I’ve decided that I’d like to start learning about wearables, in particular some kind of activity tracking watch. As I began looking I didn’t have any specific use cases in mind, so part of what I was researching was what I actually wanted out of this kind of a device.

I pretty quickly centered in on the Fitbit Charge HR and the Withings Activité Pop (affiliate links), which are, usefully, the same price, at $150. I’ve bought both and am hoping that Amazon lets me return whichever one I decide against.

Right now it’s a dead heat, though each device has very different strengths and weaknesses. After about a day of using each device and its app, here’s what I’ve learned about the pros of each one:

Fitbit Charge HR

• Premium feel. The band is textured on the outside and very soft on the inside, and the clasp is built just perfectly, with a notched rubber slider to keep the loose end in place. The Withings strap feels a little cheap—though you can replace it with any standard 18″ watch strap.
• Smaller, more comfortable. Having a band around your wrist is less distracting than a big watch face. The band wraps around my (small) wrist evenly.
• Heart rate tracking. I’ve been trying to figure out how much I need this. It was really great to actually see what my heart rate was on a run and in a yoga class; for yoga in particular I had never tracked my activity beyond recording the amount of time I spent in a practice. (Results: my heart rate was steadily high for longer than I thought, but it didn’t spike to a “cardio” level as much as I had expected.)
• Sophisticated app. The Fitbit app allows you to designate certain segments of your activity as “workouts” (so your run is counted as one workout even if you ran, then walked, then ran some more). It also has a sophisticated goal system that allows you to designate a target weight and choose from “easy,” “medium,” and “hard” lengths of time to get to that weight; it then calculates how many calories you can eat given your activity level on a given day. Withings has a goal function but it’s not that nuanced.
• See your stats in the dark. The digital display lights up so it’s visible at night. You can tell what time it is if you wake up in the middle of the night, or check your heart rate if running pre-dawn.
• Get more stats from the device. The band itself gives readings for the time of day, the date, how many steps you’ve done that day, distance, heart rate, calories, and flights. (Withings gives you the time of day, time of an alarm you set, and your % progress toward your daily step goal.) You can also set it to vibrate if you get a phone call and display the contact name or number of the call—very useful if you keep your phone on vibrate most of the time but don’t always have it in your pocket. (But: if I keep my phone with me for music and GPS tracking when I run, do I really need to have all that info on my wrist, too?)
• Useful for yogis. As I mentioned, because you can track heart rate, you can track something like the caloric impact of your yoga practice—and how that impact varies across different sessions, classes, or teachers. It also integrates with Mindbody Connect, the app used by many yoga studios to schedule classes; it means you can review your stats for your past classes all in one place in the Mindbody app.
• Water intake. You can manually log when you drink water to keep track of your hydration levels. (There is also a Thermos water bottle that tracks this for you automatically, with reminders to take a sip.)
• Slightly less ridiculous name. I mean really.

 

Withings Activité Pop

• Analog, stylish, simplified. The traditional analog face is much more professional and dressy than the sporty Fitbit. It only shows the time (hours and minutes), your % of daily step goal reached, and, with a double-tap, any alarms you have set. There are unlimited options for bands. I can see myself wearing this to the office and to nice dinners and marathon days singing in church where the Fitbit would feel a bit odd.
• Waterproof. It seems that there is a heart rate/watersports tradeoff with the Fitbit and Withings watches—you can’t have both. It’s great to know that I can use this watch to track swimming, and I don’t have to take it off for a quick shower after a run.
• No charging. You have to charge your Fitbit for 1-2 hours every few days. The Activité Pop uses a regular watch battery that just needs to be replaced a few times a year.
• Better Apple syncing. Fitbit won’t sync with the Apple Health app (though there are now some third-party apps I haven’t yet explored that will facilitate that). That means that I need to go to a completely separate app to get data like my weight, flights climbed, etc. The Withings app does it all in one place.

One of the big things I’ve realized is that it’s not just the functionality and features of the device that are important; it’s also the functionality and features of its app, and which other apps it will integrate with. I wasn’t really thinking about that when I launched into looking at the devices, but it’s really brought home how important apps are to our physical experiences now. Both the Fitbit and Withings app are very rich, and I haven’t yet gotten a sense of which better serves my needs. So, more to come!

In the meantime, do you have any experience with either of these devices? What do you think?