Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

The newest addition to the Fittbit lineup is definitely the most well-made and stylish, the problem is it's also the least accurate. If you want a tracker that will accurately count all your steps, move along, this tracker is not for you. I purchased my ALTA as a replacement for a CHARGE, another Fitbit tracker. The problem with the CHARGE is that they only last about a year before the plastic "skin" starts to separate from the tracker body. After my second CHARGE disintegrated, Fitbit gave me a 25% discount to buy a new one, so I thought I would try the latest technology, the ALTA, in hopes of a longer lasting solution. The problem is that they don't tell you that the ALTA is designed to be more of an "exercise" tracker - it includes something Fitbit calls "Smart Tracking" which essentially throws away any steps that are not done in a session lasting more than 10 minutes at a time. This means that those steps you used to get on your Fitbit CHARGE for parking waaaay out in the parking lot will no longer "count". A walk through the mall? Sorry, unless you're power walking (no stopping to look in windows) it just does not "count". My own personal challenge is my walking desk. I spend an hour each morning at it, I get about 4 miles in, which my old CHARGE counted pretty accurately (ie, the display on the treadmill agreed with the display on the tracker) -- but because I'm not swinging my arms, the ALTA gives me 400 steps instead of 4000. And there's another problem. I walked one day on the treadmill swinging my arms instead of resting them on the walking desk - I could not get any work done, but it gave me a baseline to compare accuracy. When it does start to count, it's very sensitive and tends to over-count by about 10% vs the count of the treadmill. I verified this by a short walk through the neighborhood, counting my steps manually. Needless to say, the ALTA is going back in favor of another CHARGE which I'm now resigned to replacing every year. I'd rather have an accurate count of my steps. Pros: Great style, solid build Cons: - Insanely inaccurate step counts, - Bluetooth notification such as calls, disappear off the display almost instantly, making them almost useless. Recommendation: Not Recommended.