If you’ve noticed all of the fitness tracker craze, you’ve definitely heard of the Fitbit brand. While I’m not an avid gym goer, I was sure that an activity tracker would make me a bit more aware of how much I was or wasn’t moving.
On my search for reliable activity trackers I came across the Fitbit brand. I’ve heard about them before, but they had clip on trackers before. The Fitbit brand is well known when it comes to activity trackers so I was excited to try the Fitbit Flex.
Fitbit Flex Looks
The Fitbit Flex comes in a box that allows you to see the band, you you’ll have a precise idea of the thickness and color of the band. The band is the same color all around. There’s a little clear plastic bar that is also the same color as the band. One end of the band has the metal clasp with two teeth to clip into the empty slots (there’s seven on the small band and nine on the larger band) on the other end of the band.
Design and Build
Once you take the band out you see the slot where you insert the tracker. The tracker is actually a black little device (about an inch long) that has a small LED that displays dots (more on that a bit later). On the end of the tracker, there are 3 metal connectors. It has the Fitbit logo and that’s pretty much it. If you’ve heard of the Fitbit One, the Flex is pretty much the same, except it is held in the bracelet.
The bracelet and the tracker are both very lightweight. You will forget you have it on after a while. I think it’s a good thing. You don’t want to shell out the money and get annoyed at the tracker. To sum of the Fitbit Flex’s design; simple
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Features
When researching the Flex, there were 3 features that sold me. Wireless syncing with the Fitbit app, sleep tracking, alarm functions.
Fitbit App and Data Tracking
The Fitbit Flex syncs wirelessly with the Fitbit app which is available free on both Apple iOS and Android. Setup is pretty easy. You create an account and it asks for the basic information, such as your name, age and current weight.
The clear display on the bracelet is for you to be able to see the the trackers dot system. The tracker has dots the light up to notify you of certain things (up to five dots in a row). Each dot represents 20% of your daily goal.For example, if your goal is to walk 10,000 steps a day, and you’ve walked 4,375 steps, the tracker would light up 2 dots and the third dot would blink a few times. The 2 dots indicate that you’ve reached 4000 and the blinking third dot means that you’re on your way to reaching 60% of your goal.
I love the wireless syncing because it pretty much does all the work for you. You can see your progress throughout the day, throughout the weeks, and even throughout the months.
Sleep Tracking and Silent Alarms
When it comes to tracking sleep, the Fitbit lets you know what time you fell asleep and what times you woke up during the middle of the night. They label this “restless sleep”.
You have to tell it when you’re going to sleep and when you’re awake. It’s not intuitive when it comes to recognizing when you’re sleeping lightly and knowing when to wake you up. I do prefer the silent alarm on my wrist as opposed to my annoying phone alarm.
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Experience With the Fitbit Flex
I think the Fitbit Flex does a great job of counting steps. You can see the app track as you walk and it was pretty accurate. I do wish it did count stairs since I go up and down plenty of stairs on a daily basis. My step count would be drastically different.
Battery life is great on the Flex. You can stretch it out to 5 days after one charge. That’s as far as I got. You can check your battery stats on the app. And when your battery is running low you get an email and an app notification. I hate it when I forget to charge the tracker and my moves aren’t being counted. So terrible.
Would I say the Fitbit Flex made me move more? Yes. It’s a weird type of motivation. At first, I had no idea what my routine was like. Once I did get an idea, I wanted to beat my own records and do better. You want to see the numbers go up (steps and calories burned) which in turn makes the graph bars come up.
I like being able to tap the Flex once and having an idea of how far along I am in my daily steps goal. The Flex does this funky vibration pattern when you reach your steps goal and that’s always a good feeling. To me it became like a fun contest. You can even compete with others on daily and weekly steps.
Having your data on hand is more helpful than you realize. Whenever you have a few minutes free you can gloss over your progress and that’s always helpful. The data would be more precise if I input my water intake and my food plan but I wasn’t able to keep up. The steps were fine for me.
I don’t like how the band gets dirty. You may want to invest in a few extra bands so you can switch them off.
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If you’re into the activity tracker idea, Fitbit is definitely a brand to trust. They are well known for step tracking and have made it a bit better with the Flex. Comfortable wear and wireless syncing make this activity tracker a breeze to use. I don’t think I would be that enthused to use it if I had to manually plug it in every day to get the data.
I call the Fitbit Tracker the “Gateway Activity Tracker” because it may lead you to start taking notice of what you’re eating, how often you’re moving or not moving. You can make the challenge public or private. If you decide for more accurate readings, you can get a heart rate monitor, and the Fitbit Aria scale. The scale syncs your weight along with your data as well. Helping you take tracking and your activity/ fitness goals one step further.
The Fitbit Flex will set you back $99. At the price it may be just right or too much for some that consider this a luxurious step tracker.
