How’s your fitbit? – Is it the same as ours? – Review 8 months later

Still using your Fitbit or thinking to get one? Well, I applaud your for that, as getting one means you have the intention to be more active and perhaps keep track of your fitness. So I got one last June 2016 with a friend who I accompanied to start living more healthier by doing night exercises and even my group of buddies got one each making a great circle of Fitbit users.

This was my Fitbit last June 2016 when I even compared it with the ASUS VivoWatch.

It was even proven useful to me when last July 2016, I faced one of the hardest challenges of my life of being hospitalized for being anemic. Having low red blood cells (Hemoglobin) means your body pumps more blood to your body even at easy tasks, so my heart rate was going around 110 by just walking. It was my tool to measure my progress in my recovery, monitoring like if I was reaching 120bpm when climbing stairs or achieving lower than 100bpm while walking.

Unfortunately, I just recently quit using mine and I bought the 1st generation Charge HR for around Php6,000. 8 months after I decided to stop using mine cause of the following reasons.

1. Rubber Problems

This is now my Fitbit, the top rubber along the screen peeled off and the lower portion started to bloat out making it very ugly to wear. More often since this happened, I got more questions of “What’s happening to your fitbit?” than being delighted of seeing a Fitbit user.

We did try to use some methods to save our Fitbit by using super glue, but it was just temporary and proved ineffective. Plus, we said it was over when the bottom part started to bloat / expand.

This is the Fitbit Charge HR of my friend bought last December 2015, he still uses it but barely going 1 year and this is the condition of his Fitbit Charge HR. The waterproofing is definitely compromised so you can only use it left for light activities.

2. Skin issue

I have no issue at all with allergies or any sort of skin problems in my past, but since we stopped using our Charge HR I noticed this on my skin where the heart rate monitor was placed.

My right wrist seems to have a permanent dry skin now, which is bothering, to be honest. Right now, we’re using some remedies to hopefully bring it back to normal.

3. Lack of Software motivation

You can see my #Fitbit posts of achievements throughout the months, but Fitbit’s ecosystem is perhaps slowly dying cause of lack of innovation. They still have the best social network for any fitness tracker, but it lacks peer to peer interaction to engage further.

Checking on your progress is fun, but loses delight eventually as it’s becoming more of a chart than a motivation. We suggest Fitbit push further this by having suggestive interaction like challenges with other users, workout motivations like “Can you do 10mins more this time?” and so.

4. Proprietary Cable / Connection

And until to this very day, even with the new 2nd generation Fitbit devices…they still choose to have proprietary cables. Something we are dumbfounded as they could use a micro-usb cable for charging or sync. We at least encounter the time not having the opportunity to charge our Fitbit cause of this, as we only have one cable to charge our device.

Conclusion

So was it worth getting a Fitbit Charge HR? I found it useful when I was hospitalized, but that isn’t a scenario anyone would aspire of. Spending 6,000 pesos for a gadget isn’t easy, and we just used it up for 8 months which translate to 750 pesos a month. I say it’s not a good investment at all.

This isn’t our first fitness tracker as I’ve been also a Jawbone Up user before, we ended up in the same scenario of giving up in less than a year. But Jawbone had a replacement program so we got a free unit which gave up after 6 months as well.

Charge HR vs Charge HR 2

Module

JuxtaposeJS

*Photo from Android Authority

Well, Fitbit kinda solved this problem with the Charge HR 2, but making the straps interchangeable and making the module independent from the strap. But this came a year when the 1st Charge HR was introduced, very unfair for so much “Loyal” customers.

So what now? Well, we would still love to have a fitness tracker but no longer this Charge HR. We’ll look for one with better durability and worth investing and keep you updated if we find it.