Fitbit Alta HR, Black, Large (US Version)

I had seen a coworker's Alta a while back and debated getting one but was disappointed that it didn't do HR. I didn't like the bulkiness of the Fitbits which did measure heart rate. So I started doing research -- trying to decide what features I did and didn't need. I have been using my phone to track my steps and whatnot to this point. I stopped by the fitbit website to see if they had new offerings and there it was. Exactly what I wanted! I ordered 2 (a small and a large) for my sister and myself from Amazon (2 day shipping!) I was on the cusp of small/large and I can tell you that both fit, but as the website recommends, size up if you're unsure. I've attached photos with the small and large slightly up my wrist. I love the size, the band, and the display. I appreciate the sleep tracker, the compatibility with MyFitnessPal, the silent alarms, and reminders. While it can receive text messages, it will only display short messages and truncate longer ones. The text displayed is small. If you get 2 or more messages from a person in short succession it will display the number of messages instead of the actual messages. However, I understand that I ordered a fitness tracker, not a smartwatch and so I am pleased it has text reading abilities in the first place. It does not track flights of stairs, which is okay by me. My phone didn't track them either. I have been comparing the steps tracked with my other step tracking apps and it seems relatively accurate. I'm sure that there are more accurate HR trackers out there, but the convenience of having these things together in one place is what sold me. Random side story: My sister stole my large fitbit the other day while I was doing dishes and threw it on her ankle to see if it would track. Not only did it track, but the HR was consistent with her small fitbit on her wrist. Some people have thought the calories are wildly off. I think they don't understand how Fitbit does calories. In many tracking systems, you will be shown how many calories you burned for exercise. So if you've done nothing and see some level of calories burned, you aren't sure why it's saying that. You do burn calories even when inactive. The overall calories for the day aren't that useful for me because I'm used to the system where you only get calories shown for specific exercise sessions but I've found when it tracks a workout session, those calories are pretty accurate. I love the social aspect of it, and I like that you can challenge your friends for a specific day/week/weekend of steps and meeting your goals. I like the app that goes along with the fitbit. Pros: ~Design! (I can't express how happy I am with this.) ~Tracks HR ~Auto tracks exercise ~Battery Life (I get around a week and it charges fairly quickly) ~Friend challenges and social community Cons: ~Not waterproof ~Cost (maybe prohibitive, but that is the market of fitness trackers.) ~Text messages system (but again, fitness tracker, not smart watch) Honestly, of the negative reviews I've read about this particular item, most of the people who are unhappy didn't do enough research first. You should judge an item by what it advertises it does. So far this has done everything it's said it would for me. I couldn't be happier. I think if you've done your research and this item has the features you have been looking for, you'll be super excited with it, like me. *Edit 6/5* I've had the FitBit Alta HR for a couple months now. I am still just as happy as when I got it. I've lost about 20 lbs since Christmas. It's slow going but the FitBit community has been great. I posted a picture for my first 5k and 90 some odd strangers cheered me on. Reading the discussion area is always positive and motivating. My only disappointment at this point is the lack of waterproofing because I am swimming more often these days. I'm slowly upping my goals and plan to work even harder all summer.

I've had my Fitbit for a few weeks, and I really love it, even more than I thought I would. It really gives me an incentive to work out. I hardly ever worked out before I got it, but being able to set goals for how many days I should be working out a week, and seeing those days go up as I work out is a simple, but almost crazily effective incentive. I've worked out more in the past three weeks than I had probably the whole rest of the year. I love seeing stats about the exercise I've been doing, even if I'm not entirely convinced that the calories are correct, it still gives me something to compare other exercise days to. I love the heartrate fuction, and seeing it rise and fall depending on what kind of exercise you're doing, and my bpm has steadily fallen as I've done more exercise, which is encouraging to see. I do wish that it would count stairs, but I don't really miss it, and it's not a terribly important feature, just a small thing. It counts your steps on the stairs, just not the floors of stairs you walk up, and the steps are really the most important part. One other thing I wish was slightly better is the battery. I feel like I have to charge it every couple of days, even though the package says that it should work for a full week without needing another charge. Either way, it's not a huge problem, just something I think could be improved upon. It looks great, it works well. and it provides a simple incentive to work out more and to make the active choice throughout your day. What more could a person ask for?

