Fitness trackers: Polar Loop vs Fitbit Flex
I’ve been using these two fitness trackers for a couple of weeks now. I have to say, they have been really motivating me to get up and do something, anything, until I reach my daily goal.
The Looks
While the Polar Loop comes in three colors – Smokey Black, Misty Blue, Blackcurrant- the Fitbit Flex has interchangeable straps and comes in a variety of colors you can explore here.
The Fitbit Flex has 5 white lights which indicate your activity level (20% each). By double-tapping the band the lights appear and indicate today’s progress.
The Polar Loop on the other hand has an LED display, which I have to say is just right. It tells you how much you still have to walk, jog or stand up, how many calories you’ve burned, how many steps you’ve taken so far. Last but not least, it tells you the time.
A particularly annyoing thing of the Polar Loop is the way the strap “adjusts”. This means cutting it down to the right size, leaving no options open to using the product by others.
Daily Usage
Both bands are nice to wear but you have to take your time to get used to them if you are wearing a wristwatch as well.
The Fitbit has a softer material and is, in my opinion, better to wear, since it is also a bit smaller.
Battery life is ok for both trackers, although the Fitbit seems to last for about a week while the Loop needs recharging after around 4 days.
Sleep tracking works well on both devices, yet the Loop tracks sleeping cycles automatically and quite accurately. The Flex needs to be “set up” into sleep mode.
Accuracy Test
I’ve counted steps with both bands and a physical pedometer, these are the results:
- Pedometer: 7027
- Polar Loop: 9860
- Fitbit Flex: 7749
I would say the Flex is a clear winner here. The Polar Loop definitely counts more steps than you actually make.
Mobile Apps
I like the idea of the Polar Loop app of displaying activities right in the home page. It is quite very intuitive and makes you reflect on your daily habits. I, having an office job routing, seem to be standing a lot on the chair and it was probably even more before I got the trackers.
I think Fitbit has the more mature mobile and web app. Fitbit is available on Android and iOS while Windows Phone fans are being left out by Polar.
The Fitbit app has an integrated water log and connects to MyFitnessPal and other fitness/calories trackers, which is really great, since many of us use these kind of apps to track meals, excercise and body weight.
Fitbit syncs really well and very quickly while the Polar Loop needs an extra 3-4 pull-to-refresh gestures to sync with the device and the cloud. Sometimes syncing doesn’t work at all. I think though, Polar is actively working on fixing all of it’s syncing issues.
Conclusion
The Polar Loop tracks sleep very well, out of the box. The LED display is really nice and the app is simple yet very informative. Syncing is a problem, but not a very big one I would say.
The Fitbit Flex has the better app, a better battery life, works on both arms and integrates with many apps. Anyway, the lack of a physical display and the fact that sleep tracking needs extra activation cuts it short from my point of view.
As a conclusion, if I had to choose from the two of them I would go with the Polar Loop.
