Fitbit one was wonderful for the first 6 months. We had a great relationship. I stepped, hopped, salsa, shimmed, and my Fitbit picked up my steps. It.was.harmonious. MUAH!! Oh baby, it was good! Next thing I know, my Fitbit stopped synching. We had to go through quite a bit of counseling...excuse me, troubleshooting, and FINALLY we were back in our honeymoon phase. Next thing I know, my baby started to spaz and I found out that he was a cheap piece of CRAP. If you talk to his cousins - Fitbit zip, HR, charge - you'll find out that this family doesn't live up to the hype. Gives you a good time for a few months, and then crashes and burns! over.rated.

The reason for only two stars is, that fitbit just screwed over its users with changing sleep stats over night without warning and all the useful features are gone. It went from the best pedometer with sleep tracking feature to a good pedometer with a not very useful sleep tracking feature. We, the fitbit users are watching closely right now, how they react to the customer feedback they have been bombarded with for the last several days, and depending on the improvements they hopefully make, I will update my review accordingly. The reason I gave 2 stars and not just one, is, because I actually love my fitbit one as a pedometer, except now the sleep tracking sucks. And why can only one sleep cycle be tracked, don't we all take naps every once in a while? That completely messes up the sleep tracking.

Update 04/19: Now more than one sleep period can be added again. And you don't have to log in again to go to your sleep page. That is about all that changed so far. Sleep efficiency % did not make it back in. Very disappointing.

This purchase was a replacement on my first Fitbit One that had battery problems after two years of use. I use it not because it is the best product in the field but because based upon my research and experience it appears to be only one that is effective at all and can be worn around the neck. I wear a watch that is not an activity device and have lost these kinds of devices when clipped to my pocket, so I like to have this around my neck. It registers any leg exercise well but does not seem to recognize arm movement. For duplicate walks with my wife who uses an Apple Watch, the step distances are comparable but the calorie bur shows up about 20% higher with the Fitbit One. Fitbit does a nice job of posting periodic (mainly weekly) reports on my computer as an app.

I love how versatile this Fitbit One is. I have used a Humana pedometer in the past and this does so much more. The Humana pedometer clip broke in the past or the pedometer fell off and the clip weakened. I got it as a deal through the insurance company and it was what I paid for- cheap!! The Fitbit can take a little water when I wash my hands, stays on my arm in the strap, and tracks not just my steps, but flights of stairs, calories, and something very unique- my sleep patterns! I have heard others say they aren't sure about the accuracy, but from view-point, my steps are tracked way more accurately than with the Humana pedometer in which I always felt cheated on steps because I am short and take a lot of very short steps which I don't feel were recorded so I always had less and it took hours of walking to get the required 10,000 steps a day to earn points. Yes, this is awesome and it has a clock on it too- so no need to have a wristwatch.

I've had this little guy for over a year now - I wanted to get some mileage out of it before I reviewed it - and I'm still a big fan.

First - I opted with the Fitbit One because a.) it had high reviews and b.) I wanted something that did both sleep tracking (so Zip was out) and I didn't have to wear in an ugly bracelet on my wrist (so pretty much everything else was out). I usually keep this in my pocket or clipped to my bra - works great in both places.

ACCURACY: when I first got it (and a few times since then) I walked around counting my steps then checked with the fitbit -each time it's been within about 3 steps of how many steps I counted out of 50, regardless of if I wear it on my wrist, clipped to my bra, or in my pocket. just now I stuck it on my wrist and shook my hand back and forth vigorously 20 times and it added on 8 steps, so if you really want to cheat the system you can - though it probably will take more effort to shake on extra steps than actually just walk. I haven't had any problems with it adding on a lot of steps after car rides. I had a baby 6 months ago and have found that it counts bouncing up and down to calm a fussy baby as a step, but I'm cool with that - it's pretty much like jogging in place. the floors climbed feature seems fairly accurate - I haven't actually spent a day counting how many times I go up and down our stairs to compare it and it think it sometimes will count walking up a steep hill as a flight of stairs (once again, I'm cool with that), but on days i'm cleaning the house and thus going up and down stairs more often than usual my flight count is significantly higher. whether or not it gets your distance correct depends on how accurately you set your stride length - I think the easiest way to make sure it's set correctly is to go for a walk and set the GPS tracker on your phone if you have one, then once you get to 1 mile on the GPS check and see what your fitbit is telling you then adjust accordingly.

