Blaze - First Impressions

[SunsetRunner]

Very excited as I just received my Blaze yesterday.    Thought I would share my first impressions.  While its good overall, it's not great - and there are a number of quirks and "why did they do that" moments I've quickly discovered with the new tracker.

First - the negatives/quirks - 

• I'm not a fan of the cumbersome method of having to change the device. I'm not sure what the benefit is of having to remove the tracker itself from the band - just to charge it.  Why couldn't you use the same cable concept that was used for the Charge  and Charge HR?  Infact, why can't you standardize on a single cable to charge all of your latest trackers?  I feel that having to remove the tracker from the band just puts extra wear and tear on the components than really necessary.   Now I have to travel with yet another charge cable for my Fitbits.
• I'm somewhat dissapointed in terms of the over all size of the device - seems like there is alot of wasted space, that otherwise could have been used to reduce the size of the device.  It doesn't feel big, but it looks big.  The Applewatch does alot more, and is smaller than the Blaze.  
• I find it more difficult to quickly find the status of my goal - in this case steps.  I like the simplistic view of the Zone clock, (and it looks the most professional) but it only shows me my heart rate.    Why can't it be customizable to allow me to display my primary goal?? ie: steps?
• The other clock faces are equally as confusing.    Keep it simple, but informative. 
• Text Message Notifications - Real nice feature, and seems to be implemented well.  Altho - the inability for it to display emoji's is very dissapointing.
• Would be be great if I can customize the overall interface - choose what I want displayed and in what order.  Fitstar - while it's nice, I have zero interested in it.  Be great to just disable it.  Clean things up. Since I can't disable it, to me it's considered constant advertisement for the paid service.
• No quick way to view my other goal status.  Why can't one of the buttons be configurable to quickly display the "Today" screen data?  
• It would be great if the Blaze would be able to display things such as "Calories Left" for the day.
• Why did you not implement the  "Reminder to Move" feature in the Blaze that the Alta has?
• Would be great if I could hold down one of the buttons (left for example) to enable the activity stopwatch like I could do with my Charge HR.  

What I Like:

• The screen appears to be sharp and crisp.  Altho I haven't had a chance to try it out in direct sunlight.
• I do like the fact that I CAN remove the tracker from the band.  This makes it easier to keep it with you in if you are in situations where you can't wear a watch or you don't want to risk damaging it.    But again - this shouldn't be a requirement to charge it.
• Notifications - text messages and calendars is really why I decided to purchase the tracker.  I really wanted some of those "business"  features that my coworkers have with their AppleWatches.  
• Business/Professional look and feel to it.   It doesn't look like I'm wearing a black rubberband on my wrist.    Altho, my earlier comment on the overall size still remains. 
• Nice to see the sync speed is considerably faster than what the Charge HR can do.  

In summary - I'm glad that Fitbit has a 45 day return policy.  

The jury is still out if I'm going to keep the Blaze, or simply return it and go with the AppleWatch.  I'm going to give it a few more weeks of use and go from there.  My entire family and large circle of friends are all part of the Fitbit ecosystem.    If fitbit would just open up and support the Apple Health Kit environment - or I probably would by the Applewatch for my workweek tracker, and continue to use my Fitbit Charge HR for my workouts and weeekend tracker.  But we all know that won't happen.  😞

Hopefully others find this post informative, and Fitbit uses this to improve on their product.  

[tech-ninja]

I cannot state how well these work, however I saw it the other day and figured I would pass on the information.

A matte screen protector - http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01BI94GNI/

[David8732]

Interesting thread.
I love my Blaze, and think faults are being analysed to a minuscule level.
It's not perfect, but after having the Surge and Vivosmart HR for a full day tech it blows both out of the water.
And isn't the Apple Watch twice the price of the Blaze?

[TimNgwena]

Ha the blaze for over a month now. Put together my thoughts in this video (shameless plug) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpHL-6cSugI 

I've owned every fitbit that came before and i must say it's noce to see Fitbit try something slightly different in terms of design and styling, althought in some areas (battery charging and replacing the watch strap / face) it seems a littl over engineered. 

I like the addition of fitstar workouts, it's the first time you can use the watch to help with workouts out the box without a third party app. 

As a colored skin user, the heart rate tracking works better than it has in previous devices, getting much better resting heart rate readings but theyre still nothing compared to a chest strap rreader and the lag when running is massive but once settled it tracks fairly close to reality in genereal temrs i.e. trend lines tell the same story as a chest strap. For most people this will be fine. 

There are some funny things going on in the background with the algorythms, compared to the charge HR the blaze seems to be skipping a beat in terms of tracking from time to time. noticing this with heart rate, sleep, step and calrio counting. 

Will check back in a couple of months to report how it's gone. Hoping the platform settles. 

[robwilkens]

My first impressions (today is day 3 with it)

I agree with a lot of what was said

However,

Dislike: 

-Wish it would do more notificatios, other than call text and calendar.  For example, my old microsoft band let me turn on and off notifications for individual apps, such as news alerts and e-mail

-Activity details don't seem to sync with either myfitnesspal, strava, or MapMyFitness sites.  I don't know if this is just me experiencing this issue though.

Like:

-Unlike the microsoft band, this thing tracks calories right when sync'ed to myfitnesspal.  There was a long term problem with the ms band and syncing with MFP.

[TimNgwena]

I've got blaze working smoothly with my fitnessPal try disconnecting and reconnecting the Fitbit link and in the settings choose Fitbit as the step counting device. 

Get Outlook for iOS

[robwilkens]

Mine syncs the steps (To the MyFitnessPal app) and the "Fitbit calorie adjustment" to exercises, but it does not sync individual exercises.  Is that normal?

-Rob