It says on the Fitbit homepage that Fitbit smartwatches are designed with every fitness level and goal in mind. However, if I look at my Versa watch which I got for this Christmas, it is as useful as a fitness tracker as a Casio electronic watch from the 80s.
Among several issues that make this watch useless is the non functioning calorie tracker, right lower button that pauses workouts unwantedly, and nonsensical user interface of the Exercise app.
Let me start with the core problem, the calorie tracker in the Exercise app. When I first got the watch, I got reasonable numbers. For a month now, however, the numbers have been ridiculous. For example when I do a 20 minute workout on a rowing machine or a crosstrainer, the watch shows me 20-30 percent of the amount of burned calories that the machines show. When I do a 60 minute high intensity training with weights, my Fitbit tells me that I burned 250 calories while my friend's tracker shows 700. Obviously if these numbers are so wrong, all the rest of the measurements that the calories are based on must be very off too.
Then there is the right lower button on the watch which if you start a workout in the Exercise app pauses it instantly if one starts doing normal and common exercises like push-ups. So you have to check your watch during the workout every 5 minutes not to end up with a 26 calorie result. I see that a lot of people have complained about this in the Community forum and it seems to be problem for some other models as well, but nothing has been done even though it is a core feature.
Then starting a workout in the Exercise app does not seem to consider a common scenario that this might needed to be done in a hurry for example if training in a group and thus maybe having to start the workout from the touch screen, which takes a lot of time, is not the best solution. Why cannot the same button on the right that keeps pausing the workout any time you move a little, be also used to quickly start any workout in the app?
Finally I would like to say that the apps on different platforms like Android, Windows, iOS are a mess, there is no common user experience and completely different functionality. FOr example on Android it is not possible to fix calorie count while it is possible on some other platforms.
In conclusion, my Fitbit seems to have been designed by people who have never worked out plus given that several of it's core problems have not been solved years later, I assume neither used by any Fitbit people either. As you can tell I am utterly disappointed with the Fitbit experience. I work out a lot and was hoping for normal working fitness tracker.
