Some may see it as a plus that the Alta HR can act as a watch, but I’d prefer to trade the screen for more style and waterproofing. It’s also pretty hard to read in sunlight, which means I rarely used its phone notifications. You wake up the screen with a double tap, but its responsiveness is akin to prodding a groggy drunk, and it seems particularly reluctant when you’re exercising. This is a good thing, because interacting with the Alta HR’s screen isn’t a lot of fun. And all without having to press a single button. For most types of exercise, it gives you a clear summary of the time you’ve spent in each heart-rate zone (peak, cardio and, the big one, fat burn), plus a graph of your average heart rate, ready to scroll through when you’re eating a well-deserved doughnut. When I also pitched it against a larger GPS sports watch and the Apple Watch, it seemed to take more of a middle ground with my heart rates, and was generally slightly less reactive to highs and lows.īut, like much of the Fitbit’s performance, the mantra is ‘good enough’. Is it the most accurate heart-rate tracker you can buy? No, particularly when compared to a chest strap. This does an excellent job of recognising what kind of exercise you’re doing (I was particularly impressed by its ability to pick up on bike rides), and automatically logging the distance, calories burned and your heart-rate zones. The backbone of the Alta HR”s usefulness is its ‘SmartTrack’ exercise detection. That’s because it’s works well on lots of levels, letting you dig deeper if you start to get a taste for stats, without hitting newbies with a tidal wave of graphs. Still, for most people this is probably the best tracker Fitbit has made so far. Small things, but small things that add up.įitbit Alta HR performance: hitting it out of the ballpark The Alta HR also lacks an altimeter (for counting how many stairs you’ve climbed), Connected GPS (for piggybacking your phone to map and track your exercise more accurately), Guided Breathing (for prompting moments of calm), and Cardio Fitness level, which is a VO2 max-based insight into your overall fitness. Doesn’t sound like a big deal? For an all-day fitness tracker, I found having to take it off for every shower to be pretty annoying. The Alta HR isn’t waterproof, so you can’t take it swimming or in the shower. Enter the Alta HR.īefore we jump into bed to see how well this works, you might want to know about those potential deal-breakers. Yet sleep-tracking apps like Sleep Cycle can only be so insightful because they rely on your phone’s accelerometer, rather than variable heart-rate tracking. It’s not an unusual feature in smartwatches, but they all share a common problem – not everyone wants to wear a watch in bed. It has two real specialisms: heart-rate tracking, a first for a band of this size, and support for the Fitbit apps’ new ‘Sleep Stages’ and Sleep Insights’ features.įitbit has been smart to go big on sleep-tracking with the Alta HR. Yet the Alta HR is no generic, utility player. In my experience, this worked incredibly well. A slightly less common feature (although it appears in every Fitbits bar the Zip) is ‘SmartTrack’, which means the Alta HR can automatically recognise and log when you’re walking, running, cycling, looking like an idiot on an elliptical trainer or generally playing sport. This is the minimum, Tesco Basics standard for fitness trackers today. Set your goals in the app, and the Alta HR will nudge you towards them with timely vibrations and messages like ‘Feed me 114 steps’. There are still equivalents to Jessica Ennis’ javelin nightmares.įirst, the obvious: like all Fitbits, it tracks your steps, calories and active minutes. The Alta HR is incredibly capable for one so small, and yet certain functionality lines have been drawn. Fitbit Alta HR features: more health-watcher than hardcore trainer
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