My new Fitbit Inspire HR

New year, new Fitbit.

I've just bought myself a Fitbit Inspire HR to replace my Alta HR. It's a natural upgrade, basically a fitness tracker of the same kind, but the latest version. The old Alta HR, bought in August 2018 and now redundant, though still working perfectly, has been offered to my friend Angie, who does a lot of walking when she can, and is keen to restore her weight and fitness to what it used to be. She has accepted it, and I am sure it will serve her very well.

All Fitbits collect data to sync to the amazing Fitbit app, which enables you to see, in as much detail as you wish - ever more if you drill down - how well you are progressing towards your target level of fitness. As well as showing you how you are doing with charts and graphs and scores, the app is an encouraging friend, making you really positive about the effort required. The app was the prime reason I stayed with Fitbit, and didn't go for another brand of fitness tracker - or another kind of device.

I was originally considering a much more ambitious upgrade to the Fitbit Versa 2, which is a more advanced fitness tracker, with many of the features of a smartwatch. But it looked huge on my wrist. So did the proper smartwatches by Google, Samsung, Garmin and the rest (I didn't even look at Apple, as I'm an Android girl). Big watches are fashionable, but really, they would all be absurdly oversized on me! Like proverbial dinner-plates.

Besides, I didn't want a lot of overlap between the functions of my phone and the functions of a smartwatch. I would always prefer the more accomplished, larger-screened and easier-to-handle phone; and so I'd be paying for smartwatch features I'd never use.

Finally, all proper smartwatches are very expensive!

My new Fitbit Inspire HR cost me £89.99 online from John Lewis, and I bought it on a 'click and collect' basis, picking it up next day at my local Waitrose - which avoided having to hang around at home, waiting for a postal delivery. It came immaculately packaged in a stout cardboard box. I simply had to give the Waitrose Customer Services chappie the order number and evidence of ID - my latest Driving Licence, as it happens.

So here it was, taken out of that package when back home.

I'd chosen the white strap. Inside the box, my brand new Fitbit looked resplendent and begging to be used.

Two strap-lengths were provided: 'small' and 'large'. Possibly because more females than males might opt for the white strap, it came with the 'small' strap fitted, and the long strap (if needed) was in a sealed bag, along with the charging cable.

Well, staying with the shorter strap for now, it was time to try it on!

Looks good! That's my old Alta HR with the fuschia-red strap on the grey surface behind. With both on my wrist, side by side, I could appreciate that the new model was all-plastic (and therefore lighter in weight), flatter, and slightly wider. This meant that the visible screen was larger, one of the things that made the upgrade attractive.

The strap was also wider, so that the Inspire HR looked like some kind of regular watch, and not like a bracelet, as the narrower Alta HR had. A different kind of fashion statement, then. Despite the extra strap width, the Inspire HR still looked right for a female-sized wrist, as shown below. The white strap colour helped, of course.

The screen was lit up, but the battery level was only 4%, and before doing anything else I needed to charge it up somewhat. So I took it off, attached the charging cable magnetically to the underside (the 'skin side') of the tracker, and pushed the other end into a USB socket on my laptop. The cable was short, but this really wasn't a problem.

I gave it an hour. At the end it was 86% charged up - that's 82% added in 60 minutes: reasonably fast. So presumably a 100% charge would in theory need 73 minutes - say an hour and a quarter - although subsequent charges might go faster than the very first. A full charge is meant to last five whole days. We'll see. (I resumed charging during the late evening, achieving a 100% charge before midnight)

The 'small' strap fitted my wrist, but my Alta HR experience suggested that I'd actually be happier with the 'large' strap, so my next job was to swap them over. That wasn't difficult. Yes...it was easier to get the thing on and off with the longer strap. The strap for the Inspire HR wasn't as stiff as the Alta HR strap had been. I suppose the heavier, part-aluminium electronics pod on the taller and narrower Alta HR had needed a stiffer strap to hold its sensors correctly onto the the wrist. No such issue with the wider and flatter Inspire HR, so its strap could be softer, more flexible, and therefore even more comfortable.

