Hi there guys
I have never owned a fitness tracker as I never saw a point until now.
My main priority is a heart rate monitor with good accuracy.
Ideally have gps as I dont run at all but cycle often and want to link it to Strava, also want to track sleep and ideally have NFC for payment without needing phone. Only ones I can find are very expensive garmin ones (vívoactive 3 at $450) and only use garmin pay which I dont see the point of needing a different wallet than Google pay or bank one.
I hear the Mi band 3 may get NFC but sounds like we wont get access to the NFC version outside of China.
So if NFC is too much to ask for my main priority is HRM and being able to track cycling so GPS I suppose but open to other ideas as Strava on my phone keeps playing up
Any suggestions for a decent value option??
Fitness Tracker with Decent HRM, GPS and NFC
Last edited 25/06/2018 - 15:44
Comments
Was thinking around $100 but really depends on value for money as I dont want to pay for things I dont value
IME all types of HRM other than chest bands are too inaccurate to be useful. You are literally worse off than not owning if you are placing any credibility in figures with +/- 30% accuracy, you may as well just take a guess. Or time 15 seconds on your phone and count it yourself (x4 for BPM obviously).
Sleep trackers that claim to be measuring REM sleep are a scam unless you think not measuring brainwaves is how you measure REM.
Thank you Diji this gave me food for thought as I took the tech sales guys "facts" at face value that they had come a long way and now only a few beats off… After looking up any relevant papers there are no decent independent studies and the small ones that have been done are not complementary especially if using them while moving (WTF) as they only use optic sensor to eyball vessel displacement. Thanks for the heads up will now going down the Garmin route for Strava metrics and use an integrated chest strap HRM.
Vivoactive 3 is your best bet for GPS/HR/NFC. You should be able to get it on sale for $350 if you look hard enough or wait until Fathers Day sales or ClickFrenzy etc.
Failing that Fitbit Ionic (~$350) and Fitbit Versa ($279) are also quite decent and tick all your boxes.
Cheers I am going down that route on gumtree
Cheers thanks for the advice guys! Ive ended up buying a used Vivoactive HR with chest strap HRM for under what I was going to pay for a basic fitness tracker. So has worked out well as the chest strap has very decent accuracy and integrates with watch and can then auto import to strava if I ever want to run over historical trends. It is also a very good GPS and if I want to in future I can buy the speed and cadence sensors for the bike and can do away with current ageing wired cycle computer. Thanks to knobbs who PMed me suggesting Vivoactive HR after I had came to the same conclusion that reassured me on overall merit of taking this route instead of tracker band. Watch itself is overkill for what Ill use it for but was the best fit, will try it out on the swim function and also see what sort of pace and distance I do when hiking as an added bonus.
Happy Days
Define decent value option? How much you willing to spend?