Another subtle yet key difference is that the Jawbone UP24 is shower-proof, whereas the Fitbit Force is only splash proof and not certified for use in the shower. I’ve been wearing my Force in the shower without issue, but the lack of an official blessing worries me, and the need to take it off during showers negates the always-on convenience of being worn around the wrist. On the other hand, the Fitbit Force incorporates an altitude sensor to track stairs climbed, which the UP24 lacks. As I spend a lot of time in the hospital, that extra incentive to choose the stairs over the elevator is meaningful.

Winner: Tie. The Force has a display which shows time/activity, incorporates an altimeter for tracking stairs climbed, but is slightly bulkier and not shower-proof. The UP24 lacks a display, but has a slimmer profile, and is safe for use in the shower.

Software

Left: UP app homescreen; Right: Fitbit app homescreen

With the Jawbone UP24 came a brand new redesign of the iPhone UP app, which I absolutely love. As alluded to above, the Jawbone UP experience is the iPhone app (there’s no web portal and no display on the UP24 itself), and the app is fully immersive and brilliantly designed.

Left: UP’s Daily Activity Screen; Right: UP’s Personalized “Insight”

One of the UP24′s most charming and interactive features is quite simple. Each day, the user is presented 2-4 insights, which are various facts and tidbits about healthy living. The insights are personal, often incorporating your own activity history or the UP user community history as a whole (see picture above), and they are also often related to certain holidays or events that are upcoming. Even as a doctor with specialized medical training, I still found myself opening the app every morning to see what the new insights were.

Left: Jawbone’s “Today I Will”; Right: Jawbone’s Reminder

The updated v3.0 of the UP app came touting a Today I will… feature, which claims to bring personalized challenges to the user. For example, after observing my sleep patterns, I was challenged to sleep before a certain time (12:15AM), which is just a bit earlier than I had been historically sleeping. I loved this feature, but for whatever reason, I only encountered this feature/challenge once throughout my entire month of use.

Similarly, the app would occasionally send a push notification to my phone reminding me that I was close to my goal, but this only happened once or twice. In the future, I hope that Jawbone pushes out more of these challenges and reminders to engage users and create more of a life coach feel.

Left: Fitbit home screen; Right: Fitbit’s daily breakdown

On the other hand, the Fitbit app and web portal is more of a dashboard, which presents plenty of information in a clean but somewhat sterile manner. The app is well-designed, straightforward and easy to navigate, but primarily consists of numbers, graphs, and charts. In this way, the Fitbit app provides quick access to more data than Jawbone’s app. The Home screen allows you to quickly view the number of steps, miles, floors, active minutes, calories, weight, sleep, etc. However, the excess information almost becomes busy, and can be overwhelming and grow tiresome. As a result, I found myself simply relying on the Fitbit’s display itself, and would go days without using the app.

The Fitbit’s approach appears to be more of strict data collection and data presentation, rather than trying to be more integrative and immersive. Interestingly, Fitbit does offer a Fitbit Premium service for $50/year, which includes more personalized life coaching. While this informational approach might do well for highly motivated people, I think the Jawbone UP24′s personalized/immersive approach goes farther toward solving the quintessential question of making activity trackers actionable and usable for those that might not naturally be as motivated.

Winner: Jawbone Up24. While lacking a web portal and Android support, the Jawbone UP App goes beyond simple data presentation by providing daily personalized tips and presenting data in a simplified, visually compelling manner.

Activity and Sleep Tracking

With activity trackers, the exact accuracy of the step count is less meaningful than the ability to accurately differentiate between a very active, less active, and stagnant day. At this point, most activity trackers clear this hurdle with ease, although they still struggle with tracking exercise where the hands are stationary, such as certain ellipticals, yoga, and stair-masters. The UP24 and Force are no different. Wearing both devices for one week, the step count totals, calories, and distance traveled varied by up to 10% from day to day, but fell within an acceptable margin of error.

The UP App auto-suggests sleep (Left), then analyzes it (Right)

Regarding sleep tracking, while both are able to track sleep duration and quality, only the Jawbone UP24 automatically detects sleep. If the user forgets to manually trigger a sleep session (by holding down the UP’s button), the app will suggest a timeframe of when you slept, and allow the user to confirm this. I found these guesstimates incredibly accurate, even to the point where I would have preferred not even having to confirm these sleep sessions. I also was impressed by the fact that the UP24 differentiates between when you lie down (or manually start your sleep session) and when you actually fall asleep. This allows you to appreciate how long it took to fall asleep. Naturally, the UP24 can easily detect wakeup, and will appropriately end any manually started sleep sessions with prolonged movement.

On the other hand, the Fitbit strictly requires the user to initiate a sleep session by holding down the button, which is difficult to remember most nights. In the same way, the Fitbit categorizes sleep as the exact time you started the session, rather than when you actually nod off. While the sleep analysis does allow you to interpret your sleep graph and infer when you actually fell asleep or woke up, it’s not as easily delineated as in the Jawbone app.

Sleep Analysis for the Same Night: Jawbone (Left), Fitbit (Right)

Regarding sleep interpretation, both the Jawbone and Fitbit apps break down sleep similarly: deep sleep, light sleep, and time awake. As pictured above, both graphs roughly capture similar information, but I found Jawbone’s visual representation of the data to be more easy to interpret, and appreciated the clear notation of when I fell asleep.