I love my Fitbit. It encourages me to keep moving throughout the day to meet my goals. I walk or run for ~5 miles everyday and it tracks that perfectly. It doesn't track other exercise very well, but that's okay because I log it in MyFitnessPal along with the calories I burned and the length of the workout and Fitbit picks it up just fine. The battery life deserves a mention because it truly lasts for 7 days and that's wonderful. I typically put it on the charger while I'm showering or cooking and by the time I'm done it's fully charged (only takes about an hour for charging!) The silent alarm feature is definitely underrated. It wakes me peacefully but by the time I disable the alarm by tapping on the screen I'm wide awake. Overall I'm very very glad I purchased this and I can't wait to see how much weight I'll lose with Fitbit by my side. Update (10/18/17): 5 stars to 3. After owning my Fitbit for just 5 months, the battery is an honest POS. It randomly dies and when it manages to stay with me throughout the day, the battery lasts at most 8 hours. I wear my Alta while I run so the most water it's been exposed to is drizzle - I run inside when it rains heavily. I'm not sure why the battery is so damaged but it's disappointing! I just ended a Live Chat with a very kind Fitbit Customer Service Rep and I'll be doing a 24-hour "battery draining test" which they will monitor and follow-up with me on. I hope they can either fix this issue or send a new one entirely. I'll update when I have more details. Update (10/23/17): Back to 5 stars. I contacted customer service again after my battery had completely given out during the drainage test and they were extremely helpful. I'll be getting a replacement in a few days. Hopefully all is well. Fitbit has the best customer service of any company I've spoken with.

I had back surgery and needed a way to monitor my “steps” progress as that’s how my surgeon has tasked me with my walking. I’m an overachiever so this helps stop me from overdoing it. The black band was the cheapest and wasn’t doing it for me so I got on another reseller site we all know so well (starts with an E) and picked up a Fitbit brand “light pink” band with clasp at a fraction of the original cost. The readout is all but impossible to see in bright light, much the way the old iPhone tech was lousey in bright light. It’s honestly very annoying. The readout choices and order are customizable on the band and with a flick of the wrist I can get it started. It’s oddly helpful at night when I’m awake and wondering what time it is or what my Heart rate is. If I choose, the logs on my phone will show all of one thing (whatever I choose) for as far back as day one and that’s helpful. Steps per day and the total for week. Mileage per day and week. Calories approximated per day and week and so forth. This has been helpful with surgical recovery and post-surgical appointments. So far so good. My only real nemesis are the inability to read the display in bright light (the tech exists for this so it’s very annoying) and the lack of “medium” bands. There are small or large and if you get on their site apparently/supposedly an extra-large but I’m not sure if that is for all the Fitbit models available. UPDATE 5/30/19 — screen repeatedly went blank. I did numerous resets and it would work but for only a short time then the screen would go blank. I purchased this 6/3/18 so they are replacing it free of charge. I would have been livid had this happened in only a few days because I would have been out of my warranty.

Having finally developed a skin sensitivity reaction to my charge HR, I had given up wearing it about a year ago. So when I saw that the Alta HR allowed for interchangeable bands - including metal - I jumped at it. The Swees metal bands I bought have magnetic clasps that allowed me to easily loosen the band during the day and tighten when I need heart rate readings. This helps minimize the chance of having a reaction to even the metal bands. SLEEP TRACKING: The sleep tracking with the Alta HR seems to be even better than with the Charge HR. It now shows the percentage of time spent awake, in light sleep, deep sleep and REM. It also compares this data to the norms for your age and sex. (Note: I haven't tried the Charge HR with the most recent app upgrades but I do think the Alta is getting more data.) I am including screenshots for both. I saw the nurse practitioner at my sleep doctors office a couple of days after getting the Alta HR. She told me that they find these to be quite reliable, and in fact had used FitBit data to correlate with CPAP data to figure out what was going on with one of their patients, who turned out to be going into atrial fibrillation at night. She also agreed it would be a good tool to use on my 89-year-old mother to test her for possible sleep apnea. If the data shows any multiple awakenings or erratic heart rate, I'll show it to her general practitioner and request a referral to the sleep doctor.

