If you’ve given any thought at all to buying yourself or someone else an activity tracker or smartwatch, there’s no doubt you’ve heard of Fitbit – the giant in today’s world of activity trackers. But you might not have heard of Striiv.
There are hundreds of fitness trackers available on the market today, and it can be difficult to decide which one best fits your lifestyle (and your budget). Fitbit will naturally come to mind first simply because it is so popular and well known these days. But as you shop for the right activity tracker for you, one that fits your lifestyle and budget, you should consider Striiv too.
Striiv is a budget-friendly brand of fitness trackers and smartwatches designed to help you keep track of your activity while keeping you connected to your smartphone.
Both Fitbit and Strive help you keep track of your activity levels and your sleeping patterns, encouraging you to stay active during the day and get enough rest at night. In addition, many of their products sync with your smartphone (iPhone or Android), providing notifications (usually a vibration) when you receive texts, calls, emails, and calendar alerts.
Let’s take a look at the Strive Touch, the Fitbit Charge 3, the Fitbit Alta HR, and the Fitbit Flex 2. We’ll provide an overview of each of these models to see what they offer and then offer a pros/cons list to help you compare them for yourself. Will Striiv hold its own against Fitbit? Only you can decide!
Striiv Touch – Overview
One of the most attractive things about the Striive Touch is the price point. It’s only $59! The question is whether or not it provides all the options you’re looking for in a fitness tracker. Of course, it keeps track of your steps, miles walked, calories burned, active minutes, and sleep duration.
The Striiv Touch will also sync with My Fitness Pal (popular nutrition and calorie tracking app), giving you the ability to keep closer track of your calorie intake and burn rate.
The Striiv Touch is not 100% accurate with step tracking/counting. It tracks steps based on the motion of your arm, so if your arm moves at all, it will count a step. This is not too big of a deal unless you are looking for something that is 100% accurate.
The Striiv Touch is water resistant and has a light, low profile design. You can get away with wearing it in the shower, and it will handle sweaty workouts with ease. It also claims to have a long battery life (up to 5 days).
The Striiv Touch does sync with your smartphone (iPhone or Android) and provides text, call, and app notifications.
What customers are saying about the Striiv Touch
In general, the reviews of the Striiv Touch are mixed. The chief complaints involve syncing issues and broken straps/bands. As with any new piece of technology, there are bugs to work out. The Striiv Touch has some difficulty maintaining sync with smartphones. While it does sync with both iPhone and Android devices, the sync is not always maintained.
There are also some complaints about the battery life. Setting up notifications will decrease the length of the battery life of the Striiv Touch (as well as the battery life of your phone). Some consumers have reported that their Striiv Touch battery lasted no more than a day, while other consumers have said their batteries lasted several days per charge.
For every negative review, however, there is a rave review – praising the quality of the Striiv Touch, its low profile, the ease of sync, the notification feature, and especially the price. It is important to remember the price of the Striiv Touch when considering the possible pitfalls.
The Fitbit Charge 3 – Overview
When it comes to options and features, the Fitbit Charge 3 blows the Striiv Touch out of the water. The Fitbit Charge 3 tracks your heart rate 24/7, segments your heart rate into zones (fat burn, cardio, or peak), and reveals your resting heart rate by tracking your heart rate trends over time and following your progress.
In addition, the Fitbit Charge 3 tracks the calories you burn all day, automatically recognizes exercises like running, swimming, the elliptical, sports, and more, and tracks activity all day (like steps, distance, floors climbed, active minutes, and calories burned), showing how every part of your day impacts your goals.
The Fitbit Charge 3 not only tracks how long you sleep, but it also tracks the three different stages of your sleep – light, deep, and REM – giving you greater insight into how you sleep and what you can do to improve your sleep cycles.
As if that wasn’t enough, the Fitbit Charge 3 is swim proof, offers reminders to move (which you can turn off if you find them annoying), connects with your smartphone apps (iPhone and Android) so you can check the weather, calendar appointments, texts, and calls before heading out for a workout, and even offers guided breathing sessions.
All of this, however, comes at a steep price – Fitbit Charge 3. The Fitbit Charge 3 is the most expensive activity tracker we are comparing here, and it comes with the most bells and whistles.
