Fitbit: all the features of a fitness tracker

Fitbit is an American company specializing in the sale of smartwatches and fitness trackers, devices designed specifically for training and health, available in versions for adults, children and the whole family. Fitbit features include heart rate monitoring, sleep tracking, calorie consumption and mobile payments, with NFC technology and the Fitbit Pay app.

What is Fitbit

Fitbit is a San Francisco, US based company founded in 2007 by Eric Friedman and James Park. The company sells fitness devices that measure calories burned, steps taken during the day, and hours of sleep. Health features have been added over time, such as heart rate monitoring with HR sensors that measure your heart rate from the wrist.

The American company currently produces several mobile devices, mainly including fitness trackers and smartwatches, with models for adults, children and family collections. It also offers various accessories, including the Aria 2 smart scale, Fitbit Flyer headphones, and the fitness training app, Fitbit Coach. The app is compatible with Android and iOS, but costs € 43.99 per year, which includes access to qualified instructors, audio files and personalized video exercises.

How Fitbit works

Fitbit is an integrated system developed by the American company of the same name that requires the purchase of a mobile device and integration of the Fitbit application. After purchasing a smartwatch or Fitbit fitness tracker, download the app and follow the setup wizard. Once activated, you can enjoy many advanced features, including goal planning. With Fitbit, you can log your sleep hours to analyze your weekly performance against set values, see the number of steps you take each day, for example, to get to work or for a walk with your dog.

You can also count your daily calories and enter them into your weekly food worksheets, create training calendars that show the exercises you need to complete and goals you need to achieve each day, or use a travel tracking service and go out with friends.

You can share your sports workouts with your contacts via SMS, email or social networks, you can participate in multimedia competitions with other Fitbit members, receive training notifications, measure dehydration, heart rate and much more.

All Fitbit Smartwatch Models on the Market

Fitbit devices can be divided into smartwatches and fitness trackers. The most successful products include the Ionic smartwatch, available for € 269.99, a device that allows you to view personalized exercises, track distance and step counts with GPS, listen to music from a Deezer playlist, and monitor your heart rate with PurePulse.

The smartwatch is waterproof, compatible with swimming headsets and Bluetooth headsets, has a high-resolution touchscreen display and NFC technology for mobile payments with Fitbit Pay.

Another latest-generation device is the Versa, a fairly inexpensive smartwatch that has tossed the Apple Watch glove. There are three different models in the collection, the Basic Versa, Special Edition and Lite Edition.

They have a battery life of 4 days, a 50 meter water resistant screen, heart rate monitoring, sleep and training tracking, multi-application compatibility, audio playback and real-time notifications.

The Special Edition version offers additional features, including streaming music and viewing workouts directly on the display via the Fitbit Coach app, with over 15 different training modes for running, swimming and many other sports. Smartwatches can be fully personalized by choosing leather or hybrid fabric straps, or by opting for a stainless steel case. All models allow access to the Fitbit community of over 10 million people to share their workouts, challenges and tips.

The Versa Smartwatch is retailed for 199.99 euros in black, peach / aluminum and silver gray, while the top-of-the-range Versa Special Edition is priced at 229.99 euros, with two aesthetic variants in the form of lavender fabric and a pink aluminum case or an anthracite fabric strap and a graphite gray case. A lighter version of the Fitbit smartwatch, the Versa Lite Edition, is available for £ 159.99, in white / silver gray, lilac / gray, magenta and light blue.

All Fitbit Fitness Tracker Models on the Market

In addition to smartwatches, Fitbit also produces Fitness Trackers, devices similar to smartwatches but slightly less complex, with a few smaller features than more advanced models like the Versa and Sonic.

One of the flagship products is the Fitbit Charge 3, the most advanced fitness tracker in the history of the American company, which is available on the market at a price of 149.99 euros and is available in graphite gray and black, rose gold and blue, gray with a strap ice-white or with a rose gold aluminum housing and lavender fabric strap. This sports tracker is packed with features, including wrist-based heart rate monitoring, analyzing calories burned throughout the day, tracking sleep hours, measuring distance, and counting steps.

There is also a panel from which you can manage compatible apps such as Fitbit Pay for mobile payments, Fitbit Coach for personalized workouts, and over 15 exercise programs for swimming, yoga, cycling and running in real time.

For health, there is the Fitbit Alta HR, with a heart rate monitor, OLED display and notifications from social profiles such as WhatsApp and Facebook, for around 144.99 euros. The company has also developed a fitness tracker for kids, the Fitbit Ace 2, suitable for ages 6 and up. The device has a waterproof construction, up to 50 meters deep, 5-day battery life, sleep monitoring, pedometer and parental control system. However, it is not on the market yet as it will be launched in summer for around 70 euros.

Finally among fitness trackers is a family device, the Fitbit Inspire, which allows you to connect several devices to the same account to monitor the performance of your kids and your partner by training together but setting different goals. Fitbit Inspire features include PurePulse and HR sensor heart rate detection, training mode with personalized exercise, social notifications, sleep tracking, and calorie burn logging. Purchase price from € 69.99, in black, lilac and white.

