Your life on your wrist

KNOW YOU should exercise more but unable to find the motivation to get started? If so, you might want to invest less than Bt3,000 in the Fitbit Inspire, a highly affordable and fashionable fitness tracker that keeps a close watch on your activities and alerts you to your smartphone notifications.

The Inspire is light and small and comfortable enough to wear all day and night to track both your activities and your sleep. 
The Inspire is available in two colours, black and red. The black one has a white LED illuminating its greyscale display while the red one has a red LED and looks great with a red strap. I tried the red one and can confirm it looked sleek rather than gaudy. 
The Inspire can also be made more fashionable with optional accessories like a premium hand-crafted Horween leather or trendy metal mesh strap.
The fitness watch tracks all-day steps, distance, active minutes and calories burned. And when you go to bed with it, its automatic sleep tracking works with the Fitbit app to let you understand your rest to try improve it. That’s important because medical experts are constantly stressing that a good night’s sleep can decrease the risk of diabetes and help with obesity.
Fitbit Inspire uses a 3-axis accelerometer and vibration motor to monitor your movements and calculate them into steps and calories burned, based on gender, age, weight and height.
It has sufficient memory to save seven days of detailed motion data – minute by minute.
To use it, you need to download and install the Fitbit app that will link with Inspire through a Bluetooth connection. You also need to register for an account with Fitbit for cloud space to store the data logged by the tracker.

The Inspire comes with SmartTrack function that automatically recognises workouts like walks, runs, swims, bike rides and more. It logs the data and syncs with the Fitbit app to your online account to keep as your fitness record. Fitbit then sends a weekly report to compare that week’s fitness data with the previous one.
You can also use Fitbit app to customise the clock face. Options include a helpful stats clock face for workers or a polished clock face for work. Ten clock faces are available for you to select.
Fitbit can keep the Inspire’s price lower than Bt2,800 by cutting features like the heart rate sensor and floor climb tracking. 
However, the Inspire is swim proof and water resistant to 50 metres, but while it tracks how long you have been swimming, it won’t tell you how many laps you’ve completed. 
The touchscreen has a backlit OLED display which responds swiping and scrolling and boasts such functions as an easy-to-use dashboard that provides data on your steps, calories burned, activity, sleep and more from your wrist without having to check the app.
It’s intuitive to navigate too. You can do it by tapping the screen, swiping up and down or pressing the back button. You swipe down to scroll through the apps on the tracker, tap to open the app or swipe up to see your daily stats.
Two apps that are available are Timers and Alarm. You must first use the Fitbit app to set or delete alarms and use the Alarm app on the Inspire to turn the set alarms on or off. The Timers app provides a stopwatch and countdown timer, which can be handy for certain workouts.
The Inspire also supports the female health-tracking feature of the Fitbit app. The tracker and the app will let a woman follow her menstrual cycle and record symptoms.

You can stay connected on the go with updates from your smartphone apps and receive calls and text alerts as long as your phone is nearby.
The tracker has a good battery life. It can stay on to track your activity for five days after one charge. It takes about two hours to fully charge from zero battery level.
During the test, I found the Inspire was comfortable to wear and having it on my wrist during the night didn’t cause a problem. I tested it by walking for about one-and-a-half hours. At the end of the day, the Inspire reported that I had taken 15,991 steps, covered 11.25 kilometres and been active for about 109 minutes.
A nice feature of the tracker is that it reminds and encourages you to stretch your legs and take 250 steps every hour from 9 am to 5pm. This is good because sitting for too long is not good for the spine.
I also liked the Fitbit app feature that allowed me to monitor and log my meals and compare calories eaten to calories burned. This is handy if you want to lose weight.
Fitbit Inspire has a suggested retail price of Bt2,790 and the package comes with two sizes of wristband, small and large. It can be ordered from the Fitbit official store at Lazada.co.th.

Key specs
Small wristband: Fits a wrist between 5.5  7.1 inches in circumference
Large wristband: Fits a wrist between 7.1  8.7 inches in circumference
Operating Temperature: 10 degrees to 45 degrees C
Water Resistance: Water resistant up to 50 metres 
Maximum Operating Altitude: 8,534 metres
Sensors: 3axis accelerometer, vibration motor
Display: Greyscale OLED touchscreen
Radio transceiver: Bluetooth 4.0
Syncing range: 6 metres
Memory: Saves 7 days of detailed motion data – minute by minute
Battery: Lithiumpolymer, twohour charging, fiveday battery life