Floor and distance measurements are completely worthless

[Wbuczynski]

Hi,

This is as much a "share your Fitbit story" as it is technical feedback to Fitbit Inc. regarding their product.

I've been the owner of a Fitbit Surge since last Christmas (like so many of us here I'm guessing), and I've been actively interested in both fitness and activity tracking for quite some time - basically the quantified self thing. I got Fitbit Surge following some research, which indicated that while fitness trackers are still far from very accurate (http://www.news.iastate.edu/news/2015/08/19/activitytrackers), Fitbit ranked relatively high; plus, it's got good reviews from different tech sites. So I bought one - and in many respects, it's a good product. Sleep monitoring seems very useful, as is step counting and heart rate monitoring (although there is considerable discussion out there as to how accurate first-gen pulse-based monitors are), exercise tracking is also useful. On the other hand, floor counting and distance measurements are so utterly flawed I am frankly perplexed as to why they have been included in the product, seeing that they are beyond useless. I mean, I wake up and see that I walked 200 meters. I spend the day at home, at the end of the day the system shows I walked 1km (just to be clear, I live in a small apartment, not in a mansion). Same with floor counting - I live on the 2nd floor and work on the 11th and - as ashamed as I am to admit it - I take a lift. Always. And at the end of the day Fitbit will universally show I did something in the region of 20 - 30 floors. Is it really such a challenge to link altimeter (which I presume is used to measure the floor count) with activity tracker and only count floors when there's movement detected, as opposed to total stillness of being in the lift? This is, frankly, misselling, these 2 functionalities are not as much worthless, they're "actively misinforming".

I would be very keen to hear other users' experiences, and to hear what Fitbit has to say on this.

Lastly, some questions:

1) Can Fitbit's software be upgraded, so that once the flaws described above (and any other) are fixed, our Fitbits are upgraded without the need of purchasing a new device?

2) How does Fitbit produce my daily target calories burned?

3) What exactly does Fitbit take into account when estimating daily calories burned? Does heart rate factor in it? (it should). Do distance walked and floors (not) climbed count in it? (they shouldn't)

Please note that while currently Fitbit is the market leader, this is a very, very volatile market segment and this is not to be taken for granted. The next step is taking trackers to medical-grade accuracy level (http://uk.reuters.com/article/us-usa-health-wearables-insight-idUKKBN0U10G120151218), and your main competitor Jawbone has recently acquired BodyMedia, the manufacturers of Core, which was closest to medical-grade tracker. Plus Garmin is in the race as well.

Kind regards,

Wojtek Buczynski

[SantiR]

@Wbuczynski Welcome to the Fitbit Community! There are some ways to make the tracker more accurate. First, restart it. Then, adjust your stride length and change the dominant hand setting. "Non Dominant" will make the tracker more sensitive to steps (check the last section of that article).  You know, when working at a desk, cooking, or doing any other arm movements, the tracker can pick up some extra steps as it will think you are walking because of the intensity of the movement. The tracker has a sensor inside that will count those movements as steps. The extra floors tracked may be because of any kind of pressure change, like a weather change or a gust of wind. With the restart the excessive floor count should decrease. Make sure to check How Accurate is my Surge? article, you will find all the details and reasons why you are getting extra data and tips to fix it.

Also check;

How does my tracker count steps?

How does my tracker count floors?

Answering to your questions,

1) Yes, the Fitbit software can be updated. It's free. You will be notified every time a software update is available.

2) It will depend if you have it set up to personalized (Uses your past activity history to estimate your calorie burn for the day and increases or decreases if you're more or less active than usual) or sedentary (Starts out low and lets you earn calories as you are active throughout the day). I left a picture below showing how to change this settings.

3) Yes, all the data is taken to estimate calorie burn. Make sure to check the following help articles as well:

Heart Rate FAQs, Log Activities Manually, BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate).

Hope this helps. Let me know how it goes!