I own a Fitbit Charge HR. I've had it for about two years. It's nearing the end of it's life, as the strap will soon fail, and I need to think about replacing it. The most obvious choice would be the newer model, or the slightly flashier smartwatch style offering. But at the moment I think I'll move on. Here's why.
If you make gadgets, as fitbit do, you have essentially two ways to create customer loyalty. You can either make the best damn thing you can and roll out improvements to it as software development allows. Or, you can wall it off, keep make it incompatible with everything else and try to lock the customer in.
You also have two ways to sell more gadgets to your existing customers. You can make the best damn thing you can and keep it updated, rolling out improvements as software development allows. Or, you can only add new features to the new trackers, even though they're software features based in the app and nothing to do with the tracker.
It's this last point that has really annoyed me.
To make sure your tracked distance is as accurate as possible it's necessary to calibrate your stride length in the fitbit. In the Charge HR this is a manual process. With the Charge HR2 there is a feature that uses the smartphone GPS to measure how far you've walked/run, work out your stride length and update the fitbit. This is purely an app feature and there's no reason not add this functionality to the earlier fitbit devices, yet fitbit have chosen not to do that.
Even more annoying is the Charge HR doesn't have the facility to track a workout using GPS. The newer model does but, again, this is purely a smartphone app feature and nothing to do with the fitbit itself.
As far as I'm concerned fitbit is withholding features from earlier customers in the hope we will upgrade.
That stinks. So no, I probably won't upgrade. I'll look elsewhere.
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