- Dec 14, 2014
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I've heard lots of comments about the Band not being comfortable, and will admit that when first putting it on, it feels a bit awkward. But I've used mine now for a couple of months, and I find the comfort level to be very good. I barely notice that its on my wrist. By contrast, I have tried two separate trials of three days each with my Fitbit Surge, and both times the results were not good. When I first put the Surge on, it feels great. After a couple of days though, it advances to first uncomfortable, and then to borderline painful. I think it has to do with the surge's band width (its pretty wide compared to the Band), coupled with the fact that there is no ventilation under all that width. This even with making sure to give it some off-wrist time, and keeping it scrupulously clean.
I'm fairly impatient about MS not getting up to speed with a web dashboard, and all the other promised features ("actionable insights" for instance). However, spending some time in the Fitbit ecosystem keeps driving me back to the Band and MS Health. The web dashboard is pretty clunky, the data is very proprietary, and the Band was released quite complete feature-wise when compared to the Surge, particularly regarding windows phone support. It syncs, but that's about it. No notifications on surge, no music control, just sync. And phone notifications? Yeah, they are there, sometimes I get 10 identical notifications on the phone per event. The Surge consistently over-counts my steps, gives me credit for nine floors climbed on a day where I haven't seen a single staircase, and because the screen doesn't lock, is perpetually on the wrong screen when I glance at it to check the time. The back-light is barely adequate to see the screen in the dark, but is fine in daylight.
I absolutely love the Band notifications I get with windows phone. Calls, texts, email, and more should I desire them. All seem to work very well, and its nice to just give a glance at your wrist rather than pulling the phone out to see whats coming in. The screen is pretty nice too, particularly with "Pimp My Band" (great app). The latest firmware update seemed to really smooth out the scrolling too. Cortana on the Band is pretty cool, but could use some further functionality.
Optical HR isn't perfect on either one, but sure isn't any better on the Surge. Neither one is very good at capturing spikes in HR resulting from strength training, and my feeling is that this is a software thing. Seems like both are applying some sort of overly aggressive error correction or 'smoothing', believing the short duration changes to be mistakes. Maybe this is something you have to do to make optical HR work at all with body movement, I don't know. Both seem quite good for cardio based exercise, or for 'all day' HR, for that matter.
It being the dead of winter here in northern Maine, I haven't had much chance to really test GPS on either one, but the Surge help forum is littered with concerns/complaints about it.
The auto-sleep function on the Surge seems to work flawlessly for me, and it is very nice not having to remember to turn sleep on and off. Sure wish the Band had it!
The Surge has more flexibility regarding categories of activities, whereas the Band just gives you just 'Run' or 'Exercise'. However, I'm not at all sure that all that flexibility translates into higher accuracy with HR, calorie burn, etc. Neither one has any dedicated cycling category, which I find disappointing. And anyway, with the Band you can name an activity anything you want. The problem for me comes when transferring this info to a third-party app, like Runkeeper. No matter what you name the activity in MS Health, Runkeeper categorizes it as either 'Run' or 'Strength'. So, when I sync a Spinning activity that I've recorded as 'exercise' in MS Health (since there are no cycling/spinning options), for instance, Runkeeper gives me rewards for 'strength training'. I can go in and edit the activity in Runkeeper and change it to Spinning, but there's still all those mis-categorized awards on my feed.
Speaking of third party apps, Fitbit syncs with some, the Band syncs with others. So far in my experience, none of these synchronizations are perfect in practice. Some data syncs, some data doesn't. For instance, Surge data flows to Endomondo, but only step data, not activities. Data flows both ways with this one, but not with that one. Its enough to give you fits trying to figure out what works with what, whether it really works well, and whether its going to end up giving you duplicated records in one app or the other. There are so many variables in the way that different programs handle and present data, it must be a nightmare for the developers to make anything work at all!
Speaking of Cycling/Spinning.......both the Surge and the Band require some serious workarounds if you want to track all the possible data. Currently I'm just using my bike on a trainer since it is winter, but here's what I'm doing. I use the Band in exercise mode to capture the general data (time, hr, etc.), and my old Android phone (Note 2) running the IpBike app to capture my ant+ speed and cadence sensors. Then when I've finished, the activity transfers to Runkeeper, and I can either put cadence/speed info in as a note, or I can upload the activity from IpBike to Runkeeper, and make a note of avg and max HR info. I did the same thing with the Surge, except the Surge has a 'Spinning' activity.
