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Jawbone stops production of fitness trackers

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Re: Jawbone stops production of fitness trackers

#41

Post by joshvm »

jrockway wrote: post #29

Sort of off-topic, but what fitness gadgets do you all like? I used a FitBit One for many years until I washed it recently and it died. Honestly, I never really looked at the data unless I expected it to be anomalous, even though I religiously carried it with me at all times. I bike 8-10 hours a week, so a few steps aren't really making a health difference for me. The big thing that annoyed me about FitBit is that Ap…

I have a Charge HR.

Battery is good, since the most recent update, previously it was terrible.

FitBit's sleep tracking is pretty accurate in my experience. It even gets my naps. It doesn't do REM vs non-REM, but it's good enough for duration tracking.

The sync functionality is abysmal though. Half the time it doesn't work or takes minutes which would be solved if they bothered to make a dedicated 'sync' function on the hardware. Instead you have to hope that the software and tracker coincidentally communicate (which also means that the tracker has to continually poll Bluetooth, wasting power).

The pedometer is very accurate, it gets each footfall most of the time.

But... it doesn't integrate with many apps which is annoying (e.g. Google Fit).

I mostly use it for the heart tracker, since that's pretty much the only useful metric for health that it can provide. The calorie count is very optimistic, for instance, but you can compare lazy vs active days.

Re: Jawbone stops production of fitness trackers

#42

Post by DiabloD3 »

_JamesA_ wrote: post #35
jrockway wrote: post #29

Sort of off-topic, but what fitness gadgets do you all like? I used a FitBit One for many years until I washed it recently and it died. Honestly, I never really looked at the data unless I expected it to be anomalous, even though I religiously carried it with me at all times. I bike 8-10 hours a week, so a few steps aren't really making a health difference for me. The big thing that annoyed me about FitBit is that Ap…

The most frustrating part is the isolation of the different fitness social networks. I have family and friends using Runkeeper, Strava, etc whereas I have to use Garmin Connect with my Garmin device(s). I have found Tapiriik[1] to be invaluable in keeping these different apps/fitness networks synchronized. [1]: https://tapiriik.com/

Garmin Connect devices are supported by the major ecosystems, Runkeeper, Strava, the MyFitnessPal/MapMyRun ecosystem, and the Runtastic ecosystem.

It also connects to both Google Fit and Apple HealthKit to do cross-ecosystem syncing when there isn't native support.

Generally, if your app/ecosystem doesn't support Garmin, Fitbit, Jawbone (which is now dead), and Google Fit/Apple Healthkit/Microsoft Health (for phone driven pedometer), you don't exist.

Also, Tapiriik is basically pointless: Google Fit/Apple Healthkit/Microsoft Health were all invented to break up the closed ecosystem bullshit. The data is mine, either give it to me via a public major API, or I'll let someone else track it for me.

Re: Jawbone stops production of fitness trackers

#43

Post by Alex3917 »

mynegation wrote: post #6

Personal anecdote: I had three Jawbone fitness trackers that stopped working within months. Granted, two of them were replaced by Jawbone, but after a third I stopped bothering. The bracelet design was thin and elegant as opposed to the bulky Fitbits. Inside, jawbone bracelets had several very small PCBs arranged in a row, connected by wires, with a protection layer of epoxy glue or something. The whole construction…

Same here, I got one, it broke, got it replaced, and the replacement broke. At that point I just gave up, but my spouse has gone through about five of them. To be fair they do keep replacing them, but it has to be just about the worst quality product of anything on the market.

Re: Jawbone stops production of fitness trackers

#44

Post by braythwayt »

imaffett wrote: post #15
Wonnk13 wrote: post #10

For Jawbone, Fitbit et al. the hardware has been commoditized, the software has limited utility and the whole 10,000 steps a day seems like a fad. It's incredibly hard to maintain users once the honeymoon period ends. Personally, I'm long on UA, but I still have some lingering doubts about their acquisitions with ConnectedFitness and the their Healthbox or whatever. I'm a pretty competitive triathlete and all of my g…

lol... every triathlete is "pretty competitive" ;). My wife and I switch to running and are using garmin vivoactives. The battery life is amazing and works great swimming (no gps) My non-active friends mostly ditch their fitbit style devices after a few months. Its either an apple watch, microsoft band (not joking) or some type of running/multisport watch.

  > lol... every triathlete is "pretty competitive”
I think the only uncompetitive triathlete is someone who goes for a ride, takes a tumble into a wet ditch, and has to walk their bike back onto the road.

Every single triathlete I’ve met has been fixated on gear, performance, and age-group rankings.

