I’m a freak for data. I love knowing how I spend my time, tracking fitness, donations to our ministry, books I’ve read–practically anything that is measurable I want to measure.

One thing I hadn’t ever done a good job of was tracking my fitness. I kept a journal of my workouts for a few months. I tried a pedometer for all of three days. Then, I heard about the FitBit One and received it as a Christmas gift.

The FitBit One is the fanciest pedometer you’ll ever meet. It’s far more than a step counter–it’s a fitness data machine. It tracks your steps per day, flights of stairs you’ve climbed, calories burned, sleep efficiency and more.

Here’s my review after two months of daily use.

The Good

• Step accuracy. It just knows.
• Flights of stairs. A fun stat that seems really accurate.
• Add other activities. Anything the FitBit doesn’t track (like biking, swimming, lifting) you can add manually. A number of activities from snow skiing to a gym workout are included, and you just select the amount of time you performed the activity and it automatically calculates calories burned.
• Weight tracking. Add your weight via the iPhone app to track on your FitBit dashboard online
• Silent Alarm. Niki loves this feature (and she doesn’t have a FitBit). The FitBit vibrates you awake, which is better than waking up to any alarm sound and your spouse who needs more sleep than you will be a huge fan.
• Goals. I’m incredibly motivated by goals, so the ability to change how many steps, flights of stairs and calories burned to challenge myself is a great feature.
• Response from their support team. I had an issue with syncing to my iPhone. I tweeted about it and a member of their support team contacted me within five minutes. Now that’s fast.
• Weekly email digests. Letting you know how far you walked, steps taken, flights of stairs climbed and calories burned. Oh, the beautiful data.
• Size. So tiny you don’t even notice it.
• Battery life. A charge lasts 5 – 7 days, no problem.
• Sleep tracking. You can wear the FitBit in an armband that tracks how long you slept and how many times you woke up during the night.
• Activity tracking. Graphs that tell you when you were fairly, lightly and very active, as well as your time spent sedentary, wasting away in your cubicle.

The Bad

• The iPhone app is less than stellar. It’s a bit of a hassle to update silent alarms from your iPhone
• Syncing is frustrating. Any time you turn off bluetooth, you have to turn it back on in your phone settings, then go into a deep menu setting to re-enable it via their app. That’s annoying. It should automatically turn back on with the bluetooth setting. I didn’t figure it out until a tech support person told me about the issue, and I thought the app was just not connecting, so I couldn’t change the silent alarm for a few days.
• Practically none of your friends have it. I’d imagine I have a fair amount of friends ahead of the curve in the technology world, yet according to my Facebook sync on FitBit, only two of them (of 1,400+) are rocking a FitBit of any type.
• No wall charger. The USB cable is only 3″ long and you have to plug it into your computer to charge. However, you can plug it into any other USB charging brick (like a Kindle or iPhone charger) to use it in the wall.
• No iPad app. Being able to see all of your stats in a native iPad app would be glorious.
• Username. You don’t get a fitbit.com/user/username for easy online access, and once you set a username you’re stuck with it. It seems like you can change it on the online profile, but after a while it goes back to your original name, so choose wisely.
• The computer Bluetooth adapter. Even though your computer likely has Bluetooth, you have to use their super-slim-easy-to-lose-USB-Bluetooth adapter to sync the FitBit to your computer, wasting a USB port on your computer if you leave it in all the time, and risking losing it all together if you take it out and only use it for syncing. I practically never use this and just sync via the iPhone app.

What I don’t use

• Calorie counting via manual input. I’m not patient enough to log every food I eat in addition to the calories, but if you do that, the FitBit has this feature online and via the iPhone app.
  
• Community forums. It seems like an active community online sharing goals and tips, but I don’t have much use for it.

What’s included?

• FitBit One pedometer
• Waist clip (for dads and nerds)
• Sleeping armband
• Computer USB charger
• Bluetooth Computer Adapter
• Online Dashboard

How small is it?

Really small. Easy to lose small. I find myself constantly tapping my pockets to make sure it’s still there (because wearing the clip is for people who still have pagers.)

Does it actually motivate you?

Absolutely. If I don’t have my 10,000 steps in for the day, I find myself going on a walk (either around my house or around the block).

Recommendation

I’m a big fan. $100 is expensive for a pedometer, but the FitBit gives you access to data that a regular pedometer doesn’t.

If you have $100 burning a hole in your pocket, go for it. I had a pedometer in the past and I used it for a grand total of two days. It didn’t motivate me–the FitBit does. If you love data, are trying to get in shape, are motivated by goals, or get a discount for tracking your walking mileage from your health insurance, I think it’s worth it.

One disclaimer: If you don’t have an iPhone or iPod Touch, I don’t think it’s worth it. it would be too much of a hassle to connect and sync it to your computer every time you want to update something. The iPhone app (although it’s shoddy) makes it worth the money.

I’d say this thing would kill at $50 price-point (and they do have a cheaper FitBit for around $60, but it doesn’t collect the same data). At $100, the cost is steep, but I think it’s worth it. It’s definitely motivated me to be more active, especially in frigid winter months.