Fitbit or proper HRM for my wife?

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It's my wife's birthday later in the week and I think she would appreciate some sort of sports watch.

She has recently taken up running to try and get fitter. Other than that, she is reasonably active (young kids, walking the dog, etc) but doesn't do any formal sport.

I wonder if the Fitbit Charge HR would be the right watch for her. But is it more of a gimmick than a proper HRM?

I don't think she would bother with a chest strap - I think she would find it uncomfortable and a bit of a faff - so a proper HRM would need to be one which measures HR from the wrist (e.g. TomTom Cardio).

The dowsnide of these things is that they seem to need very regular charging - I have a 12 year old Polar HRM which needs a new watch-type battery every year or two and I think it would be a PITA to have yet another thing to remember to charge several times a week (along with phones, iPads, etc).

Part of me thinks that if the present doesn't go down well, it might get recycled to me ... In which case a TomTom Cardio or similar would probably be a good replacement for my Polar HRM (which is looking quite tired now).

Any thoughts from users? Thanks in advance.

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f1_dragon said:

I've historically not been too into these sort of fitness aids/gadgets, I had a Garmin forerunner with HRM when I was training for a marathon a few years ago, but have long since stopped using it after I forgot to charge it once.

A couple of the guys on a recent roadtrip had fitbits and I have to say the graphs/data etc were impressive enough that I bought one soon after we returned.

I think it's great, the HRM seems very accurate and it is as close to real-time as I think you can get for such a non-intrusive device. I could be wrong. The sleep monitoring is also a good feature IMHO.

Re the charging, you're not meant to wear them in the shower (although others have daily with no issues) so I simply just charge it when I shower, that seems to be long enough to keep it continually topped up.

HTH!

Very helpful, thanks. I suspect I'll buy a fitbit - probably the right thing for how she would use it.

Cheers

PS. No, I haven't asked her - I think a present is much better as a surprise - shows you've put some thought into it rather than just buying her something from her list. Sometimes you'll get it wrong; sometimes you'll get it right.

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I don't think she'd ever use the GPS functionality. (She could probably just use Strava on her phone if she wanted that.)

Does sound like fitbit would be the right thing - just need to find an £80 deal now ... but not much time left so full price will probably be the outcome.

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I got the Charge HR and she loves it. I think it even encouraged her to take the dog out for a second walk yesterday evening despite the rain, so a happy dog too!

Cheers

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Well, I am now starting to get the itch for a new HRM myself. I've got an old (approx 12 years old) Polar HRM at the moment which is looking worse for wear. As soon as the chest strap runs out of power, I won't bother buying a replacement.

I would be tempted to just use my phone and get a strap which links to it, but I'm wondering about something like a TomTom Cardio of some sort to avoid the faff of a chest strap. I wouldn't want to wear it all the time like a Fitbit as I have a few proper watches which I like to wear to the office and so on. So probably something specific to exercise. I don't really need the GPS, though, as I usually use Strava on my phone when I'm out running - set it going and pop it in my pocket.

Dog still getting lots of walks ...