Fitbit vs Jawbone: wearable accuracy?

I am a lover of wearables, and how they help me to lead a healthier and more active lifestyle.

I ventured into the wrist pedometer back in 2013.  I tested its accuracy with a long walk, checking out the statistics along the way.  I found it quite scary how accurate it was, as I compared it to the information from the GPS tracker I had benchmarked it against on my phone.

Since in 2013, the accuracy from a 7km walk was down to 0.1km, I was more than happy with it.  This was with the Jawbone Up.  At the time, it was the number two in the wearable space, with Fitbit being number one.

So, this year, with much excitement, I thought that I would venture where over 50% of the people have ventured, 50% of my peers couldn’t be wrong.  And that’s the fail.  The road most taken is not, I repeat, not, the way to go for everyone.

I didn’t test to see the accuracy of the Fitbit, I just assumed that if in 2013 Jawbone were crazily accurate, I can infer and trust that Fitbit would be too.  As I used it, and watched my numbers come in, I realised something was off.

There are plenty of days where I would barely move, I would stay home all day, getting up and down every half hour or hour, walking maybe a maximum of 20 meters at a time, and yet, I had managed to walk over 7,000 steps.  Something was off.  And then, there were days when I would walk 1.6km to my gym (one way), work out for an hour, and walk home, and only get 12,000 steps.  Something was off.

It then dawned on me, the Fitbit over counting my steps when I was being super lazy, and under counting when I was being active.  It was just inaccurate.  Fair enough that my heartrate was not being captured correctly, the technology isn’t there yet, and I’m cool with that, but to not be an efficient pedometer, this is just ridiculous.

Fitbit’s sleep analysis is way off, sometimes, by more than 2 hours in one night.  Yep, it would tell me that I’d slept for 9 hours, when I know that I was unable to fall asleep until some stupid hour in the morning.  I was apparently sleeping soundly according to Fitbit.  Again, I’ll let that go.  I hate the way sleep is displayed on the App and the web portal, so, it became something I just ignored.

I went back to the Jawbone Up, now, with two devices on my wrist for more than a week, the readings are staggeringly different.  Scarily different in fact.  So, I did a control test today, to see what the different bands would show.  I walked on a treadmill for 17 minutes, at 5km/hour, which means, I walked for 1.4km, taking between 17-20 steps every 10 seconds, that means I would have stepped between  1,734 – 2,040 steps.  Here are the results from the Up and the Fitbit:

That’s right, Fitbit said I walked 0.84km (40% off), whilst the Up said I walked for 1.32km (6% off).  The number of steps taken is also interesting.  As you can see, the Up’s estimate falls within the range of estimation, whilst the Fitbit doesn’t even come close.  At 1,237 steps, it’s way off from the estimation range, in fact, it’s between 29% to 39% off.  Not looking good there Fitbit, not looking good at all.

There’s a lot of product reviews on the features and what’s usability of wearables, but never one based on accuracy.  I had assumed that the Fitbit was accurate.  It’s flashier, has more functions and apparently is great for community, but it isn’t.  Then again, I may just not have explored the full potential of the Fitbit because I’m unwilling to pay for added App features.  Yeah, I’m not willing to pay a third of the price of the gadget each year for some funky charts.

I am incredibly disappointed with how inaccurate the Fitbit has proven to be.  But I guess it kind of balances itself out, over counting when I’m doing nothing and under counting when I’m being active?  No, it doesn’t balance out.  It’s basically rewarding slothfulness and punishing the active.  I’m out.

Maybe it’s just my Fitbit, have you got one, what have you found?