Why I would not recommend the Ionic to metrics focussed athletes (for now)

[Xenoide]

The heading is a bit provocative, but here comes the justification:

1. Ionic's main function, the step counter, is not reliable at all. It is undercounting steps in the range of 20-30%. Also there is a high variability between Ionic models. A test performed with two watches worn in parallel on both wrists and a reference precision step counter attached to the chest showed that one Ionic constantly had a higher miscount than the other, also after swapping wrists. This means, you cannot trust the steps the Ionic shows at all, you actually take many more than you are credited for. As the test with two watches showed, this is not a malfunction of a single device but a general problem.
2. The GPS at the Ionic is only used to show track drawings on the map, but not used for distance calculations at all. A test with two Ionic watches and a Garmin GPSMap 64s device showed on a walking track of 6.38 km that one Ionic reported 5.68 and the other 5.27 km. Both Ionics had constantly locked GPS and no loss of GPS signal reported. This means, the actual distance, your Ionic reports is not reliable and far too low. Also this is not a specific device issue but a general problem of the Ionic design or firmware.
3. The advertised SpO2 sensor on the watch is disabled for now and there are currently no visible approaches to change that. Although this feature might not be crucial for an athlete, it is still something you get billed for without any benefit.

My main concern is the lack of accuracy in steps and distance counting. Without precise values here any serious practice for distance running and even for own stats of steps taken is virtually useless because it is not credited properly.

If Fitbit does not sort this out in the future, the Ionic remains what it is now, an expensive but mainly useless toy.

[bbarrera]

And for activities like cycling and weight lifting, there is no support for more accurate chest strap HRM. 

[jrobbins]

I wear a chest strap while cycling as well as my Ionic. They are very very close to each other in regards to HRM - close enough that it is not that big of a deal.

[bbarrera]

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@jrobbins wrote:

I wear a chest strap while cycling as well as my Ionic. They are very very close to each other in regards to HRM - close enough that it is not that big of a deal.

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I've tried a bunch of smartwatches, and just like DCRainmaker's reviews have found optical HRM on the wrist to be challenging (not good enough).

While optical HRM is good enough when I'm out on a casual ride with the family, that only happens once or twice a year.

Most of my rides are fast, averaging +/- 20mph, and on rough roads. Under those conditions I haven't found optical HRM to be good enough. And I have no issues wearing a chest strap, so I'd rather have accurate data (I actually review Power-to-HeartRate ratios) than convenience.

[jrobbins]

For me personally riding between 20 and 50 miles at an average of +/- 17mph the Ionic is just fine for HR. Yes my Wahoo HRM strap is much more accurate, but the discrepancies for someone that is not hard core HR training is negligible in my experience. It does not 'spin up' as fast as my strap on sprints, but it hits the same peaks as my Wahoo so I can see the overall trends when looking at my Fitbit dashboard.

With that in mind I do not think that Fitbit is trying to take over for straps - just having the data there that someone did not have before is a nice thing to have. Maybe someday they will release a HR strap that connects with the Ionic for more accurate training. I think the hardcore training people trying to make the Fitbit work for them are trying to force a round peg into a square hole.

[bbarrera]

well said @jrobbins and as the topic is metric focused athletes, it sounds like you agree. Just on this forum I can link you to documented examples where HR is not accurate for cycling, distance is not accurate for running, pace is not accurate for running, and HR is not accurate for weight lifting (and forget about tracking weight/sets/reps). We've even had several reports that if you put Ionic into weight lifting mode, your "recorded" HR rises which indicates Fitbit is fudging HR data - indeed I've seen Fitbit fudging HR data in cycling: after the ride is uploaded the (obviously wrong) data observed on Ionic during the ride has been 'corrected' by the Fitbit servers. I think thats a serious problem with trust that few want to admit, or take the time to see for themselves.

One glaring problem with all Fitbit devices - if you observe issues with HR accuracy there is no option to pair a more accurate chest strap if you want accurate data. 

