What mobile health tech is great at tracking & what it stinks doing...:
Bottom Line: Whether it's Apple or Fitbit wearables seem to have certain strengths and really noticeable weaknesses. Stanford studied the effectiveness of wearable health technology and found the following:
- All wearable health tech has improved in it's effectiveness with the most recent models available by leading providers
- Apple tested best overall for accuracy
- Samsung tested worst overall for error rates
- Trackers are most accurate at tracking heart rate
- Trackers are worst at tracking calorie based info (energy expended on your part)
- Error rates are higher for men than women (size appears to be a factor)
So hopefully that's helpful as you attempt to find the right technology and what you can expect from it at this point. The moral of this story is that it's getting better and there are differences between providers but it's still not all of the way to where you might like it to be yet...