Being able to track your activity and be accountable for your progress can give you the nudge you need to get moving, and get healthy. I’m erin TGC and for many years, Fitbit has been pretty much the best when it comes to fitness and activity trackers. I’ve reviewed many of them and compared them to other trackers and smart watches and they’re consisterntly the best.
There’s a Fitbit for nearly every need and for any style you want to wear. One of the newest is the simple, sleek Fitbit Inspire HR. I’m going to show you what it can and can’t do.
So what is What is Fitbit Inspire HR?
Fitbit Inspire HR is Fitbit's newest budget activity and sleep tracker that you wear on your wrist. Unlike the regular Inspire, this one adds the ability to track and monitor your heart rate too.
While the regular Inspire sells for about $99 CAD the HR version is about $129, but either way these are the least expensive Fitbits you can get.
Fitbit Inspire HR will:
Track Activity, Track Sleep, Help you set and meet goals and give you extra motivation.
This Fitbit will not track your floors climbed, but unlike the regular Inspire it WILL track your Sleep Stages (REM, deep, Lite) it will also track Swimming and other activities, as well as your heart rate. The HR version will also track your pace and distance through your phone, something the regular Inspire also can’t do.
It will give you call, text and calendar alerts direct to your wrist, but you can’t reply to them or respond; you’ll need to go to your phone for that. It also doesn't support Fitbit Pay.
VO
To get alerts you’ll need to make sure your Bluetooth is on on your phone, and you’ll need to turn on ‘All Day Sync’ in settings.
One final tip; you can calibrate your Fitbit Inspire HR to count your exact steps, not a universal average as many other fitness trackers do.
To calibrate your steps and adjust stride length go to Settings, Advanced Settings, Stride Length. You can choose to have it configured automatically or to input your specific stride length. I’ve found doing this makes Fitbit wildly accurate.
You can also change the clock face in Settings as well, choosing simple displays and fonts or the option of showing more data.
VO
What does the Fitbit app do?
The Fitbit app is your command centre for all your stats. You can check your steps, sleep, and exercise at a glance. You can also sync it to a Fitbit scale like the Aria 2 (and have it automatically track your weight.
How accurate is Fitbit Inspire HR? You can easily test it by counting your steps in your head and comparing that against the readout. If it’s off at all, just adjust your stride length inside the Fitbit app.
As for sleep, I found it also very accurate, calculating my sleep stages to match when I might have woken up in the night. I’ve tried numerous Fitbits and especially when calibrated, they’re the most accurate fitness and activity tracker (or smartwatch) I’ve ever used.
With Heart Rate, I guess it’s hard to tell how accurate it is on it’s own, since I don’t have an EKG or anything to check it against.
Overall Fitbit Inspire HR gives you most of the smart features you want and all of the heart rate monitoring and fitness and activity tracking you need. I’ve recommended Fitbits for a long time, because they’re easy to set up and use and they work well, have a long battery life and they’re accurate as all get out, so I can recommend this one too.
If there’s any downsides, it’s just what this one is missing because it’s a smaller, cheaper option; things like Fitbit Pay so you can leave the wallet at home. The screen is also pretty small, but again, these are all things you can get as you step up the Fitbit device ladder; this one is all about your budget.
It sells for about $129 CAD from places like Best Buy or Amazon.
