Fitbit Charge HR Review

I had been wanting a fitness tracker for a while so I researched the different options that were around. I decided the most suitable one for me would be a Fitbit Charge HR. I am more active now than I was before surgery and I think a large part of that is that it’s just so much easier to move around now than it ever was before.

The other main reason for me wanting to get a fitness tracker is that I love tracking and analysing my exercise. I had been using the Map My Run app on my iPhone to track my exercise but was really keen to add in tracking of my heart rate so I could see a proper reflection as to how my fitness is going. The main features that made me choose this activity tracker was firstly the heart rate tracker. The other things like the silent alarm, sleep tracking and wireless syncing helped me decide on it. I picked this up in duty-free coming back from England in Heathrow Airport.

There are some things I really love about my Fitbit Charge HR. I really like seeing how my heart rate has tracked through any exercise I do and in the tracking of exercise the Fitbit app also breaks the kilometres down so you can see how long each kilometre took. This was one of my favourite features of the app I used to use so this was great to find.

The silent alarm is great. You can set alarms at any time and the Fitbit will vibrate on your wrist and alert you. I was a bit dubious about whether this would actually wake me up when I was properly asleep but I can assure you it does. I used this feature to convince my husband to let me get this because I’m one of those annoying people who lets their alarm go off for ages before I actually get up. Now I can set my alarm stupidly early and I don’t wake him up with repeated snooze alarms. I have recently discovered that you can only have eight alarms set at once so can’t have a whole heap set up at one time.

The Fitbit wirelessly syncs with my phone and when it’s in range and I receive a phone call my Fitbit vibrates on my wrist and displays who is calling. I have not missed a call since having my Fitbit! This is probably my most favourite features of my Fitbit that I wasn’t expecting.

I like the floors climbed feature because it gives me a rough estimate of how many times I’ve been up and down the stairs each day. This gives me so much motivation to take the stairs at work and can count on one hand how many times I’ve taken the lift since I’ve had my Fitbit Charge HR. I do find this feature easily fooled though and whenever I’ve gone for a run it goes up lots.I think it gets confused when I’m running up and down hill and it thinks I’ve been doing stairs. This feature is cool but not terribly reliable.

The main reason for getting my Fitbit Charge HR was to help me track exactly how active I’ve been and see if I have any room for improvement. I think I’m more active than I thought I was but I find it much easier to meet my goal of 10,000 steps on the weekends. During the week when I’m stuck at a desk for 8 hours a day I find it really hard to meet my goal and have to get some planned exercise in if I want to meet it. My Fitbit has given me much more motivation to move and take every opportunity to get some activity in and that’s a good thing.

Now for what I don’t like about it. I got the small because I have quite small wrists but I find the unit quite bulky and it can be annoying. I can’t button up most of my long-sleeved shirts over it and it can be annoying under clothing in general. It’s fine when I’m exercising but I can hear a little ticking sound if there is not too much background noise and since I am highly intolerant to repeated noises I find it irritating at times.

Fitbit claim that the battery lasts longer than competing trackers stating a 5 day battery life for normal usage. I think I use my Fitbit normally (what does that even mean anyway?) but the most I have ever got out of it is three days. If I don’t want to risk it running out of battery I need to charge it every second day to make sure it lasts. This has been quite disappointing for me and is a real downside.

Overall I quite like my Fitbit but it does have a few points that mean I will be looking for something else in the future that will be a better fit for me. I’m happy with it for now but would rate it 3.5/5.

Do you have a fitness tracker? Let me know what you have and the pros and cons I’d love to know what you think.