Disappointed with Blaze

[LordGoofus]

I'd been thinking about getting a fitness tracker for a while, and finally took the plunge to splurge on a Blaze today. I'm reasonably happy with the accuracy of the step counter (it's never going to be 100%), but it looks like the device is all but useless for those of us that do mostly strength training and not a whole lot of cardio. This post is more of a improvement suggestion (demand), rather than a request for support...

I did a 1hr session tonight (with the Blaze in "weights" mode), and it recorded 1,500 steps and 722 calories burnt. The recorded calories seems like a reasonable guestimate based on the figures I got from www.shapesense.com/fitness-exercise/calculators/heart-rate-based-calorie-burn-calculator.shtml, but the step count is way way off. Unfortunately it looks like the bog standard response for any inaccuracies is "oh, just record a driving activity to negate the step counter", which seems like a super hacky work-around. What's being done as a permanent/non-hacky fix for these issues? I see ALOT of people have reported the problem, but there doesn't seem to be much in the way of progress to fix it.

I tried applying the "Driving" work-around, but found it also negates the calories burnt. So I deleted that, and created a new Driving activity, this time explicitly setting the calories burnt to match what was recorded on the "weight" activity. My steps for the day, and calories burnt now look ok on the activity log charts, but the activity log table is mess because of the additional fake "driving" activities that I had to log to correct the bad metrics.

If there's some technical reason why you can't enable editing of step/calorie values for each activity, could you please at least create a "step cancellation" and "calorie cancellation" activity that can be used to zero out steps/calories. Neither of these activities should appear on dashboards, metrics, graphs or reports. Any steps recorded between the start/end time of the "step cancellation" activity should be ignored, and any calories recorded between the start/end time of the "calorie cancellation" activity should be ignored.

Also, because of the dirty work-around that I had to use, the pie chart on the activity report is completely useless. It shows roughly 1/3 of my activities were "weights", and another 1/3 were the fake "driving" hack I had to apply to correct the bad data. If I go to the dashboard, I also noticed that the "Today" tile shows I've done 3023 steps (correct), but the "Steps" tile still shows 4,426 (ie: it's still counting the steps recorded during the "weight" activity).

It would also be great if you could provide us gym rats with a bit of a product roadmap in terms of whether to you plan to add/improve support for activities that aren't cardio based, and if you are, how you plan to support them. As a starting point it would be good if you could split activities into two categories - cardio, and strength. Cardio would retain your current attributes (start time, duration, distance, calories burnt), and Strength would have attributes for sets, reps and weight...maybe distance as well so account for things like farmers walks. Data for both categories would be visible on activity reports, dashboards, activity logs and graphs.

[SilviaFitbit · Accepted solution]

Welcome to the Community @LordGoofus! I truly appreciate the time that you took to post your comments about your experience with Fitbit Blaze. Fitbit is always working to improve its trackers, you can fully enjoy its features. 

Currently, as you mentioned the only option to delete extra steps is to log driving as an activity. However, there's already a suggestion that you can vote for it Add "Driving Mode" Feature to avoid erroneous steps/floors. Also, could you provide me with a screenshot of the error that you're mentioning about the step tile and today one? 

The best place to make your voice heard is by posting your idea in our Feature Suggestion board, because as mentioned above, those are viewed by our engineers and developers.  Some features that have been implemented come from this board. 

Thank you so much for providing all those great suggestions. Fitbit truly appreciates it. 

[LordGoofus]

Here's a screengrab I took the other night of the error. At the time, 3,023 steps was the (accurate) total number of steps I'd taken since buying the Blaze. The lifetime steps it out of wack because it seems to still be counting the incorrect steps that I cancelled out by using the "Driving" activity trick.

lifetime steps showing wrong figure

On the activity report, due to the driving activity hack, the pie chart becomes very deceiving, making it look like I burnt 355cal driving for a total of 1,709cal burnt. It should be showing 999cal walk, 355cal weights for a total of 1,354cal burnt. This is why I suggested a new activity type that can be used to adjust steps or calories, that doesn't appear on any of the charts of reports.

driving activity used to adjust/correct step/calorie count should not appear here

[SilviaFitbit]

Thank you so much for the screenshot that you attached @LordGoofus! In regards to the first screenshot, the today tile is showing the correct amount of steps as you mentioned. However, the other one that's daily data will show the graphs for the moments that you took those 3,023 steps. So, it's fine if it's showing bars during the day. 

Regarding the second screenshot, since it's about the activity log. It's showing driving, because it's an activity that you logged. I totally understand your feedback about it, because it's not activity that you actually did or you're interesting in knowing the results from it. I would appreciate, if you post this idea in our Feature Suggestion board; because those are viewed by our engineers and developers. 

Once again, thank you for taking the time to post your feedback and comments.