Review: Pebble Health vs. Fitbit

Review: Pebble Health vs. Fitbit

Before I purchased my Pebble Time Round, I was using a Fitbit to track my steps and sleep. Other than the perpetual motion required to mother a 5-year-old and 2-year-old, I don’t exercise regularly. But I’m trying to make a conscious effort to move more and to get more sleep. I think it’s a great first step for the many people out there who want to improve their health without making huge life changes or adding gym membership fees and prepared meal costs to their budgets. The Fitbit tracked that data for me, but like I said in my previous post, it became cumbersome and wasn’t very attractive. So can Pebble Health compare to Fitbit?


Pebble Health is the health tracking software that Pebble built into its latest Pebble Time watches. It tracks activity and sleep with no additional steps required from the user. You can also sync Pebble Health with Google Fit or Apple Health. I’m an Android user, so I use Google Fit. I’ve found it to be very user friendly. You can easily navigate through the data collected on previous days and make goals to increase your activity.

On your Pebble Time watch, with just 2 presses of your right side center button, you can see your current step count and how it compares to your average count for that point in the day. That’s a really useful way to see your daily progress and make adjustments to increase your steps if you’re below your personal average. I think this is a nice improvement over using a device like Fitbit which only compared my step count to an arbitrary goal such as 10,000 steps. Using your personal average is a much more realistic way to slowly increase your activity level. There are also watchfaces that display your step count, so you can see at a glance how well you’ve done.

Review: Pebble Health vs. Fitbit
Photo by Jennifer Jewell

Once you’re inside the Pebble Heath section of your Pebble Time watch, you can press the Up or Down buttons to view weekly step and sleep overviews, as well as a summary of your prior night’s sleep. Even if you forget to check your progress throughout the day, Pebble will add a pin at the end of the day to tell you your step total and its comparison with your average. Pebble also creates a pin every morning with your sleep overview. I find the creation of these pins to be nice subtle reminders of my goals for more activity and better sleep.

Can Pebble Health compare to Fitbit?
Photo by Jennifer Jewell

Even after I realized that I really liked the Pebble Health interface, one question still nagged at me. Can a device whose primary purpose is NOT health data collection be as accurate as a device whose primary purpose IS health data collection? Since my background is in biostatistics, I decided to do a “quick and dirty” comparison of the data collected by the two devices. I say it’s unscientific because I didn’t compare either of them to a “gold standard,” so I have no way of knowing how many actual steps that I took on the days in the comparison. Also, having only one participant makes this more of a case study than an experiment. So I can’t say with certainty that either device is accurate in their step counts or sleep data. All I can say is whether they both collect similar data on me.

Can Pebble Health compare to Fitbit?
Photo by Jennifer Jewell

I have 20 days of Pebble Health data collected. I also downloaded several months’ worth of Fitbit data. For my comparison, I’ve used the step data from my Fitbit from November 2015 and January 2016. (I wanted to cut out any outlying data that might have occurred during the holidays in December.) I compared the first 21 days of those months with the 21 days from the end of February and beginning of March that my Pebble Time Round had collected step data. As you can see in the chart below, I don’t walk nearly enough. What I found interesting was that on 60% of the days, the step counts from both Fitbit months were higher than the Pebble Health month. And on 80% of the days at least one of the Fitbit data points were higher. The average number of daily steps counted by the Pebble is also 1303 steps lower than the January Fitbit steps average and 1976 steps lower than the November average. Since I haven’t changed my daily activities during the months in question, the only thing this tells me is that either the Fitbit might overestimate steps or the Pebble might underestimate them. Without a gold standard comparison, I can’t know which is the more likely scenario. I had suspected that my Pebble count was lower than my Fitbit counts, and this confirms that impression.

Can Pebble Health compare to Fitbit?
Photo by Jennifer Jewell

It’s frustrating to have thought I was taking so many more steps when I was wearing the Fitbit. But, again, I don’t know if that’s because the Fitbit overestimates steps. I’d love to see the data that the companies have collected on the function of their devices, but I don’t think they’d give me access to that. I want to have the confidence to know that my device is a good estimator of steps, and I don’t think I’m the only one that would like to know.

That sums up my comparison of Pebble Health and the Fitbit in regards to their activity data. I’m not even going to touch on the magic that must occur for a device worn on my wrist to measure sleep quantity and quality. I honestly have no idea how “they” do it. And perhaps I’m missing it, but I don’t see a way to view the Pebble sleep data on Google Fit, so I can’t pull my Pebble data to compare with my Fitbit data.

Even though I’d like to see information from Pebble that establishes the accuracy of the Pebble Health data, I’m still happy with the Pebble Health app itself. It’s user friendly and easy to navigate. You can access easy-to-read graphs right from your Pebble Time device. I do wish that the app had “progress notifications” so that I’d get reminded throughout the day about how my current steps are comparing to my average. How do you use Pebble Health in your daily life? How do you think it stacks up to the competition?


Eyecandy

 

7 thoughts on “Review: Pebble Health vs. Fitbit”

  1. I wear pebble on a carabiner off beltloop during work, because too much damage to watch on wrist at work, and is a better step measure, as I am swinging my arms too much lifting and moving boxes….

    Reply
  2. Hey, random question: Can you confirm if you are wearing a Round 14mm in these pictures as opposed to the 20mm? I have been looking into the Round hoping it doesn’t look so bulky on my wrist and I like the way yours looks on you. 🙂

    Reply
    • It is indeed a 14mm. I absolutely love it. It’s not bulky at all! Make sure to check out our strap articles to get an idea of just how much you can change the look of your Pebble by changing the strap.

      Reply
  3. I often lament the differences between my Fitbit and my Pebble step counts.
    Over a couple of years I have seen that the Fitbit definitely appears to be over estimating the steps. This an unscientific view as I haven’t tested this on multiple subjects, but when playing sport, it would appear that I am at least as active (sometimes more) as a professional athlete.
    This I know is sadly untrue, so my guess would be that the Pebble Health step count is likely more accurate.

    Reply
    • I hope that is the case, since my Pebble is now my primary activity tracker. And I have to say, it’s extra nice to hit 9000 or 10000 steps on the Pebble, because I know I really worked for them.

      Reply

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