In all of my running posts where I include photos of my watch there are two different things in the picture normally, my Garmin Forerunner 220 and my Fitbit Flex.
I have been wanting to review my Fitbit for awhile and I’ve been asked by 3 or 4 people lately what I think of it, so now seemed like a good time to put all of my thoughts together! I also wanted to make sure I gave a true and honest review of the Fitbit Flex that I bought.
Back in February I was curious as to how active I really truly was. I had read a lot of places that on average people walk 10,000 steps a day. Little did I know at the time that the statistic does not apply to people with desk jobs. You see, I work in Internet Marketing. In other words I sit at a desk all day long. I love my job but active is definitely not something it has made me.
I started looking at the different options out there and came down to the Jawbone & The Fitbit Flex. I was going to purchase one for my husband as well and to be honest in the end Fitbit won out hands down because Jawbone did not support Android and that is the phone he uses. (This may have changed since, I’m not 100% sure).
Multiple people have asked me about my Fitbit and I will sing words of praise over and over for it. I LOVE my Fitbit. The biggest thing it has done for me is made me realize how truly not active I was. I’ve been wearing it JUST about six months now and it has completely changed the way I plan my day.
Getting Started
One of the awesome parts about Fitbit is that before you can really start tracking, they want to know a lot about you. Weight, height, which hand you’re wearing it on, etc. To me this means that they were getting a much more detailed and personalized setup.
One thing I wasn’t 100% thrilled with is that it came with no instructions. Literally, no instructions. I did wind up consulting Google and quickly realized how to set everything up by downloading the app.
Favorite Fitbit Flex Features
Sleep: Okay some days I won’t lie, this is something I probably would be better off NOT knowing. I set my sleep to sensitive because I was curious as to how much sleep I was really truly getting. With a toddler in the house I knew that my sleep varied but I never knew how little sleep I actually got. This was a huge eye opener & I’ve been trying to work on earlier bedtimes!
Food Tracking: I have tried to track calories in the past and I always fail after a day or two. Between the app and the desktop tool I have successfully tracked calories for all but three days out of the last six months. Those three days were holidays and there was no way I was going to come close to wanting to know how much I ate ;).
They recently upgraded the app and it is even better than before. The barcode scanner has been a HUGE help and really has helped me more accurately figure out how much I really truly was eating. So many foods are in the app already & you can create your own as well.
Tracking Exercise: This was a new feature very recently added. I do not use it to track running (I have my Garmin for that) but I do use it when the little man and I take evening walks. It seems fairly accurate as long as I have a GPS signal and adds it right into the exercise log when I’m done.
Syncing Across Accounts: Most of my friends use MyFitnessPal, so I am on there a lot to check-in. I don’t feel like logging my calories in two places, but Fitbit has an answer for that and they will automatically sync your stuff for you. I LOVE this feature! It allows me to still connect with non-Fitbit friends but still using only one app.
Competition: It’s no secret if you know me in real life that I’m a little competitive. Being able to see Fitbit step rankings among my friends has been awesome, fun & hilarious. One of my best friends and I compete often to see who can knock out more steps. Not only does it make it more fun, it makes getting active more motivating.
Things I Would Like To See
More consistent calories burned with manual entries: Okay, let me explain this one a little bit. I think after months of messing with this I finally figured it out, but I could be wrong! When I used to do my runs I would go back to the computer and enter in my run into Fitbit. I started to notice it was telling me that I had burned a WHOLE lot more calories than I thought I did. I finally realized it was actually counting my runs as both an exercise & the walking time that I had in there.
I believe with their new roll out of the app it has solved this problem. I have not tested it from two different timezones but I finally figured out how to sync my Garmin to MyFitnessPal which then syncs to Fitbit & it seems pretty accurate.
With that being said, I would also love to see a way to just sync my Garmin account with my Fitbit account like I can with MyFitnessPal.
Cheaper “designer” Bands: Fitbit very recently came out with Tory Burch FitBit Accessories. This makes your Fitbit Flex a little less obvious when you need to dress up. I LOVE this concept but at the same time I can’t begin to think about paying $175 for the necklace. I’d be happy to test one out though if someone wanted me to ;). I recently wore my Flex to a family wedding and just took it off for pictures and put it back on afterward. I won’t lie though, I did purchase an off brand FitBit band
The Moral Of The Story
You should go buy a Fitbit. Seriously.
If you ever question how active you are I would highly recommend purchasing it. For $99 I was able to take a true look at my lifestyle and make a huge change.
Disclaimer: I purchased my own Fitbit & was not paid to do a review of it. This post does, however, contain my affiliate link to Fitbit. These opinions are 100% my own and I really do love every ounce of my Fitbit Flex.