Chonky cats beware: There's a new cat fitness tracker in town
The PurrSong Pendant tracks your cat's activity and sleep.
This story is part of CES 2020, our complete coverage of the showroom floor and the hottest new tech gadgets around.
Fitness trackers come in all shapes and sizes, and give you a way to find out things like how many steps you walk, how many calories you consume and how many hours you sleep. This type of info can be used to improve not only your own health, but also the wellness of your furry friends. Fitbit-like devices for pets are nothing new. And last week at CES 2020 I was able to check one out up close: the PurrSong Pendant, which is a fitness tracker for cats. Best Fitness Tracker Watch
The idea of a cat fitness tracker might sound ridiculous. Cats don't work out, so why would they need a kitty Fitbit? What's next, a Peloton-like treadmill for cats so they can participate in online workouts with other cats? Fortunately, the PurrSong Pendant doesn't go overboard with any gimmicks. It simply tracks your cat's activity and sleep. The idea is to get real data about your pet's normal routine and keep track of those times when your cat breaks it. The thinking goes, when your feline friend starts veering from the routine, this could be an indicator that there's something wrong. As anyone who has ever owned a cat will know, detecting when your cat is sick just by observation can be tricky, especially since cats try to hide when they are ill. The Pendant hopes to identify an irregular pattern early so that you can seek veterinary care sooner.
The information from the tracker is shared over Bluetooth with an app on your phone that can alert you when there's an abnormal pattern. For example, if your cat isn't being as active as usual, you'll be notified about that.
The PurrSong Pendant is roughly the size of a piece of Mentos candy, weighs 20 grams and has an IP56 rating for water and dust resistance. It attaches to your cat's collar and will last one month on a single charge.
On the off chance that the name PurrSong sounds familiar, that may be because you heard it back when the South Korean company announced its LavvieBot S smart litter box at CES in 2019. The automated litter box cleans itself and refills the litter. The LavvieBot S can also track your cats' weights (for multiple pets) and how often they use the litter box. The idea is that the data from the PurrSong Pendant along with the data from the litter box can give you a snapshot of your cat's overall health.
The tiny PurrSong Pendant is designed to attach to your cat's collar.
PurrSong is participating in Samsung C-Lab Outside, which is a joint startup incubation program with Samsung. The PurrSong Pendant will be released later this year. The tracker doesn't have a price but PurrSong hopes to sell it for around $100. You can preorder the LavvieBot S smart litter box for $550 and it'll ship in April or May.
Why fitness trackers may not give you all the ‘credit’ you hoped for
January is a time when many people make resolutions – and then break them. Almost 60% of Americans will resolve to exercise more, but fewer than 10% will stick with their resolution. A key to keeping resolutions is ensuring they are measurable, and a simple way to track activity is through a wearable smartwatch or fitness tracker. Indeed, almost one in five adults has used a fitness tracker.
Wearable fitness trackers can also help improve medical care by providing insights into physical activity, heart rate, location and sleep patterns. My research team uses wearable fitness tracker data with smart home sensors to help older adults live safely and independently. We also study wearable fitness tracker data along with electronic medical records and genomic data to investigate the causes of gestational diabetes. Many other researchers utilize wearable fitness trackers to better understand how lifestyles can impact health.
Unfortunately, I’ve found in my health informatics research that wearable devices may not give all the credit their users deserve, and in some cases, users may want to consider how secure and private their data is.
Giving credit when it’s due
People who use fitness trackers have been frustrated with how they get “credit” for their activities, which drives some users to abandon fitness trackers. In my research team’s work, we find that people who have limited arm movement report that fitness trackers are not accurately recording their activities. This can happen as well with those who do not have traditional gaits because they may shuffle.
The lack of credit is especially obvious when people are walking but keeping their arms still – such as pushing a stroller or walking while holding an infant. New mothers also report accuracy issues with respect to their sleep patterns. When they wake up multiple times a night, the next morning the device will show them as “lightly sleeping.” This is frustrating when the new mother wants to use this data to negotiate with her partner on child care because a device may credit the mother with more sleep than she actually gets.
Were you ‘lightly sleeping’ or did you wake up multiple times?