After about 30 days the Alta HR's "detailed sleep stages" capability -- a key selling point from Fitbit -- stopped working. This is a well-documented software problem with the HR, which Fitbit is taking its own sweet time fixing. Just search on the Fitbit "help" forums for "Alta HR stopped showing sleep stages" or do a more general search on the Help forums. If a key feature of the watch doesn't work, what's the point of buying it? I strongly recommend that you look elsewhere, at least until the problem is fixed. I will update this review when/if FItbit fixes the problem. Update 11/10/18. So far, no progress from Fitbit on addressing the problem of not providing "detailed" sleep stage information. Very discouraging. A lot of lip service from Fitbit on the "Community" boards, but no results whatsoever. If you're looking for a device to provide useful sleep information consistently, as of this date look elsewhere I'd say. Also, beware that the Fitbit Community boards are NOT a bastion of free speech. I have had, and have observed, multiple posts even modestly critical of Fitbit for the detailed sleep stages debacle pulled down. So if you have a good impression about a product after reading the Community boards, take it with a grain of salt. If you don't happen to know what a "Potemkin village" is, google it. That's what Fitbit is operating in its "Community." Update 11/30 In the last almost 3 weeks, there has been no apparent progress resolving the problem. The only change is that the Fitbit moderators on the Alta HR Help forum acknowledge the problem and claim Fitbit is working on it. Feels like the Gulag guards acknowledging their is a shortage of food. Anyone who buys this tracker for sleep is . . . unwise! Final Update. After months and months of getting the runaround from Fitbit, I gave up and got a Garmin Vivoactive 4. Much better device and software, waterproof, pulse ox as well as heart monitoring. Please, you owe it to yourself before buying any Fitbit product to do the research. Every Fitbit device -- Charge 3, Versa, Alta HR, etc. -- has pages and pages of posts documenting problems with sleep tracking as well as other functions. Based on product quality, the company is circling the drain; they just don't know it yet. Choose something else!

This is my first fitness watch and I love it. I have been looking around for a fitness watch for some time now, I would say at least more than 6 months. If I was going to spend a great amount of money on something I wanted to make sure it was just what I wanted and that I liked it as well as the way it fit. I measured my wrist and i was right at small and large, so I went ahead and went with large, which gives me some 3 more notches to use for it's tightest fit, so the 4th notch fits me perfectly. I suggest if you are just right at the end of a small and beginning of a large measurement, I would recommend going with the large band. I chose the fitbit alta HR because it can still give me my text and call notifications and I was not worried about answering it from my watch or texting back. If my phone is in the other room and I get a call or text, I can see who is calling and read the text on my watch and decided if I want to reply now or later. The functions of the watch are great, easy to use, and scan through right at your wrist where your stats are at. I love that this watch is on the smaller side, it is not bulky at all unlike some watches seem to be. The sleep tracker on it seems to be so accurate and gives you really good details. The app is amazing too, everything is synced with my app on my phone and can read into further detail when I want to. Fitbit also has other apps that it can work with, like MapMyRun. If you found this review helpful, please let me know my selecting helpful at the bottom.

I've worn this everyday for a month or so. I may have purchased this for different reasons than most. I use it for a repeating silent alarm throughout the day (one that is not my cel), tracking heart rate at the gym/hiking, and tracking sleep. I don't really care about steps or calories and those really seem to be what the device is made for (although I haven't checked its accuracy). Out of the gate, it had a problem starting. It was supposed to automatically sync during setup after it was charged, and it wouldn't. I had to search online to troubleshoot it, and there were many other people that had the same problem and few different things to try it, but the info provided with the product was not helpful. The display is supposed to come on automatically when you turn your wrist to look at. Doesn't for me. I have it tagged in the setup info to be on my left wrist, which it is. But it will display when I'm moving my arm in every direction except how one would look at their watch. The alternative it to tap it. I know it's not a touch screen, and one shouldn't expect the same responsiveness, but I have to tap it hard 4-6 times to get the display to show. It's especially annoying when the alarm goes off (which I use very frequently) because I have to keep tapping it several times to turn off the alarm otherwise it will go off again in 9 minutes. The heart rate monitor is pretty consistently 10-20 bpm off when I'm on cardio equipment at the gym that can also read my heart rate. It doesn't matter what brand of cardio equipment, what type of exercise, the Fitbit is always much lower than the reading the equipment gives me. I've tried both tightening the band and sliding it up my arm, but it doesn't seem to help. It seems to be worst when I'm sweating so I don't know if that interferes with it somehow. (Which you can see might be an issue when exercising). I know I can get a reading from the machine I'm using, but I wanted the fitbit to actually track and record my heart rate, which is proving challenging. Plus, I have very little faith in the readings it makes when I can't cross check it with anything else (hiking, running outside, etc). The sleep monitoring is interesting and useful. I have nothing to compare it to, so until I know better the time I spend in each stage is what it tells me it is. Much like how I planned to use my exercise information, I like that I have a record to see how I'm doing over time. And be aware if your skin is fairly sensitive to touch, the device itself gives off a strange pulsing feeling while you wear it. It is odd. I don't love it and it's a good excuse to take it off whenever I'm not trying to track something. Be warned. I would have definitely given it a 2.5 rating if that was an option. I probably would have gone down to a 2-star rating, but I do still use it everyday and plan to continue using it because it's the only option I have for what it does. I just wish it did most things better. I wasn't expecting perfection, but I am disappointed. After you break the seal on the box, I'm not sure it's returnable for any reason other than it being defective (I don't know), but even so I feel you need to spend some time with it to really get a feel for it to decide how it works best for you. Other than the display being a pain in the ass to work I'm not sure any of this technically counts as defective, and even the display is seemingly more a function of poor design than not working the way it is supposed to. It's just not a great product.

