Did You Really Take 10,000 Steps? A Study Found Fitness Trackers Aren't That Accurate
Don't get TOO proud of yourself when you hit 10,000 steps a day. There's a decent chance it was more like 9,000. (!!!)
A study found fitness-tracking apps aren't as accurate as you think, and that includes counting the number of steps you take in a day. It looked at Fitbits, Apple Watches, and a bunch of other brands.
Here are five things those devices track, and how accurate the results were for each.
1. Heart rate. Pretty good. Your real number might be 3% higher or lower than what it says.
2. Heart rate variability. That's slight variations in the time between heartbeats, which can help predict potential health issues. They found they're pretty accurate with it when you're sitting down, but not when you're up moving around.
3. Sleep tracking. They found fitness trackers tend to overestimate how long you were sleeping, and underestimate how long it took you to fall asleep.
4. Calories burned. Not great. Some devices underestimated it by up to 21%. Others overestimated by up to 14%. So, you might think you just burned 100 calories. But in round numbers, you really burned anywhere from 90 to 125.
5. Counting steps. Not fully awful, but not great either. It might say you took 9% fewer steps than you really did, or 12% more. That means it could say 10,000 steps when you really took anywhere from 9,000 to 11,000.
But here's the good news: In general, they found fitness trackers are more likely to undercount steps. So if it says 10,000, chances are you took MORE than that, not less.
Originally posted on September 10th, 2024