The Best Fitness Trackers

January 2015 | Reading time: 3 minutes

Which fitness tracker is right for you?

We live in a society that is becoming ever more obsessed with health and fitness. We also live in a remarkable ever evolving technological era, so it makes sense that these two things should be combined. A few years ago the best we could come up with was a Casio sports stopwatch to time our laps or lengths but now there are gadgets that can monitor every part of our physical health. The only trouble, is that there are so many fitness trackers available, it’s hard to know which is the best for you. Fear not, VIVO are here to bring you some of the top fitness trackers that are available today.

Microsoft Band

This fitness tracker is the first offering of its kind from Microsoft. It works in conjunction with a new online health initiative by the name of Microsoft Health. The Microsoft Band band has a built in heart rate sensor that constantly monitors your heart rate. There is GPS that maps your location when you go running. Keeping track of your calories is easy and all of the data from the band is correlated on the app or the online software. It even monitors your sleep.

In addition to functioning as a fitness tracker, the Microsoft band also provides limited smartphone functions, like message previews and if you have a Cortana enabled smartphone you can use voice control through the band, just like on Star Trek!

Garmin Vivoactive

The Vivoactive is more than a fitness tracker as it is also a fully-fledged smartwatch. The watch looks pretty nifty and it connects with your phone, giving you access to text messages, emails and notifications from Twitter and Facebook. The Vivoactive also has its finger firmly stuck in a number of other sporty pies including running, swimming and golf as well as tracking all of the same day to day things that the less advanced Garmin fitness trackers do. If that wasn’t enough, the watch can also be used to remotely control Garmin’s VIRB Elite camera.

If the Vivoactive has one flaw, it is that it tries to be so many things at the same time, and it fails to do any of them quite as well as a device dedicated to a specific activity. But, if you like to track your general fitness, plus monitor your performance on the track, in the pool or on the links, then the Garmin Vivoactive may be just what you’re looking for.

Fitbit Flex

The Flex is a middle of the range fitness tracker with a sleek design and number of cool features under the hood. The flex monitors you while you sleep and when you’re awake it will count all the steps you take, calories you burn and the distance you travel. You can set up goals on the app and the lights on Flex indicate your progress. Fitbit’s funky online software lets you track your progress and compare it to other people.

The Fitbit flex is great for people who want to look good while monitoring their everyday health and sleep quality. For the more athletic user, Fitbit has a more advanced range of products with features like GPS and heart rate monitoring.

Other fitness trackers

The fitness tracker you chose will ultimately depend on your goals and your intended usage. You can compare various models of fitness trackers from Garmin and Fitbit to see which one it right for you.