I’m trying to move away from a fitbit, once in a while I forget to charge it and I have to install the app and fork over all of my data to fitbit to set the time.
Anyone have any recommendations, I need something with a decent heart monitor, that’s really the only thing I care about.
I just bought an xiaomi smart band 7 pro. I really like it for the price!
I use a Fossil Hybrid watch with gadget bridge. Works really well, though one caveat is that while you can read and dismiss messages on the watch, you can’t reply from it. This isn’t a problem for my use case, but YMMV. The couple weeks of battery life is a great plus, though. (E-ink screen)
Can I ask which one you have and does it work well with gadgetbridge?
I have been eyeing a watch from them for a while now but gadgetbridge.org seems to only list two compatible watches (or I misunderstand the Fossil naming scheme).
Basically any Fossil / Skagen (they’re the same thing) Hybrid (meaning e-ink) watch will work with Gadgetbridge. I personally have the Fossil Machine Gen 6 Hybrid which works great. Ignore the ‘Alexa’ bit, that does nothing via Gadgetbridge (and in fact you can just flat out remove that ‘app’ in the GB app). Heart Rate and Message/Notification/Call control functions all work fine. Step tracking works, but sleep tracking does not (Fossil doesn’t have it done on the watch, it’s done in their app, so until/unless GB replicates that functionality it won’t work).
I use the Fossil Collider HR with Gadgetbridge and it’s pretty great. Three are some downsides though:
- The set-up is a little bit of a hassle. You need to get the Collider’s secret key, and that requires installing a jailbroken version of the Fossil app
- Any changes you want to make to the watch display have to be made in the Fossil app, which means you have to install that app and do a bit of a runaround whenever you want to change something
But aside from that, it’s been a good year with my Collider HR and Gadgetbridge
I like my Garmin gps watch, though they have gotten what i would consider too expensive…
Does the Garmin app require location services to be turned to use like fitbit?
Location services have to be turned on in Android whenever you’re searching for Bluetooth devices.
This isn’t because they’re necessarily using your location but because scanning Bluetooth/wifi devices could be used to localise you.
As far as I can tell, Garmin does not use location on the phone. Weather updates come through the phone’s internet connection but only work based on the watch location.
Techlore did a video on fitness tracking a couple years ago. I don’t know if it’s still up to date, but it’s a place to start your search.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/LgYReUhHy9k
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
I’m very happy with my Garmin Epix (gen 2). It’s got a nice AMOLED screen, which works better for me cause I’m honestly mostly using it indoors, and I don’t really need 50 days battery life or anything like that. 13 days on pretty high settings is plenty for me…
The watch has its own built in GPS antennas, and works fine without a phone during activities, since I saw you should about GPS stuff elsewhere in the comments. I’m pretty sure it needs to sync data to a phone eventually though, for full functionally.
This is probably overkill for you, and you can get one of many much cheaper options from Garmin since all you care about is heart monitoring.
Apple watches are the only ones I know that do the full EKG thing if that’s something you’re interested in, as far as other options. If you already have an iPhone, I’ve only heard good things about the watches too. Pretty sure their adventure watch only really loses to Garmin on battery life.
