Inconsistencies in auto tracking working with the Inspire HR

[Parkersspace]

I received my inspire HR on mothers day and had been using it and my Alta HR for a week then I loaned my alta to my daughter in law who was waiting for a replacement Charge 3 on warranty when it broke after swimming with it.  I noticed that it does not auto track my exercise well; this being the reason I loved fitbit and my alta, i don't want to push any extra buttons, loved that it always tracked my outdoor bike rides, elliptical, tread mill (if you free arm) and other random sports at a "sport".  Now the Inspire has made several errors since I received it.  It tracked my unpacking my suitcase to a dresser as a swim, it has auto tracked 4 of my outdoor bike rides as "Sport" instead of outdoor bike ride.  The mistakes are very random, one day it properly tracks my bike ride, next day it does not.  Is this a common problem or should I be getting support involved to replace it as it would maybe fix it?  I thought they probably just had some software bugs to work out but I see the firm update was done before I purchased mine.  I am going to start wearing both trackers ( my fitbit Alta HR and Inspire HR) and syncing them to separate accounts again this week as my daughter-inlaw has gotten her replacement charge back now so I can show how much more accurate my Alta HR is compared to my Inspire HR.

Moderator edit: updated subject for clarity.

[AndreaFitbit]

Thanks for getting back to us and for your feedback @Parkersspace. Alta and Inspire HR have the same algorithms to calculate your exercise but they could have a slight difference between them. 

Are you wearing them in the same conditions (same hand, wrist position not to lose or tight, and intensity)? Those factors can create the differences you see. 

Please send me screenshots of what you get in order to continue assisting you. 

Thank you for visiting the forums. 

[Parkersspace]

Yes Andrea, same hand, same exercises, same everything, and I've had the alta for over 2 years so i'm very familiar with it.  The Inspire is also on the same hand/wrist/intensity when the auto track does work, it works some days and not others.  I think maybe I need a new one, with the random I'm swimming when i'm not entries and missing my outdoor bike ride some days by recording it jsut as a sport and other days it gets it right and says outdoor bike ride.  It would be nice if the edit feature let me adjust it to outdoor bike ride also but it doesn't, the alta  of course did not allow that either but it didn't mess up like this one.  I am going to have my alta back from my Daughter-in-law tomorrow and start wearing both.  I will post the comparison chart on how accurate the alta is and how inaccurate the inspire is.  I guess to prove it based on your questions I will have to wear it a week on the right wrist and then switch to left wrist to show it's consistently messing up in all situations.  I spent the last year wearing little zip ties around my alta to be sure not lose it when the band decided to break, maybe it is just time to move on from fitbit, I had really hopes this would be the answer.

[AndreaFitbit]

Thank you for getting back to us and I appreciate your comments and clarification @Parkersspace. I really understand how you feel. 

Please restart your Inspire HR and send me your information in order to continue investigating. I know this is not the response you were expecting but I´ll do my best to help you. 

Keep on visiting the forums. 

[Parkersspace]

So I restarted my fitbit today and I gave the actual record my exercise instead of letting it auto track a try.  Thought that is kind of cool but I still want it to auto track. At the end of the day i have pulled up to see how it all looks and after I did my evening walk I stopped in the laundry room and folded my clothes and the wonderful auto track makes that a swim.  Here is two photos of my fitbit.com records. One shows all my activities for the past couple weeks.  The red circles are things auto track recorded incorrectly and I edited after the fact.  So the 4 "Bike" rides were shown just as a sport.  The swim tonight was me folding laundry,  the second one the last visible on the activity history was putting clothes away and it recorded it as a swim.  I have also had 4 or 5 swims that did auto track and record what looked like relatively accurately when i did go swimming.  It's so glitchy.  Is this not what everyone experiences or is it just mine?  I did restart it again tonight but honestly, I've done a restart each time I charge the battery and I charge it most days.

[Parkersspace]

So Is my inspire totally messed up and I should return it?  This is not a common experience with it?

