I cannot believe that I am having to post on this subject for yet another Fitbit device.
I purchased my Ionic on 23rd June 2018, which replaced a Samsung Gear Fit 2 and prior to that a Fitbit Blaze, both of which I returned for a refund due to multiple issues with the devices.
Having owned my Ionic for 5 days I have noticed that, like with the Blaze, it underestimates my daily Active Minutes and randomly fails to record Active Minutes for some of my activities.
Active Minutes is my main exercise goal and was one of the reasons I returned the Blaze to Fitbit after less than 2 weeks.
For the 10 months I owned a Charge 2 prior to purchasing these devices I had no issue with it recording my Active Minutes.
For example, today I went on two cycle rides and two walks which I tracked with GPS. I was active for a total of 87.23 Active Minutes which were all within the three heart rate zones. However, my Ionic has logged just 39 Active Minutes for the first cycle ride and first walk combined, whilst recording 0 Active Minutes for a 1.04 mile walk and 1.50 mile cycle ride.
Besides cycling and walking I am a fairly active person and my Charge 2 used to record Active Minutes throughout the day to reflect this, whereas with the Ionic most of my daily activities do not count towards Active Minutes.
I really do not wish to even consider having to return yet another Fitbit as I really love the Ionic, but it seems incongruous to me that a device that cost twice the price of my Charge 2 should come up short in such basic functionality as Active Minutes.
I would be very grateful for any advice that might help resolve this issue.
Thanks.
Marc
Best Answer
@Marc_PL read this:
https://help.fitbit.com/articles/en_US/Help_article/1379/
My BMR is about 1850 calories, so 1 MET = 1.3 calories/min. That means Fitbit will only give 10 active minutes if I maintain a calorie burn of 3.9 calories/min or higher, for at least 10 minutes.
Maybe a little easier way to see active minutes is the chart below. It shows last night's 2+ hour group ride recorded using a bike computer and synced via Garmin Connect > Endomondo > Fitbit (roughly 9.7 calories/minute on activity log):
I don't exactly agree with Fitbit on active minutes, for various reasons, but thats how its suppose to work. That said IMHO its not acceptable for different trackers (Charge2 vs Ionic) to give widely different results.
If 87 minutes biking/walking is typical, you are likely well beyond the point of diminishing returns with bothering to track cardio / active minutes, at least from an overall health benefit point-of-view. I'm getting 6-10 hours a week of moderate to vigorous cardio on a bike, and don't even bother keeping track of active minutes anymore as its well beyond guidelines. Instead I focus on training stress, and modifying ride intensity. When you start exceeding general guidelines, maybe its time to focus on more appropriate metrics? Just a thought.
Can you repost the first bike ride so the text is legible?
Best Answer@bbarreraThank you for such a considered and comprehensive response.
I read the article regarding Active Minutes and I have say that it is the first time I have read anything about MET. My BMR is 1437 and I have no idea how this relates to my MET in terms of calorie burn per minute.
87 minutes is actually less than my usual daily total for cycling and walking. Today I GPS tracked 2 cycle rides and 2 walks again giving a combined total of 129 minutes, of which my Ionic has recorded 64 Active Minutes for the whole day's activity so far.
I have also noticed with the Ionic that it does not record active minutes for activities less than 10 minutes in duration, even when they are tracked activities as opposed to auto-recognised activities which have to be 10 minutes or more. My Charge 2 still recorded tracked activities under 10 minutes as Active Minutes.
I guess drawing conclusions from what you said and the MET article I will just have to accept that my Ionic is only capable of tracking some of my daily active minutes.
Thank you for kindly responding.
Marc
Best AnswerAnother example, in case it helps.
My 3 MET value is approximately 3.8 calories per minute. Here is a walk with 35 active minutes, where I walked a mile, grabbed a coffee, and walked back to the office:
17:06 - first 17+ minutes I walked a mile above 3 MET / 3.8 calories/min
18:02 - after getting coffee I started walking above 3.8 cals/min at 29:08 and stopped at 47:10
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35:08 active minutes
You can see +35 active minutes under Impact on the screenshot.
Hope that helps, and given your activity level I think you might benefit from looking beyond active minutes as a metric (look up "training stress score" or just "stress score").
Best Answer