You may remember back in February I wrote about returning to exercise. Things were going well for a while but then life got in the way again and I let things slip. When I was kindly gifted the Fourfit Health Band it seemed like the perfect time to get back into it.
My Experience With Fitness Trackers
I have worn a Fitbit for years. I have the original band which I mainly bought to track my sleep as I’ve had problems with insomnia for a long time. It just so happens that it tracks my steps which I find useful given that my job means I sit for most of the day. It can also be used to monitor water intake, exercise, female health, and calorie intake. I know that the newer versions offer more stats.
FourFit
The FourFit Healthband is marketed as not just tracking fitness, but also tracking health. The sensor is integrated into the band so it is charged as a whole rather than having to remove the sensor and charge separately.
You download the Wearfit app and set your personal information like age, height, weight and gender etc. It then goes on to ask you to set your step targets (like 10,000 step per day), track your distance, monitor your sleep and keep on top of health statistics like heart rate. The band is also waterproof so you can even take it swimming.
The Healthband is Apple Health compatible.
Features
- Sleep tracking
- Calorie tracking
- Step count
- GPS distance tracking (via app)
- Heart rate tracking
- Phone link enabled
- Text alerts
- Quick to charge
- Battery lasts 4 days
- Blood pressure monitoring
- Blood oxygen levels (Oximeter)
- Stopwatch
- Water resistant (in cold water only ie. swimming)
- Fatigue analysis
- Advanced Full sleep Analysis
How I Got On
The app confused me slightly to start with and I struggled with pairing my phone. Once I got used to the app I was fine, it was just a case of getting used to something new. I think the pairing issue was down to not charging the healthband enough when it arrived.
I believe that fitness trackers should only be used as a rough guide. For example, when it comes to blood pressure I don’t think a fitness tracker will be able to give you an entirely accurate reading and as I don’t know what mine normally is I have no idea whether its right or not.
Like I said at the start of this post, I have been wearing a Fitbit for years. I thought that it would be interesting to wear both of the trackers to compare the readings. I wore both of them on my left wrist (I’m right handed). As my Fitbit only measures steps and sleep these are the only two readings I can directly compare.
The healthband has been recording me as doing more steps than the Fitbit with about a 1000 step difference. My sister pointed out that the healthband is a lot newer and is probably more accurate. When it came to tracking my sleep the healthband says I’m getting around 40 minutes to 1 1/2 hours more sleep than the Fitbit. I’m not sure which is the most accurate as I am up a lot in the night with my insomnia so I’m inclined to go with the Fitbit. I have a habit of looking at the time when I wake up so I have a rough idea of how long I’m sleeping.
Final Thoughts
Overall I’m impressed with the healthband from FourFit. I love the text feature so I know when I have a message or a call if I’m not near my phone or it’s on silent. I tend to use the heart rate function when I’m exercising as a rough guide of how hard I’m working. It is all too easy to become obsessed with statistics like this but I think fitness trackers can be a great tool if they’re used to steer you in a healthier direction.