SLEEP TRACKER: it's cool, it shows when you're "asleep" (not moving), when your "restless", and when you're "awake" - there are two settings sensitive and normal, apparently normal is if you're wearing it on your wrist and sensitive is if you have it in a pocket or something (because some pajama's have pockets - you know, for when you need to hold stuff while you're sleeping . . .) I set it on normal because I wear it on my wrist. I tried it on sensitive for a while to see if it worked better - it just freaked me out and told me only 1/2 of my time in bed was spent sleeping - I started wondering if I really was tired and not well rested, even though I never felt like I had trouble sleeping before. . . - just read the instructions and don't freak yourself out. Often times it will show me "restless" times during the night when I am definitely awake nursing - I guess there's a certain movement threshold you have to pass to be considered "awake", so it's not 100% accurate in that regard. it also doesn't coach you in sleeping well - just gives you the raw data on what happened during your night. (which has been super helpful with nursing - it's nice to see the trends of how long the baby's sleeping, how often we're getting up, how long we really are up for, etc. without having to have the presence of mind to make note of it while I'm half asleep). you can set goals on the app for how much sleep you're aiming for each night and set goal go-to-bed and wake-up times. putting the fitbit into and out of sleep mode is super easy (you hold down the button till it buzzes) and if you forget to put it in sleep mode one night or accidentally let it run well into your morning it's easy to go in and fix the times on the app. I love the silent alarms - I was skeptical that a little thing buzzing on my wrist would wake me up - but it works great and my husband appreciates how quiet it is. there is no snooze - which is good for me because I'm one of those snooze five times type people - this forces me to set a realistic time to get up and do it (though to be honest, I set a second alarm 10 minutes after the first one just incase. . .) you can set as many alarms as you want and have them go of on any day you want, so if you want to set alarms to remind you to get up an move around every hour or have an alarm that only wakes you up on

* Note: I'm not a big fan of the little sleep wrist thing that comes with the fitbit. after a few months the velcro stated pulling it apart. For a while I cut off the top of one of my husband's socks and wore it folded in thirds on my wrist with the fitbit tucked inside- that worked OK but some nights the fitbit slipped out - now I have a cheap 3rd-party silicone wrist band thing made to fit the fitbit in it - it works great.

DURABILITY: I have accidentally washed my fitbit twice and dried it once. it survived. And it counted the spin cycle as active minutes. The charge still lasts for a week or more. I don't recommend forgetting the fitbit in your laundry, but it has held up well to the wet and the heat. I wear it while working out and sweat has never seemed to be a problem for it. It's been over a year and is still working exactly the way it did when I got it. Two weeks ago the little plastic piece on the back of the silicone clip broke - I super glued it back together and so far so good. the clip itself would still be somewhat functional without that little plastic piece - it would just have a metal part poking out that could be poky- but you also can buy third-party replacement clips for $5 or spring for the actual Fitbit replacement clip for 3X more if branding is important to you.

APP - i Like the app a lot. I've used it both on a Samsung tablet (android) and on an Iphone and both work great. you can set daily goals, see how much of your daily goal you've achieved, get weekly/monthly/quarterly historical graphs, track your weight, amount of water drank, calories, etc. I also like that you can get rid of things you don't want on it - for example I don't track my calories so i took that tile off my app and don't have it sitting there wasting space. in the settings there is a spot to mark if you are pregnant or breastfeeding - I don't know exactly what that does - my guess is it ups your daily calorie allotment - and maybe takes that into consideration when it tells you how many calories you've burned. I don't do the friends and competitions part of it - but there's a platform to connect with people you know and set little competitions or group goals - honestly the idea of me seeing what everyone else is doing and everyone seeing what I'm doing isn't very appealing, but it could be fun accountability if you set a goal with a friend/family

IMPACT ON YOUR LIFE: Know thyself. Having this won't inherently make you healthier. I got this because I like tracking things and this gave me a way to gamify my activity - I set goals and I can see exactly how close I am to hitting them each day - which is a strong motivation factor for me - at 8PM if I see that I'm still 4000 steps shy of my daily step goal I'm much more likely to suggest we take an after-dinner walk in the evening. I've been drinking more water because I'm keeping track of it. It helped me track my activity level through my pregnancy and is helping me see how getting back in shape afterwards is going, I'm also glad I'll have this archived so when I get pregnant again I can see how I track compared to this pregnancy. If you're like me it will be strong motivation for you. If your highly competitive getting one of these then competing with your friends on it might work, or having an accountability partner who can see your daily activity may help keep you motivated. If none of those things pique your interest this probably isn't a good investment, but it is a well made product.