Gadgetory

Fitbit has just put out another yet another new Fitbit what's actually new about it so this is the Fitbit Alta HR and as its name suggests it now has heart rate sensors it costs one hundred and forty nine ninety nine which is twenty dollars more than the regular Fitbit Alta and is about the same price of the Fitbit charge too which is a whole other wristband it looks exactly like last year's Alta exactly it has the same tap sensitive screen but one thing that's different about it on the underside is the strap it's a little bit different last year's Alta had a series of holes and you kind of snap in to close it and this one was more of a traditional railroad style strap the good thing about the Fitbit Alta is that it's one of the more attractive fitbit's out there you can see how people might mistake this for a bracelet not a clunky activity tracker which is nice on the downside it's one of the more basic Fitbit I mean attracts your steps and your distance traveled your calories burned it does track sleep but it's not like the kind of fitness band that you would use if you're going out for an intense exercise you wanted to you know get your duration and your GPS and your vo2 max it's not for that it's just your everyday activity tracker so why would Fitbit add heart rate sensors to this tracker well I mean for one you can check your heart rate throughout the day so right now mine is seventy which is a little high I think you're making me nervous but you also get your resting heart right now if you wear the Fitbit to bed which is considered to be a key baseline metric for your overall heart health and speaking of sleep Fitbit is now doing more advanced sleep tracking not just with the alto but with a few of its other wristbands as well so this means you can now go into the app after you've slept and you can see your different sleep stages in a way that you couldn't see it before and the app is also giving you insights around your sleep like how you sleep during the week compared to the weekends or how that informs other key metrics in your health if it is not the first company to do this I mean there have been other wearable makers out there that have tracked your sleep before and said what kind of stages you're in when you're sleeping and we don't know how accurate all this is by the way but it's a nice feature ad okay so a few things to know about the Fitbit Alta it does have some automatic exercise recognition technology which means if you go for a brisk walk or an intense run it's going to pick up on that but you can't start or stop exercises like I said earlier you also means I wouldn't necessarily trust it when it comes to accuracy if you want to know exactly how many miles you ran I mean this doesn't have GPS it's just using an accelerometer so take that with a grain of salt some people have also asked me whether or not this would be a good replacement for the charge - which is also $150 and also has heart rate sensors built in and my answer is no I mean this is really meant to be more of a stylish Fitbit kind of a basic Fitbit and the charge to actually does have specific exercise tracking by the way this means Fitbit has nearly ten different Fitbit models for sale on its site right now along with that smart scale that it's still selling and it's all just kind of a repackaging of the same feature sets in the same technology with slight variations on features and price so it's cool that the Alta now has heart rate sensors but it's not like this is the most innovative new Fitbit we've seen so should you buy the Fitbit Alta HR if you are one of those people who bought the Alta last year and you love that activity tracking wristband and you've said to yourself on a dozen occasions this is great but I really wish I had heart rate tracking then this is for you you should be really happy because that position is easy right but if you're looking for more tense exercise tracking you want to stop and start you want to track your runs and your cycling and your swims and all that other stuff this is not for you okay this is just your everyday activity tracker there are other products out there beyond fitbit's by the way that do more intense exercise tracking in fact we've reviewed a lot of them so go to the verge comm and check it out for watching I'm learning good host of this special episode on every Fitbit you need to know about because there are 2700 of them now and we're going to break it down in this 7 part miniskirt