Problems with Fitbit Blaze

[jsale]

I appreciate my wife getting me a Blaze, it seemed like a good idea at the time, but the dahsboard software has too many problems, it frequently stops syncing, and valuable data is lost or not collected at all. The fact that sooooo many others are posting similar problems indicates that Fitbit is not serious about delivering a quality product. I will look elsewhere for a better product in the future. The Garmin Vivosmart looks much more reliable for about the same price. As a researcher in data science I was hoping the data might be useful in some way, but unfortunately there are too many problems with it and it is unreliable for anything but a novel look every now and then. Why spend $200 for worthless data??

Moderator edit: Clarified subject

[FerdinandFitbit]

Hi there @jsale. Welcome to the Fitbit Community! 🙂

I'm sorry you're having problems with your tracker 😕

If your tracker is not syncing properly, something that takes care of this is restarting it. For this, just press and hold the left and lower right buttons for 10-12 seconds. This will make the tracker to reboot and refresh the connection to your phone. Additionally you can also restart your bluetooth by simply turning it off and back on and after that, try it out for the next days and see if this makes any difference.

If that doesn't work, you can also set up your tracker as a new device by going to the account section on your app and once you're there, tap on the "Set up a new device" option and follow the on-screen instructions and see how it goes after that.

Hope this works and if you need more help with this, let me know!

[Rich_Laue]

For the occasional times my tracker doesn't sync, or notifacations don't come through, with the latest update, i find that restarting the tracker doesnt work for me but restarting the phone does. This has been my experience, yours may vary . 

[jsale]

I appreciate your attempt at helping, but you are only reinforcing what I
am saying. I should not have to do all of these things to get my Fitbit to
work properly. I should not have to restart my Fitbit, I should not have to
"Set up a new device" nor should I have to restart my Sync software. I paid
a bunch of money for my Blaze, it should work as advertised. It doesn't do
much in the first place (heart rate and motion detection as far as I can
tell), but If it doesn't work as advertised, then to heck with it. I will
take my business elsewhere. I will sell it for whatever I can get for it.
Lesson learned.

Jeff

[lauraneumiller]

That issue is something recent. Today only I had to restart my blaze 6 times- forget device- reregister it to have it work once and next time I open the app it can't find my device.

[Rich_Laue]

@lauraneumiller when you do a forget device, you go to your phones Bluetooth settings and tell it to forget the Blaze. Blaze classic can be left alone. 

Now open the app and sync, the app will pair the tracker to the phone. Removing it from the account does not remove it from the phone and usually does not help with solving a sync problem. 

[lauraneumiller]

Been there- done that. Still doesn't work past one time. I close the app and wait a few- go back and back to cannot find my blaze.

[Aclobos]

@lauraneumiller, you might check to see if your phone is running multiple Bluetooth devices simultaneously. I'm not sure how many devices you can run simultaneously from your phone but this can give you syncing problems if you have to many devices running at once.

[AlejandraFitbit]

Great to see you around @Rich_Laue, @jsale, @lauraneumiller and @Aclobos. If you have already tried the instructions provided by our friend @FerdinandFitbit and keep having problem with your Blaze, please get in touch with our support team for further assistance. For a faster response you can contact them via phone or chat.

Catch you later. 

[jsale]

I wanted to follow up with some details which others may find useful. I gave my Blaze to my wife and I did in fact buy a Garmin Vivosmart HR+ and I am happy enough with it, but there are a couple of things which the Blaze does better. First, the Vivosmart display is difficult to read. It is a more narrow display than the Blaze and they use a condensed font as a result. Also, it is not color like the Blaze. The color was really nice. The quality of the Vivosmart data is excellent, exactly what I am looking for, but I can't easily get to all of my data. Fitbit offers a really nice api which gave me access to all of my data. Garmin only lets me download data if it is recorded as an "Activity", which means I need to set my watch as a perpetual Activity to save all of my data. It's a little bit of extra work and I find I don't always do it. I could be wrong, but I believe that if I want to pay $5000 I can develop for the Garmin platform and get access to their api. The Vivosmart data itself is excellent, and it includes GPS integrated together with the physio data and time stamped. FWIW, my wife is very happy with her Blaze, but she's not into the data like me. 

[FerdinandFitbit]

Thanks for getting back and sharing this with us @jsale!

[LisaSac]

I have also had endless problems with my Blaze.  It works for a week, then it stops syncing, and it stops notifying me of calls, etc.  I have spent countless hours on the phone with tech support, and reset, uninstalled, unpaired...you name it.  I recently upgraded my phone and thought, hey maybe it was the phone.  But alas, same problems as before.

To add insult to injury, tech support told me that I have to return it and they will send me a new one.  The first package included everything bit the actual piece.  I got a new charger, new band....no mechanism.  So I had to go back to the post office and return that.  Then they sent me a crappy metal wristband which in no way will fit my 5" wrist, a silicone band, the charger, the mechanizm, but no square piece so I could use the silicone band.

So I had to buy a piece to discover the same problems occur.  So now my total investment is $200 plus another $10 for the piece they left out of the box. 

Total waste of time and money.  Would never invest in their products again, especially after their spotty support.

[RaquelQuark]

Thank you for letting us know about this issue and how to restart the Blaze. I just spent the last 4-6 hours trying to figure out how to to restart this THING! It worked and now hopefully I won't have any more problems. I have had this Blaze for 4 days now and I had the Charge HR before. Also the battery sucks on this Blaze! 

[Aclobos]

@LisaSac@So are you saying that your blaze was under warranty and when you received your replacement you did not get a replacement pebble (blaze watch).? Why would you buy a new blaze if your old blaze was still under warranty? If you just bought a new blaze and your old blaze is under warranty, I would return your blaze for full refund and request customer support to replace your blaze under your warranty.

[LisaSac]

I spent hours on the phone with tectonic support. Returned everything as
instructed and got an empty box. Called again, was told to return
everything including the empty box that I could finally get a pebble and
The Wristband and everything else I needed which would have been in the
original package that I sent. Would I got back was a pebble I got a
wristband but no casing so wouldn't attach to the wristband and I got the
charger so I had to actually buy a casing so that I could try it again. I
also upgraded my phone thinking that maybe it was my old phone. I decided
to bite the bullet and try it again and it still didn't work. I've had it
now although not the original one for about nine months this is been going
on for that long. My life is too short to spend another 2 hours on the
phone with their tech support.

[Aclobos]

@LisaSacyeah I had some problems with iOS 10.1, I had to uninstall and reinstall my blaze from my iPhone. Also had to power down my iPhone. Found out I had a few to many Bluetooth devices connecting  simultaneously on my iPhone, after disconnecting a few unnecessary devices my blaze worked. One thing for sure this blaze always keeps you on your toes. There's always something that comes up unexpectedly. Sorry to hear things didn't work out.

[LisaSac]

Unfortunately I use an android phone, and it was my only Bluetooth
connection. At first I thought maybe I got a lemon. But two devices
(three packages when you count the empty box they sent me) and still does
not work.

[LisaSac]

Unfortunately I use an android phone, and it was my only Bluetooth
connection. At first I thought maybe I got a lemon. But two devices
(three packages when you count the empty box they sent me) and still does
not work.

[stevetreb]

Best case is I usually get about 2 days betwen having to flush everything and start over.  Not acceptable.  Chalk this one up to a lesson learned I guess....

[stevetreb]

think i've figured out a workaround.  turn off all-day sync and restart my blaze everytime before i sync.  it seems to sync ok, so far anyway.