Are Fitbit Products for serious athletes ?

[jeromesmiths]

I have not had a positive experience with FitBit Products.
My expectation of a company like FitBit is that they produce products that last at least 2 years. 

Is this a reasonable request / expectation ?

I have 3 of their products the Ionic, FitBit Flyers and the Inspire HR non of which are working and all bought within +- 1 year. So none of these products are older than a year and none are working. 

I have asked what the lifespan of their products are and I cannot get a definitive answer to this question. However gathering from the feedback / support forums it appears the products will last for a year at most. ( if you're lucky ) 

Given my experience is it unreasonable to assume the products are of poor quality, and hence not intended for serious athletes  ?

[globalgamble]

I have always been curious about how many average steps per day an elite or even college athlete get?  College athletes have to go to class, but elite athletes are always training.  Are there any elite athletes that have come forward as using fitbit??? 

[j0f0st3r]

I am reaching the same opinion. I haven't had fundamental breakages but my experience with the Ionic suggests that Fitbit isn't interested i real sports people and is more for those who want to do walks etc. 

[t.parker]

I don't think the athletes are a target audience of the Fitbit. It's not about the overall quality of the products but a lack of many important features that athletes find useful. Here's just a few:

- running doesn't and won't support cadence

- there is no way to use external sensors (cycling sensors, external HR monitors)

- there is no multisport support

- no structured training support (structured intervals, very useful thing)

- the interval support is rather poor (intervals based only on time as far as I remember)

- no triathlon support (which probably is in high demand among athletes),

- the data export is rather poor (detailed data as TCX only for GPS-based activities),

- the swimming on Versa 2 has been dumbed down while other watches support even things like pace clock for swimming

- there is no way to target training for HR, power or pace (no target alerts)

Athletes require a lot more and they look for proper sports watch rather than a fancy smartwatch or cheap fitness tracker. For me, the Fitbit products are just toys that look nice, count steps, calories but for serious training, my first question would be "how do I pair my chest strap with the watch"... ouch!

[jeromesmiths]

I suppose that the lack of features should be a tell tale sign that the device would not be very useful to an elite athlete. So point taken.

However quality is not reserved for athletes only but should surely be part of the ethos of such a company. 
How do we as consumers lower our carbon footprint, if the products that we buy are of poor quality ? 
Making products of inferior quality is counter productive and harms our environment. 

[t.parker]

@jeromesmiths  "However quality is not reserved for athletes only" - true, but you asked about "serious athletes" 🙂 As an athlete (as close as I can get) the quality indeed was bugging me. I'm into certain extreme sports and no Fitbit can actually withstand that. My Ionic got plenty of scratches, and it happened that the strap unlocked itself and my watch fell down from height (luckily, landed on the crash pad). I've been using several watches and I don't always expect them to take no damage but Ionic was the worst, like a plastic cheap toy. Moreover, without being able to use an external HR sensor it must be worn if I want to have HR readings (my current watch can be taken off and safely locked to the harness while taking readings from the strap). Since I'm also about altitudes and vertical speed (not supported by Fitbit) I can't just leave the watch on the ground (I may not be coming back anyway). Fitbit didn't figure out yet how important the screen/button lock feature is and that's another reason the brand is useless for me (how many times did I pause tracking with just bending my wrist).

Taking quality aside, if not that some models seem to be dying more frequently than others, the quality of Fitbit would be enough for most of the casual users who just want to count steps, calories and track sleep. Bit expensive but it does the job as long as it works. For me, the lack of features and lack of any will to implement those is a deal-breaker. I believe Fitbit has some focus. Probably health, sleep but definitely not sports. At the moment, athletes can get good sports watches at the price of Versa 2 and less which offer a lot more in terms of tracking, analytics and build quality. As of today, I wouldn't even consider Fitbit if I'm serious about sports, training and tracking progress.