Study finds that your Fitbit may be actually lying to you

Researchers find that Fitbit measurements are off by 20 heartbeats compared to ECG and sometimes they dropped a heartbeat

Next time you exercise with your Fitbit wristband, you should know that the readings by your health band may be off by some degree.

Fitbit wearables are pretty popular among the health conscious gen users and among the largest selling brand in the health wearables space. They are marketed by the company as the ultimate devices which can help track things such as your heart rate to better improve your lifestyle. However a new study conducted by California State Polytechnic University found that they may be way off in recording heart beats.

The results of study conducted by researchers at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, in which participants’ heart rates were simultaneously measured by a Fitbit on each wrist and an echocardiogram, found that the PurePulse heart rate monitors on two Fitbit models – the Surge and Charge HR – can be off by up to 20 beats per minute.

More shocking is that sometimes the two devices did not record a heart beat at all giving all the more wrong readings. Between the two devices, the researchers found a greater discrepancy with the Fitbit’s Surge compared to Charge HR.

Forty three adults were put through differing levels of activity throughout a 65-minute session, from jogging to jump-roping to full-out treadmill running. Results showed that the more intense the exercise, the greater the margin of error.

 “The PurePulse Trackers do not accurately measure a user’s heart rate, particularly during moderate to high intensity exercise, and cannot be used to provide a meaningful estimate of a user’s heart rate,” the researchers wrote.
A class action lawsuit against Fitbit by several Fitbit uses will now use the the research to shore up their case.
This is not the first study into the readings of Fitbit.  WTHR, a news station in Indiana, manually recorded things such as steps taken and calories burned and found similar results when compared to the Fitbits participants were wearing. A 2014 article in the Berkeley Science Review also found that the more intense the exercise, the more the Fitbit was prone to error.

We’ve reached out to Fitbit for comment, and will update if we hear back.

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