Product review: Fitbit Alta – stylish but not a wearable high

Have you got on board the wearable bandwagon yet? If not, you may be among the last of the holdouts. It seems almost everyone has embraced wearable technology, whether it’s activity trackers, smartwatches or jewellery designed to test your stress levels. It’s everywhere.

Part of the credit – or blame – has to go to Fitbit. The company has been pushing the wearable tech cause for some time now, and it has a number of successes to its name. The Flex, the Surge and the Charge have all carved their niche in the market and the FitBit brand has become synonymous with activity trackers.

The Alta is its attempt at a more stylish device. Fitness trackers, for the most part, are ugly. But the Alta has slimmed down and given the fitness tracker a new look.

First things first: if you are eyeing the Alta with the intention of using it to monitor your heart rate, you’re out of luck. Ditto for the altimeter; you’ll just have to count your own flights of stairs. That’s the price you pay for the slimline looks.

It also neatly sidesteps the elephant in the room – the legal action FitBit is facing in the US over claims its heart rate trackers aren’t accurate.

It’s not the biggest sacrifice in the world, to be honest. The Alta is lightweight without the extra sensors, and if it wasn’t the for the fact that the slightly too big strap clashed off my wrist occasionally, I’d have forgotten I was wearing it.

Setting up the FitBit was, as always, a simple process. You can pair the device with your smartphone or laptop – bringing to the fore one of the things about Fitbit products that I’ve always hated: the dongle needed to connect to your laptop. In my experience, it is always the first thing to go missing, followed soon by the proprietary chargers the devices need.

The Alta will measure your activity and sleep, switching between the two as it detects your level of movement. While the activity tracker generally kept pace with other comparison trackers, including the Apple Watch, the FitBit Flex and the HTC/Under Armour Health Band, the sleep tracker was another story. In general, I’ve become more disillusioned with sleep trackers the more I use them. The Alta was sometimes accurate, sometimes not, recording a full night’s sleep at a time that I knew I had definitely not had a peaceful night. The upshot is: it’s nice to think we could monitor our sleep accurately with a tiny band, but really, you shouldn’t trust it blindly.

To keep track of your progress, you have to sync the Alta with your phone or tap the screen to move through its different functions. Strong sunlight isn’t really a problem we have in Ireland, but the Alta’s screen, on the rare occasion that we do get a hint of a normal summer, can suffer a little in the glare. But that’s not its biggest crime – it was less of a tap and more of a pointed jab to get any movement out of it. While on one hand you don’t want an oversensitive screen that switched too easily, you also don’t want to feel you are about to stab your finger through your not-very-cheap fitness tracker.

The Alta is a bit of a mixed bag: it looks good but it may be destined for the same fate as the rest of the abandoned trackers.

The good:

It’s far less ugly than a lot of other wearables. But then, beauty is in the eye of the beholder; you may still find the Alta too chunky for your liking. The Alta is certainly the slimmest of FitBit’s bands, and you can swap out the band for a more fashionable alternative if you wish.

The battery life is decent, lasting a consistent four days-plus for me. I’ve got so used to having to charge wearables almost every day that this was a pleasant surprise.

The not so good:

The screen is not the best. Tap to move through the functions, the instructions say. You’ll need to be very firm with it though. A gentle tap gets you nowhere.

The inaccurate sleep tracker may be another source of frustration, but as we all know, you can’t trust everything wearables tell you anyway.

The rest:

The Alta comes with another proprietary charger, and a wireless dongle for your laptop if that’s how you wish to sync your phone.

The verdict:

At €140, the FitBit Alta keeps it simple and affordable, and far more stylish than its rivals. There is no unnecessary functions, but you may miss the heart rate monitor – even if you suspect it may not be giving you the full picture.