Vastly different measurement between Charge and Surge??

[branns]

I walk with my husband every day. I have a surge, and he has a charge. His always records higher steps and mileage than mine, despite our traveling the exact same route. Tonight took the cake: my all day record is supposedly less than 3 miles, his is 6.5 miles?!!! Add to this that I woke up and was active for several hours before our walk . . .  which is correct, or are both devices wildly inaccurate??

[shipo]

What were the step counts and what are your walking stride lengths set to in your profiles?

[shipo]

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@wkel24 wrote:
They over measure, all models. They will pick up any jolt or bump and count it as a step. You can end up with 2000 to 3000 more steps than other manufacturers products or even within the fitbit products

Best way to look at it is to take everything relative to your device and account history.

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That has not been my experience; I went from a waist-band clip-on pedometer to a Fitbit Surge.  During my typical 10-mile training run on a dirt trail, both trackers typically report between 15,500 and 16,000 steps.

[branns]

Steps count is similarly "off" mine at 8000, his at 15000, give or take. His stride length is the assumed default for a 6'3" man, mine I reset after measuring on a treadmill for an earlier model BUT my fitbit is supposed to be more accurate because of GPS. I could see missing steps if my gait was super-smooth, but I thought GPS would correct for that . . .

[RobertoME]

Hi there @branns, welcome aboard to our Community. I had the same experienced mentioned by @shipo. Actually yesterday, I went to a 7 km / 4.37 miles run with my mom and she usually achieved more steps than I. Despite the fact I am taller and my stride length is longer. Now here is the difference.

I'm a former smoker but I only got two months of not smoking and usually my resistance or stamina is not too long so for short periods of time despite that we are walking almost side by side I stay back from time to time to catch my breath again. So my distance if I'm not using the GPS on Surge it lower than my mom's distance and almost all the time she achieved her daily goal before I do.

So the whole point of this is that you have to consider that small differences where you walked in a different way or your pace is less intense as your tracker will detect all that motion patterns. Something that can help is to specify whether you wear the tracker on your dominant or non-dominant wrist, and not necessarily have to correspond if you are dominant / non-dominant as this also change the sensitivity of your tracker.

• The dominant wrist setting decreases the sensitivity of step counting and should reduce any over counting of steps when your body is not moving.
• The non-dominant wrist setting increases the sensitivity of step counting and should reduce any under counting of steps. Non-dominant is the default.

To review this you can go to your device settings and experiment with this.

Let me know how it goes, see you around.