Looking at getting gps watch

[ncourt]

Looking at getting a GPS watch can people recommend the surge I have always had the charge

[HelenaFitbit]

Thank you for your participation in the forums @ncourt! It's great to see you here. 

I'm currently wearing a Fitbit Surge and let me tell you that I absolutely love it! I'd like to talk about it a bit further; even if I'm a bit biased.  

Our specs page for the Fitbit Surge will tell you all of the features and components available on the tracker. In my opinion: bike tracking, built in GPS,  SmartTrack and other features will make tracking your activities a breeze. Your calories will be calculated day and night with our PurePulse technology to track your heart rate and sleep logs. 

Many of our Community Council members are Surge users (@Rich_Laue @Dominique @Kosnick @SunsetRunner)   and they might have some additional information that could clear up your decision. 

Hope this helps! 

[Dominique]

Like @HelenaFitbit, I love my Surge. It’s a bit bulky (compared to other wrist-mounted Fitbits), but GPS watches from competing brands seem to be even bigger. The bulkiness is mainly a problem for me if/when I need to wear business shirts, but fortunately, this doesn’t happen very often. When you start recording an activity for which GPS is supported (e.g. walk, run), you get the signal almost immediately. I’ve tried Connected GPS on the Blaze and on the Charge 2, and while it does work, built-in GPS in the Surge is a lot more convenient.

[Chris1963]

Helena, could you ask the other Community Council members how many times they have had their Surge's replaced under warranty because of defective straps?  

[Dominique]

@Chris1963: I can’t speak for other CC members, but I’ve been using the Surge as my main Fitbit since May 2015 (= 16 months and counting) and the band has no problem whatsoever. OTOH, I’m an old fart (55) and I don’t do kick boxing or other similar activities. I mostly walk, run and lift weights.

My main gripe is with battery life when GPS is on (I can get nowhere close to the 10 hours promised on paper). If I don’t use GPS, I can get at least 3-4 days without having to recharge. 

[Chris1963]

Hmm, I mostly walk and cycle and am on my second Surge in a year. Really careful but its failed on the screws.

However the battery will go 10 days with no GPS and HR on 24/7.  GPS I get about 12 hours. Oh for some consistency!

[Rich_Laue]

I also find the Surge a very nice, but as pointed out above, somewhat bulky and doesn't play nicely with long sleeves. Having a daily second tracker I find almost mandatory. 

The display being an LCD means it is always viewable even in sunlight, but the backlight is needed when dark, the Surge has a sensor to decide if the light is needed. I find the backlight adequate but not not by much. 

As for battery life, I get the same 3-4 days if I'm wearing it 24/7 and like @Chris1963 I easily get 10 hours of gps time. 

Having all the controls right on the wrist, and the option to bring or leave the phone is nice. A plus is the countdown timer which gets used almost daily. 

It is great for walks/runs/hikes/etc, i don't do much cycling but the bike mode I use for unicyling.. I find the auto detect exercise always thinks I'm on an elliptical. LOL

As for syncing the two trackers when switching, this is a good idea, but when I want to go out I don't want to wait. So I rarely do, and my tests have shown that normally when syncing later in the day the few steps I loose are when both trackers recorded steps in the same minute. It usually is less then 20, note I said normally because once or twice I've lost a few hundred. 

[Chris1963]

Best not get a Surge then. The tech is fine aside the HR not being that responsive (all optical trackers fail at this), it's just very badly put together.

My 2nd is glued together, I only cycle and walk so no activity that a tracker wouldnt be expected to survive anyway, I'm just holding on for a new Surge2 or until this fails completely, the only reason being I like the app.

[Stuffs_za]

Hey,

Depends what you want to use it for. Runing and cardio excercises the heart rate monitor is relatively accurate and gps works great.  It is however almost useless for weight training and any type of excercises involving your arms, but this is common for most fitness watches not only surge. I do a lot of weight training, the surge will report 85bpm when i do barbell squats (hand on bar). There is no way anyones heart rate is 85 when doing barbell squats at a challenging weight.

Also, myself and many others have problems syncing the divice to upload data...there are many workarounds to get this working, but it seems to be quite a problem from all the questions about it. I fyou a runner i would suggest getting a garmin - longer battery life, specialised for running and has longer battery life - this is based on discussions with people I know that own both.

I have only had a surge for about 3 weeks and this is my experience so far.

[Dominique]

---

@Stuffs_za wrote:

I do a lot of weight training, the surge will report 85bpm when i do barbell squats (hand on bar). There is no way anyones heart rate is 85 when doing barbell squats at a challenging weight.

---

Weight lifting isn’t aerobic exercise anyway, so even if the Surge fails to report your real HR at any given time during your workout (which is quite possible, given the HR monitor of Fitbit trackers are geared more towards 24/7 monitoring), this doesn’t mean calories burned would necessarily be off for the session (if you have selected WEIGHTS as the activity). And even if calories are sightly off, I don’t lift weights with burning calories as my primary goal anyway. Besides, if you lift heavy, rest times during your session will be longer, so your HR won’t stay elevated all the time (at least not if your cardio fitness is relatively good).