FitbitSurge Fitness Superwatch, Black, Large (US Version)

My Fitbit Surge has lasted me 2 years and 4 months. I bought the large version as I am a man of medium to large build. It still 'works' as a regular watch but doesn't synchronize with the app on the phone via Bluetooth, thus making it 'useless' as a smart watch in terms of viewing your stats. I liked it a lot and did buy a replacement.I would recommend the $20 3 year protection plan by Amazon which you add to the cart when purchasing the watch. This is the one time I would recommend a protection plan for an electronic item as the electronic item for me failed within the 3 year period. I didn't think it was necessary to add the protection when I purchased it as I thought that the watch would work well way past the 3 year period. How wrong I was! Lesson learned!Below are some advantages and disadvantages of the Surge in my experience.Advantages⁃ The Surge's heart rate monitor is pretty accurate. Some users have claimed that the heart rate is off but I have compared it with the heartbeat rate from the machine at my local Rite Aid and I didn't note a significant difference in the figures. If you are anal about your heart rate matching your doctor's heart rate reading, then strap a heart rate monitor onto the chest. For me, not having to strap a monitor is worth the effort.⁃ The Surge's auto backlight which lights up when you tilt the watch towards you at night, really helps when you are executing your pre-dawn and post-dusk runs as you can see your preferred stats by flicking your wrist towards you. The backlight comes on and then goes off after a second or two. I prefer this feature to having the backlight on all the time.⁃ GPS functionality is a plus and the Surge has a very accurate GPS monitor. This is especially true for long races like the full marathon. In big cities, you will be in areas where the network is spotty or non-existent, running in tunnels and so on. I have compared the chip times of my races and the times registered by the Surge and the Surge times are the most accurate. Giving me similar times to the times on the official tracker smart-chip on the runner's bib is totally worth it. I use The Runkeeper app and WalkJogRun app on my phone and the Fitbit Surge displays the most accurate times and more importantly, distances. Sometimes, those other apps are off by a lot!⁃ Once you determine your goal of the day (say 10,000 steps a day) when the watch detects your goal achievement, it beeps and displays the achievement on the screen (10,000 steps)⁃ When running, depending on your settings, you can be able to see your average pace per mile every mile you run, your distance and time as cues that you choose. You can also choose what is to be shown on the display, for example pace, average pace, heart rate, calories burned, steps and clock (actual time) When I do night runs, the clock display in addition to my other stats lets me know that I should turn around and go back home if I want to be back home by a certain time, say 9.30 pm or 10.00 pm while out on the run.⁃ It can be worn at all times and seems to blend in with casual, formal and active wear. It's not bulky looking like those Garmins out there and its black color blends in with all sorts of colors.⁃ There is an app called 'DriveBit Free' on the App Store that you use to eliminate any 'steps' that may be inadvertently recorded while you are driving or in my case, lawn mowing.⁃ I use it in conjunction with the Greatfine Anti Dust Plug for fitbit surge (10 Pairs) also sold here on Amazon. The anti-dust plugs help in preventing sweat from going into the metal points that the Fitbit Surge connector attaches to the smart watch itself. If you don't use it, the sweat, if not cleaned all the time after a workout session, corrodes the connectors over time and you will have a hard time connecting the cable to the watch and you might think that the watch has failed. I cleaned the connectors with isopropyl alcohol but I wish I had known about the anti-dust plugs from the very beginning. I now use the anti-dust plugs from the get go on my Fitbit replacement.⁃ I used the Qibox screen protector to protect the Surge screen and it worked great and I would recommend it as a valuable accessory.⁃ The Fitbit community is another area where the Fitbit Surge excels. It is a 'social media' platform where you 'make friends', usually people you know and acquaintances, who own a Fitbit, any type and you are able to compare your daily steps. You will be able to see who among your Fitbit friends has more or less steps than you on a 7 day aggregate. There are also various challenges, 'goal day', 'daily showdown', 'workweek hustle' and 'weekend warrior' that involve your Fitbit friends and friends of your friends on a step aggregating competition. You are just able to see the total number of steps that your competitors are taking and not the actual activity, running, elliptical, weightlifting, spinning, cycling etc etc that they are engaging in. You know the general stats (steps) but you have privacy with regard to your own workouts.⁃ The Surge is excellent as it incorporates various activities. There is the common one, running and exercise (hike, weights, elliptical, spinning, yoga, workout and cycling) Free running uses the GPS monitor to track your running and you start and stop your running activity (unlike other surges that figure out that you are engaging in running and give you the results on the app.) It also has a timer, an alarm that needs to be set up in the Fitbit desktop account.