Fitbit Blaze

There are some companies that take their customers seriously and others do not.

I bought a Coin on kickstarter and they got blindsided by the EMV transition and rather than shipping me a piece of junk on time, they shipped something that addressed the major problems later.

A lot of people complained but I felt they acted with the highest integrity and if they do another startup or come out with another product I will want to do business with them.

I have bought products and been contacted sellers who had sincere desire to have me be happy with the product and encourage me to return the product and get a replacement if I find any defect at all. You can find these people in Peoria and you can find these people in Shenzen.

I bought products from Fitbit which all had some problems and found that the people there would try pretty hard to not give you an RMA.

Maybe other people have different experiences and I don't know much about their situation, but I did buy a Withings scale and it worked perfectly from day one and if I do get another fitness tracker it is going to be a Microsoft Band or one of the seemingly hundreds of other products in what is a crowded marketplace.

This looks like a rushed to market experiment. The same features as a much cheaper model, with most of the interesting features requiring a smartphone. If I have to carry a smartphone anyway, I might as well use it as my tracker. If this was 149.99 it may be justifiable but for now I'll stick with a standard 99 tracker. If anything I rather get a Withings Activite.

Seems like a ripoff at $199. Aesthetically it looks pretty nice, but it requires a phone for GPS and music. For people that run often or longer distances I don't think it makes much sense. For $50 more you can get the Tom Tom Spark, which has an internal GPS and internal MP3 player.

They are going to start doing a better job of integrating with iOS / Android notifications if they are going to ask people to part with $200 for such limited functionality.