Relax. This is most definitely not a post about Star Wars (sorry Tommy).

It’s actually about my new toy, gadget, device, thingamajig, activity tracker – yeah, that’s it… my activity tracker. I will be the first one to admit that this is not something everyone “needs” to go out and buy. It’s not necessary. But for me, it was something that I thought would be helpful to assist in holding myself accountable. There are a handful on the market including ones made by Nike and Jawbone, but I chose to go with the Force after reading a handful of reviews.

Essentially it’s a glorified pedometer. It wears comfortably on your wrist – similar in size and flexibilty to a Livestrong band, and the Fitbit Force has a nice digital readout giving you up to the second progress on your daily activity (as well as the time).

screen shot of the Fitbit App

With the push of a button you can scroll through and discover:

• steps taken
• distance traveled
• calories burned
• flights of stairs climbed
• total active minutes

In addition, the Force also has a sleep tracker that will inform you of your quality of sleep by tracking how often you wake up as well as providing a nice silent alarm if needed. Personally, this is not a function that I have found much use for, but I imagine someone does.

I have been wearing the tracker for just over 2 weeks and think it is a great asset for someone counting their calories and making a conscious effort to exercise more. There is a pretty quick setup and the Force links up via Bluetooth to your smart phone with a easy to use app. My favorite part is how it syncs directly to my Lose It account. So up to the second I can see not only the information I already mentioned above, but also how many pounds I have to go to reach my goal, how many calories I have eaten, as well how many calories I have left (or gone over) each day, and it will make an adjustment for the calories burned throughout the day. It also links to several other popular fitness apps on the market such as My Fitness Pal and Run Keeper. There is also a “personal dashboard” online in case you are still rocking a cell phone from 2004.

Another nice function of the tracker is that you can set a goal for how many steps you want to hit in a day, and your band will actually vibrate once you achieve the goal. It’s the small wins that add up to the big victory. The default is set at 10,00 steps which correlates close to 5 miles. I have found myself making a concerted effort to hit at least that many each day – so much so – I went out late last night to walk the dog to ensure I climbed over 10,000 for the day. And today decided to bump it up to 12,000.

I am amazed at how accurate the device is. The first several days I would glance at my wrist to get my current steps and then spend 5 or 10 minutes walking around the warehouse counting. When I would click the device again to see what my new total was, 9 times out of 10 it was within 2 steps. I have been walking around during the working day a lot more since I have started to wear the tracker – and that alone has made it worth the investment. It certainly is not cheap at $130, but I am getting my moneys worth.

An extra incentive for some may be that the Force lets you challenge friends, receive push notifications, badges and even post to social networks. While in the end, the actual work is still left up to you, it can serve as a great reminder to step away from your desk and go move.

Just for clarification, although this is somewhat a review of the product – I had no contact from Fitbit and purchased the product for my personal use.