Accuracy WAY off?!?!

[Alyusha]

I woke up the a few days ago, turned the silent alarm off on my blaze and noticed I had already taken 66 steps that day... While sleeping. I know I did not get up in the middle of the night, and unless I have a dance party while sleeping, the blaze is counting steps that are not there. I figured oh well. What’s 66 steps? I can deal with a little bit of errors. 

I went to the gym today and "ran" on an elliptical, and used the elliptical exercise programmed into my watch. I "ran" 2.03 miles according to the machine I was on. Now I know I am not really moving, so there is no gps setting to actually track my distance traveled.. But I look at this workout on my Fitbit, and it says 1.09 miles. So either this thing is not meant to track distance for elliptical, and if that’s the case, why does it even say anything? Or I paid $200 + tax for junk. There is no reason why it is missing a mile. Is it not tracking my steps? I would ask if it was a stride setting, but it should not matter since when using an elliptical, it is a set stride.. Kind of.

Now this brings me back to having 66 steps taken while sleeping... If it messed up 66 steps in the 5 hours of the day while I was lying in bed not moving (according to Fitbit, I did not move from 12 AM till I woke up), how many steps are added / missing throughout the day of actually doing stuff?

I have lost faith in my Fitbit and am about to get rid of it, I am just hoping this is some kind of setting that I need to change. 

FYI, I did a 10 mile bike ride on Saturday, and it was dead on with that (but of course, it was connected to my phones GPS).

Thanks for any help.

[Sballenger]

I have thought since day one that Blaze was miscounting! I drove 2 hrs to get it and in way home it had that I had walked 800 steps while I was driving! Lol I had a Charge HR and got my 10,000 steps several times a week regularly. Since I've had Blaze I haven't hit 10,000 not even one time and I've had it now for two weeks. I put Charge back on and also wore Blaze on same wrist and the charge got almost 1900 more steps than Blaze! As soon as I started wearing Charge again I went back to getting my 10,000 but with Blaze on I never do!
I have ordered an Alta that will be here Wednesday and once again I will be comparing it to the Charge
I sure hope it's better than the Blaze has been, it's going back to Target Thursday. I so wanted to love it but I can't deal with miscounting steps that much!

[kawaiiko]

I have not had this issue with the blaze.  I went from  the charge hr to the blaze and my results were exactly the same.  

Try doing a restart on the blaze and see if this helps.  You can do that by holding down the Back and Select buttons (left and bottom right) until you see the Fitbit logo on the screen. This should take less than 10 seconds.

[Sballenger]

I have done a restart 4 times now and nothing helps😩

[nDoorn]

A couple of days ago I went biking and found that the readings were way off most of the time.

I found that when I was pushing hard my heart rate was 70-80 bpm on the tracker, but that seems unlogical to me.

Later I also found while reviewing the data from that run was very inaccurate. A lot of the time my heart rate was below the 100 BPM, even near rest, while peddaling hard.

[Sballenger]

I have restarted it 4 times with no improvements

[Alyusha]

I have done several restarts too and nothing. I think this is Fitbits way of getting rid of you for a while. This is driving me nuts though. I really really really like everything else about the blaze and fitbit in general, but if I can not figure this out soon then both mine and my wifes will be going back to the store. I expect this type of stuff from a cheap one, not a $200 tracker.

[Alyusha · Accepted solution]

@nDoorn Have you made sure the green lights are cleaned and above your wrist bone, tight, but not too tight?

[Sballenger]

Exactly! $216 with tax I expect better, I bought Apple Watch and kept it
for 6 weeks with ZERO problems on anything but it was more than I wanted to
deal with because of how much it did do I like simple. I got it for $270
with tax I feel the Blaze should be doing better for price paid. I don't
miss the Apple at all but I will miss the text notifications on the Blaze

[rightmire]

Welp, just more reasons to never ever buy this junk.

[Aswingle]

I woke up and walked to the bathroom, kitchen, to my car. Drove 2 hours, Sat in a training all day ( I did walk to the bath room and back twice) and I have 3917 steps. NO WAY.

[KiloLima64]

I got the Blaze the first day it was available. I got mine at Best Buy along with one for my wife. I have compared my daily steps against what my Polar M400 would give me for an average day and they are within about 100-150 steps of each other. I think you guys got bad units. I did read in another post some had trouble with the heart rate readings so they turned it around so it was reading on the bottom of the wrist and the readings were pretty close to their chest strap readings. 

[Rich_Laue]

@Alyusha, i want to go back to your original post.
66 steps in the morning can be from a trio to the restroom, and some arm motions
When it comes to the elyptical the miles that machine reports is based on the spinning of the wheel, something that is not programmed into your Fitbit, along with the abilitiy to coast, while the machine will be still count, your Fitbit will not see any movement.
Ypir tracker has no idea how far tye wheel spins with every pedal, so footer milage
Gps does not work with the elyptical simply because ir needs you to be physically moving across a distance. Gps also won't work indoors.
During the elyptical your Fotbit has adjusted your calorie burn based on the HR for this period.
As for the Bike ride it is using GPS to record the distance, so it should be correct.

[Rich_Laue]

@Aswingle check your log, dod those steps show up during your car ride? Just about every step counter made by every company, will detect steps in a cart worth stiff suspension.
Worth Fitbit you are able to log this time as driving.

[Aswingle]

Ok thanks.

[Alyusha]

@Rich_Laue I get what you are saying, and thank you for the information. However If the Fitbit is not meant to track the elliptical, then why is it a preprogrammed option? It is not like I selected "exercise" and am complaining it is a mile off. The elliptical I use also does not have a free wheel, there is no taking a break. 

I have chalked this issue up to stride info being wrong. 

[Rich_Laue]

You could say for the same reason that they have  workouts for weights cycling, you don't take steps on a bike. Fitbit adjusts the calories,  wick is what they use to tie everything together.

[AdamMSC]

From what I understand about the exercise profiles, there is not much of a difference in the algorithms between them if any at all. They are there mostly to help you track you workout for that day.

[marleysmom]

I just got the blaze for mothers day and was super excited, however, I feel like it's not counting my steps correctly.  I think it is undercounting.  It's that or the charge was over counting.  I'm seriously disappointed and on the verge of returning it.  I love everything else about it, so figured I need to work harder but it's so discouraging when you know you've done more than it's counting.

Curious to know, did your problem get solved or did you return it??

[scrubsz]

everybody seems to be complaining the same thing and fitbit isn't responding to anything. Same happened to me. I'm an avid runner. Wore a Charge HR and my new Blaze on the same wrist. Charge HR logged 6800+ steps where my Blaze only had 3700+. Big difference. I havent hit 10,000 steps yet!