Sense showing unrealistic results

[Froschi]

Hello,

I really do like my Fitbit Sense - but it calculates some really weird results over the course of a day. Two of those particularly stand out:

1.) The steps: My wife (using a Fitbit Versa) and me usually move around similarly each day - and yet at the end of the day I tend to have 2000-3000 steps more on my watch!

2.) The stairs: I do walk many flights of stairs a day, but most certainly not enough to have a 28-day average of 100 floors - which is what my current Fitbit average is.

Where do these numbers come from? And is there a way that I attune the Sense to my body better, like to my bigger step length? As it is it is more or less useless to me now.

Best,
Paul

[Heather-S · Accepted solution]

@Froschi Welcome! You can't compare your steps to someone else's. Everyone moves differently, has different stride lengths, etc. It's also important to realize these watches use wrist-based movements that completely depend on the wrist swaying to indicate you are walking or moving. If you push a shopping cart or stroller (pram) then you may not get any steps at all if your wrist isn't moving.

You can update your stride length in the Fitbit app by click on your profile pictures > Activity & Wellness > Exercise > Stride Length. There are instructions here to help you as well.

The floors is a measure of barometric pressure combined with your steps taken and sometimes it is not accurate. There have been many complaints about floors being off or flat out wrong. It doesn't affect your calories burned or anything else, so the only solution I have is to ignore the floor counts completely if it bothers you. 

[LokeAa]

@Heather-S  Concerning floor count, you are either not being honest, or you don't know. I got a new Sense a few months back, because the clock face detached from the case. On my previous sense I had insanely high floor counts, on the new it's spot on. In other words, since it doesn't apply to all it must be a hardware issue, 

[Heather-S]

@LokeAa My floor counts appear to be mostly correct, however that's not the case for everyone. I was being absolutely honest as I said it's "sometimes" not accurate and pointed out the many complaints. I, personally, have no issues with my Sense floor counts, but that doesn't mean that others are having the same experience.

[t.parker]

@LokeAa when I had Suunto watch it used to suffer occasional barometer blockage. There was a barometer hole and sometimes dirt or water could get in and give false measurements (or even ring a storm alert). Maybe Sense has a similar issue. I don't track floors but usually, the elevation from my runs is close enough to reality (the only problem I see is that reference altitude is always wrong, Fitbit for some reason has no calibration option as other watches do). Just looking at the elevation and comparing it with my Garmin watch I think my Sense works alright (the difference of 1-10m on 15+km runs is really a margin of error). On a very hilly half marathon, I ran in June, there is just a difference of 1m (Fitbit - 439m, Garmin - 440m). So probably it is a hardware issue that affects some watches. Also, I don't use my Sense 24/7 so it's very clean and (almost) like new. The problem may be that it's too easy to let dirt, water or even sweat into the barometer hole and no way to clean it up. It's just a guess. As I said, I don't count floors (I don't know what I would use this metric for) but I look at the captured elevation profile and elevation gain.

[LokeAa]

If you get dirt into the sensor, more dirt will accumulate over time, and the barometric sensor will become clogged. A clogged barometric sensor cannot register any difference in air pressure, and floor counts should be 0. You can clean the hole carefully using a canister with compressed air.

[Guy_]

Hi @Froschi - presumably for steps you both have set the hand dominance to the correct hand, in case one of you is left handed.

For the floor count there are many users where it is vastly over reading, see the posting in the forums. This can't be fixed by you on your watch.

On my watch it used to be correct till there was a firmware update, now it can easily read 10 times what my Versa reads under the same conditions [I wear both because the Versa provides the correct number of floors and the correct heart rate, and steps are similar overall].

As a barometer is a sensitive instrument, it may vary also from watch to watch. If it is broken or blocked some people report no floors, though it should be treated with the same respect as an ear drum.

[Froschi]

Hello everybody,

Thank you all very much for the answers! Turns out, my stride length was set to a comparably low value manually for some reason - I've switched it to "automatic" now, and am looking forward to seeing more realistic results over the course of the next days.  \o/

Regarding the stairs: That's a bit of a bummer. The barometer in my Sense seems to be extremely sensitive as it tends to count dozens of flights of stairs even when I'm just running - something between 10-15km with bits of elevation in between usually ends up showing 40-50 additional stairs counts which of course doesn't make much sense.

Anyway - all the best to you from Germany!

Paul

[t.parker]

@Froschi now I'm curious. What about the elevation profile and elevation gain for your outdoor runs? Does this look good? If elevation there looks correct that would suggest the barometer works fine.

[Guy_]

@t.parker - most of the barometers probably work fine.

The watches will count real floors normally but randomly add loads of extra ones during the day.

A few faulty or blocked ones count nothing.

When exprimenting with the SimpleFloors app I found my Sense would even count floors when going downhill !

The app onky attempts to iron out the random floors to demonstrate the watch is working fine but it won't fix the problem.

[t.parker]

@Guy_ so that looks like software related issue with interpreting barometric data. Well... yet another one to be fixed never.