How to download the Fitbit app

After purchasing your Fitbit device, the first step is to download the fitness app from the Google Play Store, App Store, or Windows Store. The Fitbit app is compatible with almost all versions of Android, iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch devices, with the iOS operating system from version 10.0 or with PCs, tablets, smartphones and consoles running at least Windows 8 or Xbox One. Fitbit really supports a lot of different devices, in addition to devices made by the company itself.

Fitbit setup procedure

After you’ve downloaded the Fitbit app to your device, you should start setting up the app and creating your account. Depending on the type of device you purchase, you can select a personal, family, or children’s account, the latter being available for the Fitbit Ace device, which allows you to associate different profiles with the same account, download your child’s data, and monitor certain parameters, such as heart rate during sports activities and positioning with satellite tracking.

Setting up Fitbit is fairly simple: just turn on your device, open the app, and follow the wizard to create your account. In this case, you need to select your device by tapping on the device name from those proposed in the scrolling menu, and then enter all the required information, including your email address, to verify your identity. Finally, select the type of account you want to activate, accept the privacy policy and sync your device with Fitbit.

To perform the same procedure from your computer, simply download the .exe file from the official Windows Store website, install the Fitbit application on your computer, create an account by entering your credentials, or log in with your old profile using https: // www.fitbit.com/login. Fitbit is compatible with Windows 8 and 10 Home and Pro operating systems, so be sure to check your operating system version otherwise you need to update Windows first.

How to Personalize Your Fitbit Account

After installing the Fitbit app on your device, you can personalize your account by entering specific information to create goals, training plans and programs tailored to your needs. For example, it is important to enter your weight, height, gender, and most of all to choose certain goals, such as how many hours do you want to sleep each night, the minimum number of steps you need to take each day, or how many minutes you need to run while training in park.

Fitbit is also compatible with other systems including Amazon Alexa, Strava, Runkeeper and MyFitnessPal, so you can connect these apps to sync your data and results. An interesting feature is the automatic calculation of calories by Fitbit and MyFitnessPal, but for greater privacy, you can restrict access to your personal data by setting permissions for each app within your account.

Fitbit: How To Calculate Calories Burned

Every 24 hours, Fitbit tracks your calories burned based on your estimated daily need based on the age, weight, height and gender selected during account setup. It does this by taking into account your basal metabolic rate, sports activities and workouts, or other information that you manually enter into the app. At the end of the day, Fitbit resets all data with new information every 24 hours.

One of the interesting features is the ability to record food by entering the calories of each frequently eaten food in the main panel. This allows you to create nutrition plans to monitor your progress against your goals, taking into account not only your workouts but also the calories you burn. The nutritional plan displays your daily calorie intake, calories consumed and burned data, notifications to see if you are meeting your chosen goals, including feedback on macronutrients.

To register a food item, you can take a picture of the barcode, and if the product is in the application database, all nutritional values ​​will be displayed automatically. Alternatively, you can enter food manually from the Fitbit web panel by going to Diet Plan> Calories Taken or Burned, clicking on the arrow symbol in the lower right corner, and entering the items into your diet.

From within the app, the procedure is even simpler, just tap the + icon and Save Food.

How To Count Steps With Fitbit And Measure Distances

Fitbit is able to measure distances traveled thanks to its step counting system. This is an automatic feature that is set after the height, gender and weight data have been entered and uses the device’s GPS for tracking. If the step measurement seems to be incorrect, you can proceed manually. In this case, it is enough to go to a place where you know the distance, e.g. to a park or an athletics track, choose a distance with at least 20 steps and count them.

Then divide the total distance by the number of steps to get the final length. To change this in the Fitbit app, just tap on the account symbol> go to Advanced Settings> Walk Length> adjust the value there. Fitbit uses a step count accelerometer that uses body movement and step measurement to provide a fairly accurate count for your total steps.

Based on the system there is an algorithm that selects each move to determine whether it is a step or not. The computer system is constantly updated, which allows the improvement of measurements in complex conditions, e.g. in the mountains, with particularly steep sections or with large differences in altitude. Fitbit uses the device’s pedometer and GPS to calculate the distance by crossing the data to get a nearly exact value of the distance traveled.

How to charge your Fitbit

Each Fitbit device comes with its own UL approved charger, so simply plugging it into a standard AC outlet will restore full range of the Fitbit device. Thanks to the notification settings, you can get notifications to know when you need to charge your device. Battery life depends on the operating system, type of device and features you use, but on average you can get around 5 days of battery life with Alta Fitness Tracker for example.

How to turn off Fitbit

To improve battery performance, simply turn off the device without losing stored data, which is not deleted. To turn Fitbit off, just turn on your smartwatch or fitness tracker, go to settings and select Info, Stop, Confirm.

To turn on Fitbit, on the other hand, press and hold the back button for a few seconds. Some devices, such as Blaze, may get out of sync, so you may need to reset some data, such as the hours. To turn Fitbit One off, you need to press and hold the power button for 12 seconds, while it only takes a few seconds to turn it on.