Background - I'm 33/M, and generally healthy although very lazy. A couple of months ago I was hospitalized for severe back spasms. As it turns out, my back isn't too bad from a structural stance, and my orthopedic doctor thinks that with a lot of exercise and strengthening I should improve. So I set out to get off my butt and start exercising. For my 33rd birthday I bought myself the Fitbit Charge. I did a lot of research before selecting the Fitbit Charge. I wanted the clock function if I was going to be wearing it on my wrist. And since I hadn't exercised at all for years, I thought a Fitness Tracker would be a good way to help me establish a baseline for myself and track progress at the same time. It's done good. Although I guess I should say I'VE done good. I got a gym membership and I enjoy working towards my step goals every day. I've only used the web interface once because I have an iPhone and I do all of the syncing and data input using the app, which is pretty nice. Here's a quick review of the functionality of the app for the iPhone: OVERALL APP DESIGN: I like the iPhone app a lot. It's very easy to use. At a glance, it shows you the different things that it tracks on the screen, like steps, calories, water intake, etc. If some of these things doesn't matter to you, you can hide them. You can also rearrange the items so that the ones you care most about are at the top. I keep water at the top because I'm constantly updating it with new data every time I finish a drink. And as of Jan 31, there is not a way to migrate data from the app into the Apple Health app. The only way to do this that I'm aware of is to buy another app (from the App store) called Sync Solver. It cost a buck or two, but it works really well. STEP COUNTING: Very accurate when actually counting steps. The only problem is that it counts a lot of steps that aren't ever taken. When I wear this thing to sleep, I often wake up with about 30 steps. I also accumulate a few more steps while driving. It doesn't count a ton of steps, so it's not really a big deal. And since my daily routine doesn't vary too much (drive to work, drive home, etc.) I can adjust my goal to take those non-steps into account. So it isn't really a problem. WATER: I love putting in the amount of water I drink. I used to drink zero glasses of water a day. Now that I'm doing weight lifting, my daily goal is 120 ounces. It's a good way to keep track of how much water I'm drinking. Inputting the data is super simple. MILES: Not sure how it calculates miles, but I assume it takes into account your height (which you input during setup) and the steps taken. I've never really tested it by using a treadmill. But I don't care too much about how far it thinks I've gone, I mostly want to keep track of the steps as a daily way to compare how active I've been. STAIRS: I disabled this function. You can disable (hide) any of the functions on the iPhone, which is nice. It always seemed to count flights of stairs that I never climbed. And climbing stairs isn't important to me -- I take the stairs every time I can, but it isn't exactly a set goal of mine. CALORIES/FOOD: It takes into account the fact that your body is constantly burning calories - even in your sleep. I guess it's interesting to see that by the time I've woken up in the morning I've already burned 600 or so calories. Neat. I do not input the food I eat. The search function makes it really easy to find packaged foods, and you can also very easily add your own custom foods, but it just seems like so much work to me. If tracking every item of food you eat is really important, and if you have the exact serving size and all of the nutritional info handy, I think it would be pretty easy. But I eat a lot of freshly prepared meals, so I have no idea how many calories or grams of fat are in the meals I prepare. ACTIVE MINUTES: If you hold the button on the band down for a second or two, it starts counting active minutes. Hold it again to turn off the counting. This is a very easy and good way to count active minutes. Every time I go to the gym I turn this thing on. The Dashboard feature of the app let's you see a calendar which shows you the days that you were active. It's great to see at a quick glance how active you've been, and which days you tend to not make it to the gym. SLEEP TRACKER: I like this feature for giving me an idea of how much sleep I'm actually getting at night. I'm not sure how it accounts for my periods of restlessness. I'm mostly interested in the actual amount of time that I'm sleeping, and for that it's great. After using this for about a month I'm seeing that during the week I average about 6hr 45m of sleep. Not quite enough. I don't think I'll continue tracking my sleep now that I know what my averages are. The hardest part about the sleep tracker is using the app to set it to sleep mode. It doesn't happen automatically - you have to tell it when you're going to bed, and then tell it again when you've woken up. If you forget to do one of those things, it screws up the data for that day. Kind of annoying, but I guess I don't see how this little thing could really tell when you're asleep or not any other way. CALLER ID: This works like a charm. It's kind of nice in meetings if someone calls me and I don't have to get my phone out of my pocket. But overall I don't use the feature very much and I haven't come to rely on it. CHARGING: Piece of cake. I only charge mine once a week and that works perfectly. Done and done. ALARM: Waking up to a vibrating alarm is nice, and I have to say it wakes me up a LOT better than I thought it would. I thought I'd sleep through a vibrating alarm, but there's no way I would now that I know what it's like. However, I have to give this feature two thumbs down for two reasons. 1) It says that it's silent. We all know that vibrating anythings make noise, but this thing is quite loud when it vibrates. Loud enough that it actually wakes my wife up sometimes. Not good, defeats the purpose! 2) Despite having a very small black screen, when the alarm goes off the screen gets BRIGHT! It lights up my side of the room and is hard to look at. I was really looking forward to a gentle wake-up. This alarm doesn't provide that. Too bad. BAND: The band itself doesn't seem to be too durable, but I haven't had any issues thus far (after about 6 weeks of heavy use). I take it off to shower, and I clean the inside of the band with some mild soap and water, taking care not to get the charging pin area wet. It does a great job of resisting bacteria and smells, because I sweat a lot at the gym and this thing never stinks. I'm 6'4" and about 220lbs. Based on their size chart I was right between the small and large size. I went with large, and I'm really glad I did. I probably could've gone with the x-large. Their size chart might be off, and I've read other people saying this too. I usually have this on about the loosest setting. My forearms/wrist aren't even very big, so if you're a big guy, you should go with the x-large. As for the screen scratching - I read that a lot of people were having issues with the screen scratching easily. So as soon as I got this thing I bought a super cheap clearance screen protector for an old iPhone 4 and cut out a tiny rectangle to fit the screen of the Fitbit. Works perfectly. I haven't had any issues with the screen now. Overall, I'm happy with the Fitbit charge and I'm glad I bought it. However, I don't see myself using this for years to come. Maybe for another few months. Once I really get into shape I probably won't care about my steps anymore, I'll probably just care about 1) Did I make it to the gym, 2) Did I eat well, and 3) Did I sleep well. And I don't need an app to tell me those things. But for now, it's serving its purpose. It's giving me great information and giving me some extra motivation. I've read some articles that Fitness Trackers are probably on their way out (because