These inaccuracies make sense from a technical point of view. When people keep their wrists still, as in pushing a stroller, the wrist is not changing directions. Thus, the software cannot detect changes in movement from the accelerometer sensor on a wrist tracker which is looking for changes in up-down, forward-backward and side-to-side movements. Researchers have also shown that 500 or fewer steps can be recorded without wearing the device, reflecting how devices can over count activity sometimes. In the case of detecting sleep, most people do not wake up multiple times a night, so the algorithms used by wearable devices may throw these short bursts of movement away.
The companies that make these wearable devices have significant intellectual property involved in detecting these movements and then using algorithms to decide how much people are moving or sleeping, so these algorithms are not shared publicly. There currently do not exist any mechanisms to give feedback on what was detected. Imagine if a person could push a button and tell a wearable fitness device, “I did wake up three times tonight!”
Since people are not getting the credit they deserve for some of their activities, I am concerned about what type of lifestyle data we researchers can accurately assess from a commodity wearable for our health research. In computing, there is a saying, “Garbage in, garbage out.” If wearable fitness trackers are putting inaccurate step and sleep data into the algorithms that quantify our activities, then people will be making health-related decisions based on inaccurate data.
Who has the data?
Typically, consumers assess how much “credit” they are getting from a fitness tracker by transferring the data to an app. Most people likely assume that when people transfer the data to the app, the data is not shared widely. Users may assume, for instance, that they can see the data, people they shared data with can view it and the company who has the device and app can see the data. But this is only part of the story.
A company, however, could change its terms of service – which, studies have shown, people have difficulty understanding – and decide to make this health data available to third parties. For example, wearable fitness data could be sold to help our employers understand our fitness and productivity or insurance companies to assist with or deny health coverage. Although there’s no evidence of this practice being done, I believe consumers would do well to be aware that it is a possibility in the future.
This article originally published at The Conversation here
The Best Fitness Trackers for 2020
How to Choose the Right Fitness Tracker
Count More Than Steps
There's never been a better selection of fitness trackers, but with choice comes confusion. Which tracker has the features that are right for you and the activities you do? Here are some tips and recommendations for choosing the best tracker for your needs.
Where to Start
If you want to give fitness tracking a try (but without a wearable), start by using a mobile app that counts your steps. This method requires the least commitment, and could be of interest if you're a beginner. Some apps we like are Argus, Fitbit, and Moves.
If you run or bicycle, we recommend tracking your runs or rides with an app before going whole-hog and splurging on a tracker. Why? With some trackers, you still need to carry your phone to get accurate pacing, distance, and mapping, so you'll want to know before you make a purchase if you're okay with carrying your phone, or if you'd prefer a tracker with built-in GPS so you don't have to. A few apps we recommend are Runtastic PRO (for running), Cyclemeter (for bicycling), and Strava (for both running and cycling).
The Coros SafeSound Helmet is another interesting solution for cyclists that integrates your phone's GPS to track your rides and uses bone-conduction audio to let you hear directions, music, and phone calls without blocking your ears.
The Best Fitness Tracker Deals This Week*
*Deals are selected by our partner, TechBargains
How Much Should You Spend on a Fitness Tracker?
In general, most fitness trackers cost between $50 and $250. If you pay less than $50, you'll probably get a subpar product with mediocre accuracy. In addition, less expensive trackers usually don't have a display, so you can't see how many steps you've taken unless you look at your smartphone.
More expensive trackers usually include built-in optical heart rate monitors and GPS, and often, these features are tailored toward athletes and exercise enthusiasts. Don't get suckered into buying a tracker with a heart rate monitor if your primary activity is walking; it's an unnecessary expense. If you walk and don't do much else, there are great options in the $49 to $149 range.
If you do work out often, we highly recommend spending at least $99, as that's the price point where you'll start to see the features that are useful to very active users.
Choose Your Style
A very important question to ask yourself before choosing a fitness tracker is the type of form factor you want. Fitness trackers are usually bracelets, watches, or clip-ons. Most clip-on devices these days can also be worn on the wrist, but not vice versa. Bracelets and watches are hard to lose. Clip-ons can fall off or get thrown into the wash.
See How We Test Fitness Trackers
That said, bracelets and watches can get in the way when typing on a computer or washing dishes, for example. And wrist-worn devices aren't always eye-catching accessories to your outfit. If you're bothered by having something on your wrist 24/7, you're probably better off with a clip-on, although this style isn't nearly as popular as it used to be a few years ago.
