Review: FitBit One Tracker And FitBit Aria Scale

As I mentioned in a prior post, recently I purchased J, M, and myself a FitBit One Tracker and a FitBit Aria scale.  Even though I've lost a fair amount of weight over the last few months, I need to lose a significant amount more prior to a possible SRS/GRS procedure and J is going to help with that as well as work on her own weight.  In addition to the other things we are doing, I felt that being able to track my activity would be a huge help, and while in the past I've kept my weight in a spreadsheet manually, I felt the scale would simplify that.

I had been waiting for a Samsung tracker as I have a Galaxy S4 and J my older Galaxy S3, but I'd finally given up on that and was looking into alternatives.  There were other models from FitBit as well as other brands, but all things considered it seemed that FitBit was our best option.  The price was reasonable, the integration to their website as well as the LoseIt site, and the Android support were are pros, and the fact that they also made a WiFi enabled scale sold me.  It then came down to what tracker.  The FitBit Force looked promising, but just prior to me making a decision on it, FitBit announced it was recalling them due to some occurrences of a rash.  That left it down to the Zip, Flex, or One trackers.  I ruled the Flex out because it went on the wrist and from what I had read it tended to overstate activity which did not surprise me since I see the same thing with the Walking Mate app from S Health on my GS4.  That left it down to the Zip versus the One.  I went ahead and settled on the One; although in hindsight the Zip might have been just fine as the two main differences are sleep tracking and Floors climbed and neither of those is overly important and for that matter the floors climbed is not overly accurate for me.

At this point I wasn't certain on the scale or not, but I started pricing the One.  Wal-Mart had it for right at $100, but I was able to find it for $85 at Best Buy (for the Burgundy model, the Black was still $90).  So a couple of Saturday's back M and I were going to run some errands while J was at work, so we decided to head to Best Buy first.  By now I figured in for a penny, in for a pound and wanted the scale too, so we had to drive a little further than I would have liked, but oh well.  I guess I could have ordered online, but I am a bit old fashioned in that I want it then and there and don't like to wait.  When we got there I got the impression that M wanted one too and even though I knew it would be more of a "toy" for her I went ahead and got her one as well.  J and I got the last two Burgundy ones and M got a Black one.  The "only" difference between the Burgundy and Black is the "sleeve" that the tracker pops into and considering that depending upon where you clip in - we usually put ours on our bras - it may well not be visible.

My first agitation wasn't with the FitBit, but rather Best Buy as apparently *mine* appeared to have been a return as of the three it was the only one that was charged; the other two were nearly dead; but the price wasn't reduce as a return, nor was it marked as such.  Now I suppose it could have simply been a coincidence, but it also would not be the first time I've had this issue at Best Buy.

Setting up the trackers was actually quite easy, simply create an account on FitBit.com and make sure it's charged.  In order to charge it, it has to be out of it's sleeve and it snaps into a USB cable.  The documentation says 2 hours to charge and I believe that to be about accurate.  It also says it will run about 3-5 days on a charge and we've found that to be a major understatement.  Ours will easily run over a week on a single charge and that's with it in use constantly, and I often have it attached via Bluetooth to my S4 since it won't just sync, it will actually update stats in real-time.  I have not checked J's S3, but M's Galaxy Relay does not do this, it will simply sync when forced.  Beyond that initial setup, it's simply a matter of wearing it around.  It does come with a wrist sleeve for sleeping and you put that on, slip the tracker into it, and start the timer (hold down the single button until the timer starts) when you lie down and do the same when you wake up.  It's supposed to track how often you get up and how restless you are and it seems to do an "okay" job with that; however, the biggest reason I bought it was to track my actual activity.  One note, make sure when you do actually get up that you remove it from the wrist sleeve and put it back in the regular sleeve and clip it on; otherwise it will start overstating activity similar to the reports I've seen on the Flex.

When wearing the tracker there is a single button on it which will wake it up and can be used to cycle through the various displays.  The display cycles among:

• Current Time
• Daily Steps
• Floors CLIMBED
• Miles walked
• Calories burned
• An activity flower

I think the first two, along with calories burned are self-explanatory, but the others do bear some comments.  The floors climbed is semi-accurate in my testing.  Apparently there are things that can throw it off, and in my experience there are times that it flat out misses floors, especially when going from our basement where our workout room is, up to the main floor.  It almost always gets the main floor to the second floor where our bedroom is.  The miles walked is based upon steps and stride length.  Based upon the characteristics entered on the FitBit website this is calculated; however, you can override it there if you desire.  The flower grows in size the more active you are.  My understanding is that it's "current activity", and not the full day's activity; although how it's calculated is currently a mystery to me.

We've had ours for a bit over 3 weeks now and I've walked in excess of 70 miles with it on; and J and M I believe are both well over 100 miles.  I'm not sure how much it's influenced their activity; but it definitely has mine.  I've been on the treadmill a lot more lately and if it looks like I haven't been overly active around the house I will tend to spend more time on the treadmill to get to a reasonable activity level.  Another thing I like about it is that it does manage to count steps on the elliptical.  Now a lot of FitBit users take theirs off for this as again it's counting steps and the elliptical is more involved; but for me a simple step count is good enough.  What it also cannot do is directly adjust for using the treadmill on an incline, again that's not really important to me and I'm not sure if the other trackers can do this either.  If I had the decision to make all over again I'd definitely still go with FitBit; although I might buy the Zip instead as the sleep tracking isn't a big deal to me and the floors - well that's only semi accurate in my testing.

Now on to the Aria scale.  As I said above this helped sway me to FitBit since they had both the trackers and the scale.  I've been tracking my weight in Excel manually; but this seemed like a better option and "in for a penny, in for a pound".  This was my second disappointment and it was with FitBit.  Setting up the scale was a bit of a pain for me and I am a computer/networking person.  Reading the forums at FitBit, apparently for less technical users it can be a real hassle.  Long story short, the easiest for me was to use my cell phone to get it on the Wi-Fi which once I found the correct instructions did go pretty quick; but it should have been an easier process.

Beyond that I've been very happy with the scale.  It's also interfaced to their website and you can have up to 7 additional "recognized" users that it will track.  You do need to "invite" them from the website which was a bit of an agitation, but otherwise the process was smooth.  Your information can be private (which it is by default) or it can be shared and it tracks weight and some body fat numbers.  As long as their is a bit of a difference in the weights of the people using it, the scale will automatically recognize you and upload your weight.  If not, then it will cycle through anyone who is close to the registered weight and you tap the scale to select.  Since M, J, and I are all fairly spread out it recognizes us, I am curious to see what happens as the gaps between our weight narrows though.  Really there's not much else to say about it, it's a Wi-Fi connected scale that does a nice job.  I have read reports of people complaining that it's weight is off; but it seems to balance with the scale at my Doctor so I have not had that issue.  It's a bit expensive, I believe it was $120-$125 so I'm not sure if I'd buy this again or not; but since we have it we will continue to use it.

Not sure how much of a review this ended up being since I wrote on it over four different days, but it "is what it is".  I will also say that the FitBit site can integrate to other sites such as LoseIt and the data can flow in both directions; although in the case of LoseIt, you must be a premium member to be able to sync between the sites.

So overall I'd give the FitBit One 4 1/2 out of 5 stars, and the Aria scale a 3 1/2 out of 5.  The latter mainly due to price and the setup being harder than I think it needs to be.

- M