hi everyone welcome back to wesknows tech news and reviews today we'll be reviewing testing
and comparing the fitbit inspire 2 versus the samsung galaxy fit 2. now there are plenty of
reviews and comparisons out there but they're all looking at the specs well we know the specs
because these trackers have been around for the last four to five months but what about accuracy
how do they perform in real life that's what we're going to be looking at today so we're
going to kick off with the heart rate accuracy test from my run in the forest the benchmark for
the heart rate test will be done by polar h10 ecg chest strap then we're going to be talking about
the resting heart rate during the night and then sleep accuracy let's get into it
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before we get into the testing and comparing of the two trackers let's have a quick recap
of what these two trackers are all about so on my right hand i've got the samsung galaxy f2
on my left i've got the fitbit inspire 2. now if we start off with the samsung so we'll go
through the positives and the negatives now in regards to the negatives the clasp clip
and tuck clasp shocking you just there's no way of getting it off easily nor on quickly it's just
yeah in regards to the positives well it's the usual tracker right you've got a big black
face the screen is actually amoled it's very bright it's 1.1 inches so just the traditional
tracker it's real easy to use another big positive here is the price 49 pounds of 49 in fact i can
see them on amazon usually discounted heavily so you can pick it up as low as 30 bucks or 30 quid
let's get on to the inspire 2 now so with inspire 2 the positives the positive is the
clasp it's the classic watch type clasp so you can get this on easily quickly on
off anytime in regards to the negatives well in my case i think it's the tiny screen
big black face tiny black and white screen so it is amoled but it's tiny we can't go around this
i couldn't find the size anyway but i think it's probably like a 0.5 or 0.6 of an inch
it's absolutely minuscule there is no way you're going to read any kind of text on here while
you're exercising it's just too small you need to pull out your phone and actually look into the
app another negative with the fitbit inspire 2 in my view is that it does cost quite a bit of money
so either 89 pounds or 100 bucks now you also get them discounted but you're not going to get
them as cheap as the samsung so really we've got two trackers 50 bucks 100 bucks now is the fitbit
inspired twice as good as the samsung galaxy fit 2. the fitbit inspired 2 is saying that we
have a lot of premium features but can you please let me know in the comments do you actually go in
and actually use fitbit premium features like coaching and so forth because i don't the only
thing i really use the track is for is to track my sleep uh heart rate and if they have it's an
spo2 monitor but these ones don't have spo2 so it's just the heart rate and sleep metrics that's
what's key and i think these are the functions that are most commonly used on fitness trackers
so really if you're going to be splashing at 100 bucks would you get a fitbit inspire 2 or
maybe a budget smartwatch i don't know just the question i want to know what you think of that
in the comments right so i think we're ready to dive in and actually have a look at the test we're
going to be kicking off with heart rate so i went for a run on sunday in the forest so it was a bit
of uphill downhill all over the show so we're going to be plotting the heart rate from the
optical heart rate sensors on the back of these trackers versus the polar h10 ecg chest strap
that is going to be our benchmark and these ones will be plotted against it we're going
to be starting off with the samsung galaxy fit 2 and then we'll jump on the fitbit inspire 2. let's
get into it so now we have the galaxy fit 2 heart rate plot over the polar h10 ecg chest wraps plot
and we can see that the average heart rate registered bipolar h10 was 143 beats per minute
galaxy food 2 registers 141 so there's a variance of 2 beats per minute or negative one point four
percent it does look like the galaxy fit two doesn't really register the peaks nor the trolls
but rather averages in across the tracing so this is especially evident in the first half of the run
later on it does sort of trace the polar h10 heart rate but at the start definitely
the peaks are understated and the trolls are overstated if we look at the max heart rate
so the polar h10 registers 160 beats per minute while the galaxy fit 2 actually has 161 so again
a variance of 1 beat per minute but really that is the peak and that is still very good that's
a variance of point six percent so the average heart rate variance is one point four percent
while for the max heart rate there is a variance of 0.6 percent those results are actually very
good the only worry i have is that there is a lot of averaging in because we can see that for the
first half of the run so if we look at the first 15 minutes there are quite a lot of points where
the peaks are just not registered the trolls are not followed through that's a bit of a worry but
the averaging in but the averaging in has allowed the galaxy fit2 to be very close to the ecg chest