⁃ It's useful and accurate when cycling.⁃ When you receive a voice phone call or text message on your actual phone, the Fitbit Surge shows the number of the caller and buzzes to alert you of the phone call. For text messages, the person texting you and the message will scroll on the Surge at the same time the message gets to your phone.⁃ Once you complete your workouts, the Surge uses Bluetooth to synchronize (synch) the stats to your Fitbit app. You can choose to manually synch the workout results or have the Surge synch automatically via Bluetooth. Your choice.Disadvantages.⁃ The disadvantages kick in when the device gets older. Since it is an electronic device, I suggest that you buy the 3 year protection plan from Amazon (via Asurion) for only $20 if you feel that you need to have it protected for any malfunction. The Fitbit factory warranty is only 1 (one) year and it is not enough to protect the Surge, especially since the Surge will rarely fail in the first year. Fitbit will give you a discount to purchase your replacement phone (I think it is 25%, quite generous I would add) if it fails after the 1 year warranty is over. The $20 for 3 years protection plan is the way to go.⁃ In its 2nd year, the battery would drain quickly and I would be lucky to get more that 24 hours. I would have to charge it every night to avoid this. A factory reset solved the problem for a couple of months but the battery started draining fast again and I was content with charging it daily until it stopped synching with the app.⁃ It would occasionally stop synching and you wouldn't realize it until a day or a couple of days later. A factory reset would solve this problem for a few months but it stopped synching altogether and any activities recorded by the watch were not transferred to the app, meaning that the activities were lost and not recorded.⁃ It wouldn't give me the backlight when I went on my night runs, after 2 years of service and I learned to live with this. It can be a bit annoying if you are used to it as in the dark without light, the watch becomes useless for instant checking of stats until you get to a lighted place.⁃ Fortunately for me, the straps held on but I know of a friend who had his watch replaced after a few months due to the strap wearing out where the little torx screws attach the strap to the watch itself.⁃ It does dull over time from its rich matte color but you get used to it. The rubber peels of somewhat but I am the kind of guy who does everything while the watch is on me. A person who works in an office will not have all these wear and tear problems.Overall, I would recommend it. Make sure you add the $20 protection for 3 years. Totally worth it!

I had a Fitbit Flex for a year and loved it. I encouraged several friends and family members to buy Fitbit products because I loved mine so much. However, when it was just over a year old it died. It refused to hold a charge, then refused to charge at all. I should have realized this was a warning. Instead, I decided to upgrade to the Surge, which I had been wanting for a while. Big mistake.My Surge arrived and I eagerly played with it. As far as pros, it was comfortable and easy to wear. Not overly bulky. I didn't develop a rash. Many of the features were nice - I particularly liked being able to use GPS on my hikes. But I quickly noticed that the step counts were way off. A walk that my husband and I usually take after dinner that should have been right around 2K steps only showed around 1200. I also noticed that I could be looking right at the Surge, walking around the house, and nothing registered. It locked up, as near as I could tell. I would walk normally, counting my steps, and they wouldn't show up. Flights of stairs also were missed. Long walks seemed to be the worst. I would walk and count off 100 steps, and only 50 or so were counted by the Surge. I manually set my stride, but that had no effect. It was obviously defective. And so my nightmare began. Here's the chronology:7/16 - My fitbit arrived.7/17 - I began some tests. I noted how many steps the Surge had recorded, paced off 100 steps, then noted the new number. I repeated this 10 times to get an average. The numbers it recorded ranged from 64 to 102. Overall, it recorded 853 out of 1000 steps, for an overall accuracy of 85.3%. I repeated the test for a second series, and this time the overall accuracy dropped to 80.5%. I used the support link on Fitbit's site to email them letting them know I had a problem. At that point the website said response time could be as long as 2 days.7/20 - No response. I emailed additional information to add to my ticket. I had walked, according to the GPS, 1.73 miles. It registered 2232 steps. This would yield an average stride length of 49.10 inches, which is impossible given that I'm 5'2" tall.7/23 - Gave up hope of hearing back through email and phoned Fitbit. The customer service agent was very helpful and arranged for a replacement to be sent. At this point I was happy.8/2 - Received the new Surge. Tested it and found it had the exact same problem. It visibly locked up and didn't count steps. Emailed the support with data. I did more tests and found a possible correlation between speed and accuracy. When