The FitBit Flex
is a fitness tracking device, that is worn around your non-dominant hand’s
wrist. At the first glance, it looks like any other wrist band, just trying to
make a statement. But there is much more to it, thanks to its wonderful
capabilities of tracking and sensing.
Essentially, it is just a device with an accelerometer, that
gauges your movements, and draws patterns and counts the number of steps. Based
on this, it then calculates the calories burnt, the number of steps per day,
the active times and the non-active times, and your sleep times. It gives a
nice display of all this data on a web/mobile interface. The statistics it
draws are good to keep track of your daily activities and can help you in
maintaining a healthy routine.
There are many such devices out there in the market. Jawbone
has its UP band, Nike has its FuelBand and so on. They are all available in the
range of $100 to $150, and perform almost the same functions.
Let us look deeper into the FitBit Flex:
Price: $99.99
Colors: Black, Teal,
Red, Navy Blue etc.
Usage: To be worn
on your non-dominant hand wrist, 24/7
Tracks: Steps,
sleep by itself. Food, water to be manually entered.
Sizes: Small and
Large wrist sizes. Both included in package.
It might look lame, but trust me when I say this, it is the
best motivator I have had till date. You want to eat better, sleep better and work out
better, just so that your statistics look good over a period of time. I myself
wasn't convinced on hearing about it the first time. One would say, why do you
need some tracker, when you have that thought in your mind anyway? But
statistics just makes things look better, and you feel that you are analyzing
yourself better. And it just helps when all the data that is gathered is put in
front of your so easily and so very neatly.
Putting in on yourself 24/7 seems tedious too. But after
about 2-3 days of discomfort, you should get used to it. The band itself is
waterproof and can be worn while showering/swimming. The band is made of a
rubber kind of material, and has a plastic clasp to secure it in place. If you
are used to wearing a wrist watch, then it is somewhat good and somewhat bad
for you. Good, since you are used to having something around your wrist all the
time. Bad, because the FitBit Flex doesn't show time. So you may have the
feeling around your hand that you are wearing something, and then move to check
the time, but alas, there is no time being shown.
It boasts of a nice little dashboard, and has both Android
and iOS applications. With an iPhone, it goes a step further by allowing direct
sync. For Android, FitBit is said to be rolling out the functionality slowly to
all phones. For now, to sync the FitBit in the absence of an iPhone, it needs
to connect to the dongle connected to your PC.
The dashboard gives you information about the number of
steps per day, the time frames in which you were most active, the number of
calories burned, miles covered, sleep time etc. You can log food and water
consumption manually, to get a better feedback. Each tile shown on the
dashboard is configurable, and clicking on one provides deeper insights into
the same. The sleep time tile for example shows the time when you went to sleep
till you woke up. It tracks how many times you woke up at night, how many times
were you restless and thus calculates your sleep efficiency. This is a very
nice feature, and may provide some light on why you may be waking up tired, or
why you may be needing more sleep in general.
The tracker itself has only 5 LEDs on it, which show the
goal completion in 20% increments. You can put it to sleep mode on rapidly
tapping it, and waking it up again using the same technique. A double tap shows
the goal progress. You can also set silent alarms on the tracker. A silent
alarm wakes you up by vibrating the FitBit on your wrist, and is a better alarm
than the loud ringing of an alarm clock, which I find irritating especially in
the early moments of the morning.
The battery life is around 6-7 days, and takes around an
hour to charge. The LEDs also display the battery left when low. The dashboard
shows it too, and alerts you when the battery is low.
You can set goals for yourself, such as the number of steps
to be covered per day etc. It’s a good motivation to work out or exercise more,
in order to complete the goal. If you have friends owning FitBit, you can
compete with each other too, using the Friend finder either over Facebook or
otherwise. You can set your privacy settings, and decide on the amount of
information you want to share with your friends.
All in all, I would rate it a 4 on 5. I myself think that
there can be some improvements surely, but it delivers what it is supposed to,
and it does so ever so wonderfully. I haven’t used any other Fitness band, but
this one is a keeper.
