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Making an accurate wristband heart rate monitor, let alone one that"s also comfortable and stylish, is challenging. Fitbit"s latest attempt to strike that balance is the $150 Alta HR. A near mirror-image of the original Alta, the Alta HR is an updated model with slight design differences, improved sleep-tracking features, and a tiny optical heart-rate monitor inside of it.

The Alta HR is quite similar to Fitbit"s currently available Charge 2, but the Alta HR places more emphasis on the combination of a slim design and an accurate heart-rate monitor. Fitbit is banking on that combination encouraging users to wear a device all day and all night long. The Alta HR is proof that you can have a device that works as hard as you do without being ostentatious and without much sacrifice.

The Alta HR looks nearly identical to the original Alta, and its symmetry is one of its biggest selling points. Fitbit managed to shrink the internal tech by 25 percent to make room for an optical heart rate monitor inside the Alta"s svelte frame. Coming in small, large, and extra large sizes, all Alta HR models are just 0.61 inches (1.6 cm) wide. That makes the device .23 inches (0.6 cm) thinner than the $150 Fitbit Charge 2. It also has the same tappable display as the original device and the Charge 2, but the HR responds to taps much better than the Alta did. There are no physical buttons on the Alta HR, so you can only tap the display to scroll through activity data screens. Waking the Alta HR"s display rarely took more than one tap, whereas the Alta often needed three to five taps to wake up at all.

The most noticeable difference is in the Alta HR"s bands: instead of the Alta"s snap closure, the Alta HR has a more watch-like band made of flexible elastomer and features a simple, semi-flexible buckle. Not only does the new band make the device easier to strap on, it also lets you get the perfect fit for measuring heart rate. As with any wrist-bound optical heart-rate monitor, the one in the Alta HR can interfere with blood flow and provide an inaccurate pulse reading if the device is strapped too tightly. On the flip side, it shouldn"t be so loose that air gets between the wrist and the monitor. While the original Alta"s snap closure is perfectly adequate for that device, the more secure band on the Alta HR is necessary.

The band is interchangeable, just like on the original Alta. Fitbit has a bunch of styles available in leather, metal, and, of course, elastomer, which is ideal for exercise. Although the Alta HR might not be water-resistant enough to swim with (the Flex 2 is still the only Fitbit tracker with that perk), it is comfortable to wear all day and while you"re sleeping. Since the new sleep features that are supposed to help you sleep better require the heart-rate monitor, the Alta HR needs to be easy to sleep with around your wrist. I slept with the device on for a few weeks, strapped as I typically would to ensure proper heart-rate measurement, and it never bothered me. I slept mostly with the sport band on the Alta HR and a few times with a leather band; I would wager the only uncomfortable band to sleep with is the bracelet-like metal band. Advertisement

Thanks to its smaller internals, the Alta HR is estimated to last seven days on a single charge. That"s with continuous heart-rate monitoring and sleep tracking, making it an extremely competitive device in terms of battery life. On the seventh consecutive day of wearing the Alta HR, I received a notification in the app that the battery was low. I typically tracked one or two workouts per day and wore the device to bed each night. Even with all that use, the Alta HR lasted over a week before it needed more juice.

The Alta HR has nearly all the same features as the Charge 2, the most important of which are daily activity and sleep tracking, continuous heart-rate monitoring, and auto-recognition of exercises. From the moment you strap on the Alta HR, it tracks your steps, calories, distance, and heart rate, and it will continue to monitor movement and pulse while you sleep. The heart-rate monitor enhances some of these features: Fitbit claims the caloric-expenditure estimates will be more accurate than before thanks to the heart-rate monitor, and the monitor feeds data into the new Sleep Stages and Sleep Insight features that help you get a better night of shut-eye.

Thankfully, the heart-rate monitor is pretty accurate. When I tested it against the Polar H7 heart-rate monitoring chest strap, the Alta HR typically hovered within three to five BPMs of the H7"s measurement. However, the Alta HR took a few more seconds to level off at a medium-intensity pulse after being at a high-intensity pulse for a few minutes. The H7 chest strap"s readings fell steadily from the 170s to the 130s, but the Alta HR took a few more seconds to level off at the new, lower heart rate.

Actually seeing your heart rate on the Alta HR during a workout is a little frustrating. You must tap the display to go to the heart-rate screen to see your real-time measurement, and that"s easier said than done when you"re in the middle of a 5K run. The only way to make this easier is to customize the order of your Alta HR"s screens in the Fitbit app and set the heart-rate screen to be the first one that pops up when you turn your wrist upward.

One of the differences between the Charge 2 and the Alta HR is that you cannot access sport profiles on the new device. You can save a few sport profiles to the Charge 2, allowing you to easily start a recorded workout from the device. But with the Alta HR, you must rely on the exercise auto-recognition feature or wait until you"re done exercising and manually log workouts in the mobile app. Auto-recognition and recording is one of Fitbit"s best features: the Alta HR will automatically record walk, run, elliptical, and bike workouts, as well as "sports" (a good generic category if you do a particular sport regularly) and "aerobic" workouts (another good category for HIIT sessions and the like) that you do for more than 10 minutes. This time threshold can be changed in the app, but the least amount of time needed to recognize and record an activity is 10 minutes. I only logged one session manually in the app while I used the Alta HR (it was a 10-minute stair-stepper session that I categorize as an aerobic exercise). Otherwise, the device picked up every workout I did without my help. Advertisement

The other two differences between the Charge 2 and the Alta HR is that the latter doesn"t have guided breathing sessions, nor does it have a connected GPS feature. The Charge 2"s guided breathing feature uses the display to lead you through a deep breathing session that helps lower your heart rate and keep you relaxed. It"s not a necessary feature—most fitness trackers don"t have it—but guided breathing might be good for your mental health if you"re constantly feeling stressed or anxious. The connected GPS feature lets you map outdoor running routes when you take the Charge 2 on a run with your smartphone. The lack of this feature might deter runners from buying the Alta HR: if you"re accustomed to running outside and want to review a route map at the end of each session, you can"t get that with the Alta HR.

