My Sense experience - the good, the bad and the nonsensical - feedback for Fitbit

[bouncealong313]

This isn't meant as just a thread to moan about Sense - this is genuine feedback for Fitbit and other users on my experience of using my Sense.

I paid £249 and have been using it for three weeks. Before getting my Sense, I used a Fitbit Surge for about 3 years. I was excited about getting a Sense and really hoped it would be everything I needed (which isn't much) in a comfortable package.

Let's start with the positive. Things I like about the sense:

• The general product shape and design is much nicer than my previous Surge. The main gripe I had about the Surge and the reason I wanted to replace it was that it was ugly, bulky and both the watch itself and the strap would constantly catch and scrape on everything from clothes, furniture and my other half's skin! The Sense is much smoother and nicer to look at.
• Silent alarms vibrating your wrist (when they work).
• The overall UI is ok to use. I wouldn't say it's great but it's more positive than negative.
• The higher detail of sleep data is great.
• The phone app's data as a whole is nicely presented and interesting to look through.
• Optional watch faces to change to (although unless you want to ruin battery life you won't be able to use them as you would normally intend to with a watch/smart watch, in my experience)
• ECG/EDA scans are interesting although currently have limited usages and after an initial "that looks interesting, let me try it" appeal, will not be something that the majority of users likely need.

Problems I've had with the sense:

• The heart rate monitoring. I just don't feel that I can trust that it's accurate, ever. My surge readings were consistent not only with the activities I was doing but also with how I was feeling. If I felt that my heart was working a bit more, it showed in my Surge readings. That doesn't happen with my Sense. From Day 1 of using the Sense, my readings have been constantly anything from 10-20 higher than they typically were with my Surge - all day, even at resting. With my Surge I would typically have readings between 50-75 when resting. With my Sense on, I look down at my watch when I'm feeling completely relaxed and it's giving me a reading of 80-100.

But the main problem is during workouts. I workout at home and either do a weights routine or HIIT. With my Surge, my readings always tracked alongside how I was feeling during a workout and it reacted very quickly when my heart rate changed - it kept up with what I was doing in HIIT and seemed to be very reactive to intensity and rest periods. On my Sense, it doesn't seem to track the first ~20 minutes of HR activity correctly at all when I'm working out. I can be doing a HIIT workout that gets my heart rate up really quickly and I can feel my heart pounding in my chest, but I'll look down at my Sense reading and it'll be saying 90-100 (bearing in mind it gives me a resting reading of ~80-100 most of the time). I can literally feel and know from experience that my real heart rate will be at least 150 at that time. It takes about 20 minutes for the Sense to start reacting and go anything over 100. One day I had a break half way through a HIIT routine and stopped for about 10 minutes. A few minutes after I stopped, the Sense decided my heart rate was still climbing and went up a further 40 even though I'd stopped and when I actually started out again, my HR dropped on my Sense for several minutes instead of climbing. I don't get those random things happening on a now very old Surge. It's not as bad when doing a weights routine which makes me wander if part of the problem is algorithm/software based, but it still doesn't seem as reactive as the old Surge.

• My sleep data on the phone app is generally good but randomly gets bugs which ruin it entirely for a day. In three days Fitbit or the Sense has randomly decided to split up my sleep time into two sections. On those days it's decided to stop recording after a few hours and then start again an hour later, meaning that the app data has split the day in two with a gap in the middle and seems to think I took two naps rather than one long sleep - messing up my sleep scores and the visual analysis. I didn't wake up in the middle of the night on those days and didn't do anything crazy in my sleep (nothing woke up my partner). When this happened the first time I thought it might just be a one-off bug as the Sense or the app was getting used to new data or something but it's happening multiple times now in a short space of time (messing up once a week is significant enough). This never happened on my Surge.

