Thanks to modern technology, setting up goals to track and monitor your fitness is becoming easier. Fitbit is a personal activity tracker that motivates you to stay active by updating you on a daily or weekly basis on how much of energy you are expending. These activity trackers can also be combined with mobile apps such as Nudge to help you get an overall snapshot of your health. If you are serious about your health and fitness, owning one of these activity trackers is a must. Fitbit is one of the most popular activity trackers in the market today and it comes as wristbands and clip-ons. In this article we take a comparative look at two of its popular products, the Fitbit Flex and the Fitbit One.
A Comparative Look at Fitbit Flex and Fitbit One
Let’s first take a look at the main features of both devices.
Fitbit Flex and Fitbit One have an MEMS 3-axis accelerometer, which can detect acceleration, vibration and motion and therefore your steps taken or distance travelled and calories burned during the process. If you’re doing a lot of floor climbing and want that to be monitored by your activity tracker as well, you’d want to go for the One, which offers that feature. However, the device does not allow for goal settings, so if you want your tracker to do more than just tracking, the Flex is the one you should be heading for.
Both devices are not just activity trackers, they can even track your sleep hours, or times when you should be sleeping but are up, checking email messages on your smartphone. A silent wake system is also present on both devices that will vibrate on your wrist to wake you up.
As far as the display goes, the One features six modes: steps; distance; calories burned; floors climbed; flower which grows and shrinks depending on your current activity; and clock.
The Flex’s display on the other hand is quite modern, with a series of flashing dots indicating how you are meeting your goals. Each light represents 20% of your goals and a double tap on the display will show you how well (or not) you are faring. Of course, flashing dots isn’t the best way to gauge performance, but if you carry the Fitbit app on your smartphone, you will be able to read your stats better.
The One is a clip-on, which weights about 8 grams, is 1.89 inches high, .76 inches wide and .38 inches deep. The only trouble you’re likely to have with the device is forgetting to clip it on to you, should you be a little distracted.
The Flex is a wristband, which is hard not to miss. It is available in two different sizes, a small (5.5 – 6.9 inches), a large one (6.3 – 8.2 inches).
As far as battery life goes, the battery life on the One lasts 10 to 14 days whereas the Flex lasts only a paltry 5 days, thanks to the fancy lights on the display.
Both devices are sweat, rain, and splash proof, but its wiser not to have the devices under water for prolonged periods of time. Both devices offer Bluetooth Low Energy connectivity to enable you to see your fitness stats in real time. If you are stationary within 20 feet of the wireless sync dongle the data gets automatically synced to your Mac or PC and smartphones. In fact, the smartphone apps log data, receive notifications, and display graphs and charts based on the last sync.
The One comes in two colors: black and burgundy, whereas the Flex comes in many more: Black, Slate, Tangerine, Teal, Navy, Violet, Blue, Lime, Pink, and Red.
Price
Both the One and the Flex are available at $99.95.
Fitbit Flex or Fitbit One: Which One is For You?
With both the One and the Flex evenly priced, your choice between the two lies with its features. The Flex’s display doesn’t tell much, it doesn’t measure your floor climbing activity and its battery lasts just 5 hours. On the other hand, the One is a clip-on that doesn’t let you set and monitor your fitness goals. They are both great devices to own so its up to you to choose one which better suits your needs.
Leave a Reply