Current favorite fitness tracker

[Loops]

Hey folks!!
My mio go is dead, so I'm in the market for a new fitness tracker. The mio was fine, but I'd love to know what you all are using. My only requirement is it needs to be on the wrist and have a HR monitor.

Looking forward to your responses. TIA

[Query]

I don't know, but if I were buying, I would want one with a full pulse/oximeter (measuring blood saturation, and possibly estimating blood flow rate), and a sleep monitoring and recording function. I've been using something like that for sleep apnea, and it works well, but mine clamps on a finger-tip - very inconvenient.

So make sure that your wrist-worn device doesn't actually use a finger-tip clamp, like the Contec CMS50F, CMS50K and CMS50K1 do - totally useless for sports, and not even great for sleep recording.

Other sleep apnea sufferers told me the wrist ones work just as well, and there is even at least one smart ring device.

(BTW, despite claims, no wrist-worn device can reliably detect sleep stage. To even try you also need EEG and near-eye EKG, a microphone, and something to measure breathing and breath composition, and lots of other stuff, maybe even a camera. Even with all that, even the best human interpreters are often wrong, as I learned the hard way in a sleep study. With all the equipment attached, I think I only managed about 20-40 minutes of sleep, but they said I had over 400 minutes. Not all that an unusual experience for in-lab sleep studies. However, you didn't talk about sleep, so maybe that's irrelevant.)

If I had the money, I would also want it to be waterproof, and have a GPS, with a way to download the data into a PC and my Smartphone (mine is Android), so I could see how far and where I ran or paddled.

There are a few expensive headband-type and head-net devices that have a built-in pulse/oximeter add an EEG and/or EKG, but that's mostly useful for sleep monitoring and meditation, or maybe very hard core sports training. (I've been playing with an old ZEO EEG, but it's not very very reliable.) It would be harder to keep a headband on while skating. Some watches have EKG (also called ECG), but I don't see how that can do anything useful.

I once bought a $5 pulse measuring watch with a built in pedometer from Five Below. It worked, but the pedometer rattled when I moved In fact, it only counted arm swings, and guessed distance from your own estimation of stride length. I wouldn't go that cheap again. (It wasn't this model, BTW: https://www.fivebelow.com/series-8-fitness-trade-digital-lcd-screen-activity-tracker-watch.html, but I think it's the same brand.)

GPS devices can be much more accurate than pedometers. Some use the GPS in your smartphone, that you have to take with you too - same remarks as below.

If you want to go that cheap, Five Below and others sell wrist-worn smartphone holders - but I'd hate to break my smartphone, and it might be heavy enough to affect your spins, on the ice. And I think it wouldn't be pretty. OTOH, maybe a coach would find a worn smartphone useful for other things? There are smartphone apps that you can touch a finger to, to get a pulse. The one I tried https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=si.modula.android.instantheartrate&hl=en_US, is free, and works for me, but it has lots of ads.

I've seen some reviews of a high end Apple watch that complained that you couldn't download the oximeter data.

Some of the pulse/oximeters are FDA approved - though be aware that the contact-only oximeter devices can still be off by a few percent. I figure that doesn't matter - I looked for consistency, not accuracy.

BTW, there are no FDA approved devices that measure blood glucose level, except for ones that require that you perpetually keep an open wound, and can't go swimming, like Freestyle Libre. There used to be contact-only devices, but they were found to have adverse side-effects. But there are ones sold for that in other countries, that a diabetes dietician told me not to trust.

Oh yes - batteries are a very big deal, and possibly a large component of long-term cost. Oximeters take a lot of power, so if you get one, it should be rechargeable. Replacement batteries should always be cheap and readily available. People say the Apple products can only be charged by a device-specific inductive watch charger. I do like the idea of an inductive charger, because they wear out less than idiot micro-USB ports. 3rd party inductive devices are available for smartphones - I wonder if they are for watches and bracelets.

(But pulse measurement devices without an oximeter don't need much power.)

You can no longer easily change the batteries on Casio waterproof watches. You have to send it back to the factory, to get a new gasket, for a cost usually greater than that of a new watch. I.E., the lifetime of the watch is the lifetime of the battery. Might be worth a try to do it yourself, and carefully use Silicone grease to re-seal the current gasket, but I wrecked one watch when I got grease where it didn't belong. So investigate how hard it is to change a battery, and if available, the gasket.

Oh - from personal experience with two devices, Garmin waterproof devices - aren't. And Garmin GPS's force you to spend hundreds of extra dollars on undisclosed extra devices and services - at least the automotive one I bought does. The required Garmin smartphone app takes a lot of memory and resources - and it didn't work with my smartphone, though it was in the listed compatibility charts.

Because wrist-worn devices are fragile, it might actually make sense to buy it from Walmart or Costco and buy a warranty too, but I'm not sure - it costs more that way.

I would look the reviews up on Amazon. Be sure to read ALL the reviews. E.g., see

  https://www.amazon.com/s?k=bracelet+pulse&s=price-asc-rank&qid=1564105904&ref=sr_st_price-asc-rank

and

  https://www.amazon.com/s?k=watch+pulse&s=price-asc-rank&qid=1564105854&ref=sr_st_price-asc-rank

That's all I've got.

[ChristyRN]

I use a FitBit Charge 2. It measures heart rate and tracks sleep. It's simple enough and suits my needs. I also don't live and die by the data I get from it. I don't need the fancy/overdone smartwatches because I don't want to be that in touch all the time. I hate it when my coach is always looking at her smart watch during my lessons.

[Loops]

Thanks Christy, I'm looking at the inspire hr, for exactly the reasons you state. Ill use it to track runs more than anything else...do you use it for that? Do you like the software/app?

[TDL]

I just acquired the Inspire HR, have been a long time user of a variety of Fitbit activity trackers.

It tracks sleep, steps, heart rate,  provides silent alarms and estimates V02 Max.

it works well.  Bracelet is a little chintzy, but you can buy a nicer one and replace the one that comes with the device.

Battery life could be better, maybe 3 to 4 days.

[ChristyRN]

I don't run, but sometimes walk and I do use it for that.

[Loops]

Thanks guys!! I appreciate the feedback.