periodic emails when you hit a milestone, such as walking 500 miles (which I recently hit). It also averages your resting heart rate for the day and keeps track of how and when that changes. You can go back through ALL of your data at any time. which I find interesting and helpful. ~ It is quite motivational to track your activity, as the more you do it, the more you want to. It's a great way encourage additional movement into your day. Not that I have this issue, but you can apparently set it to alarm if you haven't moved in a certain amount of time, too. I can see this being helpful if you work a more sedentary job. For me, if I am not moving, I am probably sleeping. ~ It charges quickly and only needs charging every 5-7 days. The Surge, on the other hand, needs to be charged frequently, even when I am not using it often. ~ You can get notifications from your smart phone straight to your wrist... this is good and bad. The phone needs to be a pretty close proximity to the band for this to work at all (and even then it is hit or miss for me). If your phone is near enough to send the text or call notification to your watch via Bluetooth, it's really easier to just look at your phone. The not so good: ~ The Bluetooth connections can be spotty at times. This means not all your notifications will come through AND it doesn't always sync "all day" even when set that way. There are times I have to force a sync and wait for it to upload, as it's been hours since it did so itself. ~ That little, itty bitty dongle! I had more issues with interfacing with my laptop than any other device. The dongle had to be periodically re-synced with each device and it seemed to sometimes get confused with more than one device on the account. Also, it's smaller than a nickel and can be easily lost in houses like mine. I no longer sync to my laptop at all and frankly don't know where one of the dongles are right now, either. ~ There were some "growing pains" with the software. The first month I had the device, there were several times where the online site would go down completely and I was not able to access the dashboard. I also had an issue one time where the device just would not sync and I had to reset it. For now, it seems that these bugs have been mostly worked out, at least for the Charge HR. The Surge still gives me an occasional bump. Both devices have recently updated software (it will prompt you to do so when you sync if one is available) and so far, so good. ~ The "stairs" counter uses an altimeter when counting stairs. This can be a good and bad thing. Of course, if you are hiking in the mountains (which I have done), you want all the credit for that hike on the way up. Unfortunately, I've also had it read "stairs" when I am riding in the car and go up in elevation AND I've walked up and down stairs in my own 3 story (w. the basement) house and NOT received full credit for all the stairs. If you live in areas with lots of elevational changes, I can see this becoming a major issue. ~ Not all steps get counted but sometimes the steps are counted you didn't do. I've awoken in the morning with over 200 steps overnight, and I am fairly certain (being strapped to a CPAP) that I am not sleepwalking. I try not to stress it, I hope they balance each other out in the long run. ~ It is not waterproof, so no water sports. There are mixed responses to how "water resistant" it actually is, but I have not been brave enough to see how far it can go before it is waterlogged. I always removed it for bathing, swimming and dish washing. I really hope they consider this in the next generations, because it is the ONE reason why I considered another line. I do swim fairly frequently and would have loved to be able to track that accurately, too. ~ It has no idea what to do with biking. If you frequently bicycle as a form of exercise, you will be very aware of this shortcoming for this tracker. Sure, you can just do a general "workout" track, but a lot will be lost in translation and you are best to enter the exercise manually... or opt for the Fitbit Surge, which is able to track biking with relative ease. ~ That little screen gets beat up over time. I am not sure what the easy answer is to that, but the way the band is designed, that tiny screen can take a beating. After about 3 months time, there are quite a few scratches to the screen, which I really don't like. If you wear something as often as I wear this tracker, it is bound to take some bumps and bruises. I just wish there was a better way to protect the screen. ~ I really wish there were more color choices and that they were more readily available. I have the black, as the Plum was not out yet, though I would have preferred the Plum or maybe another cool color.

