Fitbit Ultra is a smart
device using accelerometer to track your move. It acts as a step measure
machine to measure how many steps you have moved every day, a stair count
machine to show how many stairs you have climbed, and – almost unique among
gymnastic products – it tracks sleep based on move. It stitches to your
clothes, and once you uploaded data by using sole wireless dongle, it tracks everything
via your account on Fitbit website. It also allows you to track calorie and
nutrients (carbohydrate, fat, protein, and so on) of food.
It is a wonderful idea
to encourage physical exercise. We like the diagrams showing how much time we
have spent on everyday route, and sleep diagram is especially useful if you are
often insomniac or try to assure you take rest sufficiently. Step measure
machine and stair count machine work in a rather similar way by using 3D
accelerometer and height measure tool to detect the way you are moving.
However, this move-based way of tracking means Fitbit Ultra cannot detect most
physical exercises such as bicycle riding and physical training. Swimming is
not a choice since Ultra is not water-resistant. You can manually record these
activities that cannot be tracked by using web interface and inputting consumed
calorie amount or allowing website to calculate it.
Such these activities manually
recorded exclude everyday targets that Fitbit encourages you to get, which may
disappoint. It is not important that you have ridden bicycle 50 km and spent
one hour at weightlifting room – website will show that you are under standard
on that day if you have walked less than 10 thoudsand steps.
Fitbit Ultra also
calculates how many calories you burn during a day. We appreciate this feature
since it brings direct and rather real evaluation on how many calories that
your body is consuming.
What a pity! This is
where Fitbit’s biggest shortcoming becomes clear. Since Fitbit Ultra has just
only been launched in the UK, foods in its database are not related to this
country. You can add nutitional information manually, but this soon becomes
tiring when you have to do this with all things you eat. It is also inferior to
competitive websites such as MyFitnessPal, which contains many exact data of
the UK’s food. Product’s box and website promise integration with other
services. It supports devices to track Nike+, Foursquare app, and Endomondo GPS
for mobile phones, and Garmin hardware. Other integration app has been developed,
including the app allowing Ultra to work with MyFitnessPal. We just hope that
when this app is launched, it will provide access to database friendlier to the
English than MyFitnessPal’s.
We like Fitbit Ultra’s
hardware, but website’s feature to track calories became nearly useless due to
the absence of UK’s products on database. If you want to improve your physical
strength, you had better use step measure machine or cheap heart rate monitor
such as Polar’s FT7, and a free service tracking practice and calories.
Summary
Verdict. Fitbit Ultra is an interesting activity
tracker, but this website aiming at the American limits its usefulness very
much.