We"ll discuss the Alta HR"s improved sleep features in the app section, but they are improved primarily because of the heart-rate monitor. Not only does the monitor work all day, but it also measures your pulse throughout the night and your resting heart rate before you wake up. That continuous nighttime heart rate, plus heart-rate variability data and the accelerometer"s movement information, gives you a better picture of your night"s sleep. Most other devices use movement data alone to judge if you"ve slept well or not (if you move too much, your session is automatically considered a bad night"s sleep), so adding heart-rate information makes the information more clear and accurate. Heart rate and heart-rate variability also lets the Alta HR estimate the amount of time you spend in light, deep, and REM sleep, as well as the periods when you"re awake at night. Before the introduction of Sleep Stages, Fitbit devices could only estimate light, deep, and awake times.

The Alta HR also has a number of alert features that are standard for nearly every Fitbit device. It receives text, call, and calendar alerts from your smartphone, which isn"t as many notifications as the $150 Garmin Vivosmart HR gets, but they are the bread-and-butter of smartphone alerts. You can set the device to ping you with a reminder to move if you"ve been sitting for too long, and you can set a silent alarm to either wake you up in the morning with light vibrations or to remind yourself to do something important during the day.

The Fitbit Alta wristband includes a full organic light-emitting diode (OLED) screen that users can tap for reminders, a clock, and smartphone notifications. The screen is not a touchscreen, so users interact with the device by tapping the band, which is similar to previous Fitbit models. The Alta can also recognize the type of activity in progress such as running, walking, or playing sports. The Alta HR includes an added heart rate monitor (thus, the ‘HR’ in the name) and a new Sleep Stages feature, which is designed to show the user their stages of sleep rather than just the time asleep as offered in previous Fitbit devices.

According to a review of the Fitbit Alta HR from TechRadar, the device has an accurate step counter and heart rate reader. The review found that the screen is slightly unresponsive and the display is difficult to read in bright light.

The Fitbit Alta and Alta HR look visually similar, with a wristband that remains approximately the same wideness around the band. Fitbit advertises that the Alta HR is splashproof (meaning it should not be submerged in water) and can run for up to five days without being charged.

Your activity data is analysed to give you reports, available to view through the app or website. This allows you to see how active you have been and to help you make improvements.

Anyone who has used one of Fitbit’s entry-level fitness trackers in the past will know what to expect from the Fitbit Alta HR. Simply put: this is the Fitbit Alta, plus heart rate monitor.

In terms of appearance, this device barely deviates from the Fitbit Alta that came before it. It’s a slim tracker that blends into its strap. It also has a simple black screen that requires a firm tap to activate and scroll through. This is the only input the Alta HR will recognize and it’s not particularly sensitive – it gets annoying quickly. You can also turn on the screen to check the time (or a chosen metric) by bringing your wrist up to your face. This only works about 80% of the time, unfortunately.

The straps have been updated since the last generation of Altas, and now use a more conventional and less fiddly locking system, which is certainly a welcome addition. The other good news is that you can swap out the straps to find the one that best suits your personal style (or lack thereof). And yes, it is backwards compatible with the Alta, meaning you can try all the fancy leather and metal straps that are already out there.Fitbit Alta review

The Alta HR is comfortable to wear, doesn’t get in the way much and is certainly a welcome break from my bulky vívoactive HR. It’s visible enough to say ‘hey, I track my health’ but not ostentatious enough to draw unwanted attention.

But this device is all about the fitness tracking. Earlier, I described the ideal user for this device as being ‘passive’ and that’s particularly accurate seeing as nearly everything the Fitbit Alta HR does, happens on the downlow.

Step counting of course happens in the background and is pretty accurate for the most part, but so too does most activity tracking. That is to say that you don’t ‘tell’ the Alta HR that you’re going for a run or engaging in sports; rather, it will try and detect that on its own. You do have the option to start a walk, hike or run if you want to sync with the GPS through the app, but there’s no way to manually begin other activities.

Specifically, the Fitbit Alta HR can automatically identify and track walks, runs, outdoor bike, the elliptical machine, aerobic workouts, and the all-too generic “sports”. As an entry-level fitness tracker, there is no GPS built-in here. There’s no water resistance this time around unlike the Flex 2, so swimming is off the cards. There’s also no way to track weight training, which for me is a big letdown. Looking at the Fitbit during a workout also doesn’t provide any useful information.Fitbit Flex 2 review

Fortunately, the algorithm here – called ‘SmartTrack ’– appears fairly impressive and accurate. Only now it has the added benefit of a heart rate monitor for even better accuracy. It can successfully auto-detect bike rides and runs which never ceases to amaze, but that said, it’s not infallible. I recently used some edge trimmers to cut the grass around the edge of my lawn for instance, which the Alta HR recorded as a bike ride!

The heart rate monitor provides an interesting additional metric for your workouts, but it’s not as accurate as more sports-oriented trackers and doesn’t provide a particularly detailed report after activities. Rather, it mainly comes in useful as a way to track your heart rate throughout the day and to provide you with a score for your resting heart rate. This is a useful measure of overall fitness and a nice addition to have. If you’re dedicated to your gym sessions and runs, you’ll be able to see your fitness improve over time.

This is possibly the best implementation I’ve yet to experience with sleep tracking. It’s accurate in my testing and the additional information is very welcome and useful. I’m going to miss this when I stop using the Alta HR, and luckily any other Fitbit that includes a heart rate monitor will be able to do this going forward.

