Motorola Fitbit Alta Hr Large Us Version Luggage Lock, 2 cm, Black

Works as advertised.. looks great... No issues so far

Really happy with my new Fitbit - a couple of days and I'm already hooked, checking my activity throughout the day to get to my 10,000 steps and going in to the app first thing every morning to see how well I slept. Really easy to set up and use.

I had a Charge HR for about a year. Happily switched to the Alta HR when it came out. My wrist is 6.5” and I got a large. I wear it on the second smallest hole (with the Charge HR I’d worn it on the third smallest). I like the large because it can fit around my ankle if I want, and the extra strap fits across most of my under-wrist which I think looks good. STEPS: it does this just as well as the Charge HR HEART RATE: Does this just as well as the Charge HR. I run a few days a week and it gets the same readings. STAIRS: Doesn’t have this function, but I found it flaky in Charge HR and always got more stairs than I’d actually climbed for the day, so I don’t miss it. BATTERY: I had it set with “All-Day Sync” on and "Always Connected" off and the battery has lasted about 8 days. A little after the 6 day mark I started getting low battery warnings (I guess they start happening at 25%). I started getting nervous it would finally give out at the 8 day mark so I put it on the charger. I tried it with “Always Connected” on next and it lasted almost the same. I got the low battery warning earlier on the 6th day. By the 7th day I decided it was close enough and started charging again, so I'm not sure exactly how long it will take, but at least a week. ALARM: I like this better than Charge HR. The alarm goes and buzzes about four times. If you don’t do anything it stops and snoozes and goes again 9 minutes later. You have to tap it twice (or more, I usually bang on it a few times) to turn it off. Otherwise it just keeps automatically snoozing. I like that if I’ve decided I want to sleep a little longer I don’t have to do anything. SLEEP TRACKING: when set on “normal” was about the same as Charge HR. I tried it on “sensitive” for a few nights and I got big wide bars of “restless” and the tracker only counted the non-restless times as sleep, so even though I was sleeping for 6 hours, it only counted 2 hours as sleeping. I thought that was weird so I’ve had it set to “normal” since. Maybe this reading would be useful to someone, but I found it confusing. Five days after getting my Alta HR it started tracking “sleep stages”. This is cool, I like getting to see what stages I got at night. If you click on the chart it walks you through what the different stages are and what percentage of your sleep they made up. HOURLY ACTIVITY: It warns you ten minutes before the next hour if you haven’t had your 250 steps yet. I like this, I don’t always care to accomplish this throughout the day, but on the days that I do I used to get frustrated if I lost track of time at work and missed an hour since there’s no way to go back and get steps in so you just ruined getting 100%. I’m glad Alta reminds me. Sometimes instead of just walking around I stand up and shadow box - the punching counts as steps and my arms and torso get a workout and I get the elevated heart rate and I can get to 250 quicker. EXERCISE TRACKING: It can tell when I’m running, although like Charge HR it won’t know distances, just steps, heart rate, and calories. It doesn’t have the side button to start an exercise timer, but I never used that in the Charge so I don’t miss it. I have two other apps I use to track my runs, so I don’t care that much about how detailed the Fitbit tracks them. Although I did recently discover the fitbit phone app can track my runs if I start it at the beginning of the run (on the exercise screen click the stopwatch and go to the tracking tab: you can select the activity then click the play button. If it’s a run it uses the phone’s GPS to map the run). CALL/TEXT ALERT: I like getting the little buzz to let me know to check my phone. It displays a little of the text message, but not much. Which is fine, it’s usually enough to give me an idea of whether it’s something important or not.

I had seen a coworker's Alta a while back and debated getting one but was disappointed that it didn't do HR. I didn't like the bulkiness of the Fitbits which did measure heart rate. So I started doing research -- trying to decide what features I did and didn't need. I have been using my phone to track my steps and whatnot to this point. I stopped by the fitbit website to see if they had new offerings and there it was. Exactly what I wanted! I ordered 2 (a small and a large) for my sister and myself from Amazon (2 day shipping!) I was on the cusp of small/large and I can tell you that both fit, but as the website recommends, size up if you're unsure. I've attached photos with the small and large slightly up my wrist. I love the size, the band, and the display. I appreciate the sleep tracker, the compatibility with MyFitnessPal, the silent alarms, and reminders. While it can receive text messages, it will only display short messages and truncate longer ones. The text displayed is small. If you get 2 or more messages from a person in short succession it will display the number of messages instead of the actual messages. However, I understand that I ordered a fitness tracker, not a smartwatch and so I am pleased it has text reading abilities in the first place. It does not track flights of stairs, which is okay by me. My phone didn't track them either. I have been comparing the steps tracked with my other step tracking apps and it seems relatively accurate. I'm sure that there are more accurate HR trackers out there, but the convenience of having these things together in one place is what sold me. Random side story: My sister stole my large fitbit the other day while I was doing dishes and threw it on her ankle to see if it would track. Not only did it track, but the HR was consistent with her small fitbit on her wrist. Some people have thought the calories are wildly off. I think they don't understand how Fitbit does calories. In many tracking systems, you will be shown how many calories you burned for exercise. So if you've done nothing and see some level of calories burned, you aren't sure why it's saying that. You do burn calories even when inactive. The overall calories for the day aren't that useful for me because I'm used to the system where you only get calories shown for specific exercise sessions but I've found when it tracks a workout session, those calories are pretty accurate. I love the social aspect of it, and I like that you can challenge your friends for a specific day/week/weekend of steps and meeting your goals. I like the app that goes along with the fitbit. Pros: ~Design! (I can't express how happy I am with this.) ~Tracks HR ~Auto tracks exercise ~Battery Life (I get around a week and it charges fairly quickly) ~Friend challenges and social community Cons: ~Not waterproof ~Cost (maybe prohibitive, but that is the market of fitness trackers.) ~Text messages system (but again, fitness tracker, not smart watch) Honestly, of the negative reviews I've read about this particular item, most of the people who are unhappy didn't do enough research first. You should judge an item by what it advertises it does. So far this has done everything it's said it would for me. I couldn't be happier. I think if you've done your research and this item has the features you have been looking for, you'll be super excited with it, like me. *Edit 6/5* I've had the FitBit Alta HR for a couple months now. I am still just as happy as when I got it. I've lost about 20 lbs since Christmas. It's slow going but the FitBit community has been great. I posted a picture for my first 5k and 90 some odd strangers cheered me on. Reading the discussion area is always positive and motivating. My only disappointment at this point is the lack of waterproofing because I am swimming more often these days. I'm slowly upping my goals and plan to work even harder all summer.

It’s an amazing Gadget, everyone who cares about health should have it!