strap let's take a look at the fitbit inspire 2. the fitbit inspired 2 does look like it's doing
a bit more tracing than the galaxy fit 2. so it's actually quite close to the polar h-10 chest strap
yes there is a bit of a lag and we can see that basically from the start in the first rise up as
the intensity of the run increases we can see the heart rate jumping up but it is lagging
behind the chest strap as we get to the middle of the run where we see most of the peaks this was
where i was running uphill we do see that the peaks are sort of matched but then the actual
decrease of the heart rate is lagging so that means that the optical heart rate sensor is
slightly slower to register the heart rate signals than the chest strap as we look into the second
part of the plot we can see that the tracing is rather good and the fitbit inspired 2 is actually
following the polar h10 strap quite closely let's look at the variance so for the average heart rate
there is a variance of 3 beats per minute so if the polar h10 has 143 beats per minute the
inspired 2 registers 140 that's a variance of 2.1 percent the fitbit inspired 2 is also off
from the max heart rate by 2 beats per minute and that's a variance of one point three percent
so if we compare the results between the fitbit inspire 2 and the galaxy fit 2 if we don't look
at the plots we just look at the numbers then it looks like the galaxy fit 2 actually did a better
job but if we actually focus on the plots then we can see that there's a lot of averaging and
a lot of smoothing out done by galaxy fit 2 which i'm not very fond of so it sort of
played the game now in this particular case in a short run but what if the run was much longer
let's say 10k 15k then i think that all of this smoothing would not do you a whole world of good
now the fitbit inspire 2 does seem to have a bit of a lag in its optical heart rate sensor but
it's definitely doing a much better job at actually tracing the real heart rate at the
end of the day the variances are tiny from both the trackers i think they've done a good job
what we can say definitely is that the fitbit inspire 2 and the galaxy photo do actually have
quite accurate heart rate sensors just before we get into the sleep accuracy test and analysis
let's take a look at the resting heart rate this is quite an important metric because this is
the heart rate while you're at rest while you're sleeping and this is actually an indicator of your
general well-being as well as the state of your nervous system because it's actually one of the
inputs to the heart rate variability calculation or metric so the samsung galaxy for 2 measured 65
beats per minute as the resting heart rate while the fitbit inspired 2 came up with 66 now this
is in line with my general trends of overnight or resting heart rate so no issues there and we can
go on to the sleep accuracy test so to start us off let's take a look at the falling asleep time
as well as the wake up time so i went to sleep at around 2 30 a.m and we can see that both
track is actually registered just that we can see that both trackers actually registered a falling
asleep time of 2 29 a.m now the fitbit inspired 2 registered me waking up at 10 32 a.m while the
galaxy fit 2 registered me waking up at 10 29 a.m either way three minutes here three minutes later
that's still very close to the 10 30 a.m that my alarm clock went off on so no issues there
now let's take a look at the actual sleep stages so if we look at the deep and the light sleep
the total times are quite similar across the two trackers with around 45 hours registered for the
light sleep and about one and a half to two hours on the deep sleep there is no issue with that that
makes sense because over the night we do expect to have sleep cycles which are at least 70 minutes
so that all makes sense what doesn't make sense is the awake times from 2 30 a.m
till 10 30 a.m there is eight hours that's the total time slept but if we actually look at this
samsung galaxy for two registered a sleeping time of seven hours and five minutes while the fitbit
inspire 2 is saying 7 hours and 11 minutes so where did those 50 minutes go and it looks like
both of these trackers are very sensitive to movement and the fitbit inspired 2 is telling us
that i was awake for 52 minutes so in my 8 hours of sleeping apparently i woke up
52 minutes long now that's a lot of waking up during the night i don't think that's the case
now galaxy fit 2 is telling me that i was awake for 40 minutes that's also quite a bit now
what this actually means is that these trackers actually dependent on your movement to identify
your sleep stages as a result of this overestimation of the awake times the total
slept time is actually reduced and hence the sleep scores provided to us are most likely slightly off
and underestimating our real quality of sleep so i think this is an issue and that would mean
that these trackers actually over dependent on movement during the night rather than other
variables such as your breathing rate such as your heart rate and so forth either way i think
both of these trackers have shown that they're on par in regards to actual tracking your heart rate
your resting heart rate if you found this review comparison and test useful then drop us a like
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