Fitbit Ultra Wireless Activity Plus Sleep Tracker

I am currently on a weight loss diet, and I count calories using 'my fitness pal' (MFP).

My reason for purchasing a fitbit? I wanted to have a better idea of exactly how sedentary or active I am, but my primary reason was to gain a better understanding of what my total energy expenditure is each day, and how this varies through the addition of physical activity and exercise. The fitbit has met my needs in both respects, and although I do appreciate this is not an exact science, I feel much more informed than previously.

Fitbit integrates easily with MFP, 'feeding' it information on how many calories I have burned each day based on my activity, and MFP in turn tells me how many calories I can eat on each particular day, while still achieving weight loss.

I always knew that I was more active on weekends, and fitbit has confirmed this, on average it 'tells' MFP that I can eat an extra 600-800 kcals at weekend days (normally I'm allowed 1200 kcals per day to achieve a 2lbs per week weight loss) however I tend to favour not 'eating back' all of these kcals, leaving the majority instead to hopefully end up as extra weight loss. I do treat myself at weekends, going up to around 1500 kcals, and for the first time ever, I don't feel guilty about it because I know that I'm burning the calories to justify it!

The fitbit itself is very small and unintrusive. It clips discreetly to your clothing and you easily forget it is there. However it soon becomes part of the daily routine to clip it on in the morning. I am a sound sleeper, so I don't find the sleep tracking function to be of much interest. Nor do I bother adding specific 'activities' to my fitbit tracking, I just let it do its own thing.

However, on the few occasions where I have felt it necessary to add specific activities to the fitbit online dashboard, that has been a simple process, and I have been much more comfortable with Fitbit's burn estimates that with MFP's (IMO, MFP is way, way too generous). When I added 20 minutes on my exercise cycle, for example, my cycle's onboard computer gave me a burn reading of 180 kcals, and fitbit came in at around 190. That's close enough for peace of mind.

There is a single function button on the fitbit, and just scrolling through this now, I can see that I have taken 4667 steps today, walked 2.04 miles, burned 2161 kcals, climbed 21 flights of stairs, and as I am now seated in front of my computer, only two flower leaves out of a maximum 11 leaves, representing recent physical activity. I actually feel concerned when I sit still too long - conscious that fitbit will be racking up this sedentary activity, so it is actually working as incentive for me to keep busy.

Set up and configuration was easy - connected the fitbit via its docking station to a laptop, downloaded the settings from the fitbit website, keyed in my personal data, height, weight, goal etc. Then I selected to sync to MFP and voila, the two work very well together.

Only a few minor annoyances:

1) my primary computer is an ipad, which has no usb port to charge the fitbit, nor to sync the data (wirelessly) from it. So I need to boot up my partner's windows machine to charge, and to receive the latest fitbit activity tracking wirelessly to my ipad. At least the battery life is excellent.

2) The online fitbit website provides additional interesting and useful information on your activity levels and energy expenditure, however a significant exasperation is that several of the charts rely on flash technology, which my ipad cannot display. I wrote to fitbit customer support to complain about this, however I received a standard-response brush off, which they clearly provide to all customers who complain about this. So in the meantime, until they address this issue to make the charting technology accessible to all, I won't be upgrading to fitbit premium. And I wont be purchasing the matching aria scales.

Other than that, fitbit is a brilliant gizmo and I love it. The proof, as they say, is in the pudding .... and since acquiring this little gadget, the information it and MFP provide in combination, have enabled me to lose over two stone since the start of June this year.

A FINAL NOTE FOR IPAD OWNERS - check out the comments section of my review, where I have given a list to the best of my ability of the charts/summaries which are viewable/not viewable on fitbit online dashboard when using ipad (I don't want to clutter this review with the information). High time fitbit got their backsides into gear and sorted this.

The Fitbit is basically a pedometer 2.0, coupled with a fairly decent online service to track your activities. The device is designed like a clip, so it firmly grips onto your belt. It's got one button on that you can tap to go through the various screens or hold down to indicate the start or end of an activity (playing sport, running, going to sleep etc).

It's all about improving your fitness level, but the web site encourages you to keep a food log. The problem with this is that the food log covers American food outlets. So if you want to log that you had a healthy salad or felt you deserved a slice of chocolate gateaux you'd have to live with logging it as something like 'Wendy's Super Salad Supreme' or 'The McGateuax Deluxe' (both made up, but you get my point).