I guess in summing up, I'm not totally pleased with either tracker, but I keep coming back to the Band. Really wanted the Surge to work for me, in view of the concern that MS won't continue to improve/support the Band, but the wrist discomfort I get with the Surge appears to be putting the kibosh on that. Please-please, MS, keep progress up with the Band and MS Health, ok? Got something really good going here, if you stick with it!
I'm fairly impatient about MS not getting up to speed with a web dashboard, and all the other promised features ("actionable insights" for instance). However, spending some time in the Fitbit ecosystem keeps driving me back to the Band and MS Health. The web dashboard is pretty clunky, the data is very proprietary, and the Band was released quite complete feature-wise when compared to the Surge, particularly regarding windows phone support. It syncs, but that's about it. No notifications on surge, no music control, just sync. And phone notifications? Yeah, they are there, sometimes I get 10 identical notifications on the phone per event. The Surge consistently over-counts my steps, gives me credit for nine floors climbed on a day where I haven't seen a single staircase, and because the screen doesn't lock, is perpetually on the wrong screen when I glance at it to check the time. The back-light is barely adequate to see the screen in the dark, but is fine in daylight.
I absolutely love the Band notifications I get with windows phone. Calls, texts, email, and more should I desire them. All seem to work very well, and its nice to just give a glance at your wrist rather than pulling the phone out to see whats coming in. The screen is pretty nice too, particularly with "Pimp My Band" (great app). The latest firmware update seemed to really smooth out the scrolling too. Cortana on the Band is pretty cool, but could use some further functionality.
Optical HR isn't perfect on either one, but sure isn't any better on the Surge. Neither one is very good at capturing spikes in HR resulting from strength training, and my feeling is that this is a software thing. Seems like both are applying some sort of overly aggressive error correction or 'smoothing', believing the short duration changes to be mistakes. Maybe this is something you have to do to make optical HR work at all with body movement, I don't know. Both seem quite good for cardio based exercise, or for 'all day' HR, for that matter.
It being the dead of winter here in northern Maine, I haven't had much chance to really test GPS on either one, but the Surge help forum is littered with concerns/complaints about it.
The auto-sleep function on the Surge seems to work flawlessly for me, and it is very nice not having to remember to turn sleep on and off. Sure wish the Band had it!
The Surge has more flexibility regarding categories of activities, whereas the Band just gives you just 'Run' or 'Exercise'. However, I'm not at all sure that all that flexibility translates into higher accuracy with HR, calorie burn, etc. Neither one has any dedicated cycling category, which I find disappointing. And anyway, with the Band you can name an activity anything you want. The problem for me comes when transferring this info to a third-party app, like Runkeeper. No matter what you name the activity in MS Health, Runkeeper categorizes it as either 'Run' or 'Strength'. So, when I sync a Spinning activity that I've recorded as 'exercise' in MS Health (since there are no cycling/spinning options), for instance, Runkeeper gives me rewards for 'strength training'. I can go in and edit the activity in Runkeeper and change it to Spinning, but there's still all those mis-categorized awards on my feed.
Speaking of third party apps, Fitbit syncs with some, the Band syncs with others. So far in my experience, none of these synchronizations are perfect in practice. Some data syncs, some data doesn't. For instance, Surge data flows to Endomondo, but only step data, not activities. Data flows both ways with this one, but not with that one. Its enough to give you fits trying to figure out what works with what, whether it really works well, and whether its going to end up giving you duplicated records in one app or the other. There are so many variables in the way that different programs handle and present data, it must be a nightmare for the developers to make anything work at all!
Speaking of Cycling/Spinning.......both the Surge and the Band require some serious workarounds if you want to track all the possible data. Currently I'm just using my bike on a trainer since it is winter, but here's what I'm doing. I use the Band in exercise mode to capture the general data (time, hr, etc.), and my old Android phone (Note 2) running the IpBike app to capture my ant+ speed and cadence sensors. Then when I've finished, the activity transfers to Runkeeper, and I can either put cadence/speed info in as a note, or I can upload the activity from IpBike to Runkeeper, and make a note of avg and max HR info. I did the same thing with the Surge, except the Surge has a 'Spinning' activity.
I guess in summing up, I'm not totally pleased with either tracker, but I keep coming back to the Band. Really wanted the Surge to work for me, in view of the concern that MS won't continue to improve/support the Band, but the wrist discomfort I get with the Surge appears to be putting the kibosh on that. Please-please, MS, keep progress up with the Band and MS Health, ok? Got something really good going here, if you stick with it!
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