Active Zone minutes useless?

[rockpool]

I have now been wearing my charge 4 for four days. With my Charge 2 I had to do some kind of exercise most days (brisk walk or aerobic workout) to achieve my weekly goal of 150 active minutes, but now I easily reach my goal in one or two days doing just one brisk walk. I am 76, by the way. After four days (one of those days I did not even go for a brisk walk) I have achieved 445 active zone minutes! On the day with no exercise al all I still got 104 active minutes! It seems I only need to watch an exiting movie or talk to someone on the phone to get active minutes (I guess my heart rate goes up). A pretty useless function in my view. Is there a way to go back to the old way (charge 2) of counting active minutes?

[JuanFitbit]

@rockpool , Nice to see you around. Thank you for your feedback regarding the Active zone minute. 

As you mentioned, the Active zone minutes, depend on your hear rate. Depending on how long you find yourself on a specific heart rate zone, you'll get an amount of active zone minutes. 

More about it can be read here: What are Active Zone Minutes or active minutes on my Fitbit device?

What you could do, is to change your heart rate zones and customize them according to your measurements. What are heart-rate zones?

For your proposal for the Charge 4 to measure Active minutes the best place to make your voice heard is the Feature Suggestion board on our community (community.fitbit.com/t5/Feature-Requests/idb-p/features). 
If a similar suggestion has already been made by another member of the community, you can vote for their suggestion and add your comments. 

 We're constantly striving to improve Fitbit products and services, and we appreciate all of the input we receive from our customers. 

Thanks for your feedback and for participating in our community!

[rockpool]

Thanks for your reply JuanFitbit. I will certainly try to modify my heart rate zones. The problem is I have no idea how to go about this. How would I be able to know where to draw the lines between zones?

Is this a matter of age? Does heart rate go up more even without heavy exercise as you grow older? I feel very fit for my age, and I always got "excellent" on the Fitbit scale even with my Charge2. My walks are Nordic walking with bungy pump poles which make my heart rate go up much more than when simply walking fast (actually a bit more than when I do an aerobic workout). But I very strongly suspect I am not  so good that I earn all those zone minutes that I now get. Any advice on HOW to set the correct heart rate zones?

[JuanFitbit]

@rockpool , Thank you for your reply. I'm glad that you feel fit and continue performing a lot of activities. 

The heart rate may vary as we get older, even if you feel fit. 

For the best recommendations on how to find your heart rate zones, would be that you consult your medical advisor, so that he/she can perform a whole check and determine how your zones should be. 

To edit your heart rate zones please do as follows: 

1. In the Fitbit app, tap the Today tab   and tap your profile picture.
2. Tap Heart Rate Zones.
3. Enter your custom zone.(if you are using the online Dashboard (fitbit.com), log into your dashboard, and click the gear icon in the top right. Click Settings > Personal Info and enter your custom zone.

Hope this helps you further

[rockpool]

Moderator edit:  removed personal information

[JuanFitbit]

@rockpool , Thank you for your reply! It seems to be empty. Could you  please repost your answer?

See you around. 

[rockpool]

Strange. To my knowledge it contained no personal information. Anyway, here are some points.

"For the best recommendations on how to find your heart rate zones, would be that you consult your medical advisor, so that he/she can perform a whole check and determine how your zones should be." This advice is of no consequence to me as health practitioners in Sweden don't want to hear about fitness armbands, and determining my heart rate zones is nothing that is included in their services. One of the reasons I wear a Fitbit is that it measures things that health practitioners don't want to measure. 

At any rate, to me the active zone minutes feature has not added any value at all as I get lots of zone minutes just sitting down as long as I am doing something that needs my full attention. Yesterday I drove my car for  several hours (sometimes in heavy traffic) and got 125 active zone minutes just from that! Before (with charge 2) I never earned active minutes for that kind of activity. I cannot really see how me personalizing the heart rate zones could do anything about that.

Questions: Am I the only one who questions the relevance of this feature? In what way is it interesting to lump together heart rate spikes because of stress or excitement with heart rate spikes due to exercising?

[JEAE]

I have stopped being interested in Zone Active minutes for the same reason.  Heart rate goes up and you get massive number of zone minutes, even if you are in bed.  I want to ask this, but can't find how to.  I have the number of hours/minutes in each of the three heart rate zones.  They don't add up to 24 hours, so what zone am I in for the rest of the time?  Can anyone tell me?