TR Forums

southrncomfortjm · Tue Oct 31, 2017 7:47 am

Gerbils!

So, I found a Best Buy gift card with $330 on it the other day - no idea why I have it - and I'm in the market for a fitness tracker or smart watch. I'm basically completely out of the loop on this kind of tech though.

Most important stuff for me is fitness tracking. I got to the gym a lot and really want to track how I'm doing in my workouts.

After that, there are nice to haves. Bluetooth and music playback being the big ones. No need for text messages or anything like that.

It seems like the answer to this question is no, but are there any fitness trackers with Bluetooth and music playback? Or are there any compact smart watches that fit the bill?

Thanks!

Usacomp2k3 · Tue Oct 31, 2017 7:49 am

What phone do you have? Do you want it tether from the phone or be 100% independent?

southrncomfortjm · Tue Oct 31, 2017 8:03 am

Usacomp2k3 wrote:
What phone do you have? Do you want it tether from the phone or be 100% independent?

I have a OnePlus 3T.

Ideally, I want to be able to use it without my phone since I don't want to carry my phone when I go running, but still want to listen to music. But it doesn't seem like that's an option at the moment unless I get a bulky smartwatch, so I may just have to go with something like the Fitbit Charge 2 or Alta HR and maybe get a small portable music player like its 2003 again.

sweatshopking · Tue Oct 31, 2017 8:24 am

southrncomfortjm wrote:
Gerbils!

It seems like the answer to this question is no, but are there any fitness trackers with Bluetooth and music playback? Or are there any compact smart watches that fit the bill?

Thanks!

https://www.fitbit.com/ionic

southrncomfortjm · Tue Oct 31, 2017 8:51 am

sweatshopking wrote:
southrncomfortjm wrote:
Gerbils!

It seems like the answer to this question is no, but are there any fitness trackers with Bluetooth and music playback? Or are there any compact smart watches that fit the bill?

Thanks!

https://www.fitbit.com/ionic

Looks nice, but it bulkier than I want.

Decided on the Fitbit Charge 2 for now. We'll see how that goes.

Arvald · Tue Oct 31, 2017 9:10 am

if you don't mind watches you have a few choices.
it all depends on what features you want... are you doing heart rate? are you wanting other monitoring?
I'd recommend against having them do stuff like music playback since multi devices crossing purposes are rarely good.

Myself my requirement was that it not be worn on the wrist.
So my girl and I have the Fitbit Zip and the Fitbit One.

both hold about 3 days data before they overwrite and sync up with our phones when available.

ludi · Tue Oct 31, 2017 10:48 am

southrncomfortjm wrote:
Decided on the Fitbit Charge 2 for now. We'll see how that goes.

As a Fitbit Charge 2 owner, I would have recommended something Garmin, like the Vivo-anything HR. There's nothing wrong with the Fitbit options, but dollar-for-dollar, the Garmin seems to be more feature-rich.

DancinJack · Tue Oct 31, 2017 10:52 am

I'm not really complaining or anything, but you posted a thread asking TR for advice on what to get, got one suggestion, turned it down, and decided after a full 64 minutes(or less) what you were getting. Welp I guess that's that!

FWIW...I agree with this...

ludi wrote:
... I would have recommended something Garmin, like the Vivo-anything HR. There's nothing wrong with the Fitbit options, but dollar-for-dollar, the Garmin seems to be more feature-rich.

southrncomfortjm · Tue Oct 31, 2017 10:55 am

DancinJack wrote:
I'm not really complaining or anything, but you posted a thread asking TR for advice on what to get, got one suggestion, turned it down, and decided after a full 64 minutes(or less) what you were getting. Welp I guess that's that!

Eh, sometimes things move quickly. Did some searching, realized that what I really wanted didn't exist, then chose what seemed to be the consensus best option. I hadn't checked in on fitness stuff for a while, so I had no idea what was out there.

Sorry?

Tue Oct 31, 2017 12:12 pm

Spend extra money and get a fitbit bluetooth scale as well.

My bluetooth scale is not fitbit, but still great to see all those stats and keep track of stuff.

llisandro · Tue Oct 31, 2017 2:38 pm

For people encountering this thread later, IMO DCRainmaker is the best independent reviewer of these type devices.

FWIW, I wear a polar M400 daily- it's kind of an interesting compromise- it's basically a dumb smartwatch, but is a real GPS+ fitness tracker to boot. Not any larger than the G-Shock I was wearing before it. Pushes notifications but you can't interact with them, has a step counter, and BT-connects to other sensors like a HRM. Upshot is battery life is a week between charges when it's syncing to my phone (a month otherwise) because it's got an e-ink screen. Garmin now makes a better one with a color screen, but I don't recall what battery life is like.

Tue Oct 31, 2017 6:14 pm

I have a Garmin watch. I've been pleased with it. Between the exercise tracking and encouragement from the Garmin Connect app and the food diary and calorie tracking from the Under Armour MyFitnessPal app, I've made significant personal progress.

Klickey · Mon Nov 20, 2017 8:43 am

Something under $300 then it might be a Fitbit smart watch. The Fitbit Blaze is about $180 and you have the rest of money for something else. Or Samsung Gear S3 can also be a very good choice, the classic one costs about $320.

alloyD · Mon Nov 20, 2017 11:38 am

JustAnEngineer wrote:
I have a Garmin watch. I've been pleased with it. Between the exercise tracking and encouragement from the Garmin Connect app and the food diary and calorie tracking from the Under Armour MyFitnessPal app, I've made significant personal progress.

I have the same experience. I've been using a Garmin Forerunner 235 for a few months now and have been very pleased with it. Battery life is great and I've appreciated the syncing with MyFitnessPal and Strava. It also has just enough "smartwatch" features for me. I want to be able to see notifications and dismiss them, but not feel tempted to try to actually respond or anything from my watch.

Mon Nov 20, 2017 1:29 pm

The screen on the VivoSmart HR is just large enough to let me figure out if I want to pull my phone out of my pocket to read the body of an e-mail or notification.

Ikepuska · Mon Jan 08, 2018 7:01 pm

I've gone through a fair number of fitness watches, and have a large number of friends with the others. (I'm in a field where just about everyone I work with works out 3-7 times a week).

I've been exceptionally impressed with the Garmin watches. For the 300 range, a Garmin Vivoactive 3 is a very good choice. If you do the types of exercise where the features make sense, a Garmin Fenix 3 off ebay or refurbished is in the same ballpark for price. It's also an excellent choice.

If you want to focus on Gym workouts and tracking for that, the Vivoactive 3 works *fairly* well. If you're doing crossfit, then it's more of a pain thank it's worth to track the workout in terms of rep tracking and the like, but if you are doing weights or other individual workouts, you can track those if you configure in advance. It's got some ability to track reps on its own and you would just load the weight afterwards, but really the vast majority of fitness watches are cardio oriented. There's a couple of gym targeted watches out there, but they're still quite bulky, and are one-off products, that is to say I don't know of one dedicated for gym work from one of the big 3, Garmin, Polar, or Fitbit.

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