Friday Fitness: The FitBit Blaze!

If you go back in my archives, I did a Friday Fitness post reviewing my very original FitBit. Yes, I had an original FitBit. I'd read about it in a Hungry Girl email (she's awesome BTW, check out www.hungry-girl.com) and I pre-ordered it when it was still just a really good idea. That was back on December 8, 2009. So I've been a long time FitBit customer.

As I said back then, I am not paid for this review, and I paid full retail price for my FitBit. I just think it's really cool and I like to share cool finds with people!

The FitBit Blaze is the FitBit's competition for the smart watch like Apple Watch. It's really a fitness tracker that has a few smart watch type features. So if you want a true smart watch, this device is not for you. But if you want a fitness tracker - FitBit is your brand.

It has lots of features that it can track automatically: steps, miles, calories, floors climbed, active minutes, heart rate, and sleep. You can also manually add exercise (particularly if you're doing something like swimming that the FitBit can't track) and foods so it gives you a comparison of calories in vs. out. You can log your weight manually or you can also connect to FitBit's scale Aria (which I have but it's not really anything too special so I would't bother reviewing it. It tells you how much you weigh, your body fat, and it syncs via wifi with your account. That's it).

So let's break it down:

Steps - it's pretty accurate. It does sometimes record "steps" when I'm sitting and moving my hands but I figure movement is movement and activity is activity so it's not a big deal.

Miles - you can set your stride length to get accuracy or if you're the kind of person that has their phone on them always you can just link it to the GPS on your phone and it will figure out automatically what your stride is. But since my phone sits in my purse all day I turned this feature off and set my stride manually.

Calories - this is based on your basal metabolic rate (the calories you would burn to carry out your bodily functions even if you never got out of bed all day) plus added calories for your activity levels.

Floors climbed - again this is pretty accurate.

Active minutes - not sure what use to calculate this but it figures out how many minutes of the day you spend being active and then if you manually log activity it adds that it too.

Heart Rate - it has a heart rate monitor that is fairly accurate. I used to wear a chest strap HRM while working out (I have a Friday Fitness post about that too in my archives) and for a while I wore both the Blaze and the chest strap to compare. It was close enough that I stopped bothering with the chest strap. I do find it works best when I'm working out to wear the watch on the inside of my wrist. That seems to keep a more consistent, accurate reading during exercise.

Sleep - the FitBit also automatically records your sleep and tells you how many times you woke up and how many times you were restless so you can see how many minutes you were actually asleep vs. how long you were in bed. It did seem a little big to me to wear to sleep at first, but I got used to it pretty quickly. And it's not uncomfortable at all.

As far as the smart watch features, you can see text messages (but you can't reply and you can't see emoji's), you can see calendar alerts, and you can see caller ID. With the caller ID you have the option to dismiss the call. I suppose if you were working out with headphones in you could also answer the call from the watch but I don't workout with headphones in so I don't know how well that works.

And that's pretty much it! As you can see it's a pretty cool gadget. I like being able to see calls and texts because, like I said, my phone is in my purse and I don't always hear it. But I really wanted a device to track my fitness so that's why I went with the FitBit instead of an actual smart watch. Overall I've had nothing but awesome experiences wit FitBit and this device continues to impress me.

Have any questions? Feel free to comment! And if you like what you're reading follow my blog! Thanks!