The big question is whether or not the Fitbit Alta HR can improve your health and help you lose weight. The answer to that is… yes! If you diligently track your calories consumed and calories burned (and make sure to maintain a deficit), you should see steady weight loss. The heart rate monitor will only help make that calculation more accurate and the automatic activity tracking is seamless and certainly useful. Less driven users will likewise benefit from the ability to track runs and monitor their sleep and resting heart rate. As they say: that which is monitored, improves.

That said, those looking for full smartwatch features or who are more serious about their training should look elsewhere for something that comes with more precise and fully-featured activity tracking. I’ll be sticking with my vívoactive HR. This does a lot for a basic health tracker but falls short of being a full sportstracker.

As I said before, this is pretty much the standard Alta with a heart rate monitor and a few new sleep tracking functionalities built in. But that heart rate monitor makes a big difference and opens up a lot more possibilities for sleep tracking and calorie counting. It is refinement rather than true innovation, but that’s often what yields the best and most reliable technology.

You pay a little more for a Fitbit as compared with similar products from other manufacturers, but in exchange you get a reliable brand with a thriving ecosystem. It’s nice to wear, good at what it does, and has a decent amount of features for basic health and light activity tracking. If you are a casual user looking to collect a little data about your health and maybe shed a few pounds, then the Fitbit Alta HR is a fairly comprehensive and very reliable choice.

In what may seem like a sea of Fitbit models, the Fitbit Alta HR attempts to strike the balance between what folks want as a straightforward activity tracker, while making some nods towards basic workout support.  I’ve been wearing a unit now for about two months – tracking my moves 24×7.  So I figured now’s a good time to dive into how well the unit works and where it stands against the competition.  Especially since the competitive landscape continues to get more and more crowded.

When it comes to looking at how the Fitbit Alta HR sizes up, it’s definitely one of the smallest out there in its class.  Of course, this class of devices tends to be pretty small.  Comparing it for example to the Garmin Vivosmart 3, you’ll notice both have slight differences but are very similar.

The Garmin Vivosmart 3 is a shade bit larger in width than the Fitbit Alta HR.  On the flipside, it has more functions for sport and tracking than the Fitbit does. Though, the Alta HR has band swappability, whereas the Vivosmart 3 doesn’t.

If you then compare that to something like the Polar A370, you’ll see that the A370 is a fair bit bigger.  But then again, the A370 has a much brighter and bigger display and far more sport functions.

So, in general, the bigger you get, the more stuff they cram in there.  Same would be true if you compared it to the Garmin Vivosmart HR+, which is in the ballpark of the Polar A360/A370 for size – but also contains GPS.  Here’s a quick look at the weights of each of them:

When it comes to using the Fitbit Alta HR, things are pretty straight-forward.  For the most part you’ve only got a few screens to tap your way through.  In a lot of ways, the majority of the data gathered by the unit is viewable from the app – not the device itself.

Sure, you’ve got core things like calories, steps, and distance shown on the device – as well as your current HR.  But to see data from workouts or HR trends, you’ll need the app.  But let’s not get too distracted yet. First the unit itself.

The display will always be off unless you either raise your wrist to look at it, or double-tap it.  I’d say about 80% of the time it correctly gets the wrist-raise, but the remaining 20% I’ll have to double-tap it.  In most cases where I have to double-tap it’s because the wrist motion wasn’t significant (like reading a book or sitting on the couch and only slightly moving to see the screen).  The battery life is as stated, about a week.  I haven’t had any issues there.

Once illuminated, the unit will by default show the time of day, day of week, and date – as seen above.  You can customize this display though via the mobile app.  This includes customizing not just the clock face screen, but also whether it’s in a vertical or horizontal orientation.  As seen below, some of these clock faces also show your current HR or progress towards your goal.

Next, we can tap our way through up to 8 different display pages.  These are listed below and can be turned on or off as you see fit.  You can also customize the specific order of them:

Throughout the day the unit is tracking your steps and distance, but its real motivation is to get you to move more.  So by default you’ve got a step goal (of 10,000 steps).  But you can customize that to instead be a distance goal, calories burned goal, or active minutes goal.

Of course – a big part of using an activity tracker is to track your steps and distance (as well as other activity).  With the Fitbit Alta HR, you’ll get the daily status as shown in the gallery a few paragraphs up.  But what if you want to see trending over time?  For that, you’ll crack open the app.  It’s here that you can see overview stats for each day, and then tap left/right to change days.  You can also tap any given metric (such as steps) to see what things look like for each day of the week, allowing you to scroll back as far as you’d like.

The same is true of other metrics like calories or active minutes.  Note that the Fitbit Alta HR does not track floors however, which is why you see it as zero above.

Next, we’ve got more general notifications – specifically smartphone notifications.  With the Fitbit Alta HR, you’ll get both text and call notifications, as well as calendar reminders.  But that’s it.  You won’t get Twitter notifications or any other app you’ve got.  So if you happen to use WhatsApp for example, you’re hosed.

On one hand you could argue the display is tiny and almost useless for anything of length.  And that’s probably true.  But there’s no real difference in length between a text message sent via the native text and that of WhatsApp.  It’s still my friend asking if I want to meet up for a ride using the same wording.  Thus…I’m not sure why Fitbit continues to box users in.

In any case, last but not least we’ve got sleep capabilities.  The unit itself doesn’t display sleep metrics, but rather instead records sleep data as you wear it each night.  That data is then accessible from the app.  Fitbit has semi-recently updated their sleep metrics to be quite a bit more useful than it was in the past.  To begin, of course, you’ve got an overview of sleep hours by days in the week for the past week (you can go further too).  You can then tap on any given day to get more details about that night of sleep:

You’ll notice up top on the right that I’ve got the time asleep (6hr 16mins), but also a funky waveform like looking graph that shows you what type of sleep I was in throughout the night.  I can scroll down in the app to get more details about that, and then comparisons to my averages as well as everyone else:

And with that, we’ve pretty much covered all the functionality there is on the Fitbit Alta HR itself aside from workouts.  You see, there’s no specific workout mode on the device, but rather, that’s triggered from the app on your smartphone.  So let’s head on into the workout section to dive into that a bit more.

