charge2 inaccurate

[condsouza]

my son gave me his 6 month old fitbit charge2 recently.

I have been trying to calibrate it for the last week tweaking strides, handedness , checking for gps etc.

I was extremely disappointed as I thought I'd try this and update in a few months.

I have an error of about 25. to 35%.

As a science teacher, this would not be considered an error but a drastic mistake somewhere.

Moreover the gps is dormant as it does not read when pushing a trolley and the arm is not moving.

Just as an aside , i used to wear a cheap vivofit for $20. ..does not have gps and its accuracy was arouund 95% consistently.!

[JohnnyRow]

You say 25% to 35% error without any indication which metric you are talking about.

30% off in keeping time, in active minutes, in sleep measurements, in calories burned, in floors climbed, ... ?

You mention GPS being dormant when arm not moving.  Are you aware that the Charge 2 does not have built-in GPS?  Are you talking about using connected to your phone's GPS?

And your arm not moving would have no impact on GPS.  That makes me think maybe you are confusing GPS and step count.

[condsouza]

Hi Johnny,

I am talking about 20-30% less than the steps counted manually.

I made sure the GPS was connected to the Iphone and  is showing on the tracker.

I have Iphone 6

Thanks a lot

Consti

[JohnnyRow]

GPS and stride length have no bearing on number of steps counted.

GPS only measures distance with no regard to step count.

Stride length is used to convert number of steps into distance, but does not affect number of steps.

Fitbit, and any wrist-worn tracker, detects steps from the normal arm swing while walking, since it has no way of actually knowing what your legs are doing.  If your wrist is held steady, as in pushing a shopping cart or baby carriage, or holding hand rail on treadmill, it cannot know your steps.  But it still gets heart rate, which is used to calculate calorie burn, so calories and active minutes should still be good.  If accurate step count is more important to you than heart rate data, you can often get better step count carrying tracker in a pocket or pinned to clothing, but losing heart rate data.

[condsouza]

Tanks a lot ,Johnny . That was helpful