Fitbit Charge 3 Fitness Activity Tracker

I’m absolutely in love with my new Fitbit Charge 3! First of all, I must express appreciation even for the simple fact of how well all the technology inside this little thing WORKS: I have had zero issues with it, which is so refreshing and rare in this day and age. It just works! Now on to all it does: it is awesome, and so empowering for the wearer! I think the thing I appreciate the most, personally, is the heart rate monitor/information. I have an electrical conduction issue with my heart, which doesn’t have any symptoms and was found on my first-ever, routine EKG back in 2009 (the issue is called left bundle branch block—LBBB for short). After further testing, I was told that my heart is healthy and fine, BUT we do have to always keep an eye on this LBBB situation, because it could stay the same, which would be great, but it could possibly become problematic down the road, and one thing the cardiologist told me to do is to routinely take my heart rate, and make sure the resting heart rate stays between 60 and 90 bpm. Well, I was so good about doing it, just as he taught me how (manually), for several years, but then I gradually stopped taking my heart rate, honestly. But now, with the Fitbit? I don’t have to sit there, stop everything, and manually take my heart rate. I just glance at the Fitbit and: THERE IS MY HEART RATE! That feature alone, for me, is worth the price of the Fitbit. And it isn’t just the resting heart rate, it is your heart rate, in real time, 24/7: resting, active, the whole enchilada! It lets you know your current heart rate at the moment, and your resting heart rate, right there on the screen of your Fitbit. AND, when you actually go into the app on your phone, it gives you TONS of DETAILED data/information about it, and your heart rate patterns. For example, if I take a 30 minute walk, the Fitbit Charge 3 KNOWS/recognizes that it was a specific exercise session, and that it was a walk, and it provides a color bar graph in the app that charts when your heart rate was in which “zone”, so you see, oh, my heart rate was at “peak” for this many minutes (you don’t really want your heart rate to be at “peak” ever, if I understand correctly—you want it in “fat burn” or “cardio” when you are exercising, but not “peak”, as at peak it is working too hard, so this is something I will ask the cardiologist about next time I see him for my routine, every-two-year appointment I have coming up to check on the LBBB. Without the Fitbit, I would have NO IDEA what my non-resting heart rate ever is! But with it, I know that it is usually very good (I think—I will check that with the doctor, too), but occasionally goes up into “peak” just when exercising moderately—this is info I want to check out with the doctor: it is probably fine and normal, but the point is, knowledge is POWER: I have so much heart rate info now that I can go into my appointment with and tell him, HEY, I have a Fitbit now and blah blah BLAH! (The poor man *lol*.) Oh, and I know that the Fitbit heart rate is accurate, as I have taken mine manually several times and compared it to what the Fitbit says at the same time, and it is exactly correct.And that is just the heart rate info—moving on, there is SO MUCH MORE that this little wunderkind does! We have sleep data: WOW! Just wow! I have had sleep issues for years, which recently have been better due to some factors, but anyway, it is fascinating and enlightening to see how much I actually am sleeping, how much of it is light, how much is deep, how much is REM, what times of night are which, etc. We also have the step counting feature, which is similarly enlightening and empowering: I’m a big walker and it is revelatory to see how many steps, and how much distance, I’m actually walking. The Fitbit also prompts me with a little vibration if I have NOT taken 250 steps in any given waking hour (it has a 9-hour timeframe set), at ten minutes before the hour. Folks, there is just too much information and data that this little amazing piece of technology gives you to even cover in a review!Suffice it to say this: like I mentioned early on, the word of the review is EMPOWERING. When you go into the app, you have SO MUCH information. I can’t get over it. I really, really love this Fitbit and would not be without it ever again. The heart rate info alone is priceless to me, but I also need to lose weight and I feel that the Fitbit is really, really going to help and is already motivating and educating me a lot re my steps per day, calories burned—oh yeah: it tells you that, too!!!—and everything else. I haven’t even used some of the features yet. Did I mention I LOVE this thing?!!!

I've had a number of Fitbits in the past, and they always are the best one for me. The app is amazing, and every other app synches relatively easily with the Fitbit app. It works well, despite a couple of annoying little things that never seem to get fixed. It's worked great, and I'm glad I bought it again. But just in case anyone from the company might be reading reviews (and to give my thoughts to others considering which tracker to buy), I'll list my frustrations:1) When you tap on the screen, it often doesn't seem to realize it's being tapped. I have always found myself doing a "tap, tap, tap, tap" every time on the screen instead of just tapping it once like you would your cell phone. But once it wakes up, it's responsive after that. It would be nice if this was fixed at some point.2) Considering that there is so much focus on the number of daily steps these days, and since it is a step TRACKER, I would really love it if you could set an exercise goal based on a number of steps (right now you can set it based on distance, time and calories). Since I tend to walk on an indoor track or on a treadmill, distance isn't something that is reliable to track. So I would rather set a goal to do a certain number of steps instead.3) This is pretty minor, but since I do have to seem to tap multiple times to get the screen to wake up, once it does wake up I often find that I've changed the standard display that I had picked (steps walked) to one of the other options (heartbeat, # of stairs climbed, etc.).4) The other thing that has never worked well for me is the sleep tracking. I'm one of those folks who wakes up a couple of times at night to use the bathroom, and if that happens when it's almost morning, then the app records it as having woken up for the day. So I end up not actually knowing how long I'm sleeping each night because the app doesn't realize that even thought I got up, I went back to bed where I hardly moved at all. It seems like there ought to be a way for the app to recognize that if you got up and then remained essentially motionless for a couple of hours that you haven't actually gotten up yet. I imagine the other trackers might have this issue too, but all of that great reporting on REM, light sleep, etc. are lost on my because the app can't even recognize how long I'm sleeping.I know it sounds like I shouldn't be buying this since I have issues with it, but it works well enough, and I love the app, and love that my other apps all partner with Fitbit and make it relatively painless to set up synching with my Fitbit. But it would be great if they could address some of these issues!