Unlike the Fitbit Charge 2, the Alta HR doesn’t have a dedicated button for starting a workout from the band itself.  Instead, you’ve got two options – one is to let it automatically detect your exercise.  And the second is to manually start an exercise from the smartphone app.

What happens after you press start is that you’ll get heart rate data from the unit saved directly to the app via Bluetooth Smart.  So you must take your phone with you for this to work.  You’ll also be able to see the exact distance on the app itself.  Note – there’s no additional data displayed on the Fitbit Alta HR, that’ll just do its normal screens.

So basically, the app is acting like any other GPS fitness app – except it’s simply pairing to your Fitbit Alta HR to get your heart rate (sorta like pairing to a heart rate strap).  Speaking of which, the Fitbit Alta HR does NOT broadcast your heart rate to other apps in real-time (many other trackers do).  So no, it does NOT broadcast over either Bluetooth Smart or ANT+ standard HR profiles.  Nor will it communicate with gym machines like treadmills.

So what about optical HR accuracy?  Well, there’s two pieces to that.  First is the 24×7 HR component.  How well does it record heart rate when not in sport?  For that, I found things pretty good.  In many ways Fitbit’s optical HR sensor is better tuned for 24×7 mode than sport mode, and it shows here.  It’s sampling at a 1-second rate, and is recording quite near that as well.  And all the data I’ve seen while comparing multiple devices at once for 24×7 mode looks pretty good on the Alta HR.

Note that the 24×7 mode data is shown on the unit itself using the HR data page, or by customizing the clock face to show it by default.  Also, the data can be seen within the app too – both in real-time as well as historical trends.

But what about sport mode?  Well, that’s gonna vary person to person, and situation to situation.  One of the things that makes smaller band accuracy more challenging is how much light gets in from the side (daylight is the arch-enemy of optical HR sensor accuracy, and a loose fitting and very thin band is super tough).  Still, with that in mind, I went out and tested it in a few different scenarios.

Keep in mind that in order to test this accuracy you need to start a workout from the phone.  That way you can get a workout file to compare against other files with.  For these tests I was using both a chest HR strap as well as another optical HR sensor watch, and in some cases a fourth HR sensor (such as the Scosche Rhythm+ on the upper arm).  No wrist had more than one device worn.

As you can see, overall the Fitbit Alta HR did actually pretty well, especially in the interval portion.  Early on however in the first 7-10 minutes it struggled a little bit, and overshot on HR compared to the other devices.  For this run I had a chest strap (Wahoo TICKR-X), a Scosche optical sensor (upper arm), and the Suunto Wrist HR (other wrist).  So three optical HR sensors and one traditional chest strap.  Given the terrain during this run was pancake flat (seriously, a table-top has more deviation than this route did), I’m not clear why in the first 10 minutes we see the Fitbit Alta HR have trouble.

This means that for anything else you get an auto recognized activity. Which in turn means no GPS coverage.  And that matters because for years (still), Fitbit doesn’t allow data exports with HR data to non-GPS activities. Sure, you can go onto the site and click ‘Export to TCX’ for anything.  Except the file it’ll give you for a non-GPS activity is simply empty.  It’s a useless and null file.  Fitbit doesn’t call that a bug – but rather some sort of ‘feature’.  Hmm….ok.

While I could try and compare the data between the picture above and the actual HR sensors I had, that’d be pointless. Why?  Well, two reasons.  First is that the accuracy of doing so is sketchy at best.  But more important is that any person can easily see these two graphs look nothing like each other (the Fitbit seems to think I topped out at about 118bpm, despite major long climbs).  The Fitbit Alta HR is dismal when it comes to tracking optical HR on the bike – a problem I’ve had with all Fitbit units on the bike.

So overall I’d say that on the running side of things I’ve seen generally good progress from Fitbit (it’s much better than it used to be).  However, cycling is dismal as always.  As for other sports – well, again, it’s hard to know/tell because strangely Fitbit doesn’t actually let you track those sports with the Alta HR.  No indoor gym mode to track lifting, or Yoga, or anything else.

Finally, for lack of sticking it anywhere else – I’m not going to compare GPS accuracy in this review.  Like the Polar A370 review last week, the reason is the same: It’d just be comparing different phones’ GPS accuracy – not the Fitbit itself.  That’s because with the Fitbit Alta HR using your phone for GPS accuracy, the test results wouldn’t mean a whole lot. They’d vary by phone model and invariably you’d have a different model than I.  Then you get into things like firmware versions on the phone which can also impact results.  Still, for those curious – you can look at the GPS tracks with each and every data set I’ve shared above (it’s shown in the DCR Analyzer).  Alternatively, here’s a shot of one route, with four different units including the Alta HR.  Things are basically identical (albeit on a reasonably easy route):

I’ve added the Fitbit Alta HR into the product comparison tool.  This allows you to compare features against other products in the category, such as those from Garmin, Polar, and more.  While I’ve shown just a handful of competitors below, you can mix and match and create your own product comparison chart here in the product comparison tool.

For most people, the Fitbit Alta HR pick up doing what Fitbits of the past have done: Being a perfectly capable activity tracker.  With the porting of Fitbit’s optical HR technology into the Alta series, they’ve expanded the number of wearables they have with wrist-based heart rate technology, and in this case – the ability to swap bands.

But I feel like in many ways when I look at the Alta HR, I kinda just shrug. Fitbit didn’t really deliver on anything that would drive most other existing Fitbit users to upgrade to it, unless you really like band swappability.  Which of course – some people really do.  The ability to have more fashion-focused activity tracker bands is definitely a hot trend right now.  But in looking at the Fitbit lineup it’s almost become too confusing with too many options, especially in the $80-$150 price range.