Re: Jawbone stops production of fitness trackers

#45

Post by sanotehu »

zxcvvcxz wrote: post #36

Commodity fitness trackers are a terrible business to be in, I almost fell for the hype a few years ago. As a user I never saw it, couldn't even get myself to use them consistently and I really liked the idea. And I even heard an investor say (regarding FitBit), "After 3 months they [the customers] just stop wearing it." If you're not top 2 or 3 you're probably toast. > Jawbone raised a new $165 million round of fund…

To answer your question about the difference between "clinical grade" and "consumer grade" hardware, consider [1] - where FitBit-measured heartrates differed from actual heartrates by about 30bpm. As a doctor I looked into getting a fitbit but realised they could not live up to the ideal of heartrate tracking that I wanted.

To be fair this is a hard problem. Even the pulse oximeters we use in our hospitals have a hard time picking up certain heart rhythms. The only way to be sure is to get an ECG done!

[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/12086337/Fitbit-h...

Re: Jawbone stops production of fitness trackers

#47

Post by pacificmint »

xchaotic wrote: post #24
Wonnk13 wrote: post #10

For Jawbone, Fitbit et al. the hardware has been commoditized, the software has limited utility and the whole 10,000 steps a day seems like a fad. It's incredibly hard to maintain users once the honeymoon period ends. Personally, I'm long on UA, but I still have some lingering doubts about their acquisitions with ConnectedFitness and the their Healthbox or whatever. I'm a pretty competitive triathlete and all of my g…

Wondering about the 10k steps. I'm not hitting it everyday, but I feel that if I consistently did, I'd be a fit person with enough activity to be healthy from that angle. How's that a fad? Is there any research showing otherwise?

Of course any exercise is better than nothing, but I think the current thinking is that getting the heart rate up is what matters most.

So doing less steps that get your heart rate up would have more effect than more steps without elevated heart rate.

Re: Jawbone stops production of fitness trackers

#48

Post by DiabloD3 »

imaffett wrote: post #15
Wonnk13 wrote: post #10

For Jawbone, Fitbit et al. the hardware has been commoditized, the software has limited utility and the whole 10,000 steps a day seems like a fad. It's incredibly hard to maintain users once the honeymoon period ends. Personally, I'm long on UA, but I still have some lingering doubts about their acquisitions with ConnectedFitness and the their Healthbox or whatever. I'm a pretty competitive triathlete and all of my g…

lol... every triathlete is "pretty competitive" ;). My wife and I switch to running and are using garmin vivoactives. The battery life is amazing and works great swimming (no gps) My non-active friends mostly ditch their fitbit style devices after a few months. Its either an apple watch, microsoft band (not joking) or some type of running/multisport watch.

The Microsoft Band 2 is actually extremely nice. It isn't tied down by being forced to run Android Wear or Apple Watch OS or Samsung Gear, and instead runs "Microsoft Wearables" which is closer in design and lightness to the kind of realtime OS design you see in Pebbles.

It has decent battery life (48h claimed, meets the requirement of >24h real world, but not >7 days real world), it is physically small and light, but is also a typical smartwatch.

It has the right blend of both being an activity tracker and a smartwatch, but the only reason I won't buy one is it is insufficiently water proof. The only devices that will survive true day to day wear are currently being made by Garmin. Nothing that Fitbit or Jawbone makes is beyond IPX7, and all of Garmin's stuff (coming from the professional competition device pedigree that they do) has actual water rating marks (at least 50 meters, some models exceed that).

So yeah, I've been recommending Garmin gizmos lately. Vivofit 3, $99 without heart rate tracking, battery life of a year with a standard coin battery, or Vivosmart HR, $149, battery life of 5 days, has heart rate tracking, both support Garmin Connect, thus every major app and ecosystem.

Re: Jawbone stops production of fitness trackers

#50

Post by MBCook »

sanotehu wrote: post #45
zxcvvcxz wrote: post #36

Commodity fitness trackers are a terrible business to be in, I almost fell for the hype a few years ago. As a user I never saw it, couldn't even get myself to use them consistently and I really liked the idea. And I even heard an investor say (regarding FitBit), "After 3 months they [the customers] just stop wearing it." If you're not top 2 or 3 you're probably toast. > Jawbone raised a new $165 million round of fund…

To answer your question about the difference between "clinical grade" and "consumer grade" hardware, consider [1] - where FitBit-measured heartrates differed from actual heartrates by about 30bpm. As a doctor I looked into getting a fitbit but realised they could not live up to the ideal of heartrate tracking that I wanted. To be fair this is a hard problem. Even the pulse oximeters we use in our hospitals have a har…

While not clinically certified, reports were that the Apple Watch was very close to accurate most of the time, just a few BPM off at most.
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