My Background
Hello, and thanks for checking out my fitness tracker review site! I'm Fitness Tracker Fran, a gadget geek who loves activity trackers -- the primary motivation for building this resource.
My interests in health, hiking, lifelong activity, and running led me to health trackers. And their ability to motivate me and fascinate me with data are what have held my interest and kept me scanning the high seas for the next best fitness gadgets. In fact, it was my initial struggle to find the right product - which you can read more about below - that led me to want to help others in this area.
My background is in the sciences, and I've worked in renewable energy technology consulting, helping governments and companies evaluate technologies, develop renewable deployment plans and incentives, and understand the renewable energy market. I've also worked in electric vehicle technology analysis to provide information on vehicle performance, electric vehicle business models, and potential market penetration of electric vehicles. Aside from all that, I'm now quite ecstatic to be providing information about wearables to others who may find it useful!
My interests in health, hiking, lifelong activity, and running led me to health trackers. And their ability to motivate me and fascinate me with data are what have held my interest and kept me scanning the high seas for the next best fitness gadgets. In fact, it was my initial struggle to find the right product - which you can read more about below - that led me to want to help others in this area.
My background is in the sciences, and I've worked in renewable energy technology consulting, helping governments and companies evaluate technologies, develop renewable deployment plans and incentives, and understand the renewable energy market. I've also worked in electric vehicle technology analysis to provide information on vehicle performance, electric vehicle business models, and potential market penetration of electric vehicles. Aside from all that, I'm now quite ecstatic to be providing information about wearables to others who may find it useful!
My Fitness Trackers...All of Them
On a hike that totaled 24,774 steps!
You can see my Jawbone UP on my left wrist in the photo to the left. My FitBit One is hidden, carefully clipped to my right pocket with the device facing in. So far, I've owned about 4 or 5 Jawbone UPs, 3 FitBit Ones, a FitBit Charge HR, a FitBit Force and a FitBit Flex. I also own a Basis B1 Watch, a Basis Peak, the Amiigo, the Striiv Play and Striiv Smart Pedometer, and have used the LifeBEAM Heart Rate Bicycle Helmet, the Moov Smart Coach wearable, the Wellograph, the Omron Walking Style pedometer and the GeoPalz Unity tracker...and probably quite a few more that I'm forgetting. look forward to personally testing more wearables. As I do, I'll be sure to go back and enrich existing reviews with my first hand experience!
How did I end up going through so many of these little gadgets? I started my journey into the world of fitness trackers/health monitors in fall of 2012 with the purchase of a FitBit One. A friend had the FitBit Ultra, and I was intrigued. I hoped that knowing how active I really was (or wasn't) might spur me to get in some extra exercise!
When the One arrived, I was ecstatic! It was tiny, beautiful, and captured every step and more ... all neatly reported back to me on its digital screen and my online dashboard. I was also so pleased to find that it really did change my behavior. I kept my regular pre-FitBit routine for the first two weeks of owning it to set a "baseline" to compare against, after which I let its information guide me to a more active self. It really worked! I seem to get almost double the number of steps when using it, and I changed a lot of small daily behaviors (like going for a walk when I took a cell phone call instead of sitting) that really added up.
The downside occurred about a month in: the display began to scramble and flicker. I wrote to FitBit customer support, and they speed-shipped me a new one, and were super friendly. Phew! Just a month later, though, my new FitBit One popped out of its carrying case while I was grocery shopping.
Despite my love for the FitBit One, I was curious about trying something new: the Jawbone UP. I hoped its 24/7 wearability would make it impossible to lose. From there, I tried both the FitBit Force and FitBit Flex, and went through several more Jawbone UPs, and basically started a cascade of wanting to try every fitness tracker out there.
All the exposure hasn't lessened my interest in wearables -- in fact, I'm hooked on trackers, and I'm motivated to keep looking at new activity trackers hitting the market -- and to try more of them.
I hope you've found this site useful! I've been too busy to keep up with emails and social media, so I no longer have a contact page, and I've restricted the Google+ Community settings.
Thanks for reading!
Fitness Tracker Fran
How did I end up going through so many of these little gadgets? I started my journey into the world of fitness trackers/health monitors in fall of 2012 with the purchase of a FitBit One. A friend had the FitBit Ultra, and I was intrigued. I hoped that knowing how active I really was (or wasn't) might spur me to get in some extra exercise!
When the One arrived, I was ecstatic! It was tiny, beautiful, and captured every step and more ... all neatly reported back to me on its digital screen and my online dashboard. I was also so pleased to find that it really did change my behavior. I kept my regular pre-FitBit routine for the first two weeks of owning it to set a "baseline" to compare against, after which I let its information guide me to a more active self. It really worked! I seem to get almost double the number of steps when using it, and I changed a lot of small daily behaviors (like going for a walk when I took a cell phone call instead of sitting) that really added up.
The downside occurred about a month in: the display began to scramble and flicker. I wrote to FitBit customer support, and they speed-shipped me a new one, and were super friendly. Phew! Just a month later, though, my new FitBit One popped out of its carrying case while I was grocery shopping.
Despite my love for the FitBit One, I was curious about trying something new: the Jawbone UP. I hoped its 24/7 wearability would make it impossible to lose. From there, I tried both the FitBit Force and FitBit Flex, and went through several more Jawbone UPs, and basically started a cascade of wanting to try every fitness tracker out there.
All the exposure hasn't lessened my interest in wearables -- in fact, I'm hooked on trackers, and I'm motivated to keep looking at new activity trackers hitting the market -- and to try more of them.
I hope you've found this site useful! I've been too busy to keep up with emails and social media, so I no longer have a contact page, and I've restricted the Google+ Community settings.
Thanks for reading!
Fitness Tracker Fran
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Header photo by gregralich, feature photo by Josiah Mackenzie. Both photos licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
Header photo by gregralich, feature photo by Josiah Mackenzie. Both photos licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
