choosing a pedometer

A pedometer senses your body motion and counts your footsteps. This count is converted into distance by knowing the length of your usual stride. Wearing a pedometer and recording your daily steps and distance is a great motivating tool. You can wear a pedometer all day, every day and record total steps. Or you can wear it just when you go out for a walking workout.

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What Kind of Pedometer is Best?

All pedometers count steps, but use different methods to do so. Some mechanisms are more accurate than others. In general order of accuracy, these are: accelerometer, coiled spring mechanism, and hairspring mechanism. Free pedometers given away in health promotions are often the notoriously-inaccurate hairspring models. Start with a good pedometer to have the best results.

How Will You Wear Your Pedometer?

The old-style spring mechanisms required a pedometer to be worn in a perfect vertical position to count accurately. Depending on your body shape, a waistband pedometer might be tilted and not able to count steