Best Fitness Tracker in 2020 - A Buying Guide

Wow! So, finally, thinking of buying a Fitness Tracker?  Here, we present factors that need consideration before you decide.  Fitness Tracker is a must-have gadget and worth buying. 

These bands act like your fitness buddy. They make you think of your health and fitness by throwing vital stats of your heart, steps count, activity tracking, sleep quality, calories consumed & burnt, and much more. 

In some cases, these trackers serve as a life-saving device by throwing early signals on your deteriorating health.

But, that's all is subject to a right choice while you are selecting a one.  Hence, let's take a deep dive into the factors that need to be considered before buying a fitness tracker depending upon your lifestyle, profession, and age.   

Any wearable fitness tracker makes you input correct physiological details such as your gender, height,  weight so as to support the tracker to make a better sense of the data that it extracts from the inbuilt sensors.

Before you Choose: 

The process of choosing the right fitness tracker is crucial as you need to consider the various features that will affect your daily routine and workout output. We hereby present the various must-have features in a fitness tracker for you to understand before you finalize your fitness tracker. You may skip a few or think of a combination of other features depending upon your daily routine and workout style.

Here we go.

1) Budget:  

Needless to say, that budget is the most important and deciding factor while selecting a Fitness tracker.  

There is the tracker available from 50$ to 500$. We look at it as a life-saving fitness buddy and a must-have gadget. Hence, we recommend having a respected budget while you choose a tracker. Plan a budget somewhere between 50$ to 200$, if you are a beginner. 

It's always advisable to plan a slightly higher budget as we look at these trackers as life-saving devices and not as show off gadgets.

2) Coach and Fitness Buddy: 

Many fitness trackers act as a fitness buddy in your journey towards fitness. 

They motivate you during workouts to complete the targetted tasks through friendly reminders or notifications. Whereas some trackers have the ability to remind you of no activity period if you are idle for a longer span. 

Some advanced fitness tracker has got a guided breathing feature and indicates you to take a deep breath if your heart rate shows abnormality. This feature is extremely useful for those in the 40s and above.

3) Swimming Support: 

Do not get confused between water-resistant and swim proof. Water-Resistant means rainproof, splash-proof. It also means sweat proof. Hardly matter how sweaty you get during workouts. 

Swim Proof feature enables you to use it during swimming and track your swimming performance. It will auto-detect your swimming style like backstroke, breaststroke, butterfly, and freestyle.  Besides, it will track your speed and time taken to cover a particular distance. 

Some trackers have the SWOLF tracking feature. These are able to track no. of actual strokes taken during the swimming against the no. of optimum strokes to be taken to cover the distance. 

The devices to be looked at for the swimming support feature are  Fitbit Charge 4, Fitbit Inspire HR, Garmin Vivosmart 4, Xiaomi Mi Band 4.

 

4) Heart rate monitor:

Irregularities in the heart ( beats per minute) indicate problems related to heart disease. Any spike in your heartbeat per minute without a strenuous physical activity is alarming and needs care from experts. If the spike in BPM (beats per minute) is accompanied by pain in the chest, back, jaw, arm, belly, and breath shortness, you ought to take critical medical help immediately. 

Thus, Heart Rate Monitor is a must-have feature in your prospective Fitness Tracker and due its importance has become the most common feature as well.  

The devices to be looked at for this feature are  Fitbit Charge 3, Garmin Vivosmart 4, Fitbit Inspire HR.

5) GPS: 

Built-in GPS enabled trackers will set you free from the burden of carrying your smartphones during your workouts.   

If you want your tracker to throw correct data on speed and distance covered (which is quite obvious), then your tracker ought to be GPS enabled. A GPS enabled tracker will give you accurate and REAL-TIME data on the distance covered and pace. Fitness trackers with connected GPS are best suitable to the brisk walkers, runners, and cyclists. They also help you to get a geo-map of your running or cycling.  

Besides, a GPS enabled device will also be able to track the quality of your sleep and present you the data in a simpler form.

The devices to be looked at for inbuilt GPS features are Garmin Forerunner 245 Music, Samsung Galaxy Fitness Watch Active 2, Apple Watch Series 5, Fitbit Charge 4. 

6) Battery Life: 

The battery is the most important part of your Fitness Tracker. In fact, it serves as fuel for all the good things that your device does for you. It is strongly recommended to go in for a device with "Up to 7 days battery life" in standby mode or "Up to 5 or 6 hours with GPS + Music". However, if you can manage for a tracker with "Up to 10 hours of battery life", then it will help you to gid rid of the tension of frequent recharging.

The devices to be looked at for stronger battery life are Garmin Vivofit 3, Fitbit Charge 3, Moov 3D Fitness Tracker.

7) Music: 

Music plays a crucial and motivating role in enhancing the quality of the workout output and its a must-have element during workouts.  The fitness trackers with inbuilt music offerings help you to get rid of the burden of carrying your giant smartphones everywhere you go while running, walking, or cycling. That increases your flexibility and hence, the output quality during the workouts. 

All you need is a fitness tracker with an inbuilt music component and a Bluetooth headphone to connect to and listen to music while doing your workout.

8) Auto Activity Tracker:

The main thing for the sensors in the fitness tracker is to understand the activity or workout being done by the user. There are two ways it usually happens. Firstly, you manually select the workout mode and log it. And, secondly, the inbuilt sensors in the tracker, sense the activity being performed and automatically logs you on to the activity.

Devices to look for: Various Fitbit devices (Fitbit Charge, Fitbit Inspire HR, Surge, Alta)

9) Sleep monitor feature including Sleep Quality:

The proper beginning of the day happens a night before. How much you slept and how did you sleep also plays a crucial role in making your day successful. Thus, besides, the hour we sleep, it's important to track the quality of sleep. Many fitness trackers today have got the ability to track how well you slept. They track the time you were asleep and split it up into the light, motionless (presumably deep) and restless periods. 

The devices to be looked at for this feature are Garmin Vivo Active 4, Fitbit Versa 2, Samsung Galaxy Watch Active 2.

Final Word :

The abovementioned are a few unique features that your prospective watch should have. However, it's quite tough to have all of them in a single piece.

Hence, one must make a wise choice about your tracker depending upon your profession, age, sex, and daily workout pattern and daily routine pattern. What say?

That's all from my side. Please let me know which other feature needs consideration, for my learning.