Fitbit Alta HR active minutes feature?

[aaronsdad52]

Hello I just bought a Fitbit Alta HR and the active minutes are way wrong every day, today I have walked 8860 steps  & 4.20 miles and have 200 active minutes and it seems to get farther off the more days I walk. Is there any way to reset  or send this tracker or send it back?

[JohnnyRow]

What do you think the active minutes should be?  Do you think they are too high or low?

Do you understand exactly what active minutes are?  They have a precise definition.

See What are active minutes? 

[aaronsdad52]

I believe active should be the minutes you actually walk or exercise, I have had three other fitbits  before the Alta and if I walked 60 minutes then the fitbit would show 60 active minutes so walking 10,000 steps would be around 100 minutes not 235 active minutes as it does now so it is way high!

[Rich_Laue]

Please reread the active minute help file @aaronsdad52 

Active minutes and minutes of activity are not the same. 

It is possible to have active minutes without doing an activity such as a walk. In the same way, it is possible to go on a walk and get no active minutes. 

The file @JohnnyRow links to is very specific as to what active minutes are. 

Is this your first Fitbit with a heart rate monitor? Fitbit will use your heart rate to determine active minutes. Otherwise it looks at the arm movements. 

You do want to check your personal settings, age, gender, height, weight, etc for these will affect the calculation of active minutes. 

[aaronsdad52]

Yes this is my first fitbit with a heart rate monitor,  I did read what is an active minute earlier just after adding this question and kind of figured out what they are talking about but, it is a whole new ballgame with the heart monitor added in because I normally walk 5 miles a day and use to get between 80-100 active minutes with the old fitbit and now for the same distance I am over 180 active minutes. So when I am normally walking and recording steps, miles and active minutes in my log should I use the actual active minutes that this fitbit shows?

[JohnnyRow]

It sounds like your heart rate is getting high enough to count as active minutes at times other than on your walk, which was not getting picked up just by steps without heart rate.  Tap on the 'Active minutes' to try to figure out when you are getting these.  If you are keeping a separate log, it's up to you which number you want to use.

[aaronsdad52]

Today  I was walking doing virtual walks on you tube  and on the dashboard for the heart rate monitor I had 356 minutes fat burn, 205 minutes Cardio with 20 peak heart rate and I had 10,310 steps and 228 active minutes on my Fitbit does that sound about right. Just trying to figure all these numbers out. Thank you

[Rich_Laue]

We would need to look at the calories burnt graph to answer this 

[aaronsdad52]

Hello: You asked in the above comment what my calorie burn was for the numbers I had posted and the dashboard says I burnt 4,197 calories throughout the day! Thank you for all of your replies!