What customers are saying about the Fitbit Charge 3
The Fitbit Charge 3 is PC Mag’s Editor’s Choice for fitness tracker of 2018. However, reviews on Amazon seem to point to the fact that the interface is not quite ready. Customers are reporting syncing problems. The Fitbit Charge 3 apparently has a tendency to break sync. Customers are also complaining about the lack of options when it comes to the clock face.
Overall, the Fitbit Charge 3 offers a wealth of options and features, but still has a few kinds to work out in the interface.
Fitbit Alta HR – Overview
The Fitbit Alta HR is a sleek heart rate monitor and activity tracker that seeks to help you increase your activity levels while making a stylish fashion statement.
In addition to keeping track of your heart rate, the Fitbit Alta HR keeps track of all three stages of your sleep (light, deep, and REM), provides notifications from your phone (call, text, and calendar), pushes reminders to move, provides your cardio fitness level, tracks your steps, calories burned, and distance traveled, automatically recognizes certain exercises, and has a battery that lasts up to 7 days.
In addition to all of that, the Fitbit Alta HR has interchangeable bands, so you can make a fashionable statement or make the tracker blend in with the rest of your wardrobe – it’s totally up to you!
The primary goal of the Fitbit Alta HR is to track your heart rate. The tracker records your heart rate 24/7, showing real-time heart rate during workout sessions and determining your resting heart rate as well. PC Mag writes, “The [Fitbit] Alta HR is also one of the smallest fitness trackers with continuous heart rate monitoring you can get.”
This tracker is slightly less expensive than the Fitbit Charge 3, starting at $129.95 , but is still quite a bit more than the Striiv Touch.
What customers are saying about the Fitbit Alta HR
Negative reviews on Amazon point to the heart rate monitor being inaccurate during workouts. Customers also mention trouble interacting with the touchscreen and steps not being recorded correctly (either too many steps or too few being recorded).
The majority of reviews, however, were positive and offered advice on how to wear the band so that steps and heart rate are recorded correctly.
Fitbit Flex 2 – Overview
The Fitbit Flex 2 is closest in price to the Striiv Touch, coming in at $59.95, and while it has many of the same features that the Striiv Touch has, it does not have the touch screen.
The Fitbit Flex 2 tracks steps, activity, and sleep in a simply designed, sleek, swim-proof wristband. The tracker is removable and fits in the band, bangle, and pendant accessories so you can update your look to fit whatever style you’re going for and still keep track of your daily activity.
The Fitbit Flex 2 also offers reminders to move (the band will vibrate at intervals throughout the day). The band will also vibrate to notify you that you’ve received a call or text, but since there’s no screen, you’ll still have to look at your phone to read the text and see who’s calling.
What customers are saying about the Fitbit Flex 2
In general, the reviews on Amazon are positive. However, the problems reported involving the tracker falling out of the wristband, poor battery life, and trouble syncing the device with smartphones. There were also some complaints about the lack of accuracy with recorded steps.
The overwhelming number of reviews, however, were positive, with many customers praising the quality of Fitbit’s customer service. When something did go wrong, they were able to correct it quite easily after reaching out to Fitbit support.
Let’s Recap the Pros and Cons
Now that we’ve taken a look at the Striiv Touch, the Fitbit Charge 3, the Fitbit Alta HR, and the Fitbit Flex 2, let’s briefly recap the pros and cons of each product.
Striiv Touch
Pros
- Budget-friendly – $59.00
- Low cost makes it a great option for newbies to the fitness tracking universe
- Notifications make it easy to read texts and see who’s calling without having to pull out your phone.
