Top critical review
1.0 out of 5 starsUnreliable tracker & poor-quality product
Reviewed in the United States on February 24, 2019
This is a very unreliable tracker and a very poor-quality product.
Compared to other, more reliable devices:
- The Fitbit Alta HR miscalculates the number of steps taken (for instance, it counts thousands of steps for an hour spent speaking while sitting, or for an hour driving on dirt roads)
- The Fitbit Alta HR overestimates calories burned by 25-30% (even after discounting extra steps)
- The Fitbit Alta HR’s heart rate tracking is completely off and, therefore, so is the sleep tracking & the exercise tracking
- The Fitbit Alta HR does not recognize many common forms of exercise (like most martial arts).
In addition, the Fitbit Alta HR is poorly built. The device I bought stopped working after 6 months. [Update: Fitbit sent me a replacement product, which stopped working after less than five months].
Customer service is terrible:
- replacement for products under warranty take weeks to arrive (minimum “5 to 10 business days”)
- Fitbit replaces defective products not with brand new items, but with refurbished pebbles (which won’t last very long, given that even brand-new products break down after 6 months)
- The warranty on the replacement items is only for the duration of the warranty left on the original product, rather than a new one-year warranty, which is standard practice for other companies. (this show the very poor confidence Fitbit employees have in their own products!)
- It takes days to receive answers from customer support.
- There is no compensation for customers who have to deal with defective products. Not even an apology.
Overall, Fitbit’s policies are excellent at protecting themselves against the poor quality of their own products, but they are much less effective at protecting the rights of their customers.
The only good thing I can write about this product is that the Fitbit Alta HR is discreet and relatively elegant, and it gives the time accurately.
But given that that this tracker fails to perform appropriately all of the basic functions for which we may decide to buy it, including step tracking, heart rate tracking, and calorie tracking, we’re be better off with no device at all (more discreet), a standard watch (more elegant), or a tracker from another brand like Garmin or Omron (more accurate).