Is a Fitbit Charge a good "fit" for use with MyFitnessPal + MapMyFitness?

[kmaling]

Hey all,

I'm looking into purchasing an activity tracker for use with MyFitnessPal + MapMyFitness and I'm considering the Fitbit Charge and wondering if it works well with these two apps?

Right now, I have my iPhone 6 linked to both of these apps to record steps. I also have MyFitnessPal + MapMyFitness accounts linked. I record all my food/drink intake via MyFitnessPal and I record workouts (walking, hiking, jogging) using MapMyFitness. I also manually log indoor workouts (treadmill) in MyFitnessPal as MapMyFitness doesn't really seem to work well with stationary workouts (like the treadmill). And I don't "wear" my iPhone during treadmill workouts, so those steps are lost.

I've been using this setup for a while and results seem accurate enough. The only "issue" is that I don't always have my iPhone with me, so it's not all that accurate in counting my steps, so results could be more accurate if I was wearing something 24/7. Would the Charge work well in this situation?

Also, as a side-question, can the Charge be used during indoor workouts (such as running on a treadmill), or would I still need to manually log this workout with MyFitnessPal?

Thanks,
Kristin.

[RobertoME]

Hello @kmaling, I've noticed you are new around in our Community, so welcome aboard my friend! To answer your question. Yes, it will work with MyFitnessPal or MapMyFitness.  If you are using MFP for food logging, this information will be reflected on your Fitbit Food logs.

Whit MapMyFitness all the information as Distance and Calories will be synced from your Fitbit account. Although MapMyFitness activity doesn't sync to Fitbit.

Note that if you are interesting in getting the Charge, In my personal opinion I suggest the Charge HR, it will read your steps along with your heart rate and will provide additonal features. Answering your second question, there are certain activities due to the nature of the exercise, it will be require to use different features to accurately track your calories burned.

The Charge HR has the ability to SmartTrack certain activities.  Now for those activities where step count isn't the best indicator of the calories burned. If you are doing an activity that does not require steps (like cycling or swimming), or an activity that requires more than just steps (like tennis or yoga), you can use the exercise mode by pressing the side button of the tracker to start an activity record and improve the accuracy of this activity's contribution to your caloric burn. You can obtain more information about the Charge and Charge HR in following link: Get help for your Fitbit Charge HR and Get help for your Fitbit Charge.

Hope this information helps and see you around! 

[kmaling]

Hi Roberto, thanks for the info!

For the past month, I've been using the FitBit app on the iPhone (via the basic MobileTrack option, which pulls steps in from the iPhone's M8 coprocessor) and it's been working great, but I don't carry my phone with me 24/7, so a FitBit seems like a good idea. One thing I have noticed, is that while the FitBit app doesn't directly sync data from MapMyFitness, it does pull in this data, indirectly, via MyFitnessPal. For example, yesterday I went for a 45 minute walk over my lunch. I tracked this with MapMyFitness and when complete, MapMyFitness synced with MyFitnessPal. Then, MyFitnessPal synced with the FitBit app and the activity I tracked in MapMyFitness appeared in the FitBit app. So, the data was syned like this:

MyFitnessPal > MapMyFitness > FitBit app

In the FitBit app, that activity shows like this: Walking (MyFitnessPal) 

So, at least the data from MapMyFitness finds its way into the FitBit app, even if indirectly. Though, once I get the FitBit device, I may or may/not eliminate MapMyFitness from the equation. We'll see.

Anyway, on a completely different note—how well does the FitBit Charge (original and HR versions) perform in terms of tracking a run on a treadmill? What woud be the best way to have this sort of activity recorded?

Thanks,

Kristin.