- You can connect the Striiv Touch to other apps (like My Fitness Pal), expanding functionality
- Sleep tracking is included
- Water Resistant (but not swim proof)
Cons
- Only basic fitness data is collected: steps taken, calories burned, minutes of activity, and length of sleep
- Not many customization options when it comes to which notifications the tracker receives
- Step tracking is not accurate
- Syncing with other apps is sometimes difficult
Fitbit Charge 3
Pros
- Swim proof
- 24/7 heart rate tracking
- Tracks calorie burn all day
- Tracks sleep stages (light, deep, and REM)
- 15+ goal-based exercise tracking and automatic exercise recognition
- Movement reminders
- Long battery life (up to 7 days)
Cons
- The most expensive option of those being compared here ($149.95)
- Touch screen controls have been described as “frustrating” and “finicky”
Fitbit Alta HR
Pros
- PurePulse heart rate tracking
- Sleep length and stage tracking (light, deep, and REM)
- Notification alerts (call, text, and calendar)
- Reminders to move
- Tracks steps, calories burned, and distance traveled
- Automatically recognizes certain exercise
- Long battery life (up to 7 days)
- Interchangeable bands
Cons
- Not waterproof
- Does not include GPS
- No guided breathing sessions
- No timer
- Has a tendency to under-report steps
Fitbit Flex 2
Pros
- Of the Fitbit products being compared here, the Flex 2 is most comparable in price to the Striiv Touch ($59.95)
- Swim proof
- Interchangeable accessories
- Reminders to move
- Automatically recognizes certain exercises
- Notifications (call and text)
Cons
- Wristband is probably the weakest of the products being compared here
- Does not have a display or touch screen
- Does not track heart rate
| Notifications | Water Resistant | Sleep Tracking | Price | Battery Life | Touch Screen | Interchangeable Bands | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Striiv Touch | Call, Text & App | No | Length | $59 | 5 Days | No | Yes |
| Fitbit Charge 3 | Call, Text & Calendar | No | Length and Stages | Fitbit Charge 3 | 7 Days | No | No |
| Fitbit Alta HR | Call, Text & Calendar | Yes | Length and Stages | $129.95 | 7 Days | No | No |
| Fitbit Flex 2 | Call & Text | No | Length | Fitbit Flex 2 | 7 Days | Yes | No |
Striiv Touch vs. Fitbit – David vs. Goliath
Fitness and activity trackers can be a wonderful way to motivate yourself to get moving during the day. They help you set goals (a certain number of steps per day, for example) and encourage you to reach those goals. The Striiv Touch and Fitbit activity trackers compared here also offer ways to connect with your friends (via the app). Once you’ve connected, you can challenge each other to see who can take more steps or stay more active.
Neither the Striiv Touch nor the Fitbit products reviewed here will single handedly improve your health and fitness. But the appeal of racking up your step count might have you taking the stairs instead of the elevator or getting up from your desk once an hour to take a few steps.
If you’re new to the joy of fitness trackers, the Striiv Touch might be a great way to get into the game. You won’t be shelling out big bucks on a piece of technology that you might find out just doesn’t fit your lifestyle. If you keep the Striiv Touch’s price in mind, the cons are easier to overlook.
But if you really think a fitness and activity tracker is for you, I would advise spending a little bit more and buying a Fitbit. For a bit more money, you get a fitness tracker that’s more reliable, has been around longer, and has worked out the kinks with its interface. Personally, I have worn Fitbit trackers for years and, while they’ve had their issues, I have always been able to resolve them with Fitbit customer service.
The Striiv Touch is great for simple, basic activity tracking, but doesn’t quite compare to the number of features offered by the Fitbit Charge 3, the level of heart rate monitoring offered by the Fitbit Alta HR, or even the sleekness of design seen in the Fitbit Flex 2.
Striiv is certainly an up-and-coming contender in the activity tracker market. If you’re looking for an easy-to-use, basic model activity tracker, the Striiv Touch might be just the thing for you. But if you’re looking for more bells and whistles, you’ll want to spring for the Fitbit.”
Recommended Reads:
- Fitbit Alta HR vs. Charge 2 – The Ultimate Fitbit Battle!
- Fitbit Ionic vs Garmin Forerunner 235 – Which One Should You Buy?
- Nike FuelBand vs. Fitbit Charge HR – Which Fitness Tracker is Right for You?
- The Fitbit Ace Review – The Activity Tracker For Kids
- Fitbit Flex 2 vs. Fitbit One: Which is Right for You?
- Striiv Touch vs Fitbit – The David vs Goliath Comparison! – April 11, 2019