Works as advertised.. looks great... No issues so far

An incredibly useful fitness product. It has incredible app and community which sets it apart from any other fitness brand. The design of altar hr is very good for both men and women. If you are looking for something to track your steps and daily calorie count or distance travelled or heart rate, then go for this over any other watch. If you are looking to track other specialised exercises in the gym and also need a few smart watch features the go for a higher model in the fitbit line up.

So Let's Start With My Final Review Which Include:- Box Contents,Design Review,PROs,CONs,Final VERDICT... ---------------------- 📦 Box Contents: ---------------------- 1.FITBIT ALTA HR 2.CHARGING Cable 3.USER Manual ---------------------- 🎀DESIGN REVIEW : ---------------------- As you may know, Fitbit puts fashion first with the Alta, making it the slimmest stylish activity tracker. People love the design of the Alta, that’s why Fitbit doesn’t change much in the design of Fitbit Alta HR. Though integrated the heart rate monitor sensor, Fitbit managed to keep the tracker 15mm in width, making it slimmer 25% than the Fitbit Charge 2. The Flex 2 is even slimmer, at 11mm, but it doesn’t have a screen, thus inconvenient to view information. The band is interchangeable, allowing you to snap to other colors or metal, leather as you wish. A good news for those want to upgrade from Alta to Alta HR is that the Alta bands fit the new Alta HR so your strap collection is still in use. The difference from the old Alta is that Alta HR uses original buckle strap. Fitbit has included a clasp for the elastomer strap this time, making it feel more secure and better for heart rate monitoring. ---------------------- ---------------------- PROs [The GOOD]👍👍 ---------------------- 1.Heart rate monitor This is the key feature of the Alta HR. The tracker continually records your heart rate 24/24, letting you know your resting heart rate and showing real-time heart rate during your workout session. 2.Sleep tracking Fitbit Alta HR is launched with a new feature that has never been seen in other Fitbit devices. That is “Sleep Stages”. It uses the optical heart-rate sensor to show you the amount of time you’ve spent in REM, light sleep or heavy sleep, how often you wake up mid-snooze, so you can monitor how good your night has been. What I find very interesting is that it gives you the sleep trends of other people your same age and gender and offers personalized guidance on how to improve your slumber. Floors climbed tracking The great news is Fitbit has added floor climbed tracking to the Alta HR, which was missed in the Alta. Battery life Thumb up to the 7-day battery life. Given that it is integrated with a heart rate monitor, the Alta HR lasts even longer than the Alta and Charge 2 (5 days). ---------------------- ---------------------- CONs [The Bad]👎👎 ---------------------- 1.Not Waterproof It seems that Fitbit keeps ignoring this function. So for those wish to use a Fitbit tracker for swimming, your choice comes down to the Flex 2. 2.No guided breathing sessions Like other fitness tracker devices of Fitbit, the Alta HR has Smart Track which automatically detects various activities like running and biking. However, it was not integrated the guided breathing sessions like the Charge 2. 3.Not having a timer For some people that are familiar with the timer in the Charge HR, they may feel disappointed to know that there’s no such feature in the Alta HR. ---------------------- ---------------------- 💬 VERDICT: ---------------------- I have to agree that the Fitbit Alta HR is actually is the best slimmest fitness tracker with heart rate monitor. It’s slender, it’s fashionable and it can assist you work out perfectly. If you are having a Fitbit Alta, don’t hesitate to upgrade. If you want a Fitbit that has more functions, then Fitbit Charge 2 is still the number one choice. --------------------- Hope You Like This Review ....If You Like This Review Hit The HelpFul Button...It Matters To Me A Lot And Yes Thankyou Amazon For A FASTER And Safer Delivery(5/5 for AMAZON) --------------------- THANK You

This is a great product albeit pricey at 14,999 when I bought a month ago. It is now at 11,999. The product is very good tracks steps, heart rate and sleep patterns. It has a week's worth of battery life. It is not bulky and quite inconspicuous on your wrist. I had the Flex before this and now this one is a worthy successor. I only wish I had waited and bought it now for 3k cheaper rather than a month ago.

I love my Fitbit Alta HR. It's the best Fitbit. The bracelet is easy to attach, I'm very happy with my purchase. I truly recommend it.