Fitbit Surge Fitness Super Watch

Ok, so I have a heart problem and need to keep an eye on the heart rate, and general well being, like eating, sleeping, walking, climbing stairs, drinking enough water (kidney problems as well).I looked and researched very hard and finall settled on the Fitbit Surge. The most important reason, it has what I need, and it looks good in black.It arrived next day in a very nice elegant package. It reminded me of Apple packaging.So I took it out and recharged it first. It was about 2 third down, it took about an hour to charge back to fullpower. When it switches on, it tell you exactly what to do and you better follow it.It said, go to [...]there it tells you to download the app for your phone.Downloaded the app. Run it, made sure BT is on, they found each other and asked for the pairing code displayed on the watch. Do that. It then download some thing, took about 7-8 minutes to setup.Once this is done you are good to go.It synced itself with the phone and you are good to go. It will ask some questions such as your name, date of birth, enable enotifications (text and calls),it also synced the watch to the correct time and date.I bought the large one as I am a big guy. It does not look big but slightly thicker than my current watch. So your shirt's sleeve might not roll over smoothly. This does not bother me as I never button my sleeves.It is very comfortable to wear. The rubber strap actually feels good and comfortable, strong yet soft.it has three buttons and you can play with that if you want :-) but it is best to download the userguide (just search for fitbit Surge userguide and download the PDF which tells you everything you need to know plus troubleshooting).Reads that and you will master the watch functionalities in 5 minutes.It is not swim proof but splash proof.Tests I have done:Begged someone to call me, and it vibrated and told who is calling (name displayed if it is in your contacts on the phone, otherwise, it shows the number).Again, I begged the same person (my daughter) to text me, again I got the notiification, tap on that (it displays for 7 seconds) and you can read the message on the full screen. Not bad actually, you can swipe up and down to read the whole message.If you have more than one notification, swipe left and right to see them all.Swipe down to scroll through the entire contents of a text. A maximum of 32 characters of a subject and 160 characters of a text message are shown.Press the Action button or Home button to exit the notification screen. It stores a maximum of 20 notifications. If you receive more than 20 notifications, the oldest notifications are deleted as new ones come in. Each notification is deleted after 24 hoursNext music of course. This can catch you out a bit I think, this is why you need to read the user guide, but the procedure is simple.on your watch press the home button (the sole button on the left). Press it once and swipe until you get to settings.Tap settings and scroll until you get to Bluetooth classic swipe until you get to off/on/pair and choose pair.go to your phone and access bluetooth setting and pair the device (it will read Surge classic). You should see 2 bluetooth devices on your (at least on my iphone) phone, Surge and Surge classic (for music).That is it, you can now play, scroll and pause and read track names.The watch has several faces, nothing fancy. I use digital as it is the easiest to read (have poor eyes). If it is dark and you cannot see just tap the screen and it will light up.You can also adjust the brightness.Generally, I find it is easy to read in any lighting conditions on default settings.It shows (swipe) steps, heart rate, distance walked, calories, floors. You can also have, timer, alarms (you can set this in the app), exercise, and run plus some settings, all by pressing home button and swiping.All these statistics are displayed in the app on your phone and you can add more widgets like sleep tracking, and you can add how many glasses of water you had, what did you have for breakfast.Too many to list here.On the app, you can share stats, you can add friends (via contacts, email, facebook) and even chat (did not test as I guess you need another fitbit user).You can setup goals, food, challenges.I only tested the GPS once and it acquired signal (outside in the open within 1 minute or so). It shows a map and a start button press that and ti will record, tracks, speed etc..you have the following widgets on the app, Track exercise, Log food, Log sleep, Log water intake, add friends, scan barcode, Log weight (I need this :-) ) and set alarms.Wearing it, i find it comfortable, well, soldily build, no irritations (specially on the wrist bone, just do not tighten it too much).There are 2 more buttons on the right hand side, for selection and action depending where you are in the various menus.it comes with a charger (fitbit's own) and a dongle which I did not use but I guess it is for desktop computer or laptops.it vibrates on calls, text, calls, alarm etc.bad things: I don't know yet, cant it be improved, nothing is perfect but yes it can. I don't have anything else to compare it with.I would like however to see the battery charge next to the time. For now you have to press the home button and it will show up there.Enjoy.

Love it, play with it all the time (which is probably why my battery hasn't lasted more than 4 days yet, my bad) luckily it only takes around an hour to charge. The app is really good apart from a few annoying little niggles like not being able to zoom in on charts and third party apps like MyFitnessPal not syncing properly but this is a review for the tracker so i wont judge it on the app. Heart rate monitor seems pretty accurate. Sleep tracker is impressively accurate. Gps works which i know can be an issue sometimes (a friend of mine had problems with 2 different Surge trackers where the gps would not work, roughly a year ago, Fitbit customer support were very good dealing with him though). that has probably been sorted now via the company software updates. It can be a little bit off accuracy wise though (according to the gps map of my run i ran through a few houses rather than on the road outside the houses, but thats not a big deal really is it). Silent alarms are good, if anything though they are too short, unlike a normal alarm that will just keep going and going until you either switch it off or press snooze, this just vibrates a few times then stops (sort that out Fitbit!). Its also a bit annoying that you have to have internet connection to change the alarm times, which makes no sense to me (sort that out too!). Atep tracker is like any other step tracker, you have inaccuracies, but its consistent with them, its bound to happen as its on your arm, which you do occasionally move while not moving your legs, im not bothered about this tho as like i said you get the same problem with any step tracker. Screen is clear and the automatic backlight is a nice feature (if its dark it turns the light of for you when you look at the watch, which means if you hands are full you have to struggle to tap the screen to see the time). Its comfy to wear, maybe a little big for my weirdly small wrists (i have the same problem with a lot of watches). And i would definitely recommend it to a friend. I find it very motivating too as im always checking the app to see how far away i am from completing my daily goals. All in all a good bit of kit. :-)

I've had two problems with my Fitbit so far. Firstly I had a software fault that stopped the screen swiping, and secondly the strap broke around one of the screws on the back. With the complexity of electronics and miniaturization it's rare that a product will be 100% all the time every time. What stood out to me in this case is that in both of the previous problems Fitbit support shipped me out a new Fitbit without being awkward or making me jump through hoops.As for the Fitbit itself it fits comfortably and does what I need it to do. Fitbit offer a premium service which gets you more training tips and info but I find the standard software to have everything I need, so it's not like all the useful stuff is locked behind a paywall. The software and functionality is very good with a couple of little niggles. First of all I wish the hourly activity monitor that's supposed to get you moving once an hour told me how many more steps I needed to hit it that hour, it irks the completionist in me. Secondly I find that the heart-rate tracking goes haywire when I exercise unless I move the band further up my arm (3cm above the wrist bone seems to work best for me). It's not ideal having to remember to adjust the band every time I exercise, but it's still a lot more convenient than having to go get a chest strap. Lastly I wish they had an alarm designed to wake you up during non-REM sleep like some other fitness watches do.Overall very happy with the Fitbit, especially Fitbit support (without which this would have probably gotten a 1 or 2 star review), though there are somethings I think they could improve.