Next, I used the Fitbit app on my phone to set up my new Inspire HR. That didn't take much time. (I'd already watched a YouTube video on how to do it, and had a good idea of what to expect)

Now - with dusk falling - I compared the Inspire HR and Alta HR displays.

Both devices were still syncing to the Fitbit app on my phone, so were essentially showing the same thing. The old Alta HR showed my steps for the day to the nearest 100 ('3.8K', meaning '3,800'), but the new Inspire HR had room to show the actual figure in full ('3,837'), and had a better visual indication of how close I was to my 10,000 step target (that white line about one-third of the way around the grey circle). The winner here was my new Fitbit.

Now the time display. With a clock face like the Alta HR's installed, the larger display on my new Fitbit was mostly easier to read - at least the time itself certainly was. The date underneath was however very small. The old Alta HR won on date size, and usefully showed which day it was as well.

Dissatisfied with this clock face, I switched to another in a vaguely Art Deco style, which showed just the time:

Now that was clear and stylish! I didn't mind the way some figures overlapped. This particular clock face actually turned the Inspire HR into a very usable ordinary watch, which the Alta HR had not been. To briefly see the time, I simply raised my wrist and looked at the screen. Ditto to access any of the Fitbit's other information. Alternatively, a little button on the side of the pod could be pressed - or you could tap the screen with a finger. It seemed to me that the Inspire HR was slightly more responsive to finger-taps than the old Alta HR had been. And the Alta HR had had no button.

Once activated as above, the screen was touch-sensitive, and scrolling with a finger up or down revealed various features such as a timer in one direction, and the current stats for steps, heart rate and so on in the other. A quick press of the button let you go back one step. A long press of it brought up other stuff, such as how much battery life was left. (If the display timed out, it reset to show the time when first reactivated) Of course, it was all just summary information, presented as briefly as possible. The Fitbit app was the proper place to go for full details.

Compared to the old Alta HR, there were a fair number of unsuspected on-device features and settings. I'll be exploring these.

The Inspire HR vibrated when a timer had run its course, or an alarm had gone off, or if Bluetooth was enabled and there was a notification. I have to say it was a very gentle vibration that didn't go on for very long, and might not always catch my attention. It was possibly even gentler than the old Alta HR's. I don't think it would wake me up from a deep sleep.

It also vibrated when a goal was achieved, as for example when getting to my 10,000 step target for the day. The old Alta HR made a big thing of this, vibrating furiously, and the display lighting up by itself to show a rocket taking off, plus plenty of fireworks, before revealing a magic '10,000'. Not the same on the new Fitbit! I went out of my way today - walking in the wet, at dusk - to get 10,000 steps in on my Inspire HR. But when I achieved that, all I felt was the usual quiet vibration, and no rocket and fireworks on the display. It was just blank. Then I realised that I needed to wake the display up, by pressing the side-button. I just caught the tail end of something.

Next time, I'll be ready, and will press that button as soon as I feel the vibration. Also, I have re-enabled 'notifications' in the Inspire HR's internal settings, which may help to get the 'goal-achieved' fireworks-show to display automatically. But I suspect that it won't be quite as fun as the one on the Alta HR's. Never mind.

So: first verdict. A worthwhile update - a sleeker design; better features; a clearer, brighter display; and generally easier to use.

I don't have to stick with the white strap. I can install something else if I think it's boring or not 'me'.  Indeed, I've already ordered a mint-coloured strap from a third-party online supplier. It looks like this:

That's a nice colour. 'Mint' in more than one sense! (I understand that 'mint' is Northern slang for 'nice' or 'cool') Whether I'll actually swap the white strap for this mint one is not so certain. I really do like the white - more than I thought I would - and may well stay with it! Mind you, a white strap is likely to get grubby sooner than anything else, and if that happens, the mint strap can be swapped in.