Good question. That depends. Longish sorta complicated answer. Hope you really care enough that I'm not just wasting my time answering in detail. If you are just concerned about your daily totals of steps, calories burned, active minutes, etc, it probably doesn't matter. If you are concerned about getting credit for and seeing details about individual workouts, then it might matter. But the actual activity doesn't matter - calories burned are based on heart rate.
2 ways to track a workout: (1) rely on auto-recognition where you count on Fitbit/Google to realize that you are exercising and to recognize your activity. (2) use the Exercise App where you tell what activity you are doing, tell when you start and when you stop.
(1) Auto-recognition: It is limited to about 8 activities it can (sometimes) recognize, solely from the movement pattern of your wrist, and even these, it can often get wrong. But for just walking, I find it generally recognizes it and does just fine. People often want to get other activities added here, not realizing it involves trying to recognize an activity from wrist motion. For each of the 8 or so activities there is a minimum time limit (I think default 15 minutes) for it to count as an exercise session. That min time can be changed from 10 to 90 minutes. But none of the above has any effect on the calories burned or steps, just whether or not you get credit for an exercise session and what that exercise is called.
(2) Exercise App: In my opinion, much underused, many people never use it and don't even know about it, then continually complain that their exercise didn't get recognized. This is when you say what activity you are going to do and start the activity, then stop it when done. Often have options of different stats to show during the exercise session. Anything you do using the Exercise App will get counted as an exercise session. So actually you could tell your watch you wee starting a run, sit down for 2 minutes, then say you were done, and you would get credit for an exercise session regardless of the time length. The advantages of using the Exercise App: your exercise is always recognized and gets the name you chose for it, when exercising the PW2 turns on 5 pulse sensor lights instead on just 1 as when at rest for more accuracy - starting the exercise app tells it right away to turn on all 5 sensors.
Seems like I left some other advantages of Exercise App that I am forgetting but basically daily totals the same however, but Exercise App more reliable if need individual workout data, but if auto-recognition seems to be working for you, then that's fine too.
Clear as mud or more confused than ever?
Before posting, re-read to see if it would make sense to someone else not looking at your Fitbit or phone.
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