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Tag Archives: steps
Nike+ FuelBand vs Fitbit Tracking: Spring 2013 Update
Here at QS Labs we’ve been curious about the differences between two of the most popular devices among self-trackers: The Nike+ FuelBand and the FitBit. I’m the latest experimenter on this topic, and since January I’ve been wearing a FuelBand on my left wrist and a FitBit (original model) in the right hand coin pocket of my jeans. The FitBit almost always counts significantly more steps than the FuelBand.
The details are interesting. When Bastian compared his FuelBand vs his Fitbit, he found a slight correlation between his activity level and the difference in the number of steps they counted. In other words, them more active he was, the more the two devices disagreed. When Ernesto did his FuelBand vs Fitbit test, his numbers closely matched. My data is more like Bastian’s, but with the effect of high activity even clearer. Look at the graph below. On the vertical axis is the difference in step count, by day. On the horizontal access is the number of daily steps Fitbit counted. The higher the number of “FitBit steps,” the more likely it is that “Fuelband steps” are much lower.
Posted in Discussions, Tool Roundups
Tagged activity tracking, comparisons, FitBit, FuelBand, nike, qstop, steps, trackers
8 Comments
Fuelband vs Fitbit: Do They Agree on Steps?
We are not the only ones curious about whether our activity level looks different when seen with different trackers. Bastian Greshake, co-founder of OpenSNP.org, has been comparing his FuelBand and his Fitbit for months. Here’s what he found.
Inspired by Ernesto’s post I wanted to take a look at how my data for the Fitbit and the FuelBand compare to each other. I started wearing the FuelBand in October of last year. Since then it has only left my wrist to recharge the battery. I was already carrying a Fitbit Ultra, which I’ve had since May 2012. I wear the FuelBand on my dominant arm. The Fitbit is usually clipped to the pocket of my jeans and I have it on my non-dominant arm while sleeping. From my day-to-day experience I have a sense that FuelBand steps are usually a good way below the Fitbit steps. But I also thought that the difference was getting smaller, probably due to firmware updates on the FuelBand.
Using the Fitbit-API (and it’s integration into openSNP) it’s quite easy to get a file that contains all step counts measured with the Ultra. If you have an openSNP account you can download the complete file, also including sleep data and body measurements here. Unfortunately the Nike+ API isn’t ready yet, so one needs to manually scrape the data. As this is boring work that can’t easily be automated I only got FuelBand step data back to 2013/11/16. Still, that should be enough to get a first insight on how both devices compare.
Posted in Discussions, Tool Roundups
Tagged data analysis, FitBit, FuelBand, nike, physical activity, qstop, steps, trackers
5 Comments