I'm not "hardcore" cyclist, but I am an enthusiast that rides to get faster to better enjoy group rides on the weekend. Weight lifting and cycling are my cornerstones for staying fit and active in the second half of my life. I've seen Fitbit's website marketing speak that promises I can "optimize your intensity and dial in your effort" but when I've hammered out a 30 second sprint and am coasting to recover only to see the Ionic showing 120bpm instead of 160-175bpm that promise rings hollow.

Again, the topic is metric focused athletes and not the Fitbit core target audience of "motivating people to move more and live a healthier and more active life." In this regard Fitbit has a lot of work to do, and finally needs to admit that optical HRM doesn't always work and allow the use of HRMs, or at least allow importing HRM (and GPS) data.

[bmw54]

@Xenoide: I'd have to agree with you; for months I insisted that distance and pace were not being measured via the GPS data collected by the Ionic. This was painfully obvious every time I participated in a road race; the ionic understated distance and overstated pace by at least 33%. Gradually, enough others did enough tests to prove ionic was using stridelength instead of the geolocation data it so faithfully records. And a Fitbit person confirmed that in a chatlog (that I saved).

But I've also become suspicious of how it records heart rate. It seems that when I look at my run stats after sync'ing, they are sometimes suspiciously high and, almost always, independent of effort. I'm not a cardiologist, but it seems my heart rate should go up when I speed up hills.

So today I tried an experiment. I taped over my wrist with four layers of band-aid and paper towel - right under the green light. Then I went on a standard 7.7 mile run.

The resulting heart-rate chart is almost identical to the last time I ran this same course at the beginning of the month. (170 avg bpm today vs. 171 avg bpm 3 weeks ago) even though I ran faster by 30 seconds per mile today. (Today's chart is a bit smoother than the earlier one.)

Maybe I've got this wrong - maybe the sensor can read through layers of paper and plastic. But having lost faith in one metric leads me to wonder about the other things I bought Ionic for.

BTW: I have screenshots of the charts and the 'bandage' I placed under my Fitbit.

[bbarrera]

@bmw54 try putting your Ionic in weights mode and let us know if Ionic is giving accurate heart rate. 

[bmw54]

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@bbarrera wrote:

@bmw54 try putting your Ionic in weights mode and let us know if Ionic is giving accurate heart rate. 

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In weights mode, (ionic still strapped over the patch I stuck above my wrist) no heartbeat was registered. 

So I swapped it to my other arm (no patch), where it measured a resting heart rate of 63 BPM. In weights mode it registered heart rate at 62 BPM.

I'm not sure what that's telling me, but it's not making me feel any better about heart rate in running mode today. Fortunately, I've never believed Fitbit when it comes to HR or its   sleep statistics. 

After describing my 'experiment' to my co-worker, she suggested that on another run I wear my still-functioning Surge on my other wrist and compare heart rate charts. I have a 6K race coming up (yeah, that's 6), maybe I'll try it then.

[bbarrera]

@bmw54 if you've never used weights mode, then one guess is that Fitbit hasn't learned what your normal HR range is for weight lifting. So therefore it couldn't predict your HR, and you received actual data (no HR detected).

[Stubhoy67]

My first post after a 15 day ban for constantly saying bad things about the ionic I now promise to make my posts more constructive. 

My ionic wouldn’t pair with my iPhone, tried everything and still wouldn’t work. Paired it to my wife’s s7 and suddenly it started pairing with my iPhone. At first it paired every time I logged onto app then after a day it paired every 48 hours or so. I thought I could live with that and tried it again on a bike ride. I stopped half way through journey and checked my miles and I was at 14 miles something and I then turned back and went same route home and ended up at 29 miles which was about right. The hr and calorie count however were miles out. On the hardest part of the cycle I stopped at the peak of a hill and with arms and legs shaking from the effort and sweat running down my face I check me hr on the watch and it was 120bpm lol. No chance. I then continued home and checked all my stats and in my cycle my average hr was 102bpm for two hours which would be a leisurely cycle(which it wasn’t) but my calories burned was over 1800! I have no idea how the can be so far apart.