I’ve partnered with Clever Training to offer all DC Rainmaker readers an exclusive 10% discount across the board on all products (except clearance items).  You can pick up the Fitbit Alta HR (or any other Alta HR bands) from Clever Training. Then receive 10% off of everything in your cart by adding code DCR10BTF at checkout.  By doing so, you not only support the site (and all the work I do here) – but you also get a sweet discount. And, since this item is more than $75, you get free US shipping as well.

Additionally, you can also use Amazon to purchase the unit (all colors shown after clicking through to the left) or accessories (though, no discount on Amazon).  Or, anything else you pick up on Amazon helps support the site as well (socks, laundry detergent, cowbells).  If you’re outside the US, I’ve got links to all of the major individual country Amazon stores on the sidebar towards the top.  Though, Clever Training also ships there too and you get the 10% discount.

We are constantly coming up with new ways to keep our electronic devices protected. While our IQ Shield is designed specifically for flat screen surfaces, we�ve also engineered a film that is able to completely cover your entire Fitbit Alta HR! Our IQ Shield film is pliable, allowing it to wrap itself against round edges and corners, but tough and highly durable to withstand physical wear and tear.

If you have received a defective product or if the film has become permanently damaged over time, we will happily send you a brand new IQ Shield screen protector or full body skin. Please note that the IQ Shield Lifetime Replacement does not cover items that have been mishandled or damaged through installation errors. That includes imperfections like air bubbles, dust, dirt or fingerprints getting caught underneath the film, improper alignment and stretching of the film. We encourage all customers to read our instructions thoroughly before installing your IQ Shield on your device. For more information, please visit the FAQ.

We are constantly coming up with new ways to keep our electronic devices protected. While our IQ Shield is designed specifically for flat screen surfaces, we�ve also engineered a film that is able to completely cover your entire Fitbit Alta HR! Our IQ Shield film is pliable, allowing it to wrap itself against round edges and corners, but tough and highly durable to withstand physical wear and tear.

If you have received a defective product or if the film has become permanently damaged over time, we will happily send you a brand new IQ Shield screen protector or full body skin. Please note that the IQ Shield Lifetime Replacement does not cover items that have been mishandled or damaged through installation errors. That includes imperfections like air bubbles, dust, dirt or fingerprints getting caught underneath the film, improper alignment and stretching of the film. We encourage all customers to read our instructions thoroughly before installing your IQ Shield on your device. For more information, please visit the FAQ.

I’m new to the world of Fitbit and its wearable fitness trackers. What got me interested in trying a Fitbit was my wife’s company was doing a fundraiser for charity based on steps with the leading team being able to donate to the cause of their choice. Spouses were allowed/encouraged to join in on the fun and since I wanted to get in better shape I wholeheartedly agreed. I don’t typically wear a fitness tracker or smartwatch, preferring a classic timepiece on my wrist. So, the Alta HR’s sleek and slim form factor appealed to me; allowing me to wear my watch on my left wrist and the unobtrusive Fitbit on my right. For this review, Fitbit sent me their stealthy Special Edition gunmetal Alta HR to try out.

The Alta HR is one of the slimmest and most stylish fitness trackers on the market today. The HR is a follow on to the original Alta adding Fitbit’s PurePulse heart rate sensor, quite a feat considering the device’s tiny size.  In addition to built-in heart rate monitor, the Alta HR has an OLED display, 7-day battery life, all-day fitness tracking, sleep tracking with Fitbit’s new Sleep Stages and Sleep Insights feature, notification mirroring, etc.

Getting the Alta HR operational is more about getting your Fitbit account setup and signed into the app than anything on the device side of the house. Once charged and paired to your smartphone, the device syncs with the app and you’re more or less good to go.

Like the original, the Alta HR has a plastic body surrounded by a metal frame with a 1.4 inch, 128 x 36 resolution OLED touchscreen display on top. The display is monochrome with decent contrast, though sometimes difficult to see in bright/sunny conditions. The Alta has a buttonless design; its “Single Point Touch Screen” allows you to navigate the fitness tracker’s various screens by tapping its front face. The display is off until you either raise your wrist to look at it or double-tap it.  Approximately 3/4 of the time it correctly senses the wrist-raise motion, but the remaining times I would have to double-tap the screen to bring it to life. It did take a bit of initial practice to get the screen to respond. At first, I found the interface quite irritating with how unresponsive it was but with time I finally got the hang of it or the mechanism itself needed to be broken in. Either way, the device is currently responding well to screen taps with perhaps 10% of the time needing to repeat the effort.

The Alta HR charges via its propitiatory USB cable that clamps onto the back of the tracker, locking it into place. The Alta HR charges relatively quickly (within a few hours) and operates nearly a week without needing to be recharged.

Like other Fitbit fitness trackers, configuring the Alta HR is done via the smartphone app. The pairing and setup process is quick and easy. Considering how small the screen is, Fitbit has done a good job optimizing what and how your fitness data is displayed. Being able to see your steps and heart rate on the fly is convenient and helps keep you motivated.

As you can see above, the Alta HR tracks steps, estimated distance traveled, calories burned, and sleep quality; plus it nags you to move if you have been sedentary too long. I found all of the Fitbit’s features very motivating, especially during the fitness competition. There is no doubt that between the two, I regularly hit 20k steps and beyond during the challenge.

Like its predecessor, the Alta HR auto-scenes what type of workout you’re doing and records them as blocks of effort. Though it did get a little confused with tennis but was spot on when I ran, walked, or did the elliptical machine. The Fitbit app keeps track of not only the type of exercising you’re doing but its duration, calories burned, average heart rate, and type of exertion (aka burning fat/cardio/peak). With more data within each workout for greater in-depth analysis as seen on the right screen capture.