Clip-on devices are smaller and more discreet when worn on a waistband or the front of a bra. Most don't have displays, meaning you have to rely on a smartphone to see your tracked activity.
The Motiv Ring, meanwhile, brings fitness tracking to your fingers. It tracks many of the same metrics as wrist-worn models in a discreet form factor that looks like jewelry.
There are also trackers for children, like the Fitbit Ace 2. And don't forget about Fido. That's right, there are even trackers out there specifically for pets.
Do You Want Heart Rate Monitoring?
Heart rate monitoring sounds like the best feature ever, but there are different kinds of heart rate monitors, and frankly, some people don't need it at all. A built-in heart rate monitor drives up the price.
Optical heart rate monitors are the ones built into the device itself. Some very good fitness trackers don't have a heart rate monitor built in, but can pair with a chest strap. Most every device from Garmin and Polar supports a chest strap (like the excellent Polar H10), and you can usually bundle one in when purchasing a tracker for an extra $40 or $50.
Finally, if you're interested in knowing your resting heart rate, you don't need to buy a tracker with an optical heart rate monitor to find it. Many smartphone apps let you take your heart rate in about 15 seconds using the phone's camera. Check your pulse once or twice a day, and you're good to go.
For more, see The Best Heart Rate Monitors.
Will You Track Sleep?
Many fitness trackers record your sleep. When they do, they generally watch for movement using a three-axis accelerometer to a more sensitive degree than they do during the day. Some devices report graphs showing the times when you were in light sleep and deep sleep based on motion.
There are also dedicated sleep trackers out there that attach to your mattress, but we haven't found them to offer an appreciable advantage over wrist-based trackers. And wearable trackers have the ability of doing a lot more than simply tracking your rest. If you don't like the idea of wearing something on your wrist to bed and need a new mattress, you can always spring for the Sleep Number 360 Smart Bed.
Go Sport-Specific
Swimmers will want a waterproof tracker, but keep in mind that not all water-safe trackers actually track swimming. Runners will probably want a watch that shows time, distance, pace, and lap time, at the very least. If you want good accuracy for those metrics without having to carry a smartphone, you need a runner's watch with built-in GPS—see our picks for The Best Fitness Trackers for Running.
Also consider the display. If you want to see your stats at all times, or simply use your tracker as a wristwatch, look for one with an always-on display. How you control the tracker is also important. If you like to run in the cold while wearing gloves, you may want to steer clear of devices that only have touch-enabled displays.
Cyclists have even more considerations. There's a difference between tracking how many miles you pedal and calories you burn versus monitoring your power and cadence. If all you want is the former, you can find a few fitness trackers that support bicycling as an activity. More serious cyclists will want a device that can pair with additional bike equipment, like a cadence sensor, and should look at devices from sport-specific companies, like Garmin and Polar.
The App Experience
A fitness tracker's app matters. Whether on your phone or on the web, the app is absolutely vital because it is where you make sense of the information the tracker collects. Fitbit has one of the best apps and websites we've tested. It lets you record all kinds of data that many other companies don't, such as calories consumed, allergy severity, and stress level.
If you want total body analysis, look for a system that incorporates a smart bathroom scale. Fitbit, Polar, and Withings and do. Check out the Fitbit Aria 2, the Polar Balance, and the Withings Body Cardio. These send your weight directly to your account, so you can't cheat the system by entering a lower number. The QardioBase 2 is another top choice, especially for pregnant women.
Smartwatch vs. Fitness Tracker
Several fitness tracker have some smartwatch functionality, and some smartwatches have fitness features, too. The Fitbit Versa 2 comes close to blending both worlds, but at the moment it still lags far behind the Apple Watch in terms of third-party app support.
The Apple Watch Series 5 places more of an emphasis on health and fitness tracking than any other smartwatch we've seen. It even has an FDA-approved electrocardiogram (ECG) function that generates a PDF of your heart rhythm you can share with your doctor, which is a feature you won't find on any of trackers listed here. But as its name implies, it's first and foremost a smartwatch. See our list of The Best Smartwatches for recommendations in that category.
Other Options
With so many good fitness trackers on the market right now, and promising ones on the horizon, it's hard to contain them all in just one list. We've limited our picks here to trackers that have scored four stars or higher, but there are lots of other very good options out there that might be right for you. We update this article often, so make sure to check back for our latest recommendations. And for the very latest reviews, see our Fitness Trackers product guide.
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