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Leveling Off & Powerwatch Update

For the first time, I've hit consecutive weeks where my weight hasn't budged, hovering around 158. This isn't a bad thing as I don't have that much extra body fat left to lose.

It's been a brutally cold winter, so I haven't been able to ride my bike into work as much or walk my dogs as long. So, my natural weight is probably a couple of pounds less than what it is now on a 2000 calorie a day budget. I also had a gut buster of a guys weekend the weekend before last, so that skewed my numbers a little. But, it's clear that my weight loss is slowing down. The reduced activity has me constantly bumping up against my calorie consumption rate throughout the day in my Fitbit dashboard and makes me jealous of those who live in warmer climates. I'd imagine they'd probably tell me to try going for a walk in July when it's 90 degrees at night.

Speaking of the Fitbit, my new human powered, thermoelectric replacement - the Matrix Powerwatch, has struck me as only ok. The step counter accuracy is pretty horrible. It just can't seem to differentiate wrist movements from actual steps that well. I remember this was a problem with the first generation of wrist-worn fitness trackers, but my wife's Fitbit Alta is now just as accurate as my hip-worn Fitbit One.


It seems as though my step total is usually about half of what the Powerwatch reports, so maybe I could just use that as a rule of thumb. I'm not sure I'm ready to sacrifice that much accuracy for throwing away another charging cable though. I emailed the company, and they seemed to acknowledge the problem but said they'll be pushing out a software update soon that will improve it. I'd be surprised if that helps the situation all that much, however. I can't imagine this is something that went unnoticed during development or that their testers kept their watch hand in their pocket all day.

Also, the sleep timer is nothing more than a glorified stopwatch for your sleep. It doesn't give you any feedback for how well you slept but just how long you started the timer until the time you got up and started moving around. If you forget to hit the stop button when you wake up, it does figure out once you start moving again to turn the timer off. So, I guess it scores a point there. I never use the sleep timer on my Fitbit, so this was sort of an add-on feature for me. I generally know when I have a lousy night's sleep, and if I do, I didn't do it deliberately (and frankly, I'd rather not see the reminder that I only got 4 hours of sleep).

Lastly, the stopwatch is somewhat useless. You cannot see how much time has elapsed unless you hit pause or stop. I think it's because your body heat barely generates enough power for it to do its critical duties that displaying a running timer requires too much juice. It just displays "Running" until you stop or pause it. This is kind of annoying, but I could live with it if the step tracker worked properly.


This thing claims to have the most accurate calorie burning measurement of any fitness tracker precisely because it measures your body heat, but this claim appears to be a bunch of baloney. I worked pretty hard today doing stuff around my weekend home - 16,000 steps (31,000 steps according to the Powerwatch), but it says I only burned 2000 calories while my Fitbit says 2900. My back of the napkin BMR (body weight x 11) is 1738 calories burned if I did nothing but lay around all day.

So, we'll see. I tried to read some reviews on it to see if others noticed this step problem, but I honestly think I'm probably 1 of about 50 people who actually received the watch as all of the reviews seem to be by tech bloggers who just got a quick hands-on at a trade show.

I might give it a little more time and see if the upcoming software update improves it, but I may just throw it on Ebay now since you can't get them immediately anywhere else. There are literally only a few on Ebay now, and it looks like I can probably get a little over my purchase price.

It's really too bad. Appearance wise, it was starting to grow on me, and I really high hopes for this really unique watch. Hopefully, they'll get all the kinks worked out in the second generation or maybe another company will give thermoelectric watches a try. My first requirement for a watch is dependability but a close second is usefulness. My solar-powered Casio Protrek can't track steps, but it can do lots of other things that this can't and where they overlap, such as with the stopwatch and telling time (the Protrek has a world clock), the Casio simply works better.

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