Fitbit HR vs Band V2

I’m a bit of a data junkie who randomly has periods where fitness works in my life. I’ve not done horrible over the last year as I’m down 30 pounds and the Microsoft know your numbers thing says my BP and Cholesterol are better this year vs. last. But, there is always room to improve. Anyhow review my opinion time. I’ve been wearing both a fitbit and a band for about a year now. My V1 band is extremely beat-up due to me being a human jungle gym and having kids hang on my arm, and due to wearing my band while building a house.

I’ve thought about the fitbit with GPS but the Band screen is awesome vs the fitbit screen, and it’s not horrible for me to wear both so I will keep on wearing both. Work reimbursed me for both so cost is not really a concern for me with the devices. If cost mattered, I would purchase the fitbit max level then put the band in my amazon cart and hope my wife “accidently” did not notice there and bought it next time she buys something. End up some great toys using this method.

Fitbit HR

  1. Near real time heat rate monitoring – Makes Kev happy
  2. Fitbit has five years of my data. It fun looking back to track progress or see what I was doing what day, or watch how my patterns have changed with kids and jobs, and sleep.
  3. Charging during showers is enough to keep going forever power wise
  4. Stairs seem to be more accurate vs. the Band.
  5. I own the fitbit scale and use it
  6. My BP monitor also uploads to the fitbit site
  7. Fitbit has lots of data and lets me hunt around
  8. The clasp on the charge HR is watch like and not “cool” sometimes it’s annoying
  9. Fitbit has amazing customer support. you send in pictures of dead unit. they send you a new one and don’t care about the old one

 

 

 

 

 

Band v2—

  1. Heart rate is still not real time – this makes me sad face
  2. Fitbit uploads to health vault so Band has some of my data, but not full fidelity
  3. V2 has stairs finally – but does not seem perfect. I did like 400 flights one day
  4. Charging during showers is not enough to keep the band doing it needs more charging
  5. Band is comfy and clasp is pretty awesome. I play with it all the time as part of nervous twitches. Love the clasp and band fit
  6. GPS data is ubber cool for running, even with the delay to find signal. I use the delay to encourage stretching
  7. Band Tells me about Emails, Texts, face book, and Meetings
  8. Last week in San Diego my band told me to put on sun screen, pretty cool feature to track UV
  9. Microsoft support I sent in my busted band 2 and waited a few weeks for a new one to come back
Band V2 is a massive improvement over v1. – that being said my band 1 is held together with glue and tap and peeling all over the place but it is still working. My band v2 is going in a box back to Microsoft tomorrow because it stopped charging. Sad face.
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 My band V1 after a year of heavy usage

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