Fitbit Flex

Aug 3, 2013 - The Fitbit Flex is the first wrist fitness tracker from the maker of the Fitbit Ultra. It’s reasonably-priced, pretty convenient to slot into your life and is water resistant. However, it lacks some key features compared Fitbit’s other trackers and not as stylish looking as its wrist-bound rivals.

Jun 20, 2013 - A long list of features and a comfortable fit make Fitbit’s new Flex the best fitness tracker you can buy.

May 28, 2013 - Which goes back to the verdict we came to in our Jawbone Up review, that the Fitbit is a much more useful fitness tool, while the Up is a lifestyle tech accessory.

The Flex does start to veer to the accessory side of the fence with its design, but it's app keeps it firmly in the fitness tool category.

The Fitbit ecosystem is a great way to start using technology to keep on top of your personal health. But the Flex is the weakest link in the product lineup, a device that tries to take the same technology as the One and place it in a much more convenient position on the body.

The catch is that it sacrifices too much. Gone is the satisfying feeling of accuracy, with high step counts seemingly too-easy to obtain thanks to inaccurate algorithms.

The wristband itself could also use a little more work. It's lightweight and comfortable, but looks more like the watchband on a kid's watch than a truly stylish piece of tech.

All that said though, Fitbit has shown the strengths of its platform. Wireless syncing is essential in this product lineup, and having a strong app ecosystem is a huge benefit to fitness trackers out there.

There's no doubt the second generation Flex will improve on all of the issues, but at this stage the One is still a much better alternative for your money.

May 6, 2013 - WIRED Great design. Best smartphone app of all the trackers on the market (Oh, and it’s on Android too). Amazing battery life. Scoble-proof: You can wear it in the shower.

TIRED Thanks for telling me what I’ve done, but please tell me more about what I should do. Would be nice if device itself showed number of steps taken at a glance.

May 6, 2013 - The Flex offers all the features you'd desire most in a fitness tracker while also being more attractive and more affordable than its competitors.

May 6, 2013 - The $99.99 Fitbit Flex is on one hand the exact opposite of the $129.99 Jawbone Up. The Up is intentionally obvious, a piece of jewelry that also happens to be functional; the Flex just tries to get out of your way as much as possible. There's a case to be made for either, but for me, the Flex works better as a device I don't have to take off when I type, or plug in constantly to charge and sync. It's much more set-it-and-forget-it, and that works better for me. It unquestionably made me more active just by wearing it – I became hyper-aware of my step count, found myself jogging in the evenings when I hadn't walked around much during the day, and even walked to the second-closest bodega to buy groceries. There's something inherently placebic about that, but it sure works.

Where the two devices are similar is in their shortcomings. Jawbone and Fitbit both collect plenty of data... and just don't do much with it. The Up could be more useful now thanks to Jawbone's new API and its integration with IFTTT, RunKeeper, and others, but it requires quite a bit of work and app-jumping to do all that properly. By avoiding this entirely, and intentionally collecting no data other than whether or not you do better than yesterday, Nike's FuelBand is perhaps an easier sell – it's less work for ultimately the same reward. But there's a lot more to see with the Flex, and I can wear the band while I work.

Fitbit has nearly figured out how to make a fitness device you both won't lose and won't notice – that's not an easy feat. The next thing it needs to do is convince me, and everyone else, why it's worth spending $99 to track how much you eat and how many steps you take. Whatever company can help me turn all that information into better sleep wins my wrist — at least until someone builds it all into the watch I already wear.