After purchasing Fitbit One, at this moment I have three different devices capable of counting my steps. The first one is the Fitbit One itself, then my iPhone 5S can also count steps using its M7 co-processor, and finally my Pebbble smart watch can work as stand-alone health tracker (step counter) using a watch-face called Motiv8.
I did two tests to compare the results of their counters.
Experiment 1: going out for weekly grocery shopping.
Pebble smart watch with Motiv8 records 1,341 steps.
Fitbit One records 2,070 steps.
iPhone 5S records 2,085 steps.
Experiment 2: going out to watch movie with my wife.
Pebble smart watch with Motiv8 records 4,512 steps.
Fitbit One records 4,231 steps.
iPhone 5S records 4,396 steps.
Experiment 3: photo hunting, walking carrying camera tripod
Pebble smart watch with Motiv8 records 2,556 steps.
Fitbit One records 3,965 steps.
iPhone 5S records 4,007 steps.
Fitbit One and iPhone 5S record close number of steps. However, I find it a bit strange since Pebble’s Motiv8 recorded a lot less steps in experiment 1 while it records more steps in experiment 2. Then I realize that when doing grocery shopping, my hand was carrying the shopping bag all the time, thus my hands did not swing. So naturally Pebble recorded less steps. When my hands are free (thus can swing normally), it records the highest number of steps.
Finally, I took a day-tour from Melbourne to Great Ocean Road in Easter long weekend. No driving, joining tourism bus. During the trip, my hands are basically free because I try to travel as light as possible. By the time I return home, this is my step count:
Experiment 4: day-tour trip
Pebble smart watch with Motiv8 records 12,788 steps.
Fitbit One records 10,144 steps.
iPhone 5S records 10,078 steps.
This last experiments proves that in activities that I can swing my hands more, Pebble end up counting more steps than my other two counters.
Overall, I think I can rely more on the result from Fitbit One and iPhone 5S compared to the result of Pebble smart watch (or generally other tracker that we wear on our wrists). Fitbit One is smaller and easier to carry around anywhere, making it a better choice for step counter. The result of Pebble smart watch (using Motiv8 watch face) relies heavily on the type of activity I was doing. And I suspect this limitation applies to all other step counters in the form of wrist-wear.
For sleep tracking, wearing Fitbit One is reasonably comfortable thanks to its included sleep wristband. Carrying a smartphone while we sleep sounds like a dumb idea, so I skipped it altogether. Wearing Pebble when I sleep was not comfortable. I kept feeling there’s something wrong with my wrist. And I kept waking up worrying that I might break my favorite smart watch in my sleep.
So, iPhone returns to its original function: as a smart phone. Pebble returns to its original function: as a smart watch. And now I have Fitbit One as a dedicated device to count my steps and motivate me to exercise more.
Interesting results. I compared distance traveled with an LG G3 LG Health app and the Pebble with the Misfit app plus used a Garmin Explorer GPS to measure distance. All 3 had the same distance (+/- .01), the step counters on the Pebble and LG were about 12 different and that was over a 6.12 mile walk.
In the initial testing of the Pebble/Misfit I did a walking count to 400 steps 5 times and matched counts each time except for the off by 1 on time. I forgot to count in the last step atvthe top of the front steps though on that one.
Hi
I did a similar experiment and what’s interesting is that I found that my Pebble regularly recorded less than my Fitbit!
Interesting. Care to share your experiment results?