Whats In The Box?
When you open your box expect to be greeted by 2 plastic soft touch wristbands, a charging cradle, a wireless sync dongle for your desktop, and a capsule that holds all of the electronics tucked inside the larger wristband. The soft touch wrist band wicks sweat away and is rather comfortable. The GYMCADDY™ team all reported they eventually forgot they were wearing their FitBit Flex after prolonged use.
Setting Up Your Fitbit Flex
Setting up the Fitbit Flex out of the box is easy. First you will want to go to you phone’s app store and download the Fitbit app. Then take out your FitBit dongle out of the wristband and put it in its charging cradle to charge. You will then be instructed to select your Fitbit model. In this case we choose Flex. You will then set up your account by adding your hight, weight and gender into your profile. After your account is set up and your fitbit is charged you’ll follow Fitbit’s step by step guide to pair your Fitbit to your phone. This will include a series of tapping on your fitbit and allowing it to download the newest firmware. The whole process takes around 10 minutes.
First Impressions Using The Fitbit Flex
Price $79.99
First impressions on using the Fitbit Flex are muted. After setting up your account and playing around with the included app there isn't much else to do. You just wear it around 24/7 and let it record your data for you. Granted, the app is very well made. It has a very minimalistic approach and the ever so popular material design language which has become popular due to Google’s and Apple’s adoption. We were annoyed by locking mechanism thats employed on the Fitbit Flex wristband. Its awkward and will drive you crazy every time you have to put on your Fitbit. But besides the clasping mechanism we cant find much to complain about. The Fitbit Flex is well made and barely noticeable when wearing it. Its slim design lets you go about your day without constantly reminding you its there to judge you. Having the option to switch out the wristband for different colors is great and allows you to accessories with your daily outfit.
The Fitbit App
Playing around with the Fitbit app is fun. You can play around with settings like Activity goals, Exercise goals, Nutrition and Body Goals, and Sleeping goals. In the Activity Goals tab you can set amount of steps taken in a day, distance walked or ran, Calories Burned, Active Minutes, and Hourly Activity Goals. In the Nutrition Tab you can change goals like water intake, and caloric deficit goal. Finally in the Sleep tab you can change your Time Asleep Goal, Bedtime, and Wake Up Time. Your Fitbit will then wake you up by vibrating when it feels its the best time to wake you up with in a 30 minute window of your selected wake up time. We highly prefer this wake up alarm as opposed to your standard audio alarm. Just make sure you have a backup alarm set just in case you're a heavy sleeper.
The Fitbit App also includes a food logging journal which is reminiscent to MyFitnessPal. It can help you track your caloric intake and will give you a good sense of calories consumed vs calories expended through exercise via graphs and charts. It gets the job done but it fails to give you detailed macro tracking like MyFitnessPal. If you're looking for a detailed breakdown of your daily macros we suggest you stick to using MyFitnessPal.
The Fitbit App does give you a detailed breakdown of your sleep. It tells you how many hours slept, and it'll also tell you how many times you wake up at night. Knowing the quality of your sleep can help you on your fitness journey and help you achieve your goals. If you know you're waking up multiple times at night then this might be a good call to action to analyze your diet, caffeine consumption, workout schedule, or any stress that you may be experiencing in your daily life.
The Final Verdict
The Fitbit Flex is a great little fitness tracker that is well made, subtle, and comes paired with a really well made app. The high quality and low profile wristband disappears while you're wearing it and stays out of the way while you go on about your daily routine. You completely forget you're wearing it, which is great. The information the included app supplies to the user is invaluable. You can see how many steps you've taken, calories burned, and your sleep quality just to name a few. The Fitbit Flex is a great product for any dedicated runner that wants to be the best athlete they can. We highly recommend any serious runner invest in a fitness tracker. Just keep in mind this particular model does not read heart rate, which is a sought after feature runners look for. For that you'll have to invest in a Fitbit Charge HR of the Fitbit Charge 2 (Review coming soon). In order to experience the full benefits of this product we recommend you do your running outside instead of on a treadmill. The Fitbit Flex is unable to read your stats if you run on a treadmill while at the gym and you'll have to manually log your exercise into the app.
In conclusion, the Fitbit Flex is a well made product that can truly be an asset to runners. The build quality of the band and the Fitbit itself are both great. The app is well designed, encourages users to stick to their fitness goals and supplies valuable information. We recommend any serious runner to invest in a fitness tracker. The Fitbit Flex is a great entry level product almost anyone can afford.