FitBit Flex

by Cyrus Sidhwa
Md7 Lease Consultant

After gaining 20+ pounds in 2014, I was happy to find a FitBit Flex under the tree on Christmas morning. The Flex is a device you wear on your wrist that tracks your daily activity level. I have never enjoyed tracking workouts, but I was willing to give it a shot. Boy, am I glad I did. Let me tell you, I love this thing!

One great feature about the Flex is that it is extremely light-weight and comfortable to wear. I also like that it is water resistant. I only take it off to charge once every 5 days. If I had to take it off to shower, I would forget to put it back on half the time and just stop wearing it.

I also love the simplicity of the Flex. It has a small display of five lights. Whether you’re walking, running, exercising on an elliptical, or even pushing a stroller, the FitBit will track your steps. At any point during the day, you can simply tap on the Flex and anywhere from 0-5 lights will illuminate. Each light represents 20% of your step goal.

For the times when you want to see more detailed information, there is a free FitBit app that syncs wirelessly via Bluetooth and displays your exact daily step count. This is my favorite feature! Whenever I pull up my stats and find out I’m only a few thousand steps from my daily goal, I suddenly find new motivation to walk the dog. I often find myself walking to the grocery store instead of driving. Knowing that I have a specific goal that is within reach is a huge motivating factor! Be warned: You may find yourself unexpectedly sweating up a storm at 9pm when you are suddenly lugging home a dozen grocery bags overloaded with the chicken breasts you found on sale!

The Flex app also tracks the distance you have walked and the calories you have burned. Another cool feature is that you can track your current exercise. So, if you want to go on a 5 mile run and you see you’ve gone 2.5 miles, you know it’s time to turn around.

Flex can also track your sleep. When you are about to sleep, you tap the Flex 5 times and it goes into sleep mode. There are more advanced FitBit trackers that automatically sense when you go to sleep. These trackers also track your heart rate and display the distance traveled during exercise directly on the tracker. Pretty cool stuff!

There are a couple of minor complaints I have about the Flex. I don’t like having to manually tell the device that I am going to sleep or waking back up. I often forget to wake it back up in the morning, so I stopped using the sleep tracker. Also, if you are doing something that causes your hand to bang on something several times in a row, the tracker may think you are putting it into sleep mode and stop tracking your steps. This has rarely happened, but it’s something to watch out for. My biggest complaint is that the sync between the Flex and my Android is a little hit and miss. Sometimes it syncs right away. Other times, I’ll have to force-close the app, or even restart the phone before the sync will work. It’s not a big deal, but a little maddening in our on-demand world. First world problems….

All in all, I love my Fitbit Flex! The only way I’m going to stop using it is if I decide to upgrade to one of the more advanced models. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go get some steps in!

febrero 26, 2015
MD7 Bio