Tracking Calories: Validity of Wearable Activity Monitors
Mentor/s
Professor Alicja Stannard
Participation Type
Poster
Abstract
The use of commercially accessible activity monitors has increased over the past few years. Assessing the accuracy of these devices is necessary to inform recreational consumers about the products they pay for. Manufacturers continually release updated devices, allowing for researchers to continually test the improvements or lack of. The purpose of the present study was to classify the accuracy of four different activity monitors when calculating energy expenditure: LetsFit Activity Monitor, Garmin Vivosmart 4, Fitbit Charge 3, and the Polar H7. 12 subjects (5 male and 7 female), with the average age of 20.16 participated in the research protocol. Subjects participated in 3 different exercise activities of varying intensity, walking, running, and HIIT, for ten minutes each. The subjects were connected to the Parvo Metabolic Cart (gold standard) for the entirety of the experiment. Data was analyzed using Excel. The LetsFit activity monitor performed the worst in the running and HIIT intensity levels. The Garmin Vivosmart 4 performed the worst at walking intensity. The Fitbit Charge 3 performed the best at walking intensity, while the Polar H7 performed best at running and HIIT intensities. All devices showed overall weak correlations with the Parvo except for the Polar H7 during the HIIT portion. The Fitbit Charge 3 performed relatively the same through all exercise protocols, making it the most consistent. Future research should continue to assess the validity of these devices to provide sound information to recreational consumers.
College and Major available
Exercise Science UG
Location
University Commons
Start Day/Time
4-24-2019 2:00 PM
End Day/Time
4-24-2019 5:00 PM
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 License.
Prize Categories
Most Scholarly Impact or Potential, Most Creative
Tracking Calories: Validity of Wearable Activity Monitors
University Commons
The use of commercially accessible activity monitors has increased over the past few years. Assessing the accuracy of these devices is necessary to inform recreational consumers about the products they pay for. Manufacturers continually release updated devices, allowing for researchers to continually test the improvements or lack of. The purpose of the present study was to classify the accuracy of four different activity monitors when calculating energy expenditure: LetsFit Activity Monitor, Garmin Vivosmart 4, Fitbit Charge 3, and the Polar H7. 12 subjects (5 male and 7 female), with the average age of 20.16 participated in the research protocol. Subjects participated in 3 different exercise activities of varying intensity, walking, running, and HIIT, for ten minutes each. The subjects were connected to the Parvo Metabolic Cart (gold standard) for the entirety of the experiment. Data was analyzed using Excel. The LetsFit activity monitor performed the worst in the running and HIIT intensity levels. The Garmin Vivosmart 4 performed the worst at walking intensity. The Fitbit Charge 3 performed the best at walking intensity, while the Polar H7 performed best at running and HIIT intensities. All devices showed overall weak correlations with the Parvo except for the Polar H7 during the HIIT portion. The Fitbit Charge 3 performed relatively the same through all exercise protocols, making it the most consistent. Future research should continue to assess the validity of these devices to provide sound information to recreational consumers.
Students' Information
Kayla Kowalczyk, Exercise Science, May 2020
Bianca De Lucia, Exercise Science, May 2020
Jessica Wade, Exercise Science, May 2020
Victoria Lynch, Exercise Science, December 2019