Getting Used To Wearable Tech

Runners are always looking for new tech to help them out and I have seen a lot about the Fitbit recently so I decided to take the plunge a couple of weeks ago and get one. I went with the Fitbit Flex which you wear on your wrist. It looks a lot like the colored wristbands people wear for various causes but contains a small sensor.

The Fitbit is basically a glorified pedometer that will sync to your cellphone or computer via Bluetooth. It has built in memory so if you are not near your phone or computer, the date will be stored and syn next time you are in range. Obviously it will count your steps each day and it calculates the distance you covered. As a runner, I was curious how this would work as stride length is different for running versus walking. The device comes much closer to measuring the distance I ran than I was expecting (I have a GPS running watch I can use for comparison) so there is obviously some adjustment made when you run to get a more accurate distance.

When you setup the software, it asks a few basic questions about height and weight and uses them to estimate calories burned. I always take those with a grain of salt, but you can probably at least use it to gauge which days are your most active.

Another neat little trick is it has a sleep monitor. It will tell you how many times you wake up during the night and how many times you are "restless" based on the motion sensor. I am sure it is not a perfect measurement, but I had not data on this before so it is fun to see what it says.

There are lots of other online features. You can set goals for steps/miles/calories burned per day. It also lets you setup a food plan, enter pulse rates and blood pressure, log activities like weightlifting that the motion sensor might not pick up and of course look at your history. You can also friend people on the site and share data if you want to compete with someone on fitness goals.

There are lots of features I haven't explored on it yet but it has been a fun little gadget. You can buy an optional scale that will sync wirelessly as well (I haven't done this yet...I own a perfectly good scale that is much cheaper...would consider it if the cost came down though).

Battery life is about a week before you have to recharge it via USB. It took less than an hour and a half to fully recharge.

Phones have some of this functionality built in, but I haven't seen an single app that combines all the data as well as Fitbit does. I am curious what the next generation of these devices will be able to do.