Assessment of the Fitbit Charge 2 for monitoring heart rate

Fitness trackers are devices or applications for monitoring and tracking fitness-related metrics such as distance walked or run, calorie consumption, quality of sleep and heart rate. Since accurate heart rate monitoring is essential in fitness training, the objective of this study was to assess the...

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Published inPloS one Vol. 13; no. 2; p. e0192691
Main Authors Benedetto, Simone, Caldato, Christian, Bazzan, Elia, Greenwood, Darren C, Pensabene, Virginia, Actis, Paolo
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States Public Library of Science 28.02.2018
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Subjects
Accuracy
Actigraphy - methods
Activity trackers
Biology and Life Sciences
Blood
Electrical engineering
Engineering and Technology
Evaluation
Exercise
Fitness
Heart monitors
Heart Rate
Humans
International conferences
Measurement techniques
Medical electronics
Medicine
Medicine and Health Sciences
Metabolism
Methods
Monitoring
Monitoring, Physiologic
Physical fitness
Physiology
Research and Analysis Methods
Sleep
Studies
Supervision
Tracking devices
Italy
San Francisco California
United Kingdom > UK
United States > US
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Summary:Fitness trackers are devices or applications for monitoring and tracking fitness-related metrics such as distance walked or run, calorie consumption, quality of sleep and heart rate. Since accurate heart rate monitoring is essential in fitness training, the objective of this study was to assess the accuracy and precision of the Fitbit Charge 2 for measuring heart rate with respect to a gold standard electrocardiograph. Fifteen healthy participants were asked to ride a stationary bike for 10 minutes and their heart rate was simultaneously recorded from each device. Results showed that the Fitbit Charge 2 underestimates the heart rate. Although the mean bias in measuring heart rate was a modest -5.9 bpm (95% CI: -6.1 to -5.6 bpm), the limits of agreement, which indicate the precision of individual measurements, between the Fitbit Charge 2 and criterion measure were wide (+16.8 to -28.5 bpm) indicating that an individual heart rate measure could plausibly be underestimated by almost 30 bpm.
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Competing Interests: The authors declare that the funding organization (TSW XP Lab) only provided financial support in the form of authors’ salaries [SB, CC, EB] and/or research materials, and did not play a role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The specific roles of these authors are articulated in the “Author Contribution” section. The authors also confirm that this commercial affiliation does not alter their adherence to all PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0192691