Fitbit Flex review

**Unboxing and Initial Impressions of the Fitbit Flex**

When I first opened the box containing my new Fitbit Flex, I was excited to see what this wearable device had to offer. The device itself is small and lightweight, making it easy to slip on and off my wrist. As I examined it closer, I noticed that the tracker was stored in a shell-like compartment in the wristband, which could be easily accessed by popping it out and inserting it into the cradle that came with the device.

The Fitbit Flex retails for $99, and one of the options available to customers is to purchase additional wristbands in various colors. These bands are priced at $20 or $30 each and come in a range of sizes, making them easily interchangeable if you find that your fit has changed over time. I was impressed by this feature, as it would allow me to easily swap out my band if I lost weight or needed a smaller size.

**Using the Fitbit Flex App**

To get started with my Fitbit Flex, I downloaded and installed the accompanying app on my computer. The app allows you to sync your device with your computer using an included dongle, but most users will likely choose to use the mobile app instead. Once I opened up the app, I was greeted by a clean and intuitive interface that displayed all of my fitness data in one convenient place.

On the main screen, I could see a breakdown of my daily activity, including steps, distance traveled, active minutes, calories burned, and even calendar-based calorie burn estimates. While I found this feature to be useful, I did feel that the Fitbit was being somewhat generous with its calorie count calculations – I had only burned 722 calories since midnight, despite having been alive for several hours already! I also performed a workout session with both my Fitbit Flex and the Nike Fuel Band, and while both devices tracked my activity accurately, I felt that Fitbit was still overcompensating on the calorie front.

**Customizing Your Fitbit Flex**

One of the features I found particularly useful in the app was the ability to customize my wristband's display. By tapping into the main menu, I could adjust which data points were displayed on my tracker – whether it showed steps, distance, calories burned, or active minutes. I also had the option to choose between a "dominant" and "non-dominant" wrist setting, which was convenient for left-handed users like myself.

In addition to customizing my display settings, I could also tap into various sections of the app to access additional features. The calorie burn section showed me nice graphs illustrating my progress over time, while the sleep tracking feature (although not as robust as some other trackers on the market) provided a useful snapshot of my nighttime activity.

**Food Tracking and Other Features**

One area where I felt that Fitbit fell short was in its food tracking capabilities. While the app did provide a basic database of foods, I found it to be lacking compared to more specialized apps like MyFitnessPal or Weight Watchers. This is not surprising, given that many wearables struggle to provide accurate and comprehensive nutrition data.

That being said, the Fitbit Flex does offer some useful features for tracking weight loss progress – you can input your daily food intake and track your calorie budget, although I found this feature to be somewhat limited in its scope. The app also allows you to change units, settings, and even share your fitness goals with friends or family members.

