How To Choose The Best Fitness Tracker In India

Fitness trackers are gaining popularity in the last few years in India for the sheer number of benefits they can bring. These wearables can guide your training, tell you of any irregular patterns in your heartbeat, and sometimes can pack handy apps like calendar and weather forecast.

However, it can be confusing picking a fitness tracker as there are so many of them out there. So here we will provide a few guidelines to help you:

All About The Sensors

No matter how many features they have, what these wearables do is to track the wearers’ physical activities. To fulfill this mission, they gather and analyze data from a system of sensors. Two decades ago, these sensors may cost a fortune and weighed several kilograms, but nowadays, they may be as small as a grain.

The accelerometer is the most basic sensor for detecting linear acceleration. One single unit consists of three of them, each for one axis. For radial motion, gyroscopes are needed in a tracker to cover all the axes. Some trackers can even detect magnetic fields, courtesy of the magnetometers. Only some of the trackers feature all of three motion sensors, but as you may have guessed, more of them means more accurate data about the wearers.

Another type of sensors is for detecting users’ heartbeats with light, or some may call it photoplethysmography. This technology calls for light sensors and LED lights on the back of the tracker to measure the heartbeats.

Tracking Your Workout

Most trackers will have a timer or a stopwatch to help users track their sessions. Some models even let you specify the type of activities you are doing, including bike riding, running, swimming, and walking. A handful of fitness trackers can also recognize the activity right away when you start.

If you want to wear the tracker while swimming, opt for something that is water-resistant. An accurate indication is the IP rating. If the device has IP67, it can survive in water as deep as one meter, for up to 30 minutes. IP68 means that the depth is more than one meter.

If you expect the watch to accompany you when doing more activities than just to the shower, look for models like the Misfit Shine 2, which can survive being submerged in water as deep as 50 meters.

To make the most of your workout, some smartwatches nowadays offer features like recovery rate, heart rate variability, and VO2 max. Cyclists and runners may need GPS tracking, which enables them to navigate without bringing along a phone. For this feature, a suggestion is Garmin Vivo sport.

Tracking Your Health

One feature that has been attracting lots of interest recently is the ability to monitor EKG (electrocardiogram) data. This term is used to call the electrical waveforms of your heartbeats. This function can even alert you when it detects a potential threat with your heart arrhythmia. A device with this feature is Withings Move ECG.

Other functions trackers may have are food intake tracking, sleep tracking, reminders, female health data, and hydration.

Want More Than Just Fitness?

Nowadays, you will find most of the basic features on any smartwatch or fitness tracker, so the question here is what you really need and your budget.

Fitness trackers are handy, but if they want to be part of people’s lives, they need to do more than that. A report reveals that around 50% of users who own a tracker no longer use it.

Smartwatch is a more universal option that can focus on both fitness and non-fitness needs. For example, a smartwatch can help you listen to audio, make and answer phone calls, and change to a variety of watch faces.

While some fitness trackers do offer these functions, a smartwatch is always a better choice for a quick fix of whatever you want the wearable to do, at a higher price, of course. A prime example is Apple Watch Series 4, which features cellphone circuitry, so you do not need to bring the smartphone along to make or receive phone calls. Versa 2 has a payment system built-in and support for Amazon’s Alexa.

Also Keep In Mind

Battery life is a worry for most users. Some smartwatches can last for weeks while some will need another charge after just a few days. If you want to spare yourself of the inconvenience of charging, Misfit Shine 2 offers a solution. It draws power from a coin battery that can last for half a year. The battery is cheap and replaceable. Another good option is Garmin Fenix 6, which makes use of a solar cell to make the device lasts longer between charges.

Some devices even have support for operating systems. Bluetooth is now used by most devices to connect the smartwatch to a phone. In many cases, it can work with both Android and iOS. One notable exception is, you may guess it, the Apple Watch, which works only with another device from the same ecosystem of Apple.

For fitness trackers, the situation is similar, your phones may be compatible with most of them.

Making The Choice

The price can range from Rs. 5,000 for a fitness band to more than Rs. 100,000 for a smartwatch. Most users, no matter what they need, can find a suitable model paying from Rs. 5,000 to Rs. 14,000 for both fitness trackers and smartwatches.

If you take your time picking the right one, it will less likely end up somewhere for half a year without you knowing about its absence.