Last year, I decided that I wanted to lose weight and I lost 30 pounds in three months! After that I lost 10 more pounds and chose to go into a more “maintenance” phase. But we had a few trips and I stopped tracking my calories and I knew that I had gained. I weighed myself and had gained five pounds — not terrible, but I wanted to get things back under control.
To reinvigorate my weight loss and help me to be motivated, I wanted a new fitness tracker. This is a review of my Fitbit Alta HR:
This post may contain affiliate links; all opinions are my own. See Disclosures here
If you’ve been following my fitness tracker journey, you know that I have gone through two Fitbit Flex and now two Fitbit Charge HR. Once my replacement Fitbit Charge HR broke, I decided to look into a completely new fitness tracker and I found the Garmin Vivosmart HR. I’ve had the new fitness tracker for about 3 weeks now so this is my Garmin Vivosmart HR review:
This post may contain affiliate links; all opinions are my own. See Disclosures here
I’ve had the Fitbit Flex for just over a year and a half and I’ve loved having a lightweight fitness band to track my steps and help me stay motivated about staying active. When I heard about the new fitness bands from Fitbit, I was curious. I’ve always been interested in tracking my heart rate, but I didn’t think a chest strap monitor was right for me. So, when I saw that Fitbit had a new fitness band that could track heart rate — the ChargeHR and the Surge — I thought this would be perfect for me.
I started researching the Fitbit ChargeHR but I wasn’t getting all my questions answered. How accurate is the heart rate monitor? How often do you need to charge it? How can I transfer my data from the Flex to the ChargeHR? I kept checking my local Target to see if they were available (at fitbit.com, there is an 8-10 week backorder) and I got very excited when I found the Fitbit ChargeHR at Target yesterday. I decided to buy it today and here are my first impressions.
I bought the Fitbit ChargeHR in Large in the color black. I thought I might like the Plum color, but it wasn’t available in store and the Plum display band seemed a little to pink for my liking. I plugged the ChargeHR into my computer to charge it while I went through the setup process.
Some of the first things I noticed:
I synced up the Fitbit ChargeHR very easily through my computer and Fitbit asked me if I was replacing the Fitbit Flex. I clicked “Yes” and that was it — all of my data was ported over very easily. The entire process took maybe 7 minutes. I’ll do a side by side comparison post soon between the ChargeHR and the Flex.
The Fitbit ChargeHR was 50% charged out of the box, and just having it plugged into my computer while I did the setup, took it to 100%.
I then wore it for a treadmill workout to see what the heart rate monitor was like. I ran for 30 minutes and the heart rate seemed very accurate. I also have a Heart Rate monitor app for iPhone that has you key your pulse beats for 10 seconds and it tells you you BPM. Both heart rate numbers were with in 5 BPM each time I tested it.
The band was very comfortable during my workout. Fitbit recommends wearing the band higher on your wrist for more accurate heart rate results. I wore it about 1.5 finger lengths from my wrist bone. I’m excited to see more of my heart rate data throughout the week.
A more in depth review to come after I’ve had time to really use the Fitbit ChargeHR for a while. Let me know if you have any questions so I can include them in my review post. So far, I like the ChargeHR and it’s very comfortable. 🙂