You get rewarded with badges, much like Foursquare or Angry Birds. For example, walking 10,000 steps in a day or a 'life time' achievement of 500 flights of stairs. Earning badges works as a motivator for you to keep using the device and exercise more. On the device itself are a number of screens that report the distance travelled, the number of floors climbed and the amount of calories burnt. There's also a tamagotchi-style flower that grows the more you exercise, but shrinks back down if you get lazy.

The Fitbit comes with a fabric wrist strap that can house the unit so you can wear it as you sleep. It detects your movements during the night to indicate when you awoke (or were asleep lightly enough to move). Of course, if you happen to be a sleepwalker this is an opportunity to earn an extra badge or two during the night.

It's pretty tough to remember the bring the Fitbit with you when you leave the house in the morning, and there's been days I've forgotten it and had to climb flights of stairs thinking what's the point if I'm not earning any badges or helping my flower grow, so either it's made me into a sad badge-obsessed freak or is helping me think more about ensuring sure I exercise during the day.

Again with the Americanisms, the measurements are all imperial - so feet/inches, miles etc. If like me you're more comfortable measuring distance in KM, you have to change your height into metres/cm and that converts everything to metric (it's not at all obvious but it works). Although the badges you earn for distance are still measured in miles so it's a bit confusing.

All in all it's a great device. The other guys I know who've bought one have both bored of it already, so it is a bit of an expense if it's just going to sit in a drawer after a couple of weeks, but if you're interested in stats and want to improve your fitness level this really is a great buy.

Newly launched in the UK the FitBit Ultra is the first of perhaps a number of similar lifestyle/dieting devices. Already available is the Jawbone Up (not yet available from Amazon UK) and in May 2012 the Nike+ Fuelband. Both are dearer than the FitBit Ultra but both are rather more stylish , particularly the Nike+ Fuelband which is currently very much in demand in the USA. The Jawbone UP has been plagued by quality Control issues and has no visual display; the Fuelband is markedly more expensive and Nike's walled garden may restrict interfacing with rival fitness tracking websites. So that leaves the FitBit Ultra for me at least, in the lead.

There are many detailed technical reviews on Amazon and so I will not attempt here to add to them but instead will give my thoughts after a week or so of use.

The unit is very simple to set up provided the instructions are followed. I opened an account at the FitBit website first and entered my details there before I physically installed the Fitbit software on my PC. After installation I could then simply log in and all was ready and waiting. My Fitbit data syncs automatically to the Fitbit website As a Runkeeper.com and Myfitnesspal.com user I have found it best to follow the advice on the FitBit website and enter additional data (meals and nutrition etc) to the Myfitnesspal website first. After linking the accounts together the additional data will automatically be propagated to the FitBit and Runkeeper websites. Doing this saves work and also ensures that data will not be duplicated.

The Fitbit has a Recording mode which can be used to track specific activities. Understanding its use is crucial to get the best from the Fitbit. Recording mode allows nighttime movements to be logged to monitor sleep patterns - although how accurate this is I have my doubts. During the day this can be used to log runs and other exercises. The specific activity time must be entered on the MyFitnesspal website to allow a breakdown of data for this activity to be displayed on the Fitbit and Myfitnesspal.com sites and to further avoid double posting. Also, to avoid problems when driving the car with the FitBit attached you should record this activity and enter it on the Fitbit website as 'Driving' the website will then deduct the false readings from your daily steps total.

The battery life is good and up to a week or so of use can be expected.

You will soon find that using this little device becomes second as you seek to increase you step level each day. The Fitbit records the number of steps (or similar motions) taken daily as well as altitude, progress uphill is expressed as 'Floors' although climbing hills and stairs count equally.

The Fitbit also attempts to show the distance you have traveled but straight from the box I found this to be wildly inaccurate. A walk of 6 miles tracked on my GPS equipped iPhone was give as being 11 miles by the FitBit. To get around this I did a series of walks of a known distance and then some simple maths using the number of Fitbit steps allowed me to work out my stride length which I then entered into my Fitbit profile settings on the Fitbit website. I found I had to tweak this setting several times before getting it more or less right. Since the Fitbit records every jog and nudge as a step the distance reading will never be very accurate.

The Good
Cheaper than similar rival products
Small and easy to fit
No case for the device and supplied peripherals
Excellent integration with the Fitbit and other websites
It soon becomes addictive and second nature to use

The Bad
Stride length needs to be set and this is tricky
Display screen tiny and hard to read in bright light
No printed or downloadable manual, website manual only
Sleep monitoring of doubtful accuracy
Charging/syncing mount is quite flimsy
No case for the device and supplied peripherals
FitBit website food database is very US centric (use myfitnesspal.com instead)
Driving gives false step and altitude readings (work around available)