Undercounting steps and calories on Surge

[Pejaar]

I just got the Surge this afternoon.  I have been using a Precor EFX elliptical at home, and several other ellipticals at gyms.  Every day, it is the same routine for 1 hour.  The calories burned according to the machines are +/- 1000, and the distance is +/- 6 miles.  Average HR was 132.

The Surge indicated 567 calories and 3.98 miles today.  This makes no sense to me since it is not even close to what several ellipticals estimate, based upon my height and weight.

Please help me understand why the calories and distance were so underestimated.

[shipo]

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@Pejaar wrote:

I just got the Surge this afternoon.  I have been using a Precor EFX elliptical at home, and several other ellipticals at gyms.  Every day, it is the same routine for 1 hour.  The calories burned according to the machines are +/- 1000, and the distance is +/- 6 miles.  Average HR was 132.

The Surge indicated 567 calories and 3.98 miles today.  This makes no sense to me since it is not even close to what several ellipticals estimate, based upon my height and weight.

Please help me understand why the calories and distance were so underestimated.

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There are several potential explanations (in no particular order):

• Steps are counted based upon arm movement; if you held on to any surface which wasn't moving while your legs were moving; those steps will not be counted.
• A Surge isn't specifically designed to track a workout on an elliptical machine; it must attempt to determine distance via your stride length set in your profile.
• Calories burned are based upon your height, weight, age, and your heart rate during the workout; hard to say whether 567 is correct, but it sounds WAY more accurate than ~1,000 calories for only a one hour workout.  (see Note 1 below)
• Some folks say machines are extremely over-generous when it comes to distance and calories burned; can't say personally as I never use them.

Note 1: I am a heavy runner, and yet I am quite fast for my age and height; my normal daily training run is 10-miles which I typically complete in 85 to 90 minutes, and in that time I only burn 1,200 calories.  If I was lighter, younger, and/or faster, the calorie burn would drop considerably.

[YojanaFitbit]

Hey there @Pejaar welcome to the Forums! and thank you @shipo for jumping in, you have a really good points there! 

I'd like to add, that since you're taking that information from the machines itself and Fitbit is taking it  using both: the name of the activity and your profile information, not always will show the same stats. Why don't you go to your Fitbit settings, and change the sensitivity of your Surge. It will help your Surge to catch more information about your movements, since this is not a base step activity, the pedometer might be missing some of them.

Also restart your tracker, in case that it is a hardware issue.

Keep me posted and keep up the super stepping too!