Withings Pulse HR – Water Resistant Health & Fitness Tracker with Heart Rate and Sleep Monitor, Sport & Activity Tracking

I switched from a Fitbit Charge 2 to a Withings Pulse HR about three weeks ago and am happy with the change.Pros: The Withings app and sync process are infinitely better than Fitbit. Connected GPS is much more consistent with the Withings app. The Pulse HR is lower profile (size), which is my aim in a fitness tracker; if I was in the market for a watch I'd go for the Steel HR for the same reason. Battery life is incredible; maybe not 20 days but easily two weeks.Toss up: Step counts are much stricter on Withings, maybe under counting compared to Fitbit's over counting, but either way is fine for trend analysis. Sleep tracking and HR quality also seem comparable to Fitbit. The Pulse HR has no alternative band options; it's crazy they aren't using a standard narrow watch band - same for Fitbit.Cons: I would like to see Withings add a active minutes tracker; this is easy enough to achieve with Google Fit syncing, but it would be nice to have it built in. I'd also like reminders (e.g. hourly, morning/afternoon, etc) to move around, get in X steps or active minutes. Finally, the configurable interval exercise in Fitbit is missed here - I had to download another (free) app to have that timer. These are all relatively small quibbles relative to the overall value of the product - it is relatively cheap, has a nice design, and does it's job very well and better than the competition.

I decided to get the Pulse HR after my Fitbit died. At first, I was pleased with the no-frills approach to the tracker, but after having used it daily for just over three months, here's what I've discovered.Pros:- Very long battery life. I charge it about every 3.5 weeks or so, and it charges very quickly.- Okay sleep tracker. It's not as detailed or insightful as Fitbit's sleep tracking, but it was fairly accurate at detecting when I'd fall asleep and wake up.- Great form factor. This thing is light and has no bulkiness, so after a couple of minutes, you don't even notice you're wearing it.Cons:- The pedometer on this thing is laughably inaccurate and simply doesn't work. I walk an average of 8,000 steps a day just walking around the office, yet every single day this tracker has barely registered 3,000 steps by the time I go to bed!- Hardware. This is supposedly waterproof and safe to use in the shower and for swimming. The only water I've exposed this to is when I wash my hands, and somehow I now have a water bubble inside the screen that won't go away. Which leads me to...- Non-existent customer service. I contacted Withings to repair my device since it has a 1-year warranty. I explained my problem, sent them a picture and my receipt. That was 3 weeks ago and have heard nothing since. Not even a confirmation that someone is looking into my issue. And good luck finding a phone number to speak to a real human -- there is none!- The app is blah. Coming from Fitbit's sleek, colorful app, the Healthmate app is clunky, unintuitive, and kind of ugly. It's reliable enough, but even after three months, I still find myself getting lost trying to find specific information or settings.After three months, I'm getting rid of this tracker and going back to Fitbit. It's too bad, because I do like the Withings scale. I'd prefer to have everything on one ecosystem, but this tracker just doesn't cut it, even for daily walks. Not recommended.

This device works great. I got it for my father and he has been wearing it for 3 weeks. Battery life is amazing and it’s accurate step reading and gps. Thai one I bought for my self from Amazon warehouse.... before I even tried to power it on I was irritated with how dirty the the watch is! Why don’t you guys clean the devices ? No one wants someone else swear/skin cells 🥴 especially with Covid why could there have been five minutes to clean it. Anyway what I’m saying is buy it new.

Let me preface this by saying I was a loyal Fitbit fan. But after 6 Fitbits ( I have had the Bit, Charge(2), Charge HR, Alta and AltaHR) within 10 years I am done. The first thing that impressed me with this tracker was that it came partially charged and I still didn't have to charge it for two weeks. I have been using the Pulse for about 6 months and I only charge it about once every 3 weeks. The app that you use with the Pulse (Healthmate) is very easy to connect to. The one thing that kept frustrating me with the last Fitbit is that I constantly had to remove and add the tracker for the Bluetooth feature to work. Once I connected to the Bluetooth with the Pulse I have not had any problems. As soon as I open the app the tracker connects successfully and updates my information. The sleeping tracker seems to work very well and I am actually getting better sleep. I understand my patterns and try to get to bed earlier. When I workout I can generally track it. If it is not one of the pre-programmed options than I can do other and classify it later in the app. The GPS feature that tracks my route is nice. It was nice to see the route reflected and it was accurate. It was also nice to see the level of speed that I achieved during my walk. In my experience the only pedometer that is close to accurate is one that is on your hip, but for a wrist pedometer it's not bad. It seems to take a few steps to get it to start counting. So if you take 5 steps it may not record, but on the same token if you take 25 steps it may record 30 so it kind of balances out. The most important thing to me is reliability. At the 6 month mark 2 of my FitBits bands began to unravel. Just after the 1 year mark 4 of my FitBits started having syncing or charging issues. I know I have only had this tracker for about 6 months but it has been fun to use. The only other problem I have had is the the touch feature is not sensitive enough. I can use the button on the side to get any of the information that I want but if I tap on the watch it doesn't respond. In the full spectrum of things Withings has a convert. If you want a reasonably priced tracker that will track your steps, your sleep, and your workouts than the Pulse is an excellent choice.