I’m not a huge fan of the quantified lifestyle but I like to walk a fair bit so I’ve been using fitness trackers for the past two years. I started with a FitBit One and liked it just fine but lost it after about a year. I replaced it with a FitBit Flex which is worn on the wrist.
There are definitely a couple of advantages to wearing activity trackers on your wrist, but after nearly a decade of not wearing anything on my wrist I didn’t love wearing something on my wrist. So I replaced the Flex with a FitBit Zip. The Zip is a downgrade from the One since it can’t track steps climbed and a downgrade from both the One and the Flex since it can’t track sleep.
But I lost the Zip after a few months and replaced it with a WiThings Pulse*. I found the Zip about two weeks later and usually carry both it and the Pulse.
*My Withings Pulse came with a belt clip rather than the wristband pictured in the link above. I don’t bother with the belt clip, I just put it in my pocket.
As far as activity trackers go the primary advantage of having one on your wrist is that if you always have it on there’s no worry about forgetting to bring it with you. There’s also a built-in advantage for sleep tracking. But I can’t remember the last time I forgot to carry a tracker and a couple of weeks of sleep tracking corroborated that I know how much and how well I slept without needing to track it. For me a naked wrist trumps those advantages.
Samsung’s smart watch wouldn’t have held any allure for me even if I could use it with my phone. Given my history with Apple products I will not be surprised if the reportedly forthcoming Apple smart watch has a hook that ultimately lures me in, but my starting point is “I’m fine without reading e-mails and texts on my wrist, thanks.”
If I were motivated to wear something on my wrist I think it would be the forthcoming Withings Activité pictured above. It won’t read your text messages, but it will track everything the Pulse does and is one great looking watch. But beauty has a price: at an MSRP of $390, it will cost nearly $300 more than the Withings Pulse.