display screens alta hr in stock

This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. The action you just performed triggered the security solution. There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a SQL command or malformed data.

The Screen Protector features corrosion and moisture protection. It prevents moisture from migrating through the film to attack underlying substrates. It offers impact protection against plastics, metals, and composites from sand, rock, rain, and debris. It protects against general wear, rubbing, chaffing, abrading, scraping, etc. ArmorSuit MilitaryShield is easy to install and provides long term edge sealing protection.

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.

This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. The action you just performed triggered the security solution. There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a SQL command or malformed data.

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.

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.