Look at what I scored. A Garmin vivofit fitness band. It is something that I’ve been looking into for a while. It just so happens that I attended a wellness meeting and won this one as a door prize.

If you are not familiar with fitness bands they are a tracking device. They count steps/pedometer, monitor your sleep, and help you set goals in your activity.

We are currently in a shift in the market. There are more than a few of these standalone devices. Nike plus Fuelband was a popular one along with fitbit. But now Fuelband is pulling out of the market and rumored to be merging with some future Apple product. That is the wave of the future. The newer fitness trackers are going to be integrated into more watches, phones , and watch phone type devices.

It’s rare that I win anything and especially not anything that I want so I was particularly excited about this. I took it home and opened that box right away. While it wasn’t a hard process to setup , there was some difficulty. It was initially having some  problems pairing with the usb bluetooth that allows you to sync it on your computer.

I put it right on. Which was slightly uneventful because I was pretty close to getting ready for bed. I’m in my first 24 hours of wearing the device and I can’t help but feel like somtimes it counts more than the number of steps I actually take. Then again I’ve never really counted my steps before. I was somewhere in the range of 1200 steps by lunch time.  My goal right now is to not let the vivofit push me to walking more just yet. I want to get a baseline that is close to what my actual activity is.

I’m going to wear this for the next month and see what happens. Have you tried any fitness tracker? Which ones do you use? let me know. Comment below or tweet me @SongandCrest