Exercise Tracking Vs Active Minutes

[Capax_Dei]

Hi All, 

I will try and ask this as clearly as possible, as I'm still learning about my new fitbit. 

My fitbit won't let me use the exercise app for some reason (i am replacing the device soon), and so I haven't been logging my exercise and have just been relying on the active minutes to let me know how many calories I am burning each day. 

Today, I decided to log my exercise after I was finished and noticed a huge drop in the calories burned. Does anyone know why that is the case, and which is more accurate? 

[JohnnyRow]

For calories burned in a day, just look at the tracker or the app.  They both show daily calorie burn, regardless of if anything gets logged as exercise or active minutes.

I don't understand how active minutes, or logged exercise, could be translated to calories burned in a day.

When you manually log an exercise after the fact, whatever parameters you enter override the data your tracker actually measured for that time.

[Capax_Dei]

any idea which is more accurate? 

[JohnnyRow]

The actual recorded data is based on heart rate;  otherwise it is based on the parameters you input.  I doubt you can choose the intensity parameters as accurately as what is actually measured; if you can, no need for a heart rate monitor.