Activity trackers have become a popular accessory over the last few years. It appears that everyone is wearing some form of smart screen touch watch to assist them in achieving their health objectives and maintaining healthy behaviors. These screen touch watches can track various data to help users better understand their habits and activities. They range from smartwatches to purpose-built health trackers.
How do activity trackers calculate and work?
Listed below are the various health attributes that an activity tracker tracks. But, first, let’s understand how the wearable gets the necessary data.
1. Level of activity
An accelerometer will be built inside your smart screen touch watches or fitness tracker, which will track your daily activity level. When the algorithm calculates the number of calories burned, it will use the data collected by the accelerometer.
2. Heart rate
Photoplethysmography uses a small, green LED light and a light sensor to measure your heart rate. Because your blood absorbs light green, your tracker can detect the difference in light absorption and measure your heart rate. This is a useful trick but it is not always the best way to determine your heart rate. More on this later.
3. Track your steps
Step counting is an essential feature of screen touch watches. It’s crucial to understand how these devices calculate your daily steps. Users of activity trackers often discuss the number of steps they’ve completed on a given day and their goal for the next day. This is a great way to motivate others and can even lead to friendly competition between friends or coworkers.
An accelerometer is inbuilt in every activity tracker, independent of brand or model. This cutting-edge device tracks your actions throughout the day and analyses them based on your information when setting up the device. For example, the accelerometer will measure your steps record their rate, and estimate how many calories you expended while doing so.
4. Sleep activity
Another popular activity trackers feature how long and well you slept. The activity tracker uses its accelerometer to measure your movements. For example, it identifies when you’ve been lying still for a while and starts recording it as sleep.
While some promise to measure different stages of sleep, it’s challenging to do so with just an accelerometer because you don’t move much more or less in different stages of sleep. In addition, because sleep stages are essentially a brain phenomenon, precise measurement of the various stages necessitates using instruments that measure brain waves or, in the case of REM sleep, monitor eye movement.
Some trackers combine an accelerometer with a heart rate monitor, stating that different stages of sleep correspond to varied heart rate patterns. Some sleep scientists, however, disagree with this assertion. As a result, you should be cautious about using your activity tracker to regulate your sleep or diagnose sleep disorders. They help get a basic idea of how much sleep you’re getting in a given night, but not much else.
How accurate are activity trackers when it comes to counting steps?
Step counters on activity trackers watches are reasonably accurate. However, rather than your wrist, the optimum spot to put a step counter is on your hip. This is because measuring steps with a smartphone in your pocket is far more accurate. But, of course, you don’t always want to keep your phone in your pocket, so a wristband tracker is a good alternative.
Furthermore, those with slower movements or an unusual walking stride may have their steps undercounted. Dedicate one day to an experiment to see how accurate your activity tracker is at tracking steps: Compare your efforts at the end of the day by wearing both your activity tracker and your smartphone.
Your phone’s readout should be the closest to your fundamental steps, so you may use it to judge how accurate your wrist device is.
Finally, it is recommended that you wear your activity tracker on your non-dominant wrist to give it the best chance of accurately tracking your steps. This will let the tracker distinguish between arm movement and actual actions.
How reliable are activity trackers when it comes to measuring heart rate?
Your activity tracker watches works best while you’re at rest when it comes to tracking heart rate. When you engage in vigorous activity and begin to sweat, though, it can become out of sync.
If you glance at your activity tracker’s heart rate at any particular time, it could not be accurate. However, this average tends to be quite close if your tracker or connected applications keep track of your heart rate over a more extended period.
You may choose the smart device suitable for your lifestyle once you better understand the capabilities of activity trackers and their overall accuracy. You may start taking the following steps toward fulfilling your health objectives once you’ve chosen the proper activity tracker for you.
If you’ve chosen which screen, touch watch, or activity tracker you want to buy, you can head to the Bajaj Finserv EMI store to purchase it online. You can check out various models offered by top brands and buy your device on the lowest EMIs. Also, using the Bajaj Finserv EMI Network Card, you can conveniently repay the total cost of your wearable over a tenor of 3 to 24 months.