walking at a normal speed, accuracy was at 88%. When walking briskly (which is closer to my usual hiking speed), it dropped down to 54.8%. When walking very slowly and deliberately, it actually recorded more steps than I took. I also checked the customer forums and found other people with similar problems. One user complained she received two defective Surges and the third one was the one that worked. One theory was that the sensitivity was too high, so it was recommended to set the device so that it believed it was on the dominant arm as opposed to the non-dominant one. I tried this and there was no change (although I was impressed by the intrepid user who used a bungee cord to strap his Surge to his bicep so he could get his HR info). I appended more data to my open ticket letting them know I had set it to Dominant but there was no effect.8/4 - No email from customer support, so I called again. This time the agent told me to hold down a pair of keys to "reload the software". Given that it had applied an update, I assumed this meant it was re-downloading and applying that update or being forced to apply an incremental one, meaning the problem was related to software. However, I later found out that all this does is reboot the device. I don't know why he had me do this instead of shutting it down from the menu. But having rebooted it several times daily, I could have told him that it has no effect. But at this point I mistakenly believed I had actually reloaded software, so I did more testing. In a nutshell - no change. I took a walk for 2.35 miles, and only registered 3473 steps, yielding an overall stride length of 42.8 inches. I did three more sets of tests. The first showed an overall accuracy of 59.6%, the second jumped to 95.6%, and the third dropped back to 77.6%. I emailed my spreadsheet with the raw numbers to their support people.8/6 - I finally heard back from tech support through email! They sent me a generic message telling mt to set the Fitbit so that it believed it was on the dominant arm. Which I had told them I did way back on 8/2. Apparently they don't actually read their email. I responded and told them this. I also told them that my husband and I had taken a hike earlier in the day. Despite the fact that he's taller than I am, his Fitbit registered around 11,000 steps while mine only registered around 9,000.8/9 - I received another email from Fitbit support, saying they wanted to investigate further. Since my husband has a Fitbit, they asked for his account info so they could compare data. I gave them this info, and also put my Surge in Hike mode and took a quick walk with him so that they could compare the data. I let them know this and included more data.8/11 - Received a generic email from Fitbit asking if I still needed help with my Surge. I replied in the affirmative, and attached my previous reply.8/12 - Received email from Fitbit support telling me to reboot the Surge. Which, again, I had done while on the phone with their rep back on 8/4. And I had specifically stated in a previous email to them that rebooting had no effect. At this point I was almost past my 30 days window to return the device to Amazon, a fact that I had emphasized repeatedly both on the phone and in email, Nobody would tell me if this was a hardware problem or a software problem, so I had no way of knowing if the device itself was defective or if the latest software update was the problem and it would be fixed in the next patch. I wanted it to work. I told them that if this was a software problem then I was willing to be patient. But given that I had no way of knowing if I'd received two defective devices (a bad sign in and of itself), and given that their support team had obviously given up even reading email from customers, I decided that it was safest to return it while I could. Which I did. I also ordered a Garmin pedometer.8/15 - Received email from Fitbit support saying they couldn't read my email (a problem I've never had before). Which sounds sort of like someone crumpling up some aluminum foil to pretend they have a bad connection. I also received my new Garmin. I used it an an Omron model to repeat a previous walk. The Garmin recorded 3727 steps, and the Omron recorded 3762, a delta of 1%. The Surge, by comparison, had recorded only 2416 steps when I took the same route previously. That's off by around 30%. And it did make me feel much better about the Garmin. I did more stride tests of 100 steps each with the Garmin, and overall accuracy came out to 98.2% accurate overall, a far cry from the Surge.8/17 - Received generic email from Fitbit asking if I still had a problem. I let them know it had been returned.I do wonder what might have happened if they just sent a third replacement. More than one person on the forums had two defective devices and the third was the one to work. But that implies that they have a lot of defective units, which isn't exactly encouraging. Also, my husband's Fitbit One died around this point. It was one year old. So was my Fitbit Flex. So if the Surge actually worked, I would like assurances that it would last more than a year, which seems unlikely.The Fitbit Surge is a great concept. The execution failed, especially when combined with customer service and tech support agents who do nothing more than read off of scripts. Hopefully another manufacturer will get it right. Fitbit didn't.