Looking for a wearable I can wear 24/7 that can give me good all round daily activity stuff and other specific exercise activities – cycling being the top one, of course.

I use Strava for recording cycling activity but I want to up the ante and include stuff like heart rate etc.,

I have heard Strava and Fitbit have combined forces and it is supposed to be easy to join accounts. Have also heard people saying it can be a nightmare – so wondered what any of you thought.

I like the Fitbit Surge, though a tad expensive. The Charge HR is a better price but not sure about the bracelet look. The Blaze seems to be a compromise midpoint and, I have to say, I think I could live with it as a daily wearable.

As you can tell, I’ve looked at Fitbit mostly – are there any others I really must consider before parting with my money?

🙂

Strava user and, since Christmas, fitbit user too. Some observations

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heart rate readings from strava don’t sync to fitbit, or vice versa
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unless you remember to start your fitbit activity at the same time it will count loads of steps you didn’t do while you’re riding
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the water tracker is awesome, really getting on top of day to day hydration because of it
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Depending on what you’re trying to do, you’ll probably end up buying the wireless scales as well – that’s another £85 or so.
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Optical heartrate tracking (the type that doesn’t need a strap) doesn’t work very well IME. Neither does sleep tracking.

The Garmin vivoactive works pretty well for me. Does all the step counting for day to day, then is a decent GPS tracker for running, etc – paired to a HR strap if you want. I tend to just use my phone for Strava but no reason why you couldn’t from the watch.

I’ve had a Vivoactive for nearly a year now, I use my 810 on the bike most of the time but when I’ve used the Vivoactive it’s been fine, the main problem I have is having to put my glasses on to read the text alerts due to my old eyes.

Vivoactive here for similar reasons – I wanted something that recorded my general activity through the day and had gps/hr capabilities for the odd bike ride. Garmin connect links to strava pretty easily too.

Another vivoactive user here. Love the watch and shoping about you can get it for 125 with hrm.

I use a Suunto Ambit Run 3, dead cheap if you search around, I picked mine up for £139 from Bike Discount.

Use it running but also riding, simple to use, last around 16 hours on tracking mode and links via bluetooth to your phone. Upload through Suunto Move app which links with Strava. All you need to do is change it from a run to ride in the starva screen, still picks up all your segments.

Edit – Cheap here

I run Strava though my Sony Smartwatch 3, and it works really well as a visual guide to whats going on (although this is mainly for running)
as well as then doubling up as a remote control for music etc.
Love the ability to check HR / Speed / Distance etc on your wrist. It has a built in gps, but isn’t strava compatible on its own so to speak.

I use a Suunto Ambit 3 and it works like a dream through Movescount, and onto Strava – logs all HRM stuff too, and syncs with other Underarmour apps.

Happy with my Fitbit Surge. It has recently had a software update for the HRM and it seems pretty good now. Although as others have said this doesn’t go onto Strava. Other than this the integration is pretty seamless. As soon as I press ‘finish’ after my ride/run/walk it uploads to Strava pretty much instantly, the tracking seems accurate and its very quick to find GPS. The app and dashboard are very good indeed. Hard to say if the sleep tracking is any good as I have nothing to compare it against, but it certainly automatically recognises when I go to bed and get up. If I’m up in the night with the young ‘uns, it always recognises this too so it seems okay. I think its probably at the more ‘casual’ end of the fitness tracker spectrum, compared to say a decent Garmin version, but its been ideal for my needs so far.

Thanks for all the replies – much appreciated.

Now to have a read about the Vivoactive.

🙂

Another satisfied vivoactive user here. Though tbh I don’t really see the value in the activity monitoring, but its a nice GPS watch with a long battery life, some nice notification features when paired with a smartphone and a perfectly fine watch too. Nice and light.

Got mine for £99 on a Black Friday deal, very happy with it for general wearing, running, a bit of cycling, and some mildly diverting activity stats.

Apple Watch ? I have no idea, but just wondered

Apple Watch ? I have no idea, but just wondered

I think you could, by going through health app, and syncing with Strava from there. But you need your phone, and the HRM is a bit rubbish as it’s just a wrist mount thing.

It’s a pretty expensive way to do a bad job

TomTom runner 2 here, works well for me.

I’ve got a Fitbit HR and it’s very good for what I want, I’ll be getting the scale soon.

The whole joining forces thing is a bit of a red herring though. Fitbit, MyFitnessPal, Strava, Apple Health and a million others all claim their apps and devices sync with all the others, and they do to a certain degree, but it’s not what you might expect – as someone else said – the Fitbit HR models, don’t sync HR data to Strava – what you can do is use the ludicrously inaccurate calorie counter on Strava to sync output into the frankly appalling calorie counter on Fitbit. I wanted to sync my calories burnt via Fitbit because it actually records how hard you’re working into MyFitnessPal because it’s easily the best for recording how much you’re eating, but it doesn’t do that – it just uses Fitbit as a pedometer instead of my iPhone, which is silly.

In short, they all claim they work together, it helps them sell devices / services, but in reality they do the bear minimum to make the claims – also worth noting, whilst I really like my Fitbit HR, it only really passes HR data to the Fitbit app, and the majority of Fitbits devices, certainly the older ones are primarily pedometers – so it’s very ‘step orientated’ – and steps are a bit of a score thing – they work out your calories burnt with the HR, but you get 5000k steps or something even though your feet barely touched the ground for 3 hours. I asked them about it on live-chat and basically got “yes, they all do that sir” it’s great for competing with your mates on step-challenges, but not much use otherwise – not that it bothers me, I’m not a runner.

I use strava on my Apple Watch and it is brilliant. Much better than I expected. It’s easier than messing around getting the phone out and has plenty of available information. It has its own app installed on the watch and is linked to strava on the phone so it uploads directly. I find it better for running as it tells you at a glance the info I want. I use it on the bike but mainly for logging miles when I’m not using my garmin.

Apple is a no no for me. I don’t like the products or the brand – just my personal prejudice…

The Vivoactive doesn’t have built in HR and whilst a strap may be more accurate, I’ll take ease over remembering to put on the strap.

Whilst I appreciate it may be a compromise and the “Apple” of the fitness world, it would seem the Fitbit fits the bill. I may hold out for the Blaze…

Thank you everyone.

🙂

@bombjack

Have you tried GhostRacer? Uses the watch’s in built GPS so you can record without the phone. I picked one up for running a little while ago and its been super. Also syncs easily with Strava.

Microsoft Band 2, really like mine. Syncs to strava, meets all your requirements. I like all the health data it creates on the MS site. Sleep tracking is great.

Any hacked firmware about?