Fitbit Charge HR Wireless Activity Wristband, Black, Extra Large Update: April 9, 2016 - I've owned and used a Fitbit Charge for more than a year. Knowing what I know now I would not have purchased it or any Fitbit product. Most everything about this product is a hassle. You MUST use the website to perform even simple tasks like changing time zones. That sucks if you are on the road and don't have a laptop, smart phone, or wifi access. It will often spin for days without being able to sync which means you can't see the info you are supposed to be tracking. I'm not sure how it calculates stairs climbed but it will show a dozen or more on days when I haven't climbed one. It counts things like applause as steps and if I ride a motorcycle the "step count" is through the roof. You might as well draw an "activity monitor" on your wrist with a marker and make up numbers every day. Your mileage may vary but I've stopped wearing this (since it's also lousy as a wrist watch) and will never purchase another product from Fitbit. Additionally, Fitbit "support" is horrible. Finding instructions to do things like adjust stride length is difficult and when the Charge HR is not working (quite often) help is next to impossible to find. More often than not I have to ferret out troubleshooting information from other users on internet forums. I don't have a very high opinion of a company that depends on suckers who buy their products supporting one another. The only thing Fitbit sees to do well is to encourage people to buy a Fitbit. No thanks! I had never used an activity monitor before this year. I briefly had a Samsung Gear Fit but it didn't work well so it was returned. I saw mixed reviews for the Fitbit Charge but mostly positive so I thought I'd give it a try hoping to shame myself into being more active. The good news is that it is light and fits well. I prefer the watch-like buckle strap over the strap held with pins that requires a separate keeper. (The Fitbit Charge has a keeper that stops the end of the strap past the buckle from flapping around.) Pros: - The heartbeat monitor seems accurate. I've compared it with other pulse taking devices and manually pulse checks. - It charges quickly. I bought a 2-pack of extra charging cables so I have spares in my car and at work. - The silent alarms are a nice feature. I set two different alarms for gym days and no-gym work days. - The step counter is about as accurate as any other electronic pedometer I've tried. I've tried counting actual steps and comparing and it tends to register more than actual. Things like standing and dancing are also counted but, hey, that's exercise too. I had to experiment with settings to get it close. I wear it on my non-dominant (watch) hand but find it is more accurate if I set it as worn on my dominant hand. - The sleep monitor is fairly accurate, at least it seems to track the time closely and the 'restless' sections correspond with my recollection on waking. - Can be auto sync'd with apps like My Fitness Pal which is nice because it will transfer activity to MFP to calculate as calories burned. - Silent alert notifications (vibration) of the Fitbit when I have my phone on silent is nice. Cons: - The section that tracks stairs is wildly inaccurate. Yesterday I received an "award" for climbing 89 flights of stairs. The problem is that I didn't climb a single flight. Apparently things like riding in a car trigger the altitude monitor. Checking user forums online I find this is a common complaint. There is no way to disable it but you can uncheck it from the stats display. - The display is tiny. I must use reading glasses to resolve the display. - It is not waterproof. My spouse also has a Fitbit (Alta) but can't use it for water aerobics. Because the charging port is open you are instructed to not wear it in the shower. I've had no problems washing my hands with it on. - There is an online Fitbit Dashboard but you must use the phone app to setup the device. It comes with a Bluetooth dongle for a USB port but I was never able to get it to work correctly with my laptop. I believe devices like the Fitbit will work best for athletes in training or fitness fanatics. I will keep the Fitbit Charge for the step and sleep monitoring but may not replace it when this one wears out. Hopefully the technology will improve by then. UPDATE (06OCT17): The FitBit Charge HR died this morning. The plastic cover over the charging port came off and cannot hold the charging cable so I can't recharge the battery. I've had it for about 570 days and wore it for most of them. That works out to about 20¢ a day at the current price on Amazon. Worth it? Nope. I've owned wristwatches cost less than half of what I paid for the FitBit that held up far longer. Accuracy? Low. It recently congratulated me for climbing dozens of flights of stairs on a day I never climbed one. Wearing it while riding a motorcycle produced spectacularly bad results. As a sleep monitor, it was fair but just barely. Had to manually update many times when it missed half the night. Will I replace it? Nope. Interesting toy, might have some value for fitness fanatics, but I found it to be a waste of time and money. Today it "sleeps" in the kitchen trash can. ;-)

Good way to keep you fit n motivated.

ottimo prodotto a un ottimo prezzo, peccato per il cinturino in gomma che si gonfia dopo neanche un mese

It was exactly what I wanted.

Brilliant

It's a great fitness tracker. It's mid-range in terms of cost. The band itself is very comfortable on my skin, and I have sensitive skin. The tracker doesn't jut out or anything. I love that it tracks workouts and sleep without manual input. And it's really up to you how much detail you put into it. You can use it as a timer, input stride length, water and food intake, and the calculations for steps and calories lost seem realistic.