My wife has been dropping hints that she’d like a Fitbit style band for her birthday – she isn’t very sporty but is looking to change that.

Budget £100ish – would be nice if it did heart rate.
Have been looking at various offerings from Garmin and fitbit, but everything seems to get mixed reviews…

What have you got?

Was just about to post the same question!

Watching with interest.

I can go a bit more cash though if needed.

Would be good if it could send data etc to her phone, or viewable on phone via web.

Far more then your budget but I took delivery of a Garmin Vivoactive HR yesterday, it’s an amazing piece of tech. Syncs well with my iPhone, lots of extra features can be added and very comfortable to wear. Battery life is looking good but not tried it in full GPS mode for any length of time.

Sounds like it’ll be what you’re after Mary

Does she have any friends that use fitness bands? – there is a social/competition angle which she may enjoy but (I think) you have to be on the same ecosystem.

I personally use a Garmin Vivofit 2 which I have had for 14 months and it is still on its original battery. It is a basic model but has been good. I did a 177 day 10k steps per day streak (broken when on a long haul flight).

It has definitely made me more active.

Bought Mrs CFH the entry level Fitbit (Flex?) in an airport induced shopping stupor. No heart rate, but she’s very happy with it. Simple, unobtrusive.

Bought my Wife the fit bit one for her Birthday last year. She used it for a few months to see if she done enough. And I haven’t seen it since. I would say they are good.

New Samsung Gear Fit 2 looks good. £150 though

i’ve been down this road and back up again and after having a fitbit charge which i took back, a Withings Swiss watch which i sent back I settled on a fitbit Blaze.

What you have to consider is how you want the watch to work. I have a garmin on my bike wth HRM so that’s covered but I wanted something to measure my heart rate on spin classes and HIIT workouts.

When you know what you want to measure then it dictates which product.

Gamins are good with GPS, so great for running/cycling etc etc but not so good for indoor stuff like elliptical and workouts, unless you wear a heart rate strap or buy premium models.

I went for the Fitbit Blaze as it measures heart rate and has a series of predetermined exercise modes so if i’m doing spin it works on heart rate only, if i’m running it can either link up to phone for GPS or count steps. I did a 3k run last night on steps only and the person I was running with did it with Garmin Forerunner on GPS and i was amazed that the distance on my run was exactly the same, really shocked me.

The blaze I think is the best around for £160 and looks nice and has a lot of nice feature and the sleep monitoring is interesting too. it has Fit star on it which links with iPad/smartphone and it’ll give you a series of fast workouts to do high intensity stuff, which I find really good.

I bought a fitbit clone from gearbest for £15. It broke inside a month. Take from that what you will!

Personally i’m waiting for the smartstraps to make an appearance so i can wear my nice watch!

fitbit charge hr here … not bad, battery life is “fair”, syncing
can be a bit “hit and miss” but all in all does the job quite well.

1 month in on Vivosmart HR

Happy with it, have no issues with Garmin Connect on the phone and dials itself into things like My Fitness Pal easily. Get phone notification through but just really enough to decide if you want to read it or not. The move bar is good and the music control for your phone works.

Happy enough, battery does about a week unless I’m using it as ANT+ HRM for the proper garmin. No GPS but not really needed in a tracker.

I’d stick with a Fitbit Charge HR, then get her sorted out with Bounts. Earn points for being active (can link other things like Swimtag, Strava, etc…) which can be exchanged for shopping vouchers!

Garmin Vivoactive 2 user, it’s not terrible, about the best benefit I got is realising how little I move at work, and then when I tried to move more, how passive aggressive the management are about not being at your desk 🙂

Connect works well enough and the activities from the Vivoactive and my Edge 510 seem to merge well enough.

I did try the phone linking but it was a bit flaky. That could be a Windows 10 phone thing though, great as a phone, not very good at the apps. I have used Connect on Android and that was better.

The sleep thing is a bit random, it kind of gets it right but remembering to put it into sleep mode when you go to bed and turn it off when you get up is the most accurate.

Ordered mine from Amazon and the first was faulty, accelerometer wasn’t counting steps. Amazon sent a replacement next day along with a returns lable and I just had to drop off the broken one at the nearest Collect+.

New one has worked perfectly for months now.

I’ve had a Vivoactive HR since they came out end of April, like the device it’s getting better with each release though it auto completes paused exercises after 15 mins where as it used to be 30 which is a bit rubbish.

I had Fitbit before for over two years.

Think the Fitbit app is simpler and easier to use and you can have multiple activity trackers and it syncs the steps so you are not tied to just a watch, band or clip on.

With Garmin it doesn’t reconcile multiple devices within Garmin connect so if you have real watches you have to make a tracking choice, or use a Fitbit and Garmin which is rubbish really. I did try using vivosmart band and Vivoactive that didn’t work 🙂 so the active went back.

The battery life in the Garmin vs Fitbit surge the Garmin is far superior it exceeds the estimates given by Garmin.

The cheapest (?) Fitbit without the HR monitor has a crap strap, the wife had one and it came unfastened and fell off without her knowing. It used two oval ‘press stud’ type fasteners rather than a buckle.
Wrote to Fitbit – TS.

I have a FitBit charge HR which was a decent activity tracker (although HR tracking under heavy exercise was a bit pants) and it really didn’t understand cycling at all, but as a thing to make you move about more, it worked well. I though the app/website is the best of the ones I’ve seen. Pretty tough as well but not fully waterproof. Not much to look at!

I now have a TOMTOM Spark with the music option I bought as it has GPS and can stick headphones in for running. It’s ugly but tough. App is nowhere near as nice and it’s more of a ride/run/swim device that a bespoke activity tracker. HR seems more accurate.

I really want what Drac has! Not sure I can justify buying another one tho. Main issue I have with the TOMTOM is the GPS only lasts 5-6 hours and sometimes we’re out longer than that. It does sync seamlessly to Strava etc.

Garmin Vivosmart HR here – it’s ok, although always causes a horrid rash on my wrist. I tend not to wear watches in general so haven’t noticed this as a problem in the past. Some barrier cream gets around this issue 🙂

I usually pair it up with my Edge 25 via ANT.

The sleep thing is a bit random, it kind of gets it right but remembering to put it into sleep mode when you go to bed and turn it off when you get up is the most accurate.

I set mine to the time I normally go to bed if I’m not nights.

Has to be the iHealth Wave. I’ve used a whole host of different trackers for work projects and the iHealth is fantastic. The new Wave is excellent and unbeatable at the price point.

Fitbit Charge HR bought last week for wife’s b-day – seems happy with it. Agree that strap on lower-end one looks poor.

After hunting around a few months ago we plumped for the MS Band for my wife. Actually a surprisingly good piece of kit and she definitely like it. Unfortunately it broke quiet quickly. At least it was replaced for free – waiting to see how she gets on with the replacement. It’s a pity there have been issues with them as it’s not bad and the integration with her phone (iPhone) and Strava etc has been great for her.

I got a secondhand Fitbit Surge off here

Kind of liked it for first few weeks but lost interest in it now

Although it does motivate me to keep moving on days where I feel like I’m chained to the desk

Think you have to treat some of the data with a pinch of salt

Mine records a few steps when I’m driving for example

But if you look at the trends rather than the actual figures that’s probably best

I like my Charge HR but agree with if you look at the trends rather than the actual figures that’s probably best.