Fitbit vs Apple Watch

So for those of you that follow me on Instagram (if you don’t follow me then click here) you will have seen that I did a little experiment with an apple watch and fitbit to see how much they differed in accuracy. A lot of people out there have different theories about the reliability of fitness trackers and how many steps or calories it tracks in a typical day.

Having previously owned a fitbit (Charge HR) and now owning an Apple Watch (Series 3) I thought I’d put them both through their paces for a day and see how the results differed.

To make it a fair test I wore both watches at the same time (One on each wrist) for 24 hours. I made sure that during that day I did some walking and also went to the gym to test out the HR monitor during a workout.

Steps

Although it wasn’t my most active day I made sure to get some steps in to see how the watches compared. I was fairly surprised, they were both similar. 9,342 for the apple watch and 9,574 for the Fitbit. I had expected the fitbit to massively over estimate my steps as it was the first thing I noticed when I moved over to apple, my steps were lower.

Workout

I made sure to test the watch during a workout to see the difference in calories burned and average HR. Again there was very little difference… the fitbit tracked at 500 calories burnt with an average HR of 112 and the Apple watch tracked at 492 calories with an average of 110

Conclusion

I guess my conclusion is easy. It doesn’t really matter what tracker you use, the difference between these two is minimal and as long as you’re using the same one consistently you can track your progress over time. One important thing to remember though is that Fitness trackers of this level are not 100% accurate and they should not be taken as gospel. The can however be used as a guide. The choice between them comes down to other factors… Battery life, usability, functionality or style.