• The battery/AOD. This one really did grind my gears. With the battery life being advertised as up to 6 days just about everywhere I saw adverts/reviews of the Sense, I thought "great, I don't use heavy-duty features often at all so I should get close to that battery life because I'm only going to use basic features on a daily basis and the more advanced features very rarely" and as a result it was one of the main reasons I chose the Sense over competing devices. However, because I want AOD (because surprisingly a "Smart WATCH" is also meant to function as a WATCH!), I get 2 days of battery life. That's if I don't also use anything else - I turn off everything else, don't have the Sp02 face downloaded, haven't connected it to notifications/calls on my phone (for the purpose of testing the battery) and didn't even do any exercise tracking for a few days of testing. Comparing this to my old Surge, I used to get about 6 days of use whilst also doing daily exercise tracking, so I'd only need to charge it once a week. If I turn off AOD and just have automatic wake-up turned on with display set to dim, battery life goes up to roughly 4.5 days.

• The AOD itself - I don't get why it needs to be so bright? When I'm wearing my watch at night and have AOD on, if I turn off the lights I can literally use the Sense as a torch (and actually have). It's been bright enough to wake up my partner once just by having my wrist resting on the bed about half an arm's length away from her face. An AOD doesn't need to be that bright and that's probably half the problem as to why the AOD drains the battery so horrifically. Why not have a dim AOD and have a feature where 1 tap on screen brightens the display temporarily if you need to focus on it or can't read it in a specific environment, with 2 taps still unlocking the device as normal? That would seem so simple and would probably save a tonne of battery life. And yes, I have already set the general brightness to "Dim".

• Automatic screen wake - I find this to be really, really random as to whether it works intuitively or not. It definitely works, but sometimes only if I move my arm at least ~70 degrees at the elbow, or at least 180 degrees in a twist at the wrist AND do either movement fast enough... and by fast enough, I mean in a significantly faster movement than I would normally naturally move. Less than that in either motion, or too slow, and the watch doesn't seem to wake up. I get it that it doesn't want to be *too* sensitive to save battery but I just feel that they've gone the other direction and made the detection far too weak - so I have to make over-the-top movements just to be able to briefly tell the time.

• The wake-on-tap issues. I have previously commented on this in another post - how it doesn't work most of the time and requires harder taps than a normal touch screen would. What I also find the most bizarre about the wake-on-tap issues is that tapping the STRAP of the watch has a much higher success rate than tapping the screen itself.

• The button placement. There's only one button and yet (in my opinion) it's in an awkward place. Every time I have to press it, it doesn't register a press unless my thumb covers the entire button space, which by itself is fine if it wasn't placed facing slightly downwards in the bottom half of the watch. As a guy with averagely hairy arms, I find myself catching or pulling hairs on my wrist all the time I have to push the button which is a little uncomfortable/annoying. So although the button itself is fine, the placement fails for me.

• Silent alarms - for some reason alarms only seem to be guaranteed to work if I set them several hours before they're due to go off. Sometimes when I've set an alarm under an hour or two before it's due to go off, the alarm doesn't go off despite showing all the right settings and time. I would guess that's just a software bug that should be fixable, but it's such a basic issue I wouldn't expect a £250 product to have.

Overall, I'm just very disappointed in the experience I've had with the Sense so far and I'm thinking about returning it. I just don't feel that it warrants the high price tag. And price aside, I don't understand how any purchase could be justified when it seems to do some things much worse than a previous Fitbit product that came out in 2015. The things that it's failing on for me personally are the most basic aspects of the device functioning as a watch and the most basic heart rate monitoring. What's the point of having a "smart watch" that fails in basic user experience as a watch?

I will also add that I was also a bit disappointed to find out that "Advanced" insights (e.g. Sleep Score) and the Health Metrics Dashboard require Fitbit Premium membership. In my opinion, any analysis which is done easily and automatically through algorithms that are already in place and don't require any manual input for customisation at a business level should just be part of the standard software suite when you're selling a premium (£250+) product. I'm absolutely fine with selling customised, personalised and 1-to-1 material in Premium for a monthly cost but I feel like the automated analysis parts - which isn't actually personalised in any way and doesn't require any customisation/manual input from a Fitbit member of staff - should all be free when you're spending so much on the main product.

