Fitbit Surge Fitness Superwatch, Black, Small
CUSTOMER REVIEW
I received the FitBit Surge as part of FitBit's early limited release. I purchased it directly from FitBit on December 5, and received it on December 8th. UPDATE: My original review was made after one week of use with the Surge. I've gone through and updated every section of this review after over a month of use.
The FitBit Surge is FitBit's flagship fitness "superwatch". It integrates a few capabilities of a smart watch, like text/call notifications and music control, into a GPS/heart rate fitness tracker. It tracks your sleep as well.
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The Good:
Heart Rate Tracking:
This is probably the most important feature of this tracker, so I'll go into a bit of detail here. It is accurate, if it is worn snugly. When exercising, it's best to wear it a notch tighter than you normally would so that it stays in place, and a few inches up from your wrist so that it can get an accurate reading. It takes a few minutes for the reading to stabilize. I noticed that if it's loose, the results are all over the place. For everyday use, you can't wear it too tight because your skin won't be able to breathe (in my case wearing any watch made out of non-breathable material too tightly for too long results in a rash). When loose, the reading is 20BPM higher that it should read until I put it higher up my arm and tighten it, which is quite disappointing. But when it is just tight enough that it won't move around and further up the arm, it works great, and was accurate within 5BPM compared to my elliptical. So for exercise it seems to work well, but for everyday use is inaccurate. Unfortunately, any wrist-based heart rate tracker would have this same issue because they use a light sensor and blinking LED's, and having the band loose lets external light in, and light from the LEDs out.
FitBit: In the future, add something that lets you choose a target heart rate, then gives you a buzz on the wrist if you go outside it. This would tell you to work harder or slow down and pace yourself without having to look down at the watch, and would be an awesome feature.
Altimeter/Stairs Tracking:
Counts going up every flight of stairs (going down stairs does not count). Accurate and no complaints here.
Telling Time:
Several different watch faces available from the FitBit app. Digital, or analog, or some are a combination of both. They are easy to read, and if you just touch the screen in the dark, a backlight will illuminate the screen. However, since you can swipe on the screen to show different stats (Flights of stairs, heart rate, distance, calories burned, steps), that makes it very easy to inadvertently swipe it to a different screen. So it might be on a different screen than time at a moment's glance, and you then need to swipe left or right to get back to the clock.
Notifications:
It's nice to get a buzz on your wrist for a notification, when you're forgotten your phone across the room and left it on silent. I have even had the Surge go off when my phone was on the other side of the house! So great range, and sometimes the Surge actually goes off before my phone does.
Battery Life/Charging:
When I originally received my FitBit Surge, it seemed to be fully charged - I did not charge it out of the box. The first week it lasted from Monday morning until Thursday afternoon (battery was low, but not dead). After leaving it on the charger for about an hour, it was fully charged and ready to go again! Fast charging time, and much, much less downtime that something such as a phone. After a month, it seems battery life is about 4-5 days, and it still charges crazy fast. However, it does not reach its advertised seven day battery life. I was sick for about a week, and didn't work out at all - Surge still only lasted five days.
Motivation:
The FitBit App lets you set a main goal for the day: Steps, Distance, Calories Burned, or Floors Climbed. I set mine to calories burned. When you're reached your daily goal, the Surge gives a series of buzzes and shows that you're reached your goal on the screen. If you use the app for logging food, you can see a nice ratio of how many calories you've burned vs how many you've consumed. If you're trying to lose weight, approx. 3500 calories = 1lb fat, so do the math on you calorie deficit for the day, and that's how much you should have lost (in theory).
Fit:
I ordered a size Large. After ordering I reconsidered and tried to get FitBit to change it to a size small (my wrist is barely large enough for a large, but not too large for a small). After receiving it, I'm glad that they couldn't change the size from large to small since it was about to be shipped. My wrist measures at about 6.00-6.25 inches, and I am at the 4th notch in for normal use, or the 3rd notch during exercise with the Large size. Since you need to wear it a few inches further up your arm while exercising, if you are in between sizes, go with the next size up.
Build Quality:
The build quality overall seems decent. The band is super smooth, and it can be cleaned easily. There isn't anything sharp or with rough edges anywhere on the device. There is no significant wear after a month of everyday use, wearing a winter jacket, and bumping into things with it. I'm not sure how much wear there will be on the band over time, but at least it doesn't look too difficult to replace - each side is just held on by two Torx T5 screws.The side of the Surge that is furthest away from you is about two times taller than the side closest to you. This side tends to snag on jackets, shirts, just about anything.
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The Bad (And Improvement Recommendations):
Just about every digital watch has a stopwatch and lets you set alarms on the watch itself... Except the FitBit Surge!
Alarms must be set in the FitBit app on your phone, then you must sync it. You can turn alarms on/off on the Surge, but you cannot create, delete, or edit them from the Surge itself. A quick buzz on the wrist also isn't enough to wake up someone like me... And that's all the Surge does when an alarm goes off. It should act like a watch, beeping (or in the case of the Surge, buzzing) incessantly until you shut the alarm off and actually wake up. Because of this, the alarm feature is basically useless for me, which is disappointing.
The lack of a stopwatch on fitness "smart" watch is also a bit ridiculous. You can get a decent alarm and stopwatch on a cheap $10-15 watch.
No tracking for cycling. On FitBit's site, it is rated to 5ATM of water resistance, but it does not track swimming (I don't think FitBit wants this to be used in water - quite possibly due to chlorine and other detergents, and they specifically mention not to use soap on it).
The good news is that FitBit can add just about all of these features in the future, since they are just software-based features. For the sake of battery life, FitBit could easily implement the continuous alarm by checking to see if the watch is actually on your wrist (which it does anyways for the heart rate monitor), and if it is, the alarm goes off continuously until it shuts off. If it isn't on your wrist, it could either remain silent or buzz a couple times like it normally does.
Again, these are issues that FitBit can solve in the future with software updates. After a month, FitBit has still not added any of these features.
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The Ugly:
I had major issues out of the box. The left button, which is used for going through the menus, was very problematic when I first received the Surge. Barely touching the button with constant pressure (not even enough to press it in), would cause it to think that it was being pressed very quickly, and would bring up the music control screen... Again, and again, and again... Double-pressing that button is what should bring up the music control. Even clicking the button once firmly would make it think it was being pressed several times. I rebooted the Surge and still had issues, and that made it obvious that it was a hardware issue with the button, not a software problem. I was about to contact FitBit and send it back, but decided to spend a few minutes gently pressing the button to get it to sort of break in. Surprisingly, it worked! I haven't had any issues since then.
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What I haven't been able to test:
I have not been able to test GPS, since I hate Winter weather. I also don't plan on using it for the music control, and it seems that you must enable "Bluetooth Classic" in settings in order to use it. This would most likely lead to worse battery life since it would probably be using normal BT instead of BT Low Energy, so I don't want to enable it.
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Four Stars: Lack and limitations of basic watch features, such as a stopwatch and alarm, is a major problem. A month after receiving it, FitBit has still not added any of these features, and other users are also complaining about it in their reviews. Battery life is worse than advertised at 4-5 days on average, and this is with no GPS use. There was a week when I was sick and didn't exercise at all, and it still only got five days of battery life. The button issue I experienced resolved itself, so that isn't affecting my rating, however it is a bit bothersome to see an issue with a simple button on a $250 watch. The lower than advertised battery life, lack of added software-based features, and inaccurate everyday HR monitoring dropped this from five stars to four stars.
