Galaxy Watch Fitness Tracked: Day 8

February 6, 2019 David R. tech fitbit, fitness, fitness tracker, galaxy watch

Actions: Day off at the gym, work from home day.

Fitbit Data:

Total Floors Climbed: 8
Total Steps: 11,547
Total Distance: 5.97
Total Calories: 3,827
Total Active Minutes: 32 (*See Notes*)
Resting Heart Rate: 63bpm

Galaxy Watch Data:

Total Floors Climbed: 4 (Stairs are terrible)
Total Steps: 8,506
Total Distance: (Removing this stat as I have no clue what it really is)
Total Calories: 2,935
Total Active Minutes: Once again, see notes: Tired of looking at 2 apps for the same measurement
Resting Heart Rate: 67bpm
Average Heart Rate: 71bpm
Min Heart Rate: 60bpm
Max Heart Rate: 95bpm

Notes:

I have no clue why Fitbit counts active minutes one time but not another. My assumption is that my heart rate went long enough in an elevated zone.

I’m getting rid of the total distance on the Galaxy Watch. I’m assuming the watch’s Health app has the correct measurement, but the phone app has 2. And I’m never sure which one it is. Extremely annoying.

Total calories are about 900 off. I’m curious if GalaxyWatch isn’t counting calories when my watch is off. As that’s about 8 hours at about 120cal/hr for me TDEE.

Galaxy Watch Fitness Tracked: Day 7

February 6, 2019 David R. tech fitbit, fitness, galaxy watch, smart watch

Actions: Hard Workout Day, had to make up for the chicken nuggets the day before. 🙂

Fitbit Data:

Total Floors Climbed: 21
Total Steps: 18,034
Total Distance: 9.33 Miles
Total Calories: 5,000
Total Active Minutes: 108
Resting Heart Rate: 69bpm
Weights:
- Total Time: 39 min (timer got paused, hence the discrepancy)
- 114 avg bpm
- Total Calories: 355
- 1,704 steps
Elliptical
- 2.14 mi
- 139 avg bpm
- 30 min cardio range
- 4.3mph
- 3,919 steps
- Total Time: 30 min
- Total Calories: 468

Galaxy Watch Data:

Total Floors Climbed: 1 (lol! I know I did more than 1!)
Total Steps: 14,097
Total Distance: 6.4 mi and 5.41 mi.
Total Calories: 3,769
Total Active Minutes: 203 (127 walking/76 min exercise)
Resting Heart Rate: 66
Average Heart Rate: 79bpm
Min Heart Rate: 64
Max Heart Rate: 156
Weights:
- Total Time: 45 Mins 49 seconds
- Calories: 613
- Avg. Heart Rate: 109bpm
- Max Heart Rate 133bpm
- 1 min vigorous
- 41 minutes Moderate
- Steps:
Elliptical:
- Total Time: 30 min
- Total Calories: 306
- Average Heart Rate: 140bpm
- Max Heart Rate: 156bpm

Notes: Big day in the gym. Once again, i’m kinda tired of the Samsung Health UI. Not that fitbit is leaps and bounds better. It’s hard for me to tell whether or not I’m supposed to add the two distances, it SEEMS like it’s counting both my “active time distance” and overall walking distance. Adding them together this time get’s me over the fitbit’s data.

Galaxy Watch Fitness Tracked: Day 6

January 26, 2019January 26, 2019 David R. tech fitbit, fitness, galaxy watch, smart watch

Actions: Just a typical day off but did light house work. While I didn’t workout, I was painting my Family Room

Fitbit Data:

Total Floors Climbed: 9
Total Steps: 10,007 (had to walk in place)
Total Distance: 5.18
Total Calories: 3,933
Total Active Minutes: 0
Resting Heart Rate: 72bpm

Galaxy Watch Data:

Total Floors Climbed: 1 (lol! I know I did more than 1!)
Total Steps: 6,991
Total Distance: 2.89 mi and 4.79 mi. (Amazing that it has 2 different distances)
Total Calories: 2,787
Total Active Minutes: 111 (walking)
Resting Heart Rate: 66
Average Heart Rate: 72bpm
Min Heart Rate: 64
Max Heart Rate: 84

Notes: Still annoyed at the 2 different distances, my assumption is the 2.89 measurement is my active time and the 4.79 is the total since the 4.79 is closer to fitbit’s calculation.

Galaxy Watch Fitness Tracked: Day 5

January 26, 2019 David R. tech exercise, fitbit, fitness, galaxy watch, smart watch

Notes: Once again, sorry for not posting the data on time. Been extremely busy and also very tired from exercise! Also switched to saying Day 5 cause 120 hours sounded a bit silly.

Actions: Saturday, lots of work to be done both in the gym and out. Lifted Weights

Fitbit Data:

Total Floors: 11
Total Distance: 6.23
Total Calories: 4,669
Total Active Minutes: 90
Weight Lifting:
- Total Time 63 min
- Total Cals: 725
- Avg Heart Rate: 128bpm
- 32 min cardio
- 31 min Fat burn
- Total Steps: 1,950

Galaxy Watch Data:

Total Floors: 6
Total Distance: 8,336
Total Calories: 3,697
Total Active Minutes: 63 min
Weight Lifting:
- Total Time: 63 min
- Total Cals: 852
- Avg Heart Rate: 131bpm
- Max Heart Rate: 160
- 34 Min Vigorous
- 30 min moderate

Notes: Nothing major, just the average day to day.

Observations: Since it was a Saturday, my total floors is MUCH lower since I’m not going in my office all the time and rarely go “Up” any stairs. Fitbit seems to be MUCH better at counting stairs throughout the day. My suspicion is that the same mechanism preventing the Galaxy watch from getting short trips is the same since I’m walking from the kitchen < 10 steps to my stairs to my computer. I’m liking both data points coming from the devices, but they are in fact very different.

Galaxy Watch Fitness Tracked: 96 Hour Update

January 19, 2019 David R. Uncategorized fitbit, fitness, fitness tracker, galaxy watch, smart watch

Actions:

Once again, day off from the gym, got lots of sleep. Had several long meetings at the office. I wanted to go for a walk during lunch but I also wanted to each lunch away from the office since I didn’t bring food. Went out after work to celebrate my anniversary. Didn’t get home till 7:00PM and basically went to bed.

As of note, you may be noticing I goto bed early. I’m in bed for quite an hour or so before I fall asleep. Usually reading, playing a game, or talking to the wife. But occasionly I do get up and take steps but obviously they’re not counted and are generally less then 100 steps.

Fitbit Data:

Total Steps: 7,648
Distance: 3.95 miles
Calories burned: 4,119
Active Minutes: 61
Total Floors: 6

Galaxy Watch Data:

Total Steps: 5,815
Distance: 2.43 miles (See notes)
Calories Burned: 2,751
Active Minutes: 73
Total Floors: 2

Notes:

I’m starting to REALLY hate the Samsung Health app. When I open the Active Time for yesterday, I get the following information: Calories burned 2,741, Activity, 439. Distance 3.15 Miles. However, when I goto the steps counter, it says I went 2.43 miles and and burned 401 cal. I’m not sure which one is right, even on it’s own app it doesn’t agree with itself. I end up just using the Health app on the watch to gather data.

Observations:

Nothing major today other than it’s somewhat annoying when you don’t hit the goals. It’s not bad, but there’s a blank area there. I gues that’s the idea. The night before at the end of the day I have 9,800-ish steps, so I just walked around the house to get over 10,000. I didn’t care about the Galaxy watch side but it was there. However, this time I was ~2,500 short for Fitbit and 185 steps for Galaxy Watch. Already I’m wanting to lean toward Fitbit’s data overall, not that I took 10,000 steps but I tend to like their benchmarks better.

Galaxy Watch Fitness Tracked: 72 Hour Update

January 19, 2019January 19, 2019 David R. tech fitbit, galaxy watch, samsung, smart watch

Actions:

Day off from exercising, went to office for long meetings, during lunch went to Costco.

Fitbit Data:

Total Steps Counted: 10,054.
Total Calories Burned: 3,884.
Total Distance: 5.19 miles
Floord Climbed: 12
72bpm resting heart rate
Active Minutes: 0

Galaxy Watch Data:

Total Steps: 7,726
Total Miles: 3.31
Calories burned: 481
Total Floors: 2
77bpm average (92 max, 65 min)
Active minutes: 114 walking
Calories Burned: 481 (assuming this is from walking)

Notes:

Nothing Major to note.

Observations:

There was a BIG issue I noticed today and had come up in the past. That’s using the grocery cart and walking around Costco. As I was doing this, the Galaxy Watch was clearly not counting steps. The Fitbit was from time to time but what I couldn’t discern was if it was doing it because I brought it up to view or if it was actually counting while my hand was on grocery card. Since there’s almost a 3,000 step difference and more importantly, nearly a 2 mile distance difference, that’s where I’m going to note the two. It seems the Fitbit is just much more sensitive. Once again, that may be good or may be bad.

Galaxy Watch For Fitness: Tracked (Day 0)

January 15, 2019January 15, 2019 David R. tech fitbit, fitness tracker, galaxy, galaxy watch, hardware, samsung

Introduction:

Over on Reddit’s r/GalaxyWatch thread, there has been a lot of discourse over the Galaxy Watch’s ability to serve as a fitness tracker. There have been several threads pointing to the Galaxy Watch just being not only inaccurate but just plain not working. I’ve been using a Galaxy Watch for about 4 months now that replaced my old every day watch (Casio WSD-F10 Android Wear). While I’ve never really questioned and/or cared about “fitness” performance from the Galaxy Watch, I’ve honestly only ever looked at the steps as a Goal, not meaning that I walked that specific number, but actually more like experience points that I needed to reach. However, since it’s the New Year, and of course, I’ve been a bit lazy it’s now time to bring the Galaxy Watch’s ability into question.

Over the next few weeks, while I work on my fitness goals, I’m going to be comparing my Galaxy Watch to my Fitbit Charge 2 and to a lesser extent my Casio. I’m going to ATTEMPT to use the Scientific Method here, but bear in mind it’s probably been a good 15-20 years since I’ve used it, so I’m going to use the 5th grader version and combine some steps. I’ll try to keep things and simple as possible and keep a journal on how it’s going. I’m going to evaluate it at the end of a 7-day period and give my summary. So, Let’s begin.

A Bit About Me:

So we all know what we’re working with:

I am
- Male
- 33 years old.
- 6’7″ in height (79 inches)
- 261.5 lbs as of January 15th.
- Activity Level: Sedentary
  - There is some confusion on activity level, the consensus I’ve seen is that you put your day-to-day lifestyle in and do not count your exercise. Since I work an IT desk-job, that’s what I’m using.
- Basal Metabolic Rate: 2,475
  - I did one that said 3,400 I didn’t like that number but BMR is based on an average, so I did a couple of others from around the internet. 2,475 seems a good fit.
- Body Fat %: 27%
  - Technically, I’m obese. 🙂
- My stride is about 17 inches when walking.
  - Feet per step: 1.4
  - Steps per 100ft: 71
  - Steps per mile: 3,771
Hardware I’ll be using:
- Galaxy Watch 46mm (On my left wrist)
- Fitbit Charge 2 (On My Right Wrist)
- Casio WSD-F10 (On my right wrist)
Software I’ll be using:
- MyFitnessPal
- Fitbit Software
- Samsung Health both on watch and the phone
- Android Wear and Google Fit
- Basic online calculators

Scientific Method Step 1 (Questions):

It it my purpose that I want to validate the Galaxy Watch’s fitness tracking abilities, evaluate, and determine the following:

Is the Galaxy Watch Step tracker accurate?
Is the Galaxy Watch stair calculator accurate?
Will caloric burn during various exercises be similar to other sources?
How is the performance of the Galaxy Watch compared to Fitbit?

I’m going to be comparing it to the Fitbit, mainly due to its popularity and of course I have one. I understand/realize that these evaluations are not 100% scientific, but at least evaluate it as best as possible for me.

Scientific Method Step 2/3:

I’ll be performing my own research, which is only a data point for other evaluations. Once again, this isn’t a peer-reviewed journal and I’m not going to research each devices programmed statistics, measurements, or any algorithmic performance. Just looking at numbers at the end of the day for me.

However, I will provide a Hypothesis:

The Galaxy Watch will show fewer steps/stairs vs fitbit and fewer than calculated in trials.
The caloric burn for the Galaxy Watch will be higher when compared to other sources, including Fitbit.
The Fitbit will be higher when compared to other devices/sources.
1. (This is based on some annecdotal evidence already, since I looked at my calories burned yesterday and it’s saying 4,400 calories in a 24 hour period.)
Overall, the Galaxy Watch will have values that are lower, but at least are consistently lower by the same percentage. (Example, if I took 100 steps, GW would say nearly 60 every time. Whereas the Fitbit will represent more.

Why?

My assumptions above are based on some small evaluations over time. I have trouble hitting my 6,000 step goal on Samsung but can easily beat that on my Fitbit everyday even if I don’t try. However, I have noticed my sitting in my chair and from moving my arms the steps does increase while the Galaxy Watch remains the same. In fact if I stand and swing my arms my Galaxy Watch remained the same and the Fitbit increased by 10. (the number of each swings I took.) There has been some criticism about this stating that the Galaxy Watch doesn’t seem to pick of short little strolls. Mainly I just want to assist anyone else in determining if the Galaxy Watch is a valid platform for health tracking or at least for accounting for differences between it and other platforms.

Day 0 Summary:

Overall that’s going to be the pace for the next 7 days. I’ll do my best to update it everyday but at a minimum I’ll be updating them in 24 hour increments to account for my full days use. The data for today will be available tomorrow.