Thanks

[Redrum7]

My Sense sleep works sometimes and doesn't work sometimes.  Am I supposed to be doing something I'm not doing for it to work, other than wear it to bed?  I'm so confused and I'm paying for this benefit, which I find unfortunate.

[BoraBobbyK]

Great post. I agree that the sense is very disappointing in what it provides for the money and all of the bugs it has.

I am having the same issue (among others) with the sleep logs. This is very frustrating because the split readings also affect my stress management scores. 

As far as the heart rate issues, my Sense has logged numerous "intense activities" when I've done nothing but watch TV or eat dinner. My Ionic worked better and was way more reliable than the Sense.

The one thing I would add is that their customer service is awful.  No one seems interested in helping. That is very disappointing because I've always had good experiences with Google products and customer service. I am also seriously considering returning my watch.

[Tristannyc]

What is AOD?

[Guy_]

@bouncealong313  - To get the full 6 hours the SpO2 tracker App needs to be removed.

Interesting about STRAP tap, it seems that sideways tap of the watch is working better than tapping on the screen.

There is an option to schedule sleep on the watch - this should darken the display and may be blank it.

@Tristannyc-  AOD is "Always On Display" -  generally not needed because the wake on wrist movement is normally sufficient and because it also exhausts the battery unnecessarily. It might make sense if you are using your watch as a clock placed on a surface that you glance at to see the time. It's a personal preference provided for users.

[SunsetRunner]

Great post, @bouncealong313 . Thanks for sharing with us.

Most of what you say matches my experience with Sense.

I don't say much about sleep tracking because I haven't payed much attention to it.

I don't usually use AOD exactly to save battery and also because I find that the Auto Wake works fine enough for me, once I got used to it. Basically, I found that the safest way to have it working always is put your forearm nearly horizontal and then twist the wrist away and then back to you. In other positions, it often doesn't work.

UPDATE: Auto Wake also works fine when you are standing up with hands down and just raise your wrist to read your watch, as you would do with any regular watch.

The button... awkward position, isn't it? It took me a couple of months to get used to it and even now I sometimes struggle to press it right. But is not a problem anymore, after using it for 8 months 😆

Concerning the too bright screen during sleep, have you tried to turn on the Sleep Mode? It does dim the display, besides muting notifications, etc. And maybe turning off AOD during sleep?

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UPDATE:

I just realized that when you turn Sleep Mode on, the AOD is automatically turned off.

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Heart Rate issues for me are the greatest disappointment.

I totally agree with what you say about Premium. Having paid 330 euros for Sense, I am not at all willing to pay extra more to have Premium. Even more with all the disappointing flaws of Sense.

To finish on a positive note, in spite of everything, I like my Sense and still don't regret having bought it.

[SunsetRunner]

@bouncealong313  Great tip that about tapping the strap! Or tapping sideways, as mentioned by @Guy_ . Very useful and absolutely new to me.

[Tristannyc]

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@SunsetRunner wrote:

Heart Rate issues for me are the greatest disappointment.

I like my Sense and still don't regret having bought it.

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This comment confuses me, the base feature of the watch that determines the data for EVERY aspect of the watch is off, but it is still a good purchase? Can you explain why? I am truly curious.

[SunsetRunner]

Hi @Tristannyc ,

I get it may be puzzling to you and other users. I explained it somewhere else, but don't remember where now. But here it goes.

I bought Sense last December for two main reasons:

1) I have a heart condition.

2) It would be very helpful to me have a watch where I could take an ECG at any time, because some of my heart problems happen only once and a while, never happened while at a cardiologist appointment or while doing clinical tests. This choice proved to be right, because the ECG app produces good enough ECG records, that can be later analysed by my cardiologist. It's ironic, maybe quite revealing, that the ECG app was maybe the only Sense feature intensely tested by others than Fitbit staff before released (FDA has a worldwide reputation for some reason). And I still think it is probably one of the best Sense features.

These alone are enough reasons for me to not regret having bought Sense. It was my heart health, maybe my life, that were at stake. But there is more. Remember that last December I didn"t have many more watches with ECG available in my country. Apple watch was out of question because it implied buying also an Apple phone and I never liked Apple anyway.

