Accuracy of Step Counters

[MichaelJH]

Yesterday I went for a walk with a friend who has a Fit-bit. At the end of the walk they had recorded around 7,000 steps and the Pedometer app on my phone around 3,000. I had expected to record less steps as a 9" height advantage gives me a longer stride. Both seem to be correctly set up but the results cannot be right. Anybody else had results like this?

[bantam12]

The two I have are totally out.

[Lezzers]

Yep. I regularly go for walks with my husband & my fitbit shows 8ve done more steps than my husband & I've always put it down to him having longer legs than me. However, I go for an hrs walk with a friend at lunch time, we're equally matched, height, stride etc & there's always a big difference in the readings on our fitbit. My husbands fitbit is a blaze, mines a charge 2 & my friends is the latest one!! Can't remember it's name

[Jils]

I have found on my Fitbit that it records steps when I swing my arms Ha! Ha!

[Hidden in reply to Jils]

That's how it works..most people swing arms when walking and th fit bit counts it from that, or so I am told anyway 😂

[Lezzers]

I've hit the 10,000 as a passenger in the car!!

[stevejb1810]

I know this might sound a bit far fetched but how much do you swing your arms? I can add steps when sat in an arm chair just by moving my arms about! I have done a step count a number of times over 300-400 steps on a flat surface, at brisk walking pace and it was within 1 or 2 percent each time, so its pretty accurate when I’m out walking but it is easily ‘fooled’ when moving about the house. My device (TomTom watch) is good when I set it measure a walk (I don’t run!) or on a bike, but anything else is a bit dubious!

[MichaelJH Heart Star in reply to stevejb1810]

Mine is an app installed on my mobile and is unaffected by car journeys and arm swinging. Might do another cross check today!

[Lezzers in reply to MichaelJH]

Before my friend got her fitbit she had an app on her I phone & there was really large difference between my fitbit & her app. She was told that the phone would occasionally lose coverage & wasn't recording all her step. Sounded logical to me, what do you think?

[Kev12564]

I love my Fitbit. I doubt it’s accurate for one-off readings, but I find it great for a day to day overview and comparison of steps, calories, heart rate and even sleep. Having gone from 110Kg (BMI 32) to 87Kg (BMI 26) runner in 18 months, my Fitbit has definitely helped motivate me.

[Sunnie2day]

I'm late to this discussion but thank-you for starting it. I use a very simple pedometer clipped to my shoe and testing it against the car odometer seems to indicate it is accurate. But my husband is a bit of a technophile and he'd love it if I went for a FitBit. I told him I'd look into it - this discussion is very helpful, thank-you again!

[Lezzers in reply to Sunnie2day]

Be warned....it can become addictive initially!!

[Sunnie2day in reply to Lezzers]

I'm not a technophobe but after reading up on FitBits I'm not sure I can bring myself to justify the cost of one. My very simple pedometer serves me well and seems to be accurate. It ain't fancy but it encourages me to keep moving as I tick off the miles.

[Lezzers]

I was one step below the 10,000 yesterday so tried the swinging of the arms...didnt work!! So how weird is it that it works in the car!!

[Lezzers]

It was a scientific experiment, a lot of effort went into swinging my arms!! I did do the 1 step eventually, couldn't let that figure get away from me!

[Lezzers]

You're right that works!!

[MichaelJH Heart Star in reply to Lezzers]

✈️ to the 🌞, 😎

[Jils in reply to MichaelJH]

Lucky you! Enjoy x

[jimmyq]

I chucked my fitbit away after I went for a short walk using a clicker-counter. The fitbit counted a lot less steps than I did myself. I worked out a walking route on google maps which is 3.7 miles (45-50 minutes) and I do that most days.

[Lezzers in reply to jimmyq]

I do that milage most days as well, at a power walking pace (it's not me with the heart condition) interesting to know that I'm possibly doing more than the fitbit is recording. My husband has a fitbit blaze which is fairly accurate with the HR whereas mine tells me my HR is low 50's but in reality is actually in the 70's.

[Alison_L]

I had a Dobutamine stress echo on Thursday where the techs took my HR up to 155. My Polar watch insisted that my HR hadn't gone above 96 all day

[Hidden]

There’s been proper research done on this now, and without exception, all the various watches, fitbits and phones have been found to be inaccurate with both step counting and hr tracking. Some are only out by 1 or 2%, but some were found to be out by miles - sometimes literally!! 😂 I seem to recall that Garmin watches came out best of the bunch on one study, but they weren’t flawless, and if you also use the device to estimate calorie burn, then clearly you’re going to have knock on issues with the accuracy there. It’s the main reason I haven’t bothered buying one; whilst my phone (iPhone) is notably inaccurate with tracking my steps, as it once told me I did four flights of stairs sat on a train, it is accurate using gps to track the distance I walk, and I know roughly how many steps I take on average over certain distances, so I can keep track of my approximate steps that way. My brain is free, fitbits et al aren’t 🤷‍♂️

[Hidden]

Many of us paid for those high value health-gadgets without gaining much.

Clever marketing targets middle-aged consumers with disposable income & concerns for health etc. Do you really think "number of steps" might translate into quantifiable daily requirements? We must have lost our sanity.

JQ got it right. Key is: listen to your body. Not the numbers that junk (costly) gudgets spell it out.

