The Fitbit Flex a fitness tracking wrist band based around tracking your diet, daily activities and your sleep. The Flex was on my wrist for about a week and joined me in my day to day activities. While I did enjoy having the band on, tracking my activities I did find myself a bit frustrated at the same time.
At a glance, the Fitbit flex looks the part, feels the part and can stand up to most conditions. I basically put it through every test I could including submerging it under water. Durability is one of this fitness trackers strong suit. After a few days of use, I quickly realized that the Fitbit Flex was a great motivational tool with five LED lights that indicate how active you have been throughout the day. When you tap the band and see that only half the lights are lit up, it makes you want to get up to reach your daily goal.
Where the Fitbit Flex fell short for me was with daily activities. For example, typing on the computer and driving was being tracked as steps walked. To combat this you would have to enter in the times you were doing such activities in the application. Continuing this trend, I noticed that a weight training workout at the gym would register very low active minutes. I would workout about 45 minutes lifting weights and by the end I would get a 10 active minutes recorded. On the other side, running on the treadmill at higher speeds shot up the active minutes and step counts drastically. Once again, having to enter in this data into the app became annoying. At times it felt like I didn’t need the band at all because the app was estimating all the statistics for me.
With that being said, it is quite clear to me who would benefit and how this band would benefit a person. For active people like myself who workout regularly and are already doing active things, I think this band is not going to benefit you. For people who are just getting started in fitness, the Flex is a great companion to have. The motivation aspect, the statistics and the application seem to be tailored for people who are just starting out.
The app itself is not all bad, in fact as an app it is pretty great. Like, I said before you can enter in various activities for a more accurate stat but you can also enter in the food you eat and water you drink. All of this is put together in a very pleasing format that allows you to see how you are doing with your fitness and sort of get an idea of things you can do to improve on it.
The sleep mode built into the flex was one of my favourite features. I have always had trouble sleeping and I noticed with the Flex that I wasn’t getting much sleep at all some days. The way it tracks your sleep is interesting as well. You can see the times you were restless, your deep sleep and times you woke up throughout the night. Based on the patterns I saw in my sleep in conjunction to the days I was really tired, I found that it was a pretty good little feature.
To summarize the FitBit Flex up… It is a fitness gadget that is going to help motivate you to get active. As it tracks your activity, you can strive to improve and surpass the steps you walked the day before or the calories you burned. By having it on your wrist alone is a constant reminder to get moving but with the application, the LED lights and the sleep tracker it really does give a beginner a lot to work with. If you are someone who is more advanced and already have a decent workout schedule this may not be the fitness tracking band for you.
For full specifications, price and reviews of the Fitbit Flex, visit Amazon