Blaze concerns

[johnboy2978]

I'm starting to get a bit put out with this whole company to tell the truth.  I received the Blaze about 3 months ago as a gift.  I'd researched various smart watches that I'd like to log my running.  As someone who is very active in half marathons, I log many miles a month.  I just couldn't necessitate spending $200 on this, but was thrilled to get it as a gift.  I have to say, I'm not $200 impressed with it.  My biggest gripe is the inaccuracy the device has when not teathered to your phone.  It's primary purpose doesn't work very well.  It loses about .75 miles  for every 10 mi I run unless you have your phone with you.  If I keep my phone with me, I could use a free app which also uses GPS and save myself the $200.  

Now this update, which is about bells and whistles instead of accuracy for the one job I thought it was made for.  Why not get the main issues worked out, then worry about clock faces, etc.  I don't understand that at all.  The clock faces look like they are from the 80's/90's but again, it's a clock face.  Let's fix the real issues first.  

Now yesterday, I bought my daughter a Charge HR and today I'm returning it. Why? Because it just randomly stops working.  It was fully charged, working fine, then 2 hours later it's completely unresponsive and has to be plugged into the USB to revive it.  A few hours later and it's stopped syncing.  Give me a break.  I google some of these issues and see pages and pages of people with the same issues and a lengthy list of troubleshooting things to try and get the thing to work.  How about doing better testing and Q&C before putting these things out in the first place.  

Very frustrated with this company and won't be buying additional FB products. 

Moderator Edit: Clarified subject

[Rich_Laue]

@johnboy2978 I've moved your post out of the firmware ups RT thread, there is nothing here referencing it.

Let's look at the Charge. HR, you received a bad unit, and i suggest returning for a replacement. 

Now about the Distance, if you keep the phone with you, you could use the GPS and the Blaze in the Run tracking mode, the advantage of doing this a few times is that Fitbit will then know your stride and you won't need to calculate it. This is only a feature of the Blaze. 

The following will be for both trackers. 

Without the phone and the GPS both the Blaze and the Charge HR have no way to measure miles.. The count the steps taken then multiply the step count by the stride. Ok a step is a step, but the stride will vary from person to person, or when a person changes the speed they run at. 

While fitbit will calculate the stride based on the height, weight, gender, etc, fitbit assumes RT. User is an average person. Now the one thing we know about the average person is , nobody fits exactly average, close yes, average no. Your fitbit being off by 7.5% is well within the 10% for a default setup. 

I'm not saying it can't be better, remember the default is set on averages and you'll need to set the stride. This actually will be easy you say the distance is off by  .75 this tells me you know how far the run was, and your Blaze has a record of how many steps taken.. So let's take the distance and step count and go to a stride calculator. What i did was take the average of runs over a 5 day period to get an average of what my stride is. 

As for the clock faces there will be 6 more, please check the pinned clock face post.