Thread: New Fitness Gadget - Fitbit

Sounds like a very cool gadget, but I wonder about its accuracy. Would it read differently clipped on to different parts of your body? For example, if a girl carries it in her bra, how would it read while she is running versus jump roping? Or if you skip rope in small jumps like I do vs the typical big jumps? Or if you leave it in your pocket, what about those people who compulsively shake their leg when sitting down at work or something? Will it miscalculate?

Fitbit - Frequently Asked Questions

How accurate is the Fitbit Tracker?
Calorie data from the Tracker is very similar to those from energy expenditure measurement devices used in clinical research. The Tracker will give you a good sense of how your activity levels change from day to day.

The Tracker is also one of the most accurate pedometers. We've tuned the accuracy of the Fitbit step counting functionality over hundreds of tests with multiple different body types. For most wearers, the Fitbit should be roughly 95-97% accurate for step counting. We spent a lot of time ensuring that this accuracy is achieved even when you wear the Fitbit loosely in your pocket.

Sleep data from the Tracker correlates very strongly with results from polysomnograms found in sleep labs.

Does the Fitbit accurately track calories from cycling/biking?
The Fitbit is optimized for walking, running and general household/lifestyle activities and gives you a good general 24 hour picture of your day. It's not going to be that accurate for things like biking, but the website will allow you to manually log activities, so that an estimated calorie burn for your biking can be included in your daily totals. If you are only doing the biking for an hour or so a day, the Fitbit will give you a good overview of your activities for the other 23 hours. The Fitbit is really for people to get a general sense of their day and get motivation from improvements in their general day to day trends.


The sleep tracking is interesting:
How does the sleep tracking work and what will I learn?
It's important that you get a good night's sleep. Recent studies have shown that sleep quality is linked to overall wellness. Have you ever wondered why you still feel tired even though you think you've gotten a full 8 hours of sleep? The Fitbit Tracker will allow to "see" what your body is actually doing at night.

When you get into bed, you slide the Fitbit Tracker onto a wristband that is provided with the Tracker. As you fall in and out of sleep, the Fitbit tracks the movements that your body makes and can tell you how long it took you to fall asleep, how many times you woke up throughout the night and the actual time you were asleep vs the time you were in bed.


It seems a few things need to be entered manually to track, such as diet and in my opinion, most workout activities: weight lifting, skipping rope, boxing, cycling.

You'd think with our technology they could make sleeping blindfolds with sensors over the eyelids that track your eye movements to know when you hit REM, when you opened yours eyes then send it wirelessly to the device on your waist that also reads your tossing and turning, plus have a microphone to record snoring patterns to see if you snore heavily and suddenly stop. The data needs to be broader.

I know that if my body is sore I don't toss and turn much...

That thing is pretty damn cool!

I'm curious to see how the website looks once it's out, up and running.