From: Barry Regan
Review: I’ve been a longtime FitBit user and recently upgraded from a FitBit One to the Blaze. The driving force behind this upgrade was the addition of Heart Rate monitoring but I was pleasantly surprised by some of the other features. The Blaze is a wrist watch type of activity tracker that monitors the basic stats of steps taken, distance traveled, calories burned, and flights of stairs climbed. In addition, it monitors your heart rate and gives you a daily resting heart rate that you track over time. You can also use it as a timer and set silent alarms.
After the latest firmware upgrade, it added in a motivation feature that will remind to take at least 250 steps an hour over the range of hours that you define. At 10 minutes before the next hour the watch will vibrate to remind you to get moving.
It has two addition modes called Exercise and Fitstar. Exercise has a set of pre-defined workout styles like boot camp, run, or treadmill that when activated will track those work outs and provide you some feedback. If you are connected to a nearby phone, some modes will connect to the phone GPS and provide additional info but not on the same level as a Garmin or watch of that type.
Fitstar is utility with built in bodyweight fitness routines so you can do a workout anywhere you are. I haven’t tried it yet so can’t tell you how good the workouts are.
The watch face is a little on the large size so I would recommend checking one out before buying to see if you like it. You can change the look of the watch face by switching between 9 different styles using the app. The unit itself pops out of the wrist band so you can probably get different bands as well.
Overall I like the Blaze. It is definitely a solid tracker and the heart rate monitoring helps me control my workout and running intensity.
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I left my Blaze on for a local OCR this weekend. I’ve seen videos on YouTube saying Fitbit was understating the Blaze’s water resistance and decided I’d give it a try. At the end of the race, the Blaze was still working like a champ. I had to rinse some mud off to read the screen but no issues with function at all. Screen is clear and easily readable.
Where I did experience some challenges was not with water but with mud. The Blaze has a number of small crevices. I spent a fair amount of time with Q-tips the next day getting mud out of tiny locations I didn’t even realize were there until they were filled with mud. I also had some trouble getting the mud off the band. I have the black band with silver frame. The band has a textured surface that apparently was designed to hold onto mud.
All told, I spent about a half hour cleaning it and it’s now almost as good as new. The “almost” is because I still have some noticeable mud along the lower edge of the screen and I haven’t figured out how to get that out. It’s not something anyone else would ever notice but as the guy wearing this on his wrist, I see it.
Bottom line… The Blaze is more water resistant than they give it credit for. The course had water in multiple places including a slide into water. I made zero attempt to “protect” my Blaze from the water. No problem. But on a course with mud, the Blaze will stay in my bag in the future. I don’t have the patience for that cleaning routine after a race.