Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

FitBark Vs Whistle If you're looking at these activity trackers for your dog it really comes down to the Whistle or the FitBark. I haven't seen any reviews that offer any helpful comparisons so that's what I'm going to do here. For the record we have been using our Whistle on our dog for the past year so we have a pretty good idea the pros and cos of both platforms. Form Factor. The Whistle weighs twice as much at 16 grams. That's probably not a big deal if you have a larger dog but we are using ours on our Chihuahua and the smaller FitBark is much, much better in that regard. But it's not just the lighter weight. It's also the shape of the FitBark that makes it so much better in my opinion. With the Whistle you have a rather larger, bulbous round object that flops around a lot when the dogs run. The FitBark, on the other hand, is much smaller and flatter and sits very stably on the dogs collar. Whereas the Whistle seemed to standout the FitBark is a much more subtle device that most people probably won't even notice. Charging. The Whistle requires a rather dexterous move to remove it from the dogs collar each time it needs to be charged and then placed in their proprietary charging cradle. The FitBark doesn't need to be removed from the collar at all. You simply take the dogs collar off and plug it into a standard USB mini cord that most of us already have. I love this because I don't have to worry about what's going to happen when the one of a kind Whistle charger takes a crap on me (which it apparently just did). Most of us have USB mini cords for our smart phones and other devices so it's easy. Set-up. The set-up for the two devices is similar with the big difference being that the FitBark doesn't access your home wifi network so it's just a bluetooth connection. But with no buttons to press on the FitBark, the overall process was faster and more intuitive with the FitBark. I simply plugged it into a USB port and three seconds later it was connected to my smart phone. Easy. The Whistle, on the other hand, requires multiple steps. You hold the button down until the green light flashes; you go into your phones bluetooth settings and connect it; you enter passwords. It's much more tedious and onerous on the Whistle. I really liked how easy the FitBark was to set up. Hardware. From what I can tell the two devices share very similar hardware configurations that essentially measure the same stuff. Software. You interact with both devices through their smartphone apps and here is where I'll give the edge to Whistle. They are both well designed and track the basics like play, active, and sleep. But Whistle seems easier to scroll back and look at your dogs history. Most importantly, Whistle actually records and displays the intensity of your dogs activity. So on a graph you can see larger and larger bars for more and more intense activity, like running vs walking etc. Both companies are also working hard to compile this data in order to provide comparative data for your particular dog's age, breed etc. It seems Whistle has a bit of a headstart here as well. But at this stage of the game I'm guessing that most of this is guess work still. But as more and more dog people use these devices this information could prove to be very useful. Overall I like the Whistle app better but they are both good apps. Connectivity. Both devices use the low power Bluetooth 4 to connect to your smart phone. Whistle also connects to your local wifi network. FitBark a wifi base accessory that allows wifi connectivity but I don't have it so I won't comment on it here. We've had nothing but problems with connecting with our Whistle on both IOS and Android platforms. The customer support at Whistle is horrendous. So despite trying to resolve this issue for the past year with them we have gotten nowhere. As a result, instead of the advertised 14 days between charges we get around 4. This, presumably, is because the Whistle is repeatedly trying to access our phones or network. At this point my only guess is that because the Whistle attempts to connect to so many different devices it's prone to these problems. FitBark, on the other hand, only uses Bluetooth and limits actual connection to one user. The result so far has been fantastic connectivity. Customer Service. FitBark is light years ahead of Whistle when it comes to customer service. The people at FitBark have this crazy thing they do where they actually read the email you send them and respond to it. In a year of dealing with the people at Whistle I never once felt they actually read what I wrote. It would always be a copy and paste type response. They never followed up to see if the issue had been resolved (it hadn't). In my dealings with the folks at FitBark, it's been the exact opposite. The responses are clearly well thought out and in response to what I actually wrote to them. They follow up to see if I got the information I needed. In this regard, it's not even close. The FitBark people understand customer service and do a great job at it. The downside to this great connectivity is also its simplicity. Say someone was watching your dog for you while you were on vacation. Without buying the nearly $100 "accessory" for the FitBark it has no way to upload data and in about two