Fitness wristbands and watches

A couple of days ago I was enjoying a light lunch locally with Sue and Valerie, and Sue was showing us the Fitbit fitness wristband her husband Dave had bought for her. I think she said he had one too. Both Sue and Dave are keen on walking as much as possible, and both take their little cockerpoo dog Molly for long country walks, which keeps them all healthy.

Now I would most definitely say that I pay great attention to what I eat and drink, and I have no unhealthy habits like smoking and excessive drinking, and so on. But I can't claim to be fit. I get out of breath on any slope, and can't run any distance. I am not the worst. I tested myself on the steep hill at Robin Hood's Bay in Yorkshire last June, and managed a credible 100 yards before being forced to quit. Indeed a couple watching me said 'Well done!'

So I am not yet a lost cause, and with a steady long-term programme of ever-more-strenuous walking could get back to a reasonable state of fitness. Walking will do nicely - it fits in so well with photography.

In fact, it's vital that I get a good deal fitter, if I want to live long and be active into my eighties and nineties. Gym-type exercises have no appeal, and I am not at all sporty. I am not even competitive. But I can set a personal target and work at it until I get there, if it will secure a clear and obvious personal benefit. Losing weight, for example. And it's the time of my life when a small but permanent improvement in general fitness will pay great dividends, and enhance the effect of keeping my weight down.

So I'm in the mood to look at what fitness bands and watches can do for me. I am so lacking in physical energy. I want to train myself into a better state. And the more energetic I become, the more I will do.

A lot of this is of course psychological. With a fitness device strapped to one's wrist, one feels much more inclined to take credible exercise - to walk around more anyway! It's a reminder not to be slothful, a constant nudge to do things the energetic way, to climb stairs, and move briskly.

And nobody can wear a band or watch that screams 'Look at me! I am fit!' to the world at large without needing to live up to that image. Indeed, the larger and more sporty the watch looks, the more imperative it becomes to be truly active, otherwise it's just a worthless pose.

So, what kind of wrist-worn device? There are bands and smartwatches. The bands are slender, and of course lightweight, but have small screens. The smartwatches are chunkier and heavier, but do have big, easily-read screens. The bands are primarily devoted to fitness monitoring. The smartwatches are like miniature smartphones, and presently the best one offered by Apple is king. All types will of course tell you the time of day. But then your phone will do that. I wouldn't buy a fitness band or smartwatch just to have the time on my wrist. They have to offer a lot more.

On the other hand, I don't want a smartwatch. It will duplicate too much of what I have a phone for, and that would be money wasted. Whereas a device centred on fitness will not, and I will get the most benefit from whatever it might cost. I have therefore been looking seriously at Fitbit's line-up, and two devices in particular. The Versa, launched earlier in 2018 and now available to buy, which is the larger and more expensive. And the smaller and less expensive Charge 3, recently announced but not on sale until October.

Let's visit the Fitbit website. Here's series of screenshots, taken with my laptop.

If you want to do this yourself, the website is at https://www.fitbit.com/uk/home.

Let's contemplate the smaller Charge 3 first.

The watch syncs with the phone, and you can study all kinds of stuff using the larger phone screen.

It's certainly a neat little device, even though its screen is wider than the Fitbit Alta HR that Sue was showing me. The wider screen makes it better for reading the displayed information. Mind you, the display isn't a colour one: just black and white, and shades of grey. 

It's £129.99. If I were very keen to have one, I'd go for the black silicone wristband. The white band looks nicer, but it would soon look grubby. A grey band would be nice too. But not the others: I'd hate that rose-gold case. 

Next, the Versa. This is more expensive - £199.99 - but you get a lot more for the cash. As the name implies, it's meant to be highly customisable, both physically and electronically. It's half-way to being a smartwatch, but if I bought one there still wouldn't be any significant overlap with my phone.

In the screenshots that follow, you can see some of the strap/case/time-display combinations, some of which seem in good taste, others less so.

A long list of functions, most of them fitness-related. Here's what some of them look like on-screen.

Yes, that's video coaching on your wrist. Crikey. That's not me in the video.

I wouldn't invest in Bluetooth earphones, just to listen to a small selection of tracks stored on the watch. But who knows.

The aluminium cases come in black (fine with me), silver (fine) and rose-gold (not to my taste at all). If you want to buy just the basic product at £199.99, then the case/strap combinations are limited to three, and you don't have a completely free choice of every combination possible.   

The case/strap combinations that cost only £199.99 are black/silicone black, silver/silicone grey and rose-gold/silicone pink. The other two, with fabric straps, cost £219.99. It would however be possible to buy any strap (or straps) as an accessory, and in that way customise your watch to your exact preference. But it would set you back by £24.99 per strap. The accessory straps include a nice silver case/white silicone strap, which I'd consider if I grew tired of the original silicone strap, and wanted to try something else.

Really, I'd be most inclined to go for the grey strap/grey case combination, and let them whistle for anything more than £199.99. It looks fine.

The accessory straps include luxury designs in leather. They look very, very nice, but are impractical - you mustn't get them wet. I suppose they are for sophisticated occasions only.

So: would I actually buy one of these Fitbit fitness watches? Shall I take the plunge? 

I do need to address my lack of fitness, but buying a gadget is only a means to that end. A Charge 3 or a Versa is a tool, and only that. It might motivate me to take more exercise, and it can show me the result, but life is more than just moving around. I can't help feeling that after a short while I would get bored with spending time trying to exercise sufficiently. And then the thing would become just a fancy device to tell me the time. But I have clocks everywhere in my home, and in front of me as I drive along. A wristwatch just to tell the time with is unnecessary, and I'd end up taking it off and putting it away in a drawer. As I eventually have with all the watches I've owned since retiring thirteen years ago.

It's raining hard outside. Would a fitness watch get me into waterproof clothing and out onto the streets for a few thousand steps? No, it wouldn't. I think that's sufficient answer! I need some other incentive for a good tramp - such as the prospect of some wonderful pictures. 

Besides, £200-odd is a lot of money. It represents, for instance:

# The fuel and site fee cost for a five or six day caravan holiday.

# The price of fitting a new tyre on Fiona.

# Seven or eight pretty good pub lunches. 

# Three pairs of new shoes at full cost.

And I could just save the money. I do have a savings target to keep in mind!

There are also some other considerations. 

I don't like anything strapped tightly on my wrist, especially if it needs to be there 24/7. And a fitness watch, however stylish, however customised, doesn't have the elegance of a proper item of jewellery, nor indeed the simple elegance of a bare wrist. Like a lot of 'wearables' it needs to have a certain amount of bulk to be easily usable. 

I'd think of wearing a big watch if it could replace my phone in all important respects, but it can't. The phone would remain my major always-with-me gadget: the universal one with extraordinary functionality that I can't do without.  

There could be occasions, too, when a fitness watch would look unsuitable or inappropriate. It's not an item you can keep out of sight, as you might a phone. It's meant to be big and obvious, by design. Not for funerals, then, nor any kind of grave or important occasion. 

So it's a 'no'.