Fitbit’s new sleep tracking is my favorite and most interesting feature of the Alta HR. I firmly believe that a good nights sleep is a key component to staying healthy and motivated. I shoot for 8 hours a sleep per night but rarely achieve it. In addition to tracking the duration and type of sleep, the tracking feature helped me realize lifestyle choices that impacted the quality of rest I was getting on any given night.

When paired with and in range of your smartphone, the Alta will also display notifications of incoming calls, text messages, calendar alerts, and will provide reminders (aka nagging) to get up and move throughout the day. These notifications can be difficult to read due to the small display but at least let you know they’re there and to reference your phone if need be. I also like vibration on my wrist for calls, messages, and alarms cause there are many times I have my iPhone on silent and miss them.

The Fitbit Alta HR is available in Black/Stainless Steel, Blue Gray/Stainless Steel, Fuchsia/Stainless Steel, Coral/Stainless Steel, Black/Gunmetal, and Soft Pink/Rose Gold. Fitbit leather accessory bands are available in Brown, Indigo, and Lavender. There is also a Stainless Steel option as well.

In addition to the stock Fitbit bands, there are MANY aftermarket Alta bands out there to express yourself. The Alta HR is engineered to swap bands in a blink of an eye. The design makes it quick and easy to exchange bands whenever you please.

I really like the Alta HR’s slim, stealthy design with the Special Edition gunmetal version definitely being my fitness tracker of choice. Fitbit has done an excellent job creating a less is more fitness band that is comfortable to wear with solid features and specs. While the HR is lacking a few nice to have features, its form factor, heart rate tracking, accurate activity tracking, excellent sleep tracking, week-long battery life, and stellar app platform/ecosystem more than makeup for it.

The original Alta now costs £100 (although it can be found for even less online), so is it worth spending an extra £30 for an optical heart rate monitor? Yes it absolutely is.

The addition of heart rate monitoring means greater accuracy in tracking the calories you burn and results in a more detailed breakdown of sleep (more on that later). The Alta HR can now also give an estimate of your resting heart rate, an excellent indicator of general fitness.

A few months after launching, Fitbit upgraded the app to offer Alta HR users Cardio Fitness Score, a feature that had previously only been available on the Charge 2 and Blaze. It’s an estimate of VO₂ max, or how efficiently your body can use oxygen, based on your resting heart rate and other bits from profile including your weight. While this could have been just another number, Fitbit cleverly places you on a spectrum of people of the same sex and age range.

Subsequent screens in the app then suggest how much you could improve the score with exercise, especially HIIT, or if you drop 5lb (2.3kg) of weight. If there’s one complaint we have with fitness trackers it’s that numbers are often provided without any context, so we give Fitbit a big hand for adding this feature and explaining it.

One question with all wrist-based heart rate monitors is accuracy and the ability to respond quickly to rapid changes in heart rate. We haven’t tested the Alta HR against a chest strap (which are inevitably more accurate), but we found it mostly passed the “that’s reasonable” test. Our resting heart rate moved around appropriately according to how healthily we were behaving and there were no outlandish readings when we looked at the screen during exercise.

Occasionally, however, we did find it didn’t display a heart rate during exercise even though we were wearing it according to Fitbit’s guidelines for exercise (tight and two finger-widths above the wrist bone). This was pretty rare, though.

We found ourselves hitting the 10,000-step goal a little earlier in the day than usual (we are very much creatures of habit) so the Alta HR may be a bit more sensitive to movement, but not outrageously so, and we have no way of knowing if our previous tracker was more or less accurate.

With all things tracker-related, it’s not really the absolute number that counts, it’s how it changes over time. Fitbit seems to know that and offers breakdowns of your steps over a day, a week, a month, three months or a year.

One feature that can be found in other models in this price bracket, but isn’t present on the Alta HR, is an altimeter to count stairs climbed. In the Fitbit range, that’s present in the Charge 2 and above, but Fitbit can be forgiven the omission on the Alta HR. They’ve already managed to fit a heart rate monitor into the Alta’s svelte frame.

The Alta HR automatically recognises and categorises 15 minutes or more of running as an exercise event (although you can reduce this time limit in the settings). Afterwards it provides you with the time spent running, a graph of your heart rate and the time spent in the three heart rate zones, calories burned and steps taken.

Where the Alta HR does fall down, however, is that it can’t see any of the GPS info (time, distance or pace data) on your wrist as you run. In fact, because SmartTrack isn’t shown on the screen at all you can’t even see a timer of how long you’ve been running for. You can keep tabs on your heart rate, which is useful if you’re following a training plan and like to use heart rate zones instead of terms like easy, steady and tempo, or if you’re looking to run intervals. But if you are that into your running that you’re planning on intervals, we’d recommend the Charge 2 – which has a feature dedicated to just that.

Although there’s no cycling option when starting GPS tracking in the app, it’ll still match itself up to a SmartTrack cycling event. Otherwise the Alta HR tracks exactly the same things for cycling as it does for running. It works if you’re a casual cyclist – perhaps a commuter like us – and want the activity to count towards your goals, but if you’re at all into cycling the Alta HR will feel feature-light pretty quickly.

The Alta HR isn’t waterproof so don’t take it into the pool or the shower. Fitbit only offers swim tracking on the cheaper Flex 2 – it seems to be one area that Fitbit’s happy to leave to the competition for now.

The Alta HR is the cheapest wearable in Fitbit’s line-up that offers Sleep Stages, which uses the heart rate monitor to add REM tracking to the breakdown of awake, light and deep sleep that’s common across brands.

With such a small screen the Alta HR can’t match the smartwatch pretensions of the Blaze, its older, bigger brother, but it makes full use of the real estate available by offering simple notifications.

It’s a useful addition and well executed, although we found it difficult to read the Alta HR’s screen during daylight, and we occasionally activated the screen by accident and couldn’t bring the message back again.

What the Alta HR can’t do is show notifications from third-party apps like WhatsApp, a feature that’s present on one of the Alta HR’s biggest competitors, the Garmin Vivoactive HR and Vivosmart 3. Whether that’s a problem depends on you – if we were buzzed every time someone posts in our fantasy football group our hand would be permanently numb.

