I bought one of these a month ago, thought my experiences with it might be interesting to the forum. Reason for buying was that my old watch died, I needed something on my wrist that told the time, and there was a deal on these at the airport so thought it would be interesting to get some extra features thrown in.
First off, as a general activity tracker, the Surge offers basically the same features as any other model in the Fitbit range, or a number of other activity trackers on the market. Steps, flights of stairs climbed (using an altimeter), calorie counter, etc. These all seemed reasonably accurate, but if that was all you were interested in you could buy a much cheaper device.
The Surge is aimed at a more fitness-oriented market than the basic trackers, and includes GPS and an LED-based heart rate monitor, which is what got me interested. I found the HRM to be surprisingly good for general tracking through the day and for running (I wore my Garmin with chest strap as a direct comparison). Where it falls down is for cycling - I tried it in a number of different positions on my wrist and with different strap adjustments, and simply couldn’t find any way of getting a consistent reading (2 hour ride yesterday was done at an average HR of 99 BPM on the Surge and 127 on the Garmin…). I guess the flex in the wrist when riding a bike throws it off. Haven’t yet tried it on the tri bike, could be that the straighter wrist position on the bars works better. My overall take on the LED technology is that it’s better than I thought it would be but not yet good enough to replace chest straps for the serious athlete/exerciser. It is very nice though for running, I like not having to bother with the chest strap or with a second watch (unless you use your Garmin as an everyday watch). Having HR 24-7 also produces some interesting data, such as the ability to track resting HR from day to day, and seeing your HR when you’re asleep. It also presumably makes the calorie counter a lot more accurate - it highlighted just how inactive I can be when working from home compared to going into the office for example. I always knew this anyway, but having the data really brought it home to me.
The GPS is good. Picks up a signal a lot quicker than my Garmin, though my Garmin is now 2 years old so I assume newer models are better. The Surge seems to round the corners off a bit more than the Garmin (maybe the update frequency is lower or something?) but not enough to be a problem. Battery life with the GPS turned on is obviously a lot shorter than for regular use, but seems fine. A 3 hour ride uses less than half the battery, I haven’t tested it to flat but others have and have got 8+ hours from it, so good enough for some fairly epic days.
The display while exercising is OK, but not great. Overall time and distance are always shown, and then you can swipe between current pace, average pace, HR, calories or clock (and steps while running, which is interesting if you want to monitor your cadence I guess). What it doesn’t seem to have is the ability to scroll through these options automatically every few seconds rather than having to swipe, which is annoying but could be easily fixed with a software update. What the Surge does have is the ability to track different exercises very easily - you can tell it whether you’re running, hiking, road biking, mountain biking, lifting weights, etc. My Garmin doesn’t do that, though newer ones may.
Syncing to a phone is very quick and reliable, again have found it much faster than my Garmin’s sync to a laptop. Having synced your data, the phone app allows you to drill into it pretty well and get some nice reports very easily. If you want to do more analysis of the data, then the full website has more options including the ability to customise your dashboard, and Fitbit also have an interface with Strava which works seamlessly.
Other “nice to haves” on the phone or desktop app include the options to track what you’re eating and how much water you’re drinking. I found the water tracking to be completely pointless as it has a fixed (by you) daily target, whereas in reality the amount I need to drink varies hugely based on how much and what type of exercise I’m doing. The food tracker would be very useful (when combined with the accurate calorie counter) for somebody trying to lose weight, but after the novelty of the first week or so I did find it pretty tedious trying to enter what I’d eaten for each meal. After a couple of days of weighing all the ingredients in our meals (with my wife laughing at me), I went on a work trip for a week where I was eating hotel and restaurant food and gave up on it as it got to the stage where I felt my guesstimates were becoming meaningless. Ironically, it would be much easier to just eat pre-packaged foods where you can scan the barcode or enter the nutritional information straight off the pack, but of course that’s completely at odds with trying to eat a diet of freshly prepared food with no hidden crap in it…
The other feature I’ve not mentioned yet is sleep tracking. The Surge automatically tracks when you fall asleep and wake up based on movement (and possibly HR), and also tracks periods in the night where you’ve been restless or woken up. Seems pretty accurate, but can be fooled if you lie very still but awake either before going to sleep or after waking up. Did have a lazy morning of reading my Kindle for an hour when I woke up, and the Surge thought I was still asleep.
The watch itself seems to be well-built. Not a great looker, but is comfortable to wear all day. Battery life is pretty good - when not using the GPS I’ve easily gone 3-4 days without charging. I’ve now got into the habit of simply plugging it in every morning while I’m showering and shaving, and that 10-15 minute top-up is enough unless I’ve done a long ride. Interface is simple and easy to use. It is water-resistant which means it is supposed to be fine for showering or running in the rain, but it’s not recommended you swim with it.
Overall, the Surge is a great gadget which serves as a one stop shop for a lot of functions, but isn’t quite there yet for somebody who is serious about tracking their training. I’ve been surprised by how much benefit I’m getting from the sleep and step trackers - having them quantified really does make me think about how much sleep I’m getting and makes me realise how sedentary I can be on some days. The convenience is also good, makes it very easy to record a quick weights workout or doing some core work which I previously would have logged manually. The biggest drawback for me is the inaccuracy of the HR data when cycling - if they could sort that out so that I would be very happy.