As someone who works in technology it’s no surprise that I am typically an “early adopter” of technology. I bought my first PC in 1984, became hooked on my first PalmPilot in 1997 and followed similarly with Blackberries, iPhones etc. Cameras and music players are no different. I also love trying new “apps” and truly delight when they improve my life in ways both small (Paybyphone Parking in SF) and large (Facebook). So given my commitment to exercise I was logical that I should try out one of the wearable devices

I tried on various wristband devices by JawBone, Fitbit,and Nike but really didn’t like the idea of seeing one of these on my wrist all the time. Plus, I have extremely small wists and they look ridiculous on me not to mention feeling annoyingly large.

When I read about the Fitbit One which has pretty much all of the physical features of the wrist models(actually more than the Flex) in a form factor that can be worn attached to clothing I thought I would give it a try.

Two months in I must say I’m not won over.

First off, I believe there needs to be a significant benefit to the device if I am going to deal with yet another thing that needs to be kept track of, managed and kept charged. Larger  benefit required if the designers force me to use a dedicated charger instead of micro usb  – I really do not relish one more charger to take with me when I travel.

So what have I found to be the benefits? The Fitbit one is light weight and comfortable to wear (easy to clip on bra, waistband). The charge is long lasting – at least I don’t need to bring the charger for a short trip. The Fitbit amazingly survived a trip through the washer and dryer.  My floors climbed are tracked. Living in a three-story house, it turns out that when I am doing chores at home I can get a surprising amount of exercise – this was interesting. The most important benefit is it is always on (at least if I remember to wear it which has not been difficult) – all of my steps are tracked unlike an app like RunKeeper which you need to start and stop

On the other hand there are several drawbacks and limitations. The Fitbit is useless to monitor my exercise classes – I enjoy a variety of dance, conditioning, crossfit, barre and power yoga classes and they barely register on the Fitbit. Yes I know I can manually log them but that defeats the point of wearing the device. I wish it came in a light beige color – the dark colors show through my clothes. Accuracy has not been great – I hike many trails where the distance is known to me and the Fitbit consistently give me about 15% extra miles. Perhaps this is because as a small person I take more steps to cover the same distance?

I also bought the Aria scale. Nice looking device and an improvement in usability over our Tanita but also not much value add beyond the independent device. I don’t need an app to tell me if I’m gaining or losing – the scale plus my second grade math skill does it independently.

Bottom line for me is that I found this experiment with quantified self devices to be interesting and educational but not compelling. I exercise for my own health benefit – physical and mental, not because I’m competing with anyone so the gamification and social elements were not interesting to me. Most of my exercise is hiking, where I know the distance, or exercise classes where the device isn’t very useful. For new hikes I can use the iPhone to know the distance if that’s important to me. I do find it interesting to use the Fitbit to learn how active I am when I’m not doing a formal workout but I haven’t found that information to be anything that changes my behavior. This was in contrast to what I find to be the best food journal app on the market – MyFitnessPal. A couple of weeks of tracking my food in MyFitnessPal showed me my trouble spots (who would have imagined a medium CineArts popcorn without butter has 760 calories?) and helped me achieve my weight goal.

It’s not that quantification is useless. Quantification of health data does matter. Calories matter if you are trying to manage your weight and apps can be helpful if you enter correct quantities. How far you hike or how many steps you take in a day absolutely matters if you are counting on that activity as part of your exercise and fitness plan. The question is if regular use of the device adds enough more quantification data than you have without to justify constant use – so far for me the answer is no but I’m curious what others think about this.