I wore five pedometers and tested two pedometer apps.

Yes, I really am that much of a dork.

The five pedometers were:

Omron HJ-720
Withings Pulse
FitBit Ultra
Omron HJ-323
FitBit One

I discussed four of the five in an earlier post, so I’ll only talk about the FitBit One in this post.

The two pedometer apps were:

Accupedo
Noom Walk

I hadn’t used a pedometer app before, but quite liked one of the two I tried.

First up, the FitBit One. (For perspective on the size of the FitBit Ultra, please see this post.)

Here’s what you get:

Front view, including wireless dongle, and charging dongle:

Back view, with same as above:

The two shiny bits are where the One matches with the charging dongle to charge.

Unlike the Ultra, the FitBit One is a single piece, so the device shouldn’t chip the way the Ultra did. It is also supposed to be water resistant (not water proof). We shall see about that as well.

The protective case/belt clip is silicone, with embedded metal bits. I have concerns about the silicone case tearing (this happened with the silicone case of the pulse) so I’m going to try to avoid removing it from the case except to charge it.

Here is how the FitBit One (in its silicone case) compares in size to the FitBit Ultra:

They’re basically the same size; not at all bulky.

It also comes with a wristband for slipping the One into while you sleep. As I always wear long sleeve sleep shirts, I can just clip the One onto the hem of my sleeve for the same thing. I can also clip it into the old wristband for the Ultra. This saves me from having to pull the thing out of the silicone case every day.

The FitBit one fits perfectly into the little square pocket in your jeans, so that’s where I’ve been keeping mine. It’s unlikely to fall out there, and it’s protected from the other things in my pocket (currently, that would be four other pedometers, though I also carry a multi-tool for work).

You can sync the FitBit One in two different ways: via the tiny dongle that fits into your USB port, or via Bluetooth on your phone.

The old charging stations don’t work. Bluetooth on a computer doesn’t work. But, if you have a bluetooth phone, it’s easy to turn on the Bluetooth, open the FitBit app to sync and then turn the Bluetooth back off. It syncs smoothly and quickly, and I didn’t run into a single transfer hitch the entire time I’ve been using it.

The bad thing is I only have three USB ports on my laptop, and one of those ports already holds the USB dongle for my wireless mouse. Yeah, not a huge issue, but if you’re short USB slots on a laptop, you might want to make sure the Bluetooth works with your phone.

In summary, the FitBit One has been a surprising pleasure to use. The site is exactly the same as for the Ultra, so no surprise there. But the app has been updated and gives you relevant data at a glance.

As I said before, I’d never installed a pedometer app previous, mostly because I didn’t know they existed. I knew programs like Runkeeper etc existed, but they generally use GPS, do don’t work for indoor walking, of which I do a lot.

The Noom Walk is very bare bones, and (as you’ll see later when I look at the data) not particularly accurate.

It really wants you to socialize, and I really had no interest in doing so, I didn’t much go into the app. You see there’s also a huge push to get you to use the other apps.

No thanks, I’ll be deleting Noom Walk as soon as I finish up these reviews.

Both the Noom Walk and Accupedo had widgets, which is how I checked my step counts. The Noom Walk displays only step counts.

The Accupedo has several widgets of different sizes. This is the 4×1 widget that displays step count, mileage, kcal burned and active time.

The Accupedo, on the other hand, was surprisingly wonderful.

It has a number of inputs to personalize your profile, including height, weight, age, stride length, and number of consecutive steps before it starts counting.

It ALSO (most importantly) has a setting to decrease or increase the sensitivity. I discovered that I needed to reduce the sensitivity, but when I did, the accuracy was very close to what the other pedometers were giving me.

There is a start time, end time, and pause option. This allows you to turn off the pedometer at night, and also when you’re doing activities where you aren’t walking, such as riding in a car.

You can also have it notify you when you’re reached your daily step goal.

I currently have the free version, but think I might splurge for the “pro” version, because I really like the app, and like to support people who create things I like.

So those are the contenders. Next up, results.