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    Westwing Home & Living

    Westwing Home & Living

    Shopping and Lifestyle

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    Handpicked furniture and home accessories from great brands at discounted prices – this is...

    Worms™ 4

    Worms™ 4

    Games and Entertainment

    6.0 (1 Ratings) Rate It

    App

    ***4/5 - "charmingly fun," 148 Apps*** ***4/5 - "I can't deny the grin it put on my face," Touch...

Fitbit Charge 3
Fitbit Charge 3
GPS & Navigation > Sports & Handheld GPS, Wearable Technology > Smart Watches
9
7.3 (9 Ratings)
Tech Rating
Overall performance for the money (0 more)
Still having to pay for premium content after forking out for fitness tracker (0 more)
Fitbit changed my life(style)
First of all thanks to @smashbomb for the great giveaway of a Fitbit Inspire HR

The heading in this review might seem dramatic but it is no exaggeration.

I had a fitbit charge 3 before I won this giveaway. So I am going to repost this review on the charge 3 as well as here. As it is a review on both and I will compare them against each other. I will also post this review for the Fitbit app as both fitness trackers are used in conjunction with the app. I will score them all separately on what they offer.

I was never one to over worry about my appearance so I paid little attention to my weight and in fact have been slightly overweight most of my life. My change started a week or two before I decided to buy a Fitbit. My wife who is one to care about her appearance had recently successfully implemented her own diet and exercise plan using a Fitbit Charge 3 and the Fitbit app to monitor her calorie intake and her daily exercise.

She had recently put on a bit of weight and this had affected her confidence so she decided to change. As I have Lupus an autoimmune disease. I am classed as clinically vulnerable to Covid so we were shielding for 19 weeks. I was advised to go in a little earlier than the rest of the UK nation being locked down. Towards the end of lockdown we started to go for walks on our daily exercise. This was the beginning of the change.

One day I caught site of my reflection in the microwave of all places. It was a side profile of my stomach and my waist and I realised I had let my weight gain go too far.

So I decided to use our daily walks to try and push myself first by slowly increasing the distance walked then to trying to improve the pace and choosing different routes which would push me a bit more. For instance with steep inclines.

I noticed some benefits almost straight away. Being quite goal driven. I set myself a goal of weight loss of 1lb a week. I started using the Fitbit app to monitor my calorie intake alongside my daily exercise.

It has worked wonders. I was 15st 8lb (clinically obese) when I started. I am now 13st 10lb(still overweight) and counting. I walk at least 2 miles, 5 out of 7 days. Most weeks I walk 6 days and some weeks I walk every day.

My wife and I have also allowed ourselves cheat days. This is so we don't feel deprived so that if we really fancy a treat we can say we will have that on Friday or Saturday and it works. Although we have cheat days we always monitor our calorie intake. This is so we can see over a week or month we still have a healthy deficit.

Having the fitness tracker alongside the app has inspired my wife and I to make additional changes. We have implemented new habits due to the tips popping up on the app now and again. I used to drink tea all day. I have changed this to no added sugar dilute juice and now drink my daily recommended amount of water every day.

Another tip that popped up is to eat a high protein breakfast early in the day this gets your metabolism going early and stages of cravings for carbs and sweet things. Of the options recommended my wife and started making overnight fruit and oat jars. This has also worked. I eat much more salad and a lot less carbs and sugar.

The next habit I am going to try and implement is to not eat at least 2 hours before going to bed.

Overall these are great buys. I love the step counter/goal, distance counter/goal, the exercise tracker, the water intake monitor and the calorie intake/outgoing monitor.

It's not often that you can say a purchase actually has a positive effect on your lifestyle.

One gripe about all the products is you have to pay extra for premium content once you have forked out for the trackers.

The scores I have given are: Inspire HR 7
                                               Fitbit app 9
                                               Charge 3 9

After raving about them you might wonder why not 10's all round. I knocked 1 off the charge 3 and the app for the fact that there is additional content that doesn't come with the purchase of the tech.

The additional knock of a further 2 points is because the HR doesn't offer an altimeter and it doesn't have the advertised battery life of 5 days. It lasts just under that amount of time.

So either one of these would be a good investment for a fitness tracker on a budget. Personally I would fork out the extra £30 for the Charge 3. The altimeter and the extra battery is worth the little bit extra.
  
Idle Heroes - Idle Games
Idle Heroes - Idle Games
Games
7
7.0 (1 Ratings)
App Rating
Challenging battles (0 more)
Lack of active players (0 more)
Ideal for time wasting
I originally trialled this game in order to get free credits for another game, but rather than delete it after achieving the desired goal, I have kept pursuing it.

The game itself involves the development of heroes, you start by building up 3 star and 4 star heroes, progressing towards 10 stars. Initially I found it quite fast to develop 5 star heroes, collecting my daily bonuses from activities to speed up the process. Progressing to six star +, brings a whole new level of challenge, as you need to merge specific heroes together - I have found that this takes a lot more time in order to collect the correct amount of resources.

The creators of the game provide a large number of diamonds on a daily basis, which is beneficial to players, as it means you do not have to spend money in order to progress through the game. There are paid options if desired, where you can purchase VIP, which gives you access to additional aspects to help speed the game.

Heroes can be used in battle against the computer in the tower of oblivion and various other forums within the game, but you do find you become stuck at a level, sometimes for many days whilst trying to up grade.

To support the social aspect of the game, there is the option to join a guild. If the guild is active and works together, then this supports the development of your own team. One thing I have found on this game, is that there is a lack of audience of the game at the moment, and a large number of inactive players. This has meant that guilds do struggle to start up. The game also operates across several servers which cannot interact with each other, meaning friends need to be directed to join specific servers (and will have to carry out the introduction activities twice).

All in all the game is enjoyable and addictive, however it does have a few flaws, which I am hoping will be ironed out with time.