I was an early adopter of fitness bracelets with heart-rate monitoring. I use them to track my heart rate at rest. You heart rate should be around 65 if you are fit. If it goes much higher than 65, you might be getting unfit or you might have a medical condition. I also like to track the quality of my sleep.
I don’t really need this data right now in the sense that I am in good health. However, it is hard to keep good habits on the long term. I can easily monitor my weight by looking in the mirror, but it is easier to let my physical condition slide. I have ever saw bad numbers, it might nudge me into correcting my habits.
I have never tried the Apple Watch, which I hear is great. However, I am looking for something that I do not need to recharge every day. Also, I prefer to pay less if I can.
I have owned a couple of Fitbit watches. Fitbit bracelets and watches have been a major disappointment. They are expensive, the software is often buggy, the hardware tends to crash periodically, it is not durable, and so forth. Though on paper the Fitbit watches have many features like notifications and so on, they are finicky to setup and often fail mysterious. Fitbit has good social networking features and it makes good looking products, but that is all.
When my last Fitbit watch broke apart, I decided that I would never buy a Fitbit product anymore. Too expensive, too buggy.
I should say that one of my sons as well as my wife swear by their Fitbit bracelets. They seem to have good luck with them. The only difference between me and them that I can see is that I sleep with my bracelets whereas they do not.
So I tried my luck with a U.S product, the Katfit 1 It is $28. It is almost an order of magnitude less expensive than equivalent Fitbit products.
I have been wearing it for about a month now. Here are my thoughts. Firstly, the negatives:
Note that this is my personal taste. Several people have commented that my Katfit 1 looks good.
Secondly the positives: