Are you an adult that shops in the kids’ section? Then I might have found the perfect heart rate fitness tracker for you. How do I know this? Because the Fitbit Inspire HR is the first heart rate monitor of any brand that actually fits me, Lauren. The 30-year-old woman who wears clothing aged 13 – 14.
The Fitbit Inspire HR
Retailing at just a little more than R2000, the Inspire HR is a surprisingly good entry model heart rate monitor. It has most of the features we’ve come to expect from the Fitbit brand – steps, calories, active minutes, and sleep-stage recognition. It doesn’t track floors climbed, SPO2 and other features more typically associated with fitness watches such as the Versa. It’s basically the Charge 3, but smaller, cheaper, and with worse battery life (I had to charge mine every four days).
The Inspire uses the same body as their child-friendly model, which is probably why it fits. This might be a major drawback for some because the screen and text are smaller making phone notifications potentially difficult to read. The watch fits comfortably on the wrist and has a similar feel to the Alta. The responsiveness of the touchscreen sometimes lags, but it’s tolerable.
The one drawback to this model, and all of Fitbit’s “swim-proof” models, is that it isn’t really swim proof. I learnt this the hard way with my Flex 2, which stopped working after 8 swimming sessions. The Inspire HR is water-resistant to 50m, the depth of an Olympic swimming pool. But this doesn’t mean you can swim to the bottom of the pool regularly and still be able to tell the time. It means the watch remained functional under static pressure to 50m. Swimming, especially freestyle and butterfly, add an incredible amount of pressure on the watch, making it unsuitable for serious swimmers. Because I’ve been burned before and bought the Inspire HR myself, I did not test swim-proof functionality to confirm my hunch. If you swim for leisure you will probably be okay. But if you swim laps regularly, I do not recommend using a Fitbit to track aquatic-based workouts.
The bottom line?
If you’re looking for a well-priced fitness watch and aren’t a swimmer, get it!
Disclosure: Lauren purchased her own Fitbit Inspire HR.
