Fitness devices can help monitor heart rate but are unreliable at keeping tabs on calories burned, research has revealed. From a report on The Guardian: Scientists put seven consumer devices through their paces, comparing their data with gold-standard laboratory measurements. “We were pleasantly surprised at how well the heart rate did — under many circumstances for most of the devices, they actually did really quite well,” said Euan Ashley, professor of cardiovascular medicine at Stanford University and co-author of the research. “At the same time we were unpleasantly surprised at how poor the calorie estimates were for the devices — they were really all over the map.” The team tested seven wrist-worn wearable devices — the Apple Watch, Basis Peak, Fitbit Surge, Microsoft Band, Mio Alpha 2, PulseOn, and Samsung Gear S2 — with 31 women and 29 men each wearing multiple devices at a time while using treadmills to walk or run, cycling on exercise bikes or simply sitting.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – Fitness Trackers Out of Step When Measuring Calories, Research Shows