Fitbit Surge fitness tracker review

March 12, 2015

The Fitbit Surge tracks steps, calories, sleep, workout sessions, and can even monitor your heart rate. Unfortunately, step count accuracy still appears to be Fitbit's Achilles Heel

The Surge is Fitbit's high end fitness tracker for 2015 and features a touch sensitive screen, built-in heart rate sensor, and traditional watch style clasp. It's the most feature packed fitness band Fitbit has ever shipped. But is it enough to put Fitbit ahead of the rest?

The good

Touch screen is responsive and offers a lot of options without having to reach for your iPhone
Workout sessions are easy to use and take only a few seconds to initiate
Heart rate sensor is accurate and collects meaningful data inside the Fitbit app
Traditional watch style clasp that's less likely to get snagged on something
Sleep tracking is automatic, you don't have to remember to do anything
Call and text notifications right on your wrist

The bad

Step count on the Surge is not accurate, like its predecessors
Calorie counts also suffer from some inaccuracies
The Surge is a large device which will make it uncomfortable to sleep in for some
Battery life doesn't live up to what Fitbit advertises — I only average 3 to 4 days between charges

Setting up the Fitbit Surge is easy enough and doesn't require anything but the band and your iPhone. After you've created a Fitbit account, the Fitbit app will pair with your band. The app is also how you'll download and install updates to your band's firmware — you'll be notified if and when an update is available.

The Fitbit Surge is an exceptionally large fitness band. The face of the Surge felt like an okay size but the band is a lot thicker than it needs to be. You have to make sure you wear the Surge at least a finger width above your wrist bone for the heart rate sensor to work properly. For me this made the thickness of the band even more noticeable.

I didn't have an issue wearing the Fitbit Surge while performing every day activities like walking, doing chores around the house, running errands, or going to the gym. There were only two instances in which the band got in my way, while sleeping and while typing on the computer. Sleeping may not be an issue for some but if you have small wrists, which I do, the band gets in the way. Whether or not you're okay sleeping in the Surge will depend on how you sleep. For me, it always seemed to get in the way. I do however like the fact that the Surge tracks my sleep without me having to push a button or tell it I'm going to sleep. It just pays attention to my movements and my heart rate.

Typing was also a pain point for me. I don't think it would have been if the band was slightly thinner. I didn't have as much of an issue on my iMac where the edge of the keyboard is shorter. On my MacBook, I always found the Surge digging into my wrist or scratching on the palm rest.

Turning to the face of the Surge, you've got a lot of options available to you. The main screen functions just like a regular wrist watch. Tap the button on the left and you can swipe your way to workout sessions and useful data such as your step count, calorie count, heart rate, and more. If you receive a call or a text message, you will see a notification and feel a vibration on your wrist. You can quickly cycle through all your notifications using the side buttons. The Surge is easy to use and the button layout only took me a few minutes to get used to. You can also control music with your Fitbit Surge by pairing it in classic Bluetooth mode in Settings.

At the gym you can quickly start workout sessions and choose what kind of activity you're performing. You can then view even more detailed statistics inside the Fitbit app. Unfortunately step count on the Fitbit Surge suffers from the same inaccuracies previous versions of Fitbit products have. I wore the Fitbit Surge for a week alongside the UP24, which I've found to be the most accurate step count wise, and the differences were obvious. Most days the Surge claimed I took about 500 to 1,000 more steps than the UP24 registered. That obviously trickles down and effects other data such as calorie count. For anyone relying on accurate calorie and step count for weight loss or gain purposes, that's no good.

On a positive note, the heart rate monitor in the Fitbit Surge is pretty much spot on. I tested it on several different workout machines and it was always within 5 beats per minute. However, you'll need to make sure that you're wearing the Surge far enough above your wrist bone. If you don't, it'll result in inaccurate beats per minute.

The Fitbit app itself has added some nice improvements over the past year. Most of these improvements are focused around providing more meaningful data and statistics. Fitbit can give you averages as well as detailed graphs of how your heart rate changed throughout each day. The same data is available for step count and workouts as well.

The bottom line

I was really hoping Fitbit would have addressed step count inaccuracies this time around. Unfortunately, that's obviously something they're still struggling with. The Fitbit app has a lot of potential and provides a lot of great data points. However, that's only useful if the hardware it depends on actually filters in accurate data.

That being said, I just can't recommend the Fitbit Surge over other readily available options such as the Garmin vivosmart or Jawbone UP24 that are not only much cheaper, but far more accurate.