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Comment by mynegation | Hacker News Reader

Personal anecdote: I had three Jawbone fitness trackers that stopped working within months. Granted, two of them were replaced by Jawbone, but after a third I stopped bothering. The bracelet design was thin and elegant as opposed to the bulky Fitbits. Inside, jawbone bracelets had several very small PCBs arranged in a row, connected by wires, with a protection layer of epoxy glue or something. The whole construction was flexible but - I imagine - pretty prone to wear and tear. Whereas Fitbit went for hard casing design that was inserted into the rubber strap. To me it is a story of finding the right balance between aesthetics, reliability, and functionality

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I can also attest to the poor quality of the UP bands. I'm currently on my 5th band in 3 years. One lost band and 4 replacements later, I'm really only using them to continue with the sleep tracking.

I discovered early on that the step counting wasn't really that great of a feature or selling point. I made it a habit to inform people around me that really the best feature and the only reason why I continued to use the UP was for sleep tracking.

To me, the perfect balance between aesthetics, reliability and functionality is the Withings Activité. I've used both Fitbit and jawbone up previously. And I'm incredibly satisfied with my Withings watch.

If it's breaking just because it was flexed or got wet, they're doing something wrong. Flexible printed circuits [1] have been around for decades. The problem may be that they had to use commodity surface mount ICs, instead of getting ones with bigger pads that could take more stress.

[1] http://www.flexiblecircuit.com/product-category/flex-printed...

Same here, I got one, it broke, got it replaced, and the replacement broke. At that point I just gave up, but my spouse has gone through about five of them. To be fair they do keep replacing them, but it has to be just about the worst quality product of anything on the market.

Same exact experience. I had my jawbone, had it replaced for free, now broken again. I still use it for sleep tracking/alarm.

I have a Fitbit brand new still in its package that I will never open and wear, too wide and unaesthetic for my taste.

Yep had two and both broke within two months! Moved to a Fitbit which I lost as the clasp isn't very secure. Then gave up on fitness trackers!

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