weeks the memory would be full. Whistle, on the other hand, can access your home Wifi network or any wifi network you connect it to and upload data that way. Last year when we were in the Galapagos Islands it was great to get real-time reports from our Whistle to see that our pups were getting their play time. Lastly, let me just say a few words about why I love these fitness trackers so much. I've found that it's a great tool for motivating us to get out of the house and get our dogs that added bit of exercise. It keeps us accountable, particularly through the winter when it's not necessarily as fun to go out in the cold/snow. It's also been a great device for keeping dog walkers honest. We had a well liked dog walker in our building we hired. His first walk was for an hour. Thanks to our activity tracker we knew for a fact that this guy walked the dogs for all of 5 minutes over the course of an hour. We walked out of our building and sat somewhere for about 40 minutes and then came back. So it's nice to have the peace of mind that nobody is cheating your furry friend on their much needed play time. It's also a great tool for keeping track of your dogs overall health. Tracking sleep and activity over time makes it much easier to see that your dog is sleeping more than usual, which could be a sign of illness. In summary, the Whistle and FitBark are very similar devices that basically do the same things. But overall I prefer the streamlined and simplified FitBark to the Whistle. The Whistle app is better but that's a software issue that will no doubt get better for both companies over time. While I don't think you can go wrong with either device, if you have a smaller dog the FitBark is the better choice. Update September 2016. We've now had our FitBark's for nearly a year now and I've changed our rating from four stars to five. We have three dogs using these monitors and we've just been blown away by the customer support at FitBark. It's hands down the best customer support I've ever encountered. They listen to you, and they go out of their way to fix any problem. I really can't say enough good things about them. I wish every company was this responsive to its customers. Beyond the great customer service, the FitBark app has grown by leaps and bounds in the past year and that's a big reason for the added star to my rating. The social aspect is a lot of fun and it's just gotten better and better. It's much easier now to add other dogs to your "pack" which adds a nice competitive feature to the FitBark. The biggest changes, though, are probably the addition of a health index score, a sleep score, and the ability to track distance. I'll say a little about each below. The health index score is still pretty new and in Beta according to FitBark. Even they admit it's far from perfect at this point but the basic idea is they are working on a way to take the various metrics they get and combine them into an overall score that gives us and idea of our dogs overall health. So it takes into account not just your daily goal but how your dog is doing with exercise and sleep over time, it's age, weight and then puts that into a percentage. It should probably be taken with a grain of salt at this point, but what I love about it is that it's just another way that the folks at FitBark are constantly working to make their product better and more meaningful for pet owners. The next is the sleep score. It's something I mentioned in my original review that still doesn't get talked a lot about. People tend to focus on the active stuff like play, but sleep is a huge indicator of how healthy our dogs are and it's also one that most of us are completely unaware of. So before you just got a number of hours that your dog slept. We still get that. But what they have done is add this sleep score that gives you an idea of how well your dog slept. I think it's basically looking at how much movement or wrestlessness your dog is displaying during sleep. Our older dog, Taco, just had a bout of bad sleep and sure enough it was an indicator that he was constipated. It's things like this that make the FitBark so great. Lastly, we can finally track distance! Now because dogs vary so much in size and the way they walk this takes a little work but once you get it set up it's actually really great. What they ask you to do is take your dog for a mile long walk and then see how many Fitbark points it got for that mile. Pretty simple and straightforward. I have to admit I was a little skeptical that this would be accurate because dogs can generate very different points depending on whether they are running or walking. But I was wrong. Once I did it and came up with approximately 2300 points per mile for Rusty I went back and looked at a day where I knew she had ran over 30 miles. I did the math and her 86,000 barkpoints worked out perfectly for the 36 miles she ran that day! I was impressed. I honestly love our FitBarks. The company is fantastic. The customer support is the best I've ever experienced. And the product just keeps getting better and better. In just the past year I've seen tremendous changes in the app that just makes the overall experience better and better. If you're looking for an activity monitor for your dog you really can't go wrong with a FitBark. Whistle Activity Monitor For Dogs