Syncing with the app couldn’t be easier. The Alta HR pairs over Bluetooth in a matter of seconds every time you open the app or you can pull down the home screen to manually activate a sync.

The Fitbit app is one of the easiest to use, striking the right balance between a manageable layout at first glance and sufficient depth that you continue to stumble on new screens and details a fair while after first downloading it.

The Challenges tab offers a range of gamified competitions with friends (if you know any fellow Fitbit users) and solo challenges that allow you to virtually complete a route – like the New York Marathon – through your step count. Both are nice additions that may provide that little bit of impetus needed to change your routine and up your step count.

There’s the Garmin Vivosmart 3 (£130) which is packed full of features, but sacrifices the Alta HR’s ease of use and style and falls down on the cycling front by offering no info after rides.

Or there’s Fitbit’s own hugely popular Charge 2 (£140) which is very similar, but offers a few extra features and a larger, more interactive screen. But to make it as stylistically unobtrusive as the Alta HR you’d have to pony up £60 for the leather band.Fitbit Alta HR: Price Comparison

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Fitbit announced the Alta HR today, an update to last year’s Alta that adds heart rate sensors to the bracelet-like activity tracker. A brief refresher on the Alta: it’s one of Fitbit’s more stylish trackers, and has a tap-sensitive, OLED display and five-day battery life. It tracks steps and sleep and shows notifications from the smartphone, but Fitbit says the number one request it got from customers was an Alta with continuous heart rate tracking. And so, here it is.

This makes the Alta HR the fourth Fitbit product line to include heart rate sensors; the Charge, Blaze, and Surge also have them. But Fitbit has been developing the Alta HR for nearly a year now, according to the company’s R&D director Shelten Yuen, working with Texas Instruments to try to shrink its heart rate monitor to a size that would fit in the tiny wristband, which is 25 percent smaller than the Charge 2. Yeun said the new Alta will also last seven days per battery charge.

Fitbit is also trying to lure in (and retain) more customers by offering more detailed sleep tracking data, or, what the company is labeling Sleep Stages and Sleep Insights. Fitbit wristbands have automatically tracked sleep for a couple years now, logging more than three billion hours of sleep, but the devices would only show wearers information on how long they slept. Now Fitbit will take motion data, along with heart rate variability, to show light, deep, and REM sleep stages. And the insights are supposed to draw a direct line between your daily activities and your sleep patterns, which has been, in theory, a kind of holy grail for these consumer wearables.

The new Alta HR costs $150, $20 more than last year’s Alta. It will ship in early April, around the same time the new sleep-tracking software rolls out to the Alta HR, the Charge 2 wristband, and the Blaze watch. Fitbit says it will continue to sell the older Alta wristband, the one that doesn’t track heart rate, as well as the Flex wristband and the Charge 2.

The new Alta HR wristband is coming at a challenging time for Fitbit. The company’s holiday quarter earnings were so disappointing that it prereleased its results in late January, and announced that it would be laying off more than 100 employees. At the same time, Fitbit is still considered the market leader in activity trackers.

There are a couple ways to look at this “new” Fitbit and sleep-tracking software. The first is that none of this is really new. The Alta HR form factor itself isn’t new; it’s the same wristband design from last year. Other companies, like Garmin and Xiaomi, also make thin activity-tracking wristbands with heart rate sensors, and Jawbone (while hardly a paradigm of consumer activity tracking these days) has offered detailed sleep tracking for years.

And, the fact that Fitbit managed to miniaturize its heart rate sensor technology, making it small enough to fit into the Alta wristband, points to Fitbit’s intentions of expanding into other product areas. It’s a given at this point that Fitbit is making a smartwatch, one that will likely support different apps, but CEO James Park has also said the company is exploring non-wrist-based gadgets.

Yuen, the director of R&D, said that shrinking the chip could also allow room for additional health sensors in future Fitbit products, though he declined to say exactly which health sensors the company is experimenting with.

Fitbit’s the undisputed king of these trackers, shipping 5.7 million devices in the second quarter of 2016 and capturing 25 percent of the global fitness market. But even incumbents can’t afford to rest on their laurels. That’s where the Alta HR, Fitbit’s newest tracker, comes in.

Fitbit’s Alta HR improves upon last year’s Alta with sleep-tracking and heart rate-monitoring features — all in a slim, compact frame. We came away impressed by the device’s accuracy when tracking heart rate. While we wish the body was waterproof, and the display was a little easier to activate, we think the Alta HR is one of the best fitness trackers you can buy at its price point.

It’s near impossible to tell the Alta HR apart from its predecessor, and that’s a good thing — both are among the thinnest, sleekest fitness trackers we’ve used.

The Alta HR boasts a stylish aluminum body with tapered symmetrical edges. On top sits a curved screen with thick black borders, and underneath is a PurePulse heart-rate sensor and three-pin charging port.

Fitbit claims Alta HR is one of the smallest wearables on the market with continuous heart-rate tracking, and that seems likely — it’s tiny. The company said it shrunk the internal tech by 25 percent to make room for the optical heart-rate monitor, and the smallest model – the unit we reviewed — measures a mere 0.61 inches (16mm) wide.

The Alta HR’s wristbands are interchangeable, with alternative options available in elastomer, leather, and metal. But unlike last year’s Alta, which used a prong closure to secure the tracker around your wrist, the HR’s band adopts an adjustable watch-like buckle that’s much easier to fasten. It’s also a lot more comfortable to wear all day — I tended to forget I was wearing it.

The Alta HR’s monochrome OLED screen isn’t touch-sensitive — instead, tap the screen to cycle through statistics screens, call and text message notifications, and activity reminders. Unfortunately, it’s too dim to read in direct sunlight, and isn’t very responsive.

