Sadly I REALLY REALLY wanted to love this watch and was fully prepared to protect and defend the Fitbit brand, but they put out a substandard product.
Okay, I will begin with the reasons I purchased the Fitbit Blaze. I was given the flex as a gift years ago and I loved the device and its ability to sync with my fitness pal. My father, the gift giver, purchased a heart rate monitor with chest strap by accident so I kept that and used it to track my heart rate, but here I am one year later wearing both my Fitbit flex and heart rate strap and watch. It just felt stupid to wear both. I thought my problem was solved when wearables hit the market. I also liked the idea of getting notifications on my wrist, a good 5 day battery charge, sleeptracking and most important controlling pandora from my wrist. So I purchased the Blaze on Friday, January 6 2017 and today being the 14, I am almost completely unhappy with the devise.
First: Bluetooth capabilities. I have to reset the watch daily for my workouts and yes, part of the reason I purchased this watch was to control my Pandora from the Blaze so please don't go telling me that the Bluetooth classic is only if you want to connect to music, because I do!
When parting the devise the Bluetooth paring service disappears. In fact in an attempt to get the accurate name for the button, I just looked at my Fitbit, and it has disappeared again. I did not pay 200 bucks for a device to fight with it and beat it into submission every morning before my workout. I will say the reason I am considering taking it back to the store is because today during my workout, the watch Bluetooth pair completely disconnected from my phone leaving me to have to reach around to my arm strap and fiddle with the pandora volume and other application seriously messing with my flow. Needless to say, I was totally pissed after today's workout and I did not pay 200 buck to be pissed either. The purpose was to lower the inconvenience level not increase it.
Second: Heart Rate. So I know that the tracker is getting my heart rate from the blood vessels etc, but I'm totally being robbed of my calories burned. My chest strap rates a lot higher with regard to my heart rate and my calorie burn. I have not reached 180bpm yet with the Fitbit and I regularly hit that mark with my chest strap. I've decided to keep it one more day and workout tomorrow morning with the tracker on the inside of my wrist despite the suggestions not go. I have very small wrists so it should not be that hard to read, but we will see.
Also, my HITT workouts. Yet another point of frustration and I did not pay for that, I paid to be less frustrated. This tracker does not appropriately measure your HITT or Crossfit workouts despite the application that you choose, all of which are completely useless if you are an intermediate or advance level workout person. i cant time my walls sits or any other activity because this watch wont allow you to use two different applications at once unlike my digital watch that connects to my chest strap. How is it that my digital is more advanced in some ways than my Fitbit Blaze? I don't think this watch was not tested on people who engaged in intermediate or advance level workouts. I have even read posts where the staff reported they don't know much about TABATA workouts...ummm....YOUR SPECIALITY IS SUPPOSED TO BE FITNESS!!!!! FITBIT.
How come your fitness team (if you have one) and your tech team don't work together. I see the disconnect all over the place and sadly Fitbit is overly obsessed with cardio workouts and less focused on the trending HITT, Crossfit and TABATA workouts that are here to stay. I'm not event gonna risk speaking about hot yoga and the trend there....but you get the point.
I will say this watch is great for beginners who need to get moving and those who don't do any strength training, but instead do a lot of cardio, but for the minimally fit who want to move differently and do lateral jump, V-ups, burpees and weight training, The Blaze is sorely lacking. And doing it all with no control over your tunes it way worse.
Finally, fitstar is useless if you are again an intermediate workout person. It's likely great for beginners, but the people who lead the modules have poor form in addition to being slightly unmotivating. Nike plus has you there.
It feels like this watch was thrown together to compete with the other fitness watches and the attention to detail that could have been applied to this watch to make it smarter was simply overlooked; Watch face limitations, application limitation, the fact that it does not pair with an ACCURATE heart rate monitor and the bad Bluetooth etc gives this watch a 3/5 for me.
I'm giving this watch one last chance tomorrow. I will pair it one last time, and put it on the inside of my wrist. I am skipping myfitness class because a substandard hr reading for a class where I know I burn 1000 calories would just piss me off. I will do a personalized gym HITT workout and a 1 mile run and if this thing gives me another 400 calories burned instead of my usual 650+ I'm headed straight to Best Buy and Samsung gear will get my business.