[Kev12564 in reply to Hidden]

Each to their own. I don’t really look at step count on my Fitbit, but I look at calories (I doubt the figure is accurate at all, but it gives a daily comparison I can check as I’m the only person wearing my Fitbit) and heart rate (I can see how hard I worked in a session). It’s not essential, but it’s certainly motivated me on my journey from 110 to 87kg.

[Sunnie2day in reply to Kev12564]

And to me, therein lies the answer - if it motivates you and is successful at helping you reach the goal, it's worth the cost. Congratulations on the loss, that is an amazing achievement!

[Kev12564 in reply to Sunnie2day]

Thanks. I initially bought it as I was very sedentary and worried about my high heart rate when running. I don’t have a heart problem - although the advice for people new to exercise getting a check up first is a must - but I wanted to keep within sensible levels at first. Without the Fitbit, I wouldn’t have had the confidence to run at all!

[Sunnie2day in reply to Kev12564]

My clip-on pedometer does that for me - gives me the confidence and motivation. I don't run, at this stage I don't even 'power walk' (I am having some problems with a lifelong heart condition), but knowing how much farther I'm managing inspires me to keep at it. Every week I try to add a bit more, having the pedometer really helps me. And if I'm completely honest, the traditional 'frugal' Scot in me refuses to get comfy with the cost of one of the more techy gadgets - the first thing I think when I look at one is 'For the cost of that I could have a new dishwasher!'

[MichaelJH Heart Star in reply to Sunnie2day]

You need to train the children although motivating them can be tricky! 😁

[Sunnie2day in reply to MichaelJH]

Both grown and flown and have made me a gran five times over. But I did train them well, they're five years apart and smart as wee whips, those two...as soon as they were both old enough to have after-school jobs the first thing they did was club together to gift me with a dishwasher. I know their real motivation was to avoid the dreaded 'It's your turn to do the washing up' but what a lovely Mothering Sunday gift that dishwasher was!

[Kev12564 in reply to Sunnie2day]

I think that’s great. If your pedometer works, then keep at it.

My dishwasher was £250. My Fitbit was only half that 😀

[Sunnie2day in reply to Kev12564]

The FitBits I've looked at are priced around £200-£300, I'm in NE Scotland, maybe higher costs are a regional thing? The dishwasher we're having fitted is a slimline at £200 (new house, empty nest so a ten place machine is just the ticket) including fitting - bargain especially now I'm not feeling my energetic best.

[Lezzers in reply to Sunnie2day]

That's a lot of money, are you looking at the top models? Depending on what you want from it, they range from bout £60 upwards.

[Sunnie2day in reply to Lezzers]

I most likely am - my husband sends me links (from the next room ) and I click, gasp, and click away back to something sensible!

[Lezzers in reply to Sunnie2day]

Very wise!! Also there's a lot if gadgets out there, some cheap some not so cheap!! My fitbit does motivate me but too be honest I'm more motivated if I have someone to walk/exercise with.

[Kev12564 in reply to Sunnie2day]

I just checked Amazon. I shouldn’t say the model of my watch as it might be seen as advertising, and I also thought it was an old out of stock version. However, it’s still available for £129.99. What I will say is whilst it can be used on its own, it works better when linked to an iPhone or similar. Some people might not want the fuss of that.

And I couldn’t live without a dishwasher, so if I had to lose the Fitbit or the dishwasher, the Fitbit would have to go 😀

[Sunnie2day in reply to Kev12564]

Oh now you've done it - my mobile is a simple Nokia. I think there is a camera but I've never gone into 'apps' to find it!

[Kev12564 in reply to Sunnie2day]

Ha ha, well I guess a lot of a Fitbit’s cost goes into making it interface with a smartphone. If you’re not going to use those options, a Fitbit will be a lot of money for nothing. There are cheaper watches made by companies like Beurer which will do the job just as well.

[Kev12564 in reply to Kev12564]

To edit - I don’t have heart issues thankfully. I certainly wouldn’t want anyone to buy a tracker watch and push themselves dangerously. To me, it’s a device used for day to day comparison. If a doctor said something like “try not to exceed a pulse of x beats per minutes”, I wouldn’t be relying on my Fitbit alone.

[chdjazz]

I generally wake up with a few hundred steps logged from dashing about in my dreams. I can also add a few hundred by playing the piano for 10 minutes ( I usually take it off when I play though so I don't cheat) .

I walk with my wife and mine generally records more steps but in a consistent way ( if that makes any possible sense). We have also done the car ride test but our Fit-bit's didn't record any.

[Lezzers]

I'm amazed at how many stairs my fitbit records I climb in a day. I live in a bungalow, my office is on one level & Iive in the flattest part of the country, no hills or steep inclines!!

[MKB38]

I have an app on my Android phone called 'Simply Walking'. It is free to download. You set it to start when you leave the house and it maps where you've been and how many steps you took (I can't verify it's accuracy), you can also see a map of where you went. I find it very useful.

[S11m]

I have an Apple Watch 4…

It was expensive, but it does a lot…

Steps, km, calories, heart rate, HRV4Training, ECG… the AutoSleep app even tells me when I should go to bed!… what else could I want it to do?

[MichaelJH Heart Star in reply to S11m]

Make a cuppa when you hit your target steps!