Besides ECG, 2 other Sense features are important to keep my heart condition under control:

3) Heart rate. I'll speak about this below.

4) Steps. They work good enough for what I need.

HEART RATE

After using it for 8 months, I still have many doubts about the HR behaviour. But because HR is also very important to me, independently of all the other Sense parameters depending on HR, I tried to apply to Sense what I had learnt before with a Versa 2, as bad or even worse than Sense  concerning HR.

a) HR sometimes is reasonably accurate, other times is very very wrong. So, you can never rely on it 100%, far from it.

b) As a heart patient, my main concern is that HR doesn't go above a certain value, like e.g. 120 bpm. Besides, the way I use Sense, it never happened Sense showing a HR value much lower than the real HR. Sense HR errors have always been the other way round, Sense showing a HR much higher than the real HR. But I work with relatively low HR. And when in doubt, using a portable oximeter or just feeling my pulse with the fingers is enough to tell whether I'm having 90 or 120 bpm.

c) With me, Sense's errors so far have been usually not so difficult to spot or, at least, suspect, because they tend to go on increasing until they are just too high to believe.

d) HR can be quite accurate if you are sitting quiet, not moving much.

e) For some strange reason I have not yet understood, even when moving, sometimes Sense can be reasonably accurate. For some lucky reason I still don't grasp, when I do my daily walkings, the HR shown by the Exercises app (Walk) are quite accurate (*) most of the times, not always, though. I have never understood why. Also because for the rest of the day Sense HR often goes wild, totally wrong. Is it because I take some preventive measures before the walk? Anyway, in most of my walks Sense HR is usually surprisingly accurate enough for my purposes.

f) The above mentioned preventive measures are:

- Never start the walk until Sense HR values are stable and accurate for the past 5-10 minutes.

- Place Sense a little bit higher on the arm and tight enough, but not too tight, as recommended by Fitbit.

- During the walk, avoid that anything repeatedly touches the Sense, e.g. a long sleeve shirt or tight sleeve jacket.

SUMMARY:

As a 60 plus yo heart patient, I probably use Sense in a way that is different from most users. As I wrote somewhere else, taking all into account, I feel I am better with Sense than without it, heart health wise.

This doesn't avoid, however, that I'm more and more unsatisfied with Fitbit lack of ability to fix Sense's terrible HR feature, after all this time and lack of proper responses about it. If I were to buy Sense now, I wouldn't. But now I have alternatives I didn't have in December, when I bought it. E.g. other ECG watches.

The "I like my Sense" part, though not the most important, has also to do with its nice aesthetics and the nice way the common smartwatch features work... except for heart rate and its related features, of course.

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(*) At least apparently. I'm looking forward to testing the Walk Exercise heart rates against my recently purchased H10 chest strap.

[Tristannyc]

Appreciate the awesome thought out response! Thank you.

[m-umar]

@bouncealong313  Really good analytical report. I had bought versa 3 and had a lot of issues including HR accuracy (or no accuracy at all) but couldn't return it. So it was replaced with refurbished one by Fitbit. I didn't know until read it about FItbit replacement on some online forum which itself was very disappointing but on top of it started to give "Slow Charging ..." error and sometime took around 12-13 hours to get it fully charged. After going through the support team, who were nice really but don't know how to fix it, I hand balled this versa to my friend's son with wishing you a good luck message.

I swore never ever to buy Fitbit ever again but ironically my daughter given me her sense which she been using a for a while, but she has gone back to Versa 2, because of HR and SPO2 inaccuracies. She was really concerned with HR readings during exercise which were off by 10-20 BPM as compare to her strap. She couldn't even bother to contact the3 support after reading the stories online.

Once bitten twice shy I haven't bother to start using it yet one day I may muster my will and have a go at it to collect some data from this sense to make sure before going onto the long journey of getting support.

One thing I'm sure Fitbit is not going to waste time on fixing these issues as the new models released next year will certainly be running on Wear OS Cry & laugh at the same time   😥 😁

[jmcewen]

Over designed, under performing.