Gadgetory

for the past few years Fitbit has been dominating the for this tracker market that's not hard to understand why their products are super simple you just put them on your wrist where I'm all day and they tell you if we're moving or if you're being lazy with the new Fitbit blaze that it's trying something a bit more stylish more sophisticated maybe more smart question is how does it work just like other fitbit's the $200 blaze will track your daily activity count your steps heart rate age high while you're sleeping and put all that data into Fitbit SAP on your phone where you can compete with your friends this one adds a few new tricks there's a nice color screen and the watch tells you how to do certain exercises and it will track your workouts automatically but above all else Fitbit is pushing in the style and fashion with blaze because you can swap bands between Silicon weather and a pricier steel option the steel frame around the blaze is kind of huge even on my wrists Blaze's screen is the nicest one fit that's ever made it's bright even in sunlight colorful very easy to read you can pick between a few watch faces although not a big fan of any of them they aren't terrible and some change colors based on your heart rate swiping over one brings you to the today's screen and that's where all your key stats are your steps heart rate distance walked calories and floors climbed sleep over again and come to the exercise mood blaze supports tracking for all the basics running walking biking and even weights and it automatically log a workout if you've been more active than normal for at least 15 minutes but there's no GPS built in so you've got to carry your phone with you you're going to run outside and want to track your route that's pretty disappointing from a 200-dollar fitness device another disappointment is that the blaze for right now at least doesn't even remind you to get up and move around that that says that's coming in a future software update then there's Fitz tower feature the blaze that shows you how to do certain workouts by showing you people like animations on the screen it's useful but the blaze doesn't really give you any feedback on whether you're doing things right something the Microsoft band is really good at even so as a daily fitness tracker blaze works really well it's really accurate accounting your steps and distance though I'm less confident in the floors climb numbers which always seem kind of off and heart rate is a mixed bag it's decent for Oh 70% of the day but much less reliable when you're deep in a workout Fitbit calls the blaze a smart fitness not a SmartWatch but it's still not really as smart as I like there are notifications for calls text and calendar but that's it no Facebook no Twitter no Instagram not even email now I can understand why you'd want to tune those things out but the option should at least be there they are music controls when you're playing music on your phone but again this is all pretty basic stuff but that brings us to the blazes big strength battery Fitbit says in the last five days net charge and I can actually vouch for that it'll go a solid four days at least and let's just say I'm thankful for that battery life since this thing's charger is ridiculous you've got to pop out the blaze and put it in this little plastic housing that bits definitely pushing the style with the blaze and I'll let you decide how it's doing there but as a fitness tracker there's really just not enough here to recommend it over the charge HR in fact you can look at the blaze as a really nice charge HR and if that's worth 200 bucks to you by all means but I'm fine waiting to see what comes next