Investigating Perspectives of and Experiences with Low Cost Commercial Fitness Wearables

Consumer fitness wearables account for a growing body of personal mobile devices in the U.S. As a result, there has been increasing interest in Ubicomp in designing sensing devices which incorporate the needs of people of a broad range of backgrounds, especially of lower socioeconomic (SES) status. However, fitness trackers are expensive, and although low cost versions exist, there has not been much research on the viability of these devices for promoting their goals. To further the conversation of device use, we review a corpus of over 1,700 product reviews of 9 low cost consumer trackers, to determine perceptions and expectations of quality and general use. From this, we find that the low cost device is not currently necessarily increasing access, and that people have a wide range of expectations for what tracking will allow and represents at this price point, which colors how they describe their use experiences. We suggest that there is a need for a focused design effort for low cost devices which rectifies such discrepancies, and presents the low cost device as a counterpart to those of a higher consumer price, not an alternative.