[Updated 2015-05-23: fitbit has made some changes and I've been using it for a few months now -- see updates noted below.]
My Experience
Overall, I've had a positive experience:
- Battery life has been reasonably good. I'm charging it every 3 or 4 days, depending how many activities I'm recording. [Update: I'm still pretty positive on this point. I've gotten into the habit that if I'm ever watching TV on the sofa, I plug the watch in. So far, it's worked with only modest thinking about it. I do make sure that I fully charge before I go on work trips so that I don't have to worry about it on them.]
- The heart rate monitoring is probably better in my experience than in DC Rainmaker's. That said, there are some very annoying drops during activities like spinning that are just incredibly frustrating.
- The interface to record activities is pretty easy to use. It took me a week to get completely comfortable, but it works well and I can easily move from a weight lifting session to a treadmill run in a couple of seconds. [Update: I do this all of the time. Very easy. Great interface.]
- The Surge does not really work well with long-sleeved work shirts. I generally wear french cuffs and for the Surge to work, it has to be too high up on my wrist. That said, its better than my other watches in terms of being able to type when I'm wearing it. [Update: I wear short sleeved shirts to work in the summer. This hasn't been a problem recently.]
- I used my Fitbit One to wake me up in the morning, but had a few instances where it didn't. The Surge's vibrations have been consistently strong enough to rouse me from my slumber.
- I much prefer the automatic sleep detection over having to tell my One when I'm going to bed. It's been accurate from what I can tell and even properly captured a mid-afternoon nap that I took a week ago.
- I appreciate the default watch face (Flare) that indicates on the minutes, how active you've been since the start of the hour. It is a little bit annoying that you can't see past hours, but I understand how that would make the watch face less understandable. Much more easily accessible information than on the One.
- The long and the short of it is that I've been wearing it non-stop since it arrived on February 16, 2015. [Update: still wearing it non-stop. I love the multi-device capability (see below).]
One Step Beyond
Despite my general satisfaction with the Surge, I have some suggestions on how to improve. These are not hardware suggestions, but things that Fitbit could change immediately and improve their product. It's in rough order of preference on my part. Here goes:
- Allow me to use multiple Fitbit devices to track my activity: It seems obvious to me that I wouldn't want to wear a Surge 24x7. That said, I'm one of those people who wore the Fitbit One for two solid years missing, perhaps, only 1 or 2 days and those were missed accidentally. I always wore the One unless I was swimming or showering. When I set up the Surge on my account, it automatically dropped the One. Why? It would be so much better to have the option to use either or both and then have Fitbit pull the data together. I especially don't want to wear my Surge when I go out to dinner or a bar. Sure, it buys me some geek cred, but I don't need any more of that. I could do with less. But it'd be nice to give my wrist a break every once in a while. I'd just leave my One plugged in and charging and then just grab it and go when the Surge is not the best option. [Update: when fitbit updated their systems to allow this, I immediately set up both devices - my One and my Surge. It works great. I love the flexibility.]
- Improve the way Calorie Burn is calculated when the heart rate signal is lost: I've noticed that the Surge will often lose my heart rate when I'm spinning. How it calculates calorie burn under that condition is absurd. Despite the heart rate graph showing a nice gradual connecting line, the calorie burn calculation assumes that you had a low heart rate during that period. See this picture (the portion highlighted by the blue box did not have any heart rate readings from about 13:00 to 16:00 and thus they dropped the calorie burn to essentially nothing): [Update: this is still an issue.]
- Allow me to upload activities from other devices to my Fitbit account: Given some of the limitations of the Surge (see DC Rainmaker's comments on GPS accuracy), its more likely that I'm going to be wearing my Garmin 405 (or 920XT if I go crazy and get one) for the time being when I cycle or run outside. I'm totally good with wearing a heart rate strap for these activities, so the Surge really doesn't get me much. There have to be a fair number of hard-core "Quantified Self" people out there (like me) for whom would find this a good addition. And don't make this a premium service. This is only necessary because the Surge has defects or limitations - Fitbit don't penalize your customers twice. [Update: I still can't do this to my knowledge. It shouldn't be that hard to extend the "Log Activity" interface to allow this. fitbit really should do this.]
- Give me real access to my data: Not even with the premium service can the individual get intraday data. I'm going to look into the hacking available with Galileo, but I shouldn't have to do this. I made the data. It is mine to begin with. [Update: I will likely complain about this for some time.]
- Running calibration: I ran a solid mile this morning on the treadmill after warming up. My Surge only counted 0.81 mi total. The total should have been 1.2 mi (another 0.2 mi in warm-up and cooldown). Why isn't their a reasonably simple interface on the watch to go through a calibration. Right now, all I can do is put in my "Stride Length" and "Running Stride Length". This seems both overly simplistic (let me calibrate at 6 mph, 8 mph & 10 mph) and not particularly easy. Frankly, the treadmill and the Surge ought to be talking to each other, but that is not a software issue.
Here are my hardware suggestions:
- Make it actually waterproof. Like certify that is the case. And potentially even make it useful in the pool. Garmin is already there.
- Fix the GPS (cycling) defects. Maybe this could be improved via the software? [Update: Cycling works, but gets meaningfully different answers than my phone does. I still record on Strava for bike rides given that I mount my phone on my handlebars anyway. The Surge underestimates mileage by several 10ths of a mile on a 20 mile ride. I'm reasonably disappointed with the accuracy for a device on sale in 2015. My Garmin Forerunner 405 from five years ago is better. I do like that I can at least record the activity. But their lack of analytics forces you to use multiple sites/recordings of your activity.]
- Detachable Strap: Make into a device whose strap can be detached (like the 920XT). That would eliminate the need for my first suggestion above (but at the same time they should add an option to turn off the heart-rate monitoring for times it's sitting in your pocket). I'm also reasonably concerned that I don't get a long lifetime out of this watch due to the strap. Are others not buying it due to that reason?
- Connect with Devices: Talk to treadmills and stationary bikes. More than just one way. Display my heartrate on the treadmill. The treadmill should tell the watch exactly the distance, speed and angle I was running or walking.
Let's here your thoughts on improvements, too!
