Fitbit Charge HR Review

The Fitbit Charge HR adds continuous heart-rate tracking to all of the other features already available in the step down Fitbit Charge for just a bit more money. Resting heart-rate readings reasonably accurate. Design and fit aren't ideal for glancing at heart rate; active exercise causes accuracy drop-offs; not shower or swim-friendly.

OLED display turns off after a few seconds, which gets annoying. Heart-rate coaching and goal-setting isn't intuitive. Fitbit's Charge HR adds heart-rate tracking to an already solid fitness band at a great price, but all the kinks don't feel fully ironed out yet.
That's an important point to consider, I think, and one that's being lost a bit in the latest round of fitness trackers. Fitbit, like other connected pedometers, counted steps. But it also made a game of it: hit a goal, get a reward. Share your progress with friends, and compete. Gamification, a catchphrase a few years ago, is exactly what these FuelBands, Jawbone Ups and Fitbits provided: they're carrots on a stick to motivate exercise.

The Fitbit Charge HR is Fitbit's latest big fitness move: it adds heart-rate tracking, something tons of bands and trackers have started adopting. It tracks heart rate 24 hours a day, even when you sleep. It syncs everything to your phone. It still looks like the older Fitbit bands, but it does more.

For $20 more than the non-heart-rate-tracking Fitbit Charge, this seems like a no-brainer ($150 versus $130 for the Charge in the US; in the UK, it's £120 versus £100, or $180 versus $150 in Australia). And it is, mostly, in theory. The more expensive $250 Fitbit Surge does practically the same things, but adds a larger watch display and can track runs via standalone GPS. $150 for the Fitbit Charge HR is a good price for a full-featured device. And yet, in practice, something about the Charge HR feels a step short of exciting. 

It's how Fitbit handles heart rate. It's how it feels to wear. And, it's how useful or not I found the addition of heart rate to be in my daily routine. It's one of the best wrist-worn heart-rate trackers out there, but it's not the complete slam-dunk fitness band I expected it to be. It is, however, the best Fitbit band currently available.

Design: Welcome back, old Fitbit

The Charge HR looks nearly identical to the Fitbit Charge, and to the discontinued Fitbit Force before it. It has an innocuous rubberized wraparound band, with a narrow black OLED display that tells time, steps, and other data. You need to press the side button, however, to see anything on the display. The rest of the Charge HR is actually somewhat changed. The strap now attaches with a standard watch buckle-type clasp, making it more secure and less likely to pop off. And the underside feels different, too.

An optical heart-rate monitor with green LEDs bulges out of the bottom, pressing against the skin a bit when the Charge HR's properly secured. My skin got used to it, but the Charge HR definitely feels less comfortable than older Fitbit bands. Also, you have to wear it differently: Fitbit recommends wearing the Charge HR a finger's length above the wristbone on your arm for ideal heart-rate readings, which is farther up my own arm than I prefer to wear things. It's prone to disappearing under a long-sleeved shirt cuff.

The Charge HR comes in several muted colors; my review unit was black. It comes in several sizes, too, although each can be adjusted significantly. My large model felt OK on me, but the further-up-the-arm fit ends up feeling awkward over time. Maybe that's why a new watchstrap-style buckle is on this version: it helps keep the Charge HR clinging further up my arm...sort of. The Charge HR comes with its own USB dongle for charging, but while it attaches the same way as older Fitbits -- straight out from the bottom -- it annoyingly uses yet another proprietary connection. That's right: a new dongle. Don't lose this one, either.

 

Heart rate: All day on your wrist

Once attached, the Charge HR immediately flashes its green LEDs to gather heart-rate data. It does it all the time. That, plus a built-in accelerometer and barometer gather data on steps, heart rate, elevation (steps climbed) and intensity of exercise (walking, or running). Fitbit's heart-rate technology is called Pure Pulse, and exists on both the Charge HR and the step-up Surge fitness watch.

It works automatically, from the moment it goes on your wrist. The Fitbit Charge HR found my heart rate quickly and held onto the reading, so I could access it quickly by pressing the side button and cycling through to heart-rate mode. Compared with the Basis Peak, another green-LED optical wrist band with all-day readings, it offered similar resting heart rate readings. When I got more active, however, the reading fluctuated, sometimes jumping up or down, much like many other optical fitness bands do.

The Charge HR did seem to capture and retain my heart rate better than many other recent wrist bands I've tried. The Fitbit Charge HR can also track individual exercise sessions by holding down the side button. This starts a separate timed event with its own heart rate recording, which gets synced with the Fitbit app as its own discrete activity. It also tracks average and peak heart rate in that session. If you've used a Fitbit before, the step and exercise elements work exactly the same as before. The heart-rate aspect, however, is new...and a bit confusing to interpret.

Yes, the Fitbit Charge HR gathers heart-rate data, and does it consistently. But what it does with that data, and how it helps you, becomes a bit fuzzy. The app presents charts of every day's fluctuating heart rate, and counts the minutes spent in higher heart-rate target zones, which it calculates as exercise. 

The problem is, higher heart rate doesn't always mean active exercise. Sometimes, my own heart rate drifted into a "fat burn" mode, but I knew it was more likely due to having had too much coffee. The Charge HR calculates heart rate "burn zones" based on a formula of 220 minus your age included in the Fitbit profile, but you can customize your own as well in the app. Zones are color-coded as yellow, orange or red (fat-burning, cardio and peak), and on the Charge HR you can see your heart icon in one of three positions to indicate whether you're currently in that zone. I should get a certain amount of cardio a week, or so my cardiologist says, but the Charge HR doesn't make it all that easy for me to target and achieve those goals.

I didn't even know what the "burn zone" data meant until I dug up the information under Heart Rate in settings, and even the pop-up icon on the OLED display isn't all that intuitive. The design of the Charge HR isn't conducive to frequent heart-rate checking, either. You have to keep tapping the Fitbit (a double-tap can be customized to bring up time, step count, heart rate, or another reading), or pressing the side button. 

Most of the time, the Fitbit Charge HR just isn't easily glanceable: the screen is dark, usually. That's where the always-on screen of the more expensive Fitbit Surge could come in handy, but there are other options out there too with more watch-like LCD displays, like the Basis Peak.