Potentially, my first foray into "Fitness Trackers"? Data security concerns.

[VirtualLarry]

I read all of the prior threads on here (all 6-7 of them), that mentioned "Fitbit" in the title.
Some good posts (thanks @Kaido , among others).

Anyways, most of those threads were from 2014. What about 2018? What good / cheap / effective?

Looking (I guess), for sleep tracking, step / stair tracking, calorie consumption, HR, etc. Just the basics.

Also, concerned about GPS tracking, and that sort of thing, concerned about data-security. Being more important than all of the above. Do all of these work "in the cloud"? Are there any that will use BT to sync to an Android app, that is NOT cloud-based, but keeps all of your stats, on your phone (say on a microSD, so your phone doesn't fill up)?

 

[Kaido]

I just picked up an Apple Watch Series 4 last night. It has excellent continuous heart rate tracking, as well as an EKG feature (coming out later this year), although it doesn't sync with Android, so that's out.

SweetHome, which is basically Engadget's product review site, has a very detailed review of the current fitness trackers & was just updated a week ago:

https://thewirecutter.com/reviews/the-best-fitness-trackers/

The VivoSport from Garmin is rated number one right now, for $170 on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B074K9HNXZ

Official website:

https://buy.garmin.com/en-US/US/p/574602

Per your list:

• Sleep tracking: Sleep monitoring (monitors total sleep and periods of movement or restful sleep)
• Step tracking: Step counter with optional automatically-generated goals based on your tracked habits
• Stair tracking: Barometric altimeter
• Calorie consumption: Calories burned
• Heartrate: HR zones, alerts, calories, % HR max
• Data tracking: 7 timed activities, 14 days of activity tracking data; dumps data to Garmin Connect app via Bluetooth (available for Android)

As far as where it keeps stats, I don't know. It keeps a couple week's worth of data on the device itself, and then you sync that to your app. From there, I'm not sure if it gets synced into Garmin's cloud or not. There is an optional LiveTrack feature you can turn on to let people track you publicly:

https://www.garmin.com/en-US/blog/fitness/use-garmin-livetrack-track-activities-real-time/

The Garmin Connect Mobile app syncs to the Garmin Connect cloud system. That feature may or may not be optional, might be worth seeing if you can download the app & sign up without a device to see what privacy control settings are available.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I was initially looking more around the $50 mark. Found a brand-new, Large, FitBit HR, for ~$54, and there's currently a 15% off site-wide coupon on ebay for a few more hours.

There was a review from 2014 that really liked it.

https://gizmodo.com/fitbit-charge-hr-review-the-king-of-fitness-trackers-i-1683435172


Also looked at FitBit.com, they have a new Charge 3 coming out, looked interesting. $150 though, kind of steep, but I'm sensing that's kind of the going rate for "new" fitness-tracking products.

 

[FeuerFrei]

I'm looking for one detecting various levels of sleep. Just kicked off my search this morning. I'm considering the Charge 3, Ionic, and Versa - all Fitbit models.

Garmin's Vivoactive3 does sleep detection too, but reviews question it's accuracy.

 

[deadlyapp]

Most of the cheaper ones won't have any GPS tracking, and frankly if you keep your phone on you, then its a moot point anyways. Generally the cheap fitness trackers are only analyzing acceleration of the wrist in order to determine movement and then converting that into steps walked, type of exercise/movement, and calories burned. Some of the next step up from there will have heart rate monitors to help correlate above data. That sort of data I don't really care about security on, but most of it will sync through your phone and to the cloud.

If you're worried about GPS, you should be able to turn it off on any GPS capable trackers, and frankly the GPS isn't very worthwhile unless you're using it to interface with another program (like a run or bike tracker) - and again if you keep your phone on you anyways, it doesn't really matter.

 

[ArchAngel777]

I use the cheap Fitbit flex 2 ($60). It does not do any GPS tracking (I don't care about that, though, I mean, it wouldn't bother me if it did). I used for two primary reasons.

1) Too see what my activity level is outside of exercise. This helps me keep an eye on my TDEE. It is easy enough to track exercise separately, but what is difficult to track is all the movement you make during the day outside of that. This is where the Fitbit really shines.

2) Sleep Tracking. This is most definitely the most important part for me, I think. Sleep tracking is so underrated. When I say sleep tracking, I am not just talking about the quality of sleep (though they can be important), but tracking how much of it you get. Once you make sleep a priority in your life, things are so much better.

I don't track caloric burn via the Fitbit. I use a simple equation of BW x 13 to represent maintenance calories, and add in NET calories from exercise. If I end up walking a lot in my day, I may add 100 to 200 additional calories. Over the course of the the last several months, it is been extremely accurate way to track TDEE. My non-exercise steps are around 10K per day, with my exercise often adding another 10-15K on top of that. For these last two months I have average 24K steps per day and an average TDEE of 3650 calories per day. But, for reference, my fitbit records my average TDEE at 3559. That is because my workouts don't detect my incline grade and steps (like a stair case) accurately.

What I found is that the the Fitbit over-estimates normal walking calories and under-estimates things like running, stair climber and incline walking. So if you walk a lot outside, your TDEE is going to be higher than what it really is. But if you mix in some higher intensity stuff, it will under-report it. But honestly, I am very surprised how pretty close it is in my case as my spreadsheet tracking lines up perfectly with weight and energy intake, as expected.

Anyway, just throwing out my thoughts