Tune the tracker to your wrist with these handy tricks.
We’ve all looked at our Fitbit tracker and questioned how it actually measures our heart rate, or whether it can genuinely track every step precisely.
Through our testing, we’ve found Google Fitbit’s algorithms to be among the most consistently accurate for sleep tracking, heart monitoring, and step counting. However, accuracy can be further enhanced by adjusting a few settings.
By calibrating your Fitbit or Google Pixel Watch, you provide it a valuable boost in tracking your activity from your wrist – whether it’s floors climbed, hours slept, or calories burned.
Here are six ways to change the settings to ensure you get the very best results.
Improve Fitbit step counting and distance accuracy
If your Fitbit is inaccurately tracking distance or steps, adjusting your stride length can help. Even when it performs well, manually setting your stride length guarantees you’re accurately measuring your daily activity and workouts, preventing any overestimation or underestimation.
Determine your stride length by walking (or running) over a short distance and then dividing that total distance by the number of steps taken. You can input different stride lengths for running and walking, so ensure you do this for maximum accuracy.
- In the Fitbit app, tap the Google account icon in the top-right corner, then select ‘Fitbit settings’.
- Next, under ‘Preferences’, select ‘Activity’ and you should see an option for ‘Stride Length’. If you haven’t tweaked this before, it’s likely to be set to do this automatically.
- If you toggle it off, you’ll be able to set this manually.
Improve sleep tracking accuracy
Adjusting your Fitbit or Google Pixel Watch’s sleep sensitivity is a great setting to mix up if you’re noticing inconsistent or error-prone sleep reports.
- In the Fitbit app, tap the Google account icon in the top-right corner, then select ‘Fitbit settings’.
- Next, under ‘Preferences’, select ‘Sleep’ and you should see an option for ‘Sleep sensitivity’.
- By default, this will be set to ‘Normal’, but you can tweak it to ‘Sensitive’ if you find that the tracker isn’t registering your sleep, or is registering odd results.
Calibrate automatic exercise detection
Fitbit trackers automatically detect certain activities by default, including walking, running, cycling, and even swimming.
By going into the ‘Activity’ section of your Fitbit app’s Account settings section, you’ll be able to tweak how long Fitbit will wait to kick in tracking when it automatically detects an exercise is happening.
The minimum time you can set this for is 10 minutes; however, rest assured that any exercise you perform during those initial minutes will still be counted.
If auto-tracking doesn’t seem to function properly after adjusting the time, you can disable it for each exercise individually.
Improve swim tracking accuracy
If you want to track a swim session, make sure you’ve calibrated the tracker to the length of the pool. This was previously an option available through the Fitbit app, but it’s now only accessible on the Fitbit tracker or Google smartwatch before launching a swimming workout.
To do so on watches like the Fitbit Sense 2 or Versa 4, tap the cog icon in the top left and adjust the distance. Ensure you do this to achieve the best accuracy in the pool.
Remember that you can still tinker with the units of measurement (meters or yards) within the Fitbit app by selecting the Google account in the top-right corner and heading to ‘Date, time, units’ section.
How to improve heart rate accuracy
A simple adjustment to the wristband fit could be enough to significantly improve the accuracy of readings from the optical sensor on Google Fitbit devices.
The first thing to do is to ensure that your device is worn on top of your wrist, with the underside in contact with your skin.
If you’re exercising with it on, ensure a slightly tighter fit to minimize movement that could affect the sensor’s readings. Most importantly, you don’t want it to be constricting or so tight that it feels uncomfortable during your workout.
When you’re not using the heart rate sensor during exercise, ensure that your device is worn two finger widths above your wrist bone.
Which wrist are you wearing your Fitbit device on?
A minor detail, yet still important: ensure you indicate to the Fitbit app which wrist you are wearing your Fitbit on.
You can do this by going into the devices section via the top-left icon, then tapping on your synced Fitbit device. From there, you can scroll down the page to find the section titled ‘Wrist Placement’. You can tap to switch between left and right.
What difference does that make? Having the device determine which wrist it’s on is essential for the accuracy of step counting and distance tracking.