Sometimes, I had to tap the screen multiple times to get the Alta HR to wake up, and usually a few more times to cycle between stats. The problem is mitigated somewhat by the Fitbit companion app, which lets you specify which stat you see when you lift your wrist. But it’s frustrating nonetheless — especially during a run or workout when tapping the screen can be a quick way to glance at missed notifications.

The band isn’t as skin-conforming as we would have liked. Even at the tightest setting, we had a tough time ensuring the Alta HR’s heart-rate tracker stayed in contact with the wrist.

Sadly, the Alta HR also isn’t waterproof. Unlike Fitbit’s Flex 2, it won’t track your laps or strokes. It’s a feature we would like to see trickle down into all fitness trackers, as sportier devices have the tendency to get into contact with water more often than other devices.

A heart-rate sensor isn’t the Alta HR’s only headlining improvement — there are quite a few features it inherited from the pricier Charge 2. The Alta HR can track daily activity, monitor heart rate, steps, calories, distance, and can automatically recognize exercises. It can track movement and heart rate while you sleep, and can provide insight on the efficacy (or inefficacy) of your workout routine.

Fitbit pegs the accuracy of Alta HR’s heart-rate tracking to within 6 beats-per-minute, with a margin of error less than 6 percent. In our testing, it stayed well within that range.

Unlike the wildly inaccurate Pebble 2, the Alta HR was consistently spot on. A sedentary afternoon at the office had it hovering around the low 60s, and a sweaty session of virtual reality gaming got it to the 140s. It responded quickly to ramp-ups in activity, reporting a new BMP within a few seconds of high-intensity sessions.

Perhaps more impressive than the Alta HR’s heart-rate tracking is SmartTrack, the auto-recognition feature that Fitbit introduced last year. It automatically categorizes walks, runs, cycling sessions, elliptical routines, and broader activities like “sports” and “aerobics” after a session. In our testing, the Alta HR’s tracking had no trouble differentiating a treadmill session at the gym from a walk to my apartment. It even suggested an appropriate category — aerobics — for the aforementioned VR session.

It’s a key feature, mainly because it’s impossible to manually start a workout on the Alta HR — you have to wait until you’re done exercising and log workouts in Fitbit’s smartphone app. If most of your routines are stationary or on machines, that could get frustrating.

The Fitbit app, which has been updated to support the Alta HR’s tracking features, hasn’t changed all that much since that last time we reviewed it. The home screen shows basic stats like the number of steps you’ve taken, the distance you’ve walked, the calories you’ve burned, the minutes you’ve been active, and the number of days you’ve exercised in a given week. Scroll down a little and you’ll see your heart rate in BPM and your weight.

Relatively new additions include the Challenges and Guidance tabs. The Challenges tab packs location-based activities like “Weekend Warrior” (a two-day session of high-intensity workouts), and “Jogging in NYC” (a three-mile run in Manhattan).  The Guidance tab, meanwhile, offers workouts from Fitbit’s Fitstar app.

Fitbit said the Alta HR uses a combination of heart rate and movement data to determine how long you’ve in each sleep stage. During the different stages, your heart rate variability — the interval of time in between heart beats — changes, and so the Alta HR continuously records it throughout the night. The data’s plotted on a colorful graph that shows the previous night’s info, your 30-day average. and sleep stats from Fitbit users of the same age and gender.

Sleep tracking seemed accurate in our testing. During one particularly restless evening, the Alta HR recorded each hour of disrupted sleep — 2 a.m., 5 a.m., 6 a.m., and 7:30 a.m. It showed that I’d slept for a total of six hours, and 20 percent of that time was spent in Light sleep. The app said most people my age and gender spend a lot longer in that sleep stage than I did. Good to know, but what can I do with this information?

Fitbit estimates the Alta HR’s battery at about a week, and that’s roughly in line with what we saw. After four days with heart-rate monitoring enabled, active sleep tracking, and brisk walks in New York, the Alta HR’s battery meter settled at 35 percent — more than enough to last a full week.

The warranty covers product defects up to two years from the purchase date — or you can return the Alta HR within 45 days if you’re not happy with it.

The Fitbit Alta HR is available from Fitbit.com, Amazon, Walmart, Bed Bath & Beyond, and other retailers for $150. It comes in blue, fuchsia, coral, black. Two special edition colors, 22k soft pink gold and gunmetal black, start at $180.

The Fitbit Alta HR is an impressive fitness tracker at its price point. It may lack a few bells and whistles found on its pricier counterparts, but the Alta HR’s compactness, the accuracy of its heart-rate tracker, the smart activity recognition, and the robustness of its sleep tracking make up for its shortcomings.

Garmin’s Vivosmart HR+ and Samsung’s Gear Fit 2 are excellent alternatives that both throw in GPS for $30 more at $180, but they’re not as stylish or compact as the Alta HR. The $80 Misfit Ray and $100 Fitbit Flex 2 can record swim sessions, but they lack heart-rate monitors.

For folks looking to put $150 toward an activity tracker, it’ll come down to use case: If you’re a frequent swimmer, the Flex 2’s the obvious choice. If you can’t live without workout profiles, want relax sessions, and a GPS, go for the pricier Charge 2. If you want a lower-profile wearable that’ll track your sleep, record your activity, and won’t stick out like a sore thumb, the Alta HR’s the fitness tracker to buy.

The Alta HR should last at least a few years if properly cared for. Fitbit is generally good about updating old products, sometimes going so far as to bring new features to older models. And accessories like bands and charging docks keep it fresh.

Yes. If you’re a casual athlete looking for a no-frills, stylish way to track your sleep and daily activity — and don’t care about GPS — the Alta HR is one of the cheapest and slimmest fitness trackers with a heart rate sensor, and benefits from Fitbit’s ever-improving ecosystem of accessories and software. Simply put, it’s one of the best everyday activity trackers we’ve tried.