So am I the only one with this issue then?  I must have a faulty Inspire HR then.  I set up my alta HR on it's own account today syncing with my phone on a new account and the inspire is on my old account using my laptop to sync.  So I thought I'd need a couple weeks to show the difference but today here is what happened.  I went for a bike ride for a couple hours.  Left my fitbits to auto track them.  Fitbit Alta did it's usually, ignored I made a couple stops for water and photos and showed 1 outdoor bike ride for the full time.  Here's the Alta account photo of dashboard and my outdoor bike ride, started at 5:05.  Good they went for about the same time, alta show 5:05 for 2 hours and 6 minutes so finished about 7:11.  Below on to what the Inspire recorded, which was three different exercises for my bike ride.  See below photos.

So above has been my experience with the Fitbit Alta HR for the past two years, nice records my rides even when I have small pauses for a drink or photo op or the rare time if I stop too long it goes two outdoor bike rides and almost never misses. So my Inspire has been erratic at recording rides and other sports on the auto track.  I wore it on the arm I used to wear my alta HR on.  Here is what it recorded today, I've owned it about 3 weeks now. You see it shows three different auto tracked activities, first a "sport", then "outdoor bike ride" then "sport"

First "sport" started at 5:06, close to the Alta HR but only 21:20, so ends at 5:27  Then Outdoorbike starts at 5:31, 4 minutes later, shown below.

So my "outdoor bike ride" auto track at 5:31 pm went for 1 hour and 13 minutes ending at 6:45 pm and on to the third auto track showing on the Inspire, which shows again just as a "Sport"

So my "Sport" starts at 6:45 pm, same time the outdoor bike ride finished and goes for 38 minutes, so ends at 7:23 pm, 11 minutes after my bike ride ended as recorded by the alta and Strava, which I also had recording.  Strava shows 2 hours and 6 minutes like the alta HR. Seems the inspire is messing up everywhere. 

[Parkersspace]

Oh one other note the inspire shows a total of 985 calories burned for the three sports making up my one outdoor bike ride as recorded on the Alta HR correctly and Strava.  

Alta HR shows 847 calories burned for the total time.  Maybe I burned the other  140 putting my bike away in it's locker when I got hom and that's what I did for the extra 11 minutes it recorded me doing a sport that the Alta and Strava did not record.  The Alta HR was deadly accurate as usual.  I start Strava when I start and finish when I am completed my bike ride and the Alta HR is pretty much dead on for auto tracking time start and duration with what I see on Strava for the past two years.  

[Carenza]

No you are not alone in this. I've only had mine since Friday and it's all over the place. I'm a part time uni student and have been working on an assignment all over the weekend, which has meant a lot of sitting at a desk just typing. However, I recorded an 18 minute bike ride on Saturday and a 32 minute one on Sunday. Yesterday, I was also doing laundry and clearing out my wardrobe and logged a 24 minute swim. I've had naps show up at totally random times, but strangely not the one time I thought it would record one when I was doing a meditation. On top of those, it's logged me as doing impossible amounts of steps each day given I was mostly sedentary at a desk. 

I'm just really not happy with it overall performance wise. I am also finding it pretty uncomfortable to wear for any length of time, the thicker, curved back profile seems to dig into my wrist however loosely I wear it. It's so much worse at night when I sleep on it and all that pressure is concentrated into a small area. I woke up this morning with pain at the base of my thumb and it's almost certainly this. I'm going to contact Fitbit today to ask how I can get a refund or exchange it for a different model that has a flatter profile. And perhaps actually works as it should! 

[Parkersspace]

Thank you so much for your input Carenza.  I have until June 5 to return mine to target, so I'm trying to figure out if I should return for a refund and wait for a better tracker, that works closer to my alta or get an exchange.  Looking at the data I'm compiling between the two it definitely is not working like my Alta always has.  Even my sleep was recorded differently on the INspire.  The HR is very close when I watch both, the inspire is out by 1 or 2 beats now and then but mostly tracking it the same and I know my alta tracks the same as my chest band and in hospital it tracked the same as their machine one time when I was put on it for a few hours so I always felt that portion is accurate other than the rounding to 1 minute intervals, but in the instant when viewed it seems accurate.  So the inspire is recoding base info pretty close but what it's algorithms are doing with the information is wild.  Yet they tell me it's the same as used on the Alta.  I'm beginning to think it can't be.  They had to change something to get these wild results or the programming department has missing something that is sending it all askew.  I too have had swims recorded for putting away clothes and not recorded when did a real one.  

[Parkersspace]

I'll post more photos but in the past two days there still significant differences in the two devices recordings.  I did 18000 steps with inspire, 15000 with my trusty alta hr.  I did an outdoor bikeride with Alta HR (same time as Strava) and i tried to be really consistent this time but the inspire recorded it as a "Sport" auto tracking close to the same time though and only 10 calories different from the Alta so closer but did not identify it as a ride again.  Yesterday I did a walk, has a resting day and inspire showed on walk for longer than i took and Alta had two walks (i went shopping in between) and was accurate as usual.  The auto track is definitely not working right and the steps are over counting.  I do think I'll return it to Target as defective.  I have not spoken with customer support at this time, but from reading the forums there is many things to be worked out on the INspire and it's accuracy before I want to trust it.  The sleep tracking looks very similar and the heart rate tracking is very close to the alta and look accurate.

[Parkersspace]

So i have switched arms, tried all different exercises and I have the same issue.  As it seems to be either rolled out before ready or mine is defective I will return it to Target today as defective.  It keeps taking one bike ride and recording it as three different exercises, it over records steps which isn't so bad, the alta might be lower.  Below was my response on the new App Forum, to everyone not likely the app and sums up what is going off.  Hopefully they get the bugs fixed and it starts to auto track correctly bu I'll hold off getting a new one until they have done something about it.

Well i have to make the decision today to return my Inspire to Target or keep it.  It's a hard decision, the new app is not helping me keep it and their lack of listening I guess.  I have opened two accounts and one is running the new app the other is still on the old app, the old app is pretty, more informative for sure, really, like every response I have read, I do not like that new app.  The Inspire was released with so many bugs but over all after testing for several days it is kind of accurate.  It auto tracks poorly, records exercises as the wrong exercises full time, but when i look at the HR info and the calories the base info is very close to the Alta, the sleep is very similar charts but no where close to exactly the same but same hours and close in minutes of deep/light and rem sleep all falling into the same sections of the evening but not the same. The Alta still seems to be about flawless on auto tracking exactly what i have done.  Inspire over records steps but the Alta tends to under report and do believe that having steps when i didn't walk is okay if i was active, i have always considered them equivalent steps, like a person in wheel chair, or i was doing steps in place marching etc and since it uses HR to determine calories i'm okay with that.  So i was looking over other boards to figure out which to buy instead, and now I'm just going to have to sit on the old one and figure out if they get their act together.  I have loved my fitbit for 2 years and the customer response, but something has changed this year.  They don't seem to be addressing the issues with the Inspire and honestly it's big enough I think a recall will be required to fix it properly and to have that big issue and decide it's a good time to roll out a new app .... Just doesn't make sense.

[Chromatic]

Thank you for such a helpful and detailed response.  I am having similar issues with my Inspire HR compared to my Alta HR. The lack of communication from FitBit and apparent lack of a fix after many months clearly shows that the Inspire auto tracking feature is broken by design.  I can return it to the store with confidence that the product is defective.   

[Parkersspace]

Yes I returned mine, I got lucky, was in Costco a week or two later and the charge 3 was on sale for 109.00 so with the Costco 90 day warranty i purchased it and it's been really good.  Almost as accurate as the alta ).  It misses the odd bike ride and marks it as a sport but it does have lots of nice features I use, the calories and steps were very close to my alta, i wore both for 3 weeks and finally went to just wearing the Charge 3 now.  It's been working for my swims, rides, elliptical, treadmill if you free arm and my walks.  It also works well if you set the the ride start.  I'm happy with it's tracking though it's not quite as perfect as my alta.  It gives me the occasional sport instead of bike ride but it has gotten the start and stop times correct and I just edit it to show outdoor bike ride.  Good luck