**Conclusion**

Overall, my experience with the Fitbit Flex was mixed – while it offered a comfortable and functional wearable device, some features felt underdeveloped or lacking. I did appreciate the customization options available in the app, as well as the ability to track various aspects of my fitness progress. However, I do wish that Fitbit had prioritized more robust calorie burn tracking and improved nutrition data. As with any wearable device, it's essential to weigh your needs against the pros and cons – if you're looking for a straightforward, easy-to-use tracker that provides basic fitness metrics, the Fitbit Flex may be worth considering.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey guys Ellie with imore and today we're going to take a look at the Fitbit Flex so taking a look at the flex itself um I'll start off by saying we started this review using the Fitbit Force um but as many of you have probably already read uh Fitbit did a recall on the force due to a skin irritation issue uh I personally didn't have that issue I have a lot of friends that have Fitbit products and out of the ones that had the force not one person I know had it I think it was some crazy low number like 1.7% of people were affected by it but either way you know Fitbit took care of it they'll issue a new product uh you can get a refund or continue using it um this review pretty much would cover many of the same features of the force the only difference is where this just has a series of five LEDs to indicate uh 20 40 60 80 and 100% of your goal for the day um the force has an actual LCD screen that you can siphon it has a button and you can siphon through um time distance calories steps things like that so this basically um it's not going to do anything because I haven't walked many steps today but I can double tap by the screen and it would light up an indicator light showing me how much of my goal I've met so if I'm 60% of the way it would have three LEDs lit up so basically that's how that works um there are also other tap shortcuts you can use with the flex specifically so if I tap this rapidly for 2 seconds it activates sleep mode I can feel it vibrate tap it again and it disables it um if you have an alarm set uh tap it twice to turn that alarm off um there's a bunch of other useful shortcuts you can look up on the Fitbit website as far as Taps go um turning around here on the back I'm not fond of the way this band um goes on so basically you have to listen for this snap and you do have to push down kind of hard and I'll show you um putting this on my wrist um it's somewhat awkward for me to put this on and then you have to listen for that snap when you line this up correctly and I'll show you what I'm talking about if I can get it on so and again I don't know maybe I'm just not so coordinated with two hands that I have a hard time with this I had the hard time with the Garmin because of it's the same type of clasp so now that I've got this lined up you have to listen for that snap because if you don't and those don't get in there all the way um this will come off I've had it come off even with it fully clasped what happens is uh you put a coat on or a jacket and this gets caught when you pull it off I've actually um had that happen inside my coat jacket when I went to pull off my coat and I noticed the Fitbit wasn't on my wrist I went to put I thought I lost it I went to put my coat back on and I felt it in the sleeve so um one thing that to be very careful with um when it comes time to charge these you just pop it right out of here just pops right out of the shell and um you can stick it in the cradle that it comes with so this is the tracker itself and then you just pop it right back in so and you can also order many different colors uh the Fitbit Flex retails for $99 and then you can order additional uh wristbands so I think they come in pink green a huge array of colors so you can order those separately I think they're $ 20 or $30 and you can get them in different sizes which is nice because if you're losing weight and then you drop a size um you can just order a smaller band and S your stick your tracker right in it so um moving on to the app itself uh you can sync your Fitbit with your computer with the included dongle if you like or you can sync with the app which is what um most most people will probably choose to do so taking a look at this here um the way this works is on your main screen you have steps distance active minutes calories burned and keep in mind the Fitbit takes into consideration calendar calories you burn just being alive so this is a little different than the Nike fuel band SE which doesn't seem to do too much of that um I do feel like Fitbit is way too uh generous with calorie count um I don't think that I've burned 722 calories since midnight just being alive so um it's only 11:30 a.m. here um I've also put the Fitbit on and the um Nike fuel band and the Fitbit and the draw bone up together and did a workout session and again I felt like Fitbit overcompensated for calorie count so um just something to think about I'd be interested to know you guys' experiences with that um coming back up to the top here you can tap on your wristband and you can see um your battery life uh your main goals so here is where you change whether you want your wristband to show steps distance calories burned or active minutes that will sink on down to your phone and you can um that's what your indicator lights will show so um basically after you do that you can uh choose a dominant wrist I we mine on my dominant wrist I'm left-handed so I always choose dominant if you're left-handed and wear on your right hand you would choose non-dominant um coming back out of this um you can tap into your calories burn section uh see nice little graphs of that uh the fiet flex kind of tracks sleep but not as good as I think the only tracker that I think actually tracks sleep adequately is the up 24 by Jawbone or the up so um you know I don't really know here's the food portion of the Fitbit app um I prefer using an external app that specializes in food tracking such as my fitness pal uh Weight Watchers apps like that um I've never found these to be too robust that's across the board Fitbit Jawbone Nike any of those I've just never found them to be that great for tracking food I don't even know where it's getting this um 812 calories left in your budget I have not added anything in my budget so I I don't know either way um you can also track weight with that so you can in here and track Weight um and then you can also what else can you do in here go into your account you can change some settings in here food database um you can change your country this does support couple uh so you've got those and that's pretty much it for the app you can change units change your share settings Etc um link up your Twitter and that's pretty much it change your goals from the main screen uh you can set up your alarms so um when you set a new alarm basically you set a time in here so say I want to make sure I'm in bed by 11:30 p.m. every night I can set that and set it to repeat every Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday I don't really need to go to bed that early on Friday but I'll leave it but I do on Sunday so I'll set that and then save it and it'll sink to my band and I can turn that on and off as I want so um overall uh the flex is a very comfortable tracker to wear um it's not my favorite mainly due to the class mechanism and I do feel like the calorie count is not as good as it should be um but I'm interested to see what you guys' thoughts are on it so uh leave it in the comments if you have questions leave those two and I'll try to answer them more I can uh other than that we'll have more reviews coming your way soon thanks guyshey guys Ellie with imore and today we're going to take a look at the Fitbit Flex so taking a look at the flex itself um I'll start off by saying we started this review using the Fitbit Force um but as many of you have probably already read uh Fitbit did a recall on the force due to a skin irritation issue uh I personally didn't have that issue I have a lot of friends that have Fitbit products and out of the ones that had the force not one person I know had it I think it was some crazy low number like 1.7% of people were affected by it but either way you know Fitbit took care of it they'll issue a new product uh you can get a refund or continue using it um this review pretty much would cover many of the same features of the force the only difference is where this just has a series of five LEDs to indicate uh 20 40 60 80 and 100% of your goal for the day um the force has an actual LCD screen that you can siphon it has a button and you can siphon through um time distance calories steps things like that so this basically um it's not going to do anything because I haven't walked many steps today but I can double tap by the screen and it would light up an indicator light showing me how much of my goal I've met so if I'm 60% of the way it would have three LEDs lit up so basically that's how that works um there are also other tap shortcuts you can use with the flex specifically so if I tap this rapidly for 2 seconds it activates sleep mode I can feel it vibrate tap it again and it disables it um if you have an alarm set uh tap it twice to turn that alarm off um there's a bunch of other useful shortcuts you can look up on the Fitbit website as far as Taps go um turning around here on the back I'm not fond of the way this band um goes on so basically you have to listen for this snap and you do have to push down kind of hard and I'll show you um putting this on my wrist um it's somewhat awkward for me to put this on and then you have to listen for that snap when you line this up correctly and I'll show you what I'm talking about if I can get it on so and again I don't know maybe I'm just not so coordinated with two hands that I have a hard time with this I had the hard time with the Garmin because of it's the same type of clasp so now that I've got this lined up you have to listen for that snap because if you don't and those don't get in there all the way um this will come off I've had it come off even with it fully clasped what happens is uh you put a coat on or a jacket and this gets caught when you pull it off I've actually um had that happen inside my coat jacket when I went to pull off my coat and I noticed the Fitbit wasn't on my wrist I went to put I thought I lost it I went to put my coat back on and I felt it in the sleeve so um one thing that to be very careful with um when it comes time to charge these you just pop it right out of here just pops right out of the shell and um you can stick it in the cradle that it comes with so this is the tracker itself and then you just pop it right back in so and you can also order many different colors uh the Fitbit Flex retails for $99 and then you can order additional uh wristbands so I think they come in pink green a huge array of colors so you can order those separately I think they're $ 20 or $30 and you can get them in different sizes which is nice because if you're losing weight and then you drop a size um you can just order a smaller band and S your stick your tracker right in it so um moving on to the app itself uh you can sync your Fitbit with your computer with the included dongle if you like or you can sync with the app which is what um most most people will probably choose to do so taking a look at this here um the way this works is on your main screen you have steps distance active minutes calories burned and keep in mind the Fitbit takes into consideration calendar calories you burn just being alive so this is a little different than the Nike fuel band SE which doesn't seem to do too much of that um I do feel like Fitbit is way too uh generous with calorie count um I don't think that I've burned 722 calories since midnight just being alive so um it's only 11:30 a.m. here um I've also put the Fitbit on and the um Nike fuel band and the Fitbit and the draw bone up together and did a workout session and again I felt like Fitbit overcompensated for calorie count so um just something to think about I'd be interested to know you guys' experiences with that um coming back up to the top here you can tap on your wristband and you can see um your battery life uh your main goals so here is where you change whether you want your wristband to show steps distance calories burned or active minutes that will sink on down to your phone and you can um that's what your indicator lights will show so um basically after you do that you can uh choose a dominant wrist I we mine on my dominant wrist I'm left-handed so I always choose dominant if you're left-handed and wear on your right hand you would choose non-dominant um coming back out of this um you can tap into your calories burn section uh see nice little graphs of that uh the fiet flex kind of tracks sleep but not as good as I think the only tracker that I think actually tracks sleep adequately is the up 24 by Jawbone or the up so um you know I don't really know here's the food portion of the Fitbit app um I prefer using an external app that specializes in food tracking such as my fitness pal uh Weight Watchers apps like that um I've never found these to be too robust that's across the board Fitbit Jawbone Nike any of those I've just never found them to be that great for tracking food I don't even know where it's getting this um 812 calories left in your budget I have not added anything in my budget so I I don't know either way um you can also track weight with that so you can in here and track Weight um and then you can also what else can you do in here go into your account you can change some settings in here food database um you can change your country this does support couple uh so you've got those and that's pretty much it for the app you can change units change your share settings Etc um link up your Twitter and that's pretty much it change your goals from the main screen uh you can set up your alarms so um when you set a new alarm basically you set a time in here so say I want to make sure I'm in bed by 11:30 p.m. every night I can set that and set it to repeat every Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday I don't really need to go to bed that early on Friday but I'll leave it but I do on Sunday so I'll set that and then save it and it'll sink to my band and I can turn that on and off as I want so um overall uh the flex is a very comfortable tracker to wear um it's not my favorite mainly due to the class mechanism and I do feel like the calorie count is not as good as it should be um but I'm interested to see what you guys' thoughts are on it so uh leave it in the comments if you have questions leave those two and I'll try to answer them more I can uh other than that we'll have more reviews coming your way soon thanks guys\n"