Assessment of the Fitbit Charge 2 for monitoring heart rate
Open accessAbstract
Fitness trackers are devices or applications for monitoring and tracking fitness-related metrics such as distance walked or run, calorie consumption, quality of sleep and heart rate. Since accurate heart rate monitoring is essential in fitness training, the objective of this study was to assess the accuracy and precision of the Fitbit Charge 2 for measuring heart rate with respect to a gold standard electrocardiograph. Fifteen healthy participants were asked to ride a stationary bike for 10 minutes and their heart rate was simultaneously recorded from each device. Results showed that the Fitbit Charge 2 underestimates the heart rate. Although the mean bias in measuring heart rate was a modest -5.9 bpm (95% CI: -6.1 to -5.6 bpm), the limits of agreement, which indicate the precision of individual measurements, between the Fitbit Charge 2 and criterion measure were wide (+16.8 to -28.5 bpm) indicating that an individual heart rate measure could plausibly be underestimated by almost 30 bpm.
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On average, wearables slightly and negligibly underestimate absolute heart rate (−0.9 to −7.2 bpm) compared with gold-standard electrocardiogram.
“Current research verifying wearables to the gold-standard ECG, which uses electrodes to directly measure cardiac muscular contractions from electrical activity of the heart, have shown that on average wearables slightly and negligibly underestimate (−0.9 to −7.2 bpm) absolute HR40,41,44,52”
From Guidelines for wrist-worn consumer wearable assessment of heart rate in biobehavioral research (2020) · cites this paper as [52]
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- Authors
- Benedetto, S., Caldato, C., Bazzan, E., Greenwood, D. C., Pensabene, V., & Actis, P.
- Affiliations
- University of Leeds (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Benedetto, Simone
- Venue
- PLOS ONE
- Publisher
- Public Library of Science (PLoS)
- Published
- 2018-02-28
- Volume
- 13
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- e0192691
- ISSN
- 1932-6203 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC5831032
- OpenAlex
- W2785539913
- Cited by
- 149
- References
- 24
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 7 · 2024: 20 · 2023: 21 · 2022: 22 · 2021: 17 · 2020: 15 · 2019: 32 · 2018: 12
- FWCI
- 7.59
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- PLoS ONE (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- White Rose Research Online (University of Leeds, The University of Sheffield, University of York) (acceptedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Biomedical Engineering › Non-Invasive Vital Sign Monitoring
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Physiology › Physical Activity and Health
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Cardiology and Cardiovascular Medicine › Heart Rate Variability and Autonomic Control
- Keywords
- heart rate monitoring, wearable activity trackers, wearable devices, measurement accuracy, measurement precision, electrocardiogram, stationary cycling, bias, limits of agreement
- MeSH terms
- Heart Rate, Humans, Monitoring, Physiologic, Actigraphy
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