Okay, a review.
My husband and I got ours on Tuesday. He is switching from a Basis Peak because of constant bluetooth connection issues that periodically made the device unusable, and mainly wants the device to track his heart rate for stress purposes and steps. He likes it. His only issues are that the screen doesn't always light up when he raises his arm for the quick view and he has to tap the screen. He also doesn't like the fact that there are no numbers on the analog clock face and it is hard to tell time when the step ring is full, and the digital face runs off the bottom of the screen. As he is not a heavy user, his issues are mainly cosmetic. The HR feature seems to be working well for him.
Me, I'm different. I am a heavy user. I've had a Polar FT3, a Polar F80, a Polar RC3GPS, a motoactiv, a Body Media Fit, and an UP24 in the past. Prior to the Blaze, I was using a Surge, a Charge HR and a Flex - Surge for exercise, Charge HR for daily wear as the Surge is just too big for all day and overnight on my 5.3" wrist, and Flex in a Tory Birch band for pretty. My CHarge HR has had problems with battery life since its last update, and my Surge has had problems with detecting heart rate during weight and interval training since its last update. It was never stellar at detecting quick spikes and fast changes to heart rate, but it was close enough to average. After the last update in November it got much worse, interestingly when the PurePulse update was supposed to make HR detection better. I was using the 'weights' workout setting, with 'workout' setting was somewhat better.
Now to the Blaze. I've had it on nonstop since it arrived. I've slept with it on for three nights, done three yoga workouts, two treadmill runs, one gps tracked outdoor run, and one weight training workout.
Comfort - very comfortable to wear. Sleeker than the Surge and lighter. I am able to wear it with the band looser than the Charge HR and it still make contact, so it feels more comfortable than both bands.
Sleep - the tracking is similar to the Charge HR in readout. I am a restless sleeper and am awake a lot, and none of these trackers seem to catch all of that. It shows 'restless' but not always awake. I figure that is because I lie still. I can't blame the trackers for that. Comfortable to wear overnight, and hasn't dropped out at multiple points during the night like the Charge HR had been doing.
Exercise - the heart rate tracking seems much more accurate than the Surge on exercise. On my weight workout today, I manually counted the rate and compared it on spikes after heavy lifts and it kept up great. This is much better than the Surge. On the GPS tracked run - remember, this has no on device GPS so has to connect to your phone - everything worked great. The GPS connecting to the phone didn't seem to have any noticeable negative impact on the phone battery, which I had worried about. The watch kept up with the run the entire time and gave me a great map, and heart rate, pace and elevation were consistent with prior runs with the Surge. On the yoga, same deal. Heart rate kept up well. Pleased. Able to wear it looser on exercise too, which I like.
Notifications - the text message notifications work great. I haven't had any calendar notifications yet. Incoming call notifications work fine. Outgoing call doesn't. When I place a call, the notification buzzes on the watch and says 'incoming call'. When the other person answers, the notification continues and there is no way to make it stop. On one outgoing call last night, the watch buzzed for the first 8 minutes of the call.
Alarms - work fine. Vibrates enough to wake me up and easy to turn off.
Calorie burn seems similar to other Fitbit devices.
The display is slow to light up on quick view, you have to tap it. Moving between screens is easy with a swipe, but the buttons don't work to get you into the option. Ex - you swipe over to exercise, you have to touch the screen to get into it, then touch the screen of the exercise you want. After that, the button will start it running on the exercise. On the exercises, I read that someone said you can't see on screen stats during workouts, only the heart rate. That isn't true - if you tap on the heart rate displayed, it will scroll between heart rate, steps, calories burned, miles, whatever is relevant to the workout chosen. When you end the workout you press the bottom right to pause and upper right button to stop. You then have to click done on the screen to get back the main display, otherwise your exercise stats will stay up.
If you swipe to 'today' and click into it to see the stats, that screen comes up the next time the screen wakes up.
Sync works fine, though I had to automatically make it sync a few times even with all day sync connected. I think it was the app, and not the device, as none of my devices synced.
Um. What am I forgetting? Anyone have any questions?
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