Fitbit Surge

The Fitbit Surge is a health tracker that monitors your steps taken, distance traveled, calories burned, flooring climbed and sleep exceptional. however the Surge gives three advanced capabilities that are not located on most fitness trackers: the tool is GPS-enabled, so you can use it to map outside physical games like jogging and hiking, it includes a integrated heart fee display, and offers non-stop coronary heart fee monitoring, and it even includes some smartwatch functions — you may view texts and incoming calls on your cellphone right to your wrist.

At $250, the Surge is at the excessive quit of the price variety of fitness trackers, and fees $one hundred more than the fee HR, any other Fitbit device that also gives non-stop coronary heart fee monitoring. however in contrast to the charge HR, the Surge's GPS feature puts it on par with GPS watches like the TomTom Multi-sport aerobic, which additionally is going for $250, on Amazon.

i lately wore the Surge day and night for per week to peer how nicely it executed as both an activity tracker and a sports activities watch. here's how it went.

With a built-in coronary heart fee sensor and GPS tracking, the Surge is one of the most comprehensive fitness trackers on the market. The watch is simple to apply and its accompanying app is straightforward to navigate.

but, the Surge is bulky and uncomfortable to wear (specially at the same time as sleeping). it is now not water resistant, so that you can not use it to track swim exercises. And as of this writing, the Surge does not track outdoor biking both.

the first component I noticed about the Surge changed into its size. it is absolutely no longer as big as a number of the GPS watches i've tested, like the Suunto Ambit3 game, a multisport GPS watch that measures simply underneath 2 inches (50 millimeters) across. however at 1.34 inches (34 mm) extensive, it is quite a bit larger than the common health band. The Fitbit rate, for example, is simply 0.eighty four-inches (22 mm) extensive.

The Surge is fabricated from a tender rubbery plastic and is derived in 3 colorations (blue, tangerine orange and black). whilst this watch become easy to position on and take off, I wasn't comfy carrying it all day. Its boxy shape (the face is square, now not round like conventional watches) didn't take a seat properly on my wrist, and made the Surge specifically uncomfortable to wear even as typing on my pc or seeking to fall asleep. this could be a problem for folks who need to use the device's sleep-monitoring capabilities.

The Surge is not water-proof, in line with the Fitbit internet site, which states that the device is "sweat, rain and splash evidence." consequently, you want to do away with the watch before showering or swimming. To be on the safe aspect, I even removed it whilst doing dishes within the sink. In comparison, the similarly priced TomTom Multi-recreation cardio additionally offers GPS abilities and may be fully submerged.

The watch has a battery lifestyles of up to seven days, in step with Fitbit. however, i found that with normal use and a each day hour-long exercising using the GPS-monitoring feature, the Surge had to be charged each three days or so. it is better than the 2 days of battery life you will get with the Microsoft Band, which additionally has built-in GPS and an optical coronary heart charge sensor, but it nevertheless felt like a whole lot of charging to me.

not like most GPS watches i've tested, the Surge has a touch-display show. you may scroll through the house display along with your finger to see your every day hobby metrics (like your range of steps taken and calories burned), or you could press a button to get to other screens, just like the exercising menu or a screen that helps you to set an alarm. The 3 buttons in this device are easy to press, and that i virtually favored this aggregate of built-in buttons and touch-display abilties because it made the Surge very smooth to navigate.

putting in place the Surge was additionally clean. You need to plug within the wi-fi dongle that comes with the Surge and download Fitbit's join software program in case you need to installation the watch on your pc. in case you're the usage of a cellular device, you may download the Fitbit app to get began. if you do not already have a Fitbit account, you'll be induced to create one earlier than using the watch. I used the Fitbit app and changed into pleasantly amazed to locate that, for the duration of the setup technique, the app provided beneficial bits of data, along with cleansing instructions for the Surge and guidelines on a way to role the watch to your wrist so as to gather correct coronary heart rate information.

The Fitbit app is quite simple to navigate and, once opened, speedy syncs with the tracker. on the app's fundamental menu, or dashboard, you may see all of your totals for the day (i.e., general steps taken or calories burned) listed as widgets that you press to look extra in-depth information. you can additionally scroll thru the app to look your information for previous days.

one of the best troubles I had whilst the use of the Surge had to do with charging the tool. The tracker comes with a charging cable that you can plug into the USB port of a laptop or a wall outlet (with a USB-to-wall adaptor, sold one after the other), and the other end plugs into a port on the bottom of the Surge. but i found that the charger easily became disconnected from the port at the tracker. two times at some stage in my week of testing, I thought I had left the Surge to fee in a single day handiest to discover that the cable had someway disconnected from the tracker, and it hadn't charged.

With its integrated heart fee sensor and GPS functions, the Surge is one of the most complete health trackers on the market. And Fitbit has done a reasonably right process of assisting customers make experience of all the more facts that the Surge tracks. within the "account" section of the app, you can study approximately heart price zones, or the number of heartbeats in keeping with minute you must strive for to reach one-of-a-kind health goals (i.e., burning fats or improving persistence whilst going for walks). The Surge calculates heart fee zones for you based totally for your age and numerous other elements, however you could also personalize these zones if you're familiar together with your common heart charge even as resting versus workout. there's additionally a hyperlink to Fitbit's FAQ page on heart rate right in the app, a function i found very useful.

The resting heart rate that the Surge tracked appeared accurate and turned into consistent with the resting heart price i have recorded with chest-strap coronary heart rate sensors. I also went jogging even as carrying each the Surge and the Garmin Forerunner 920XT — another multisport GPS watch with a well suited coronary heart rate strap that is going for $490— to see how the coronary heart price statistics from every device in comparison. despite the fact that information from the two devices numerous a piece in the course of my run, both gadgets suggested a nearly equal common coronary heart price for the overall workout. but, the Surge's coronary heart charge sensor has some quirks that extreme athletes may want to take into consideration earlier than shopping the device, according to Ray Maker (the writer of the famous exercising blog DC Rainmaker), who cited the watch's tendency to overlook dramatic dips in coronary heart price in his review of the Surge.

As for the Surge's GPS capabilities, i discovered that the tool changed into able to pick out up a GPS signal about as fast as other GPS watches while i was in a fairly open area (like my suburban neighborhood). but in Midtown ny, the Surge couldn't pick out up a sign at all. on the other hand, neither ought to the Suunto Ambit3 game, which I additionally wore round Midtown. The Surge executed better in other regions of new York metropolis, where there are fewer tall homes. universal, the Surge was simply as accurate at tracking my path and general distance traveled because the Suunto Ambit3 recreation and the Garmin Forerunner 920XT, each of which value more than Surge.

but, the Surge can not track biking or swimming, making it pretty vain for triathletes or folks who like to swim or cycle. proper now you can most effective use the Surge in GPS mode to track walking, hiking, on foot and golfing. A current announcement by means of the organisation claims that an upcoming software replace due out in April will assist out of doors cycling. however even if the Surge does get biking abilities, it's nevertheless missing swim features.

similarly to all its health-tracking skills, the Surge additionally lets in you to view texts and incoming calls from your telephone for your wrist. that is a handy function for individuals who do not feel like digging round for their telephone to study a textual content, but you can not reply to texts or solution calls from the Surge. The Microsoft Band and the Garmin Forerunner 920XT additionally send certain notifications from your telephone to your wrist, however neither the TomTom Multisport nor the Suunto Ambit3 game provide such smartwatch capabilities.

Like maximum of Fitbit's products, the Surge rewards your fitness efforts by means of sending you digital "badges" thru emails or phone notifications. I got a Redwood badge for climbing 25 flooring in sooner or later (i used to be moving out of my 2d-ground condominium), and i've to mention that it genuinely did encourage me to take the steps more regularly.

some people can also discover motivation in Fitbit's social functions. you may connect to other Fitbit customers through the company's app or web-primarily based dashboard. you could additionally search for human beings you know who additionally have Fitbit trackers, and assignment your friends or family participants to compete in step-count challenges just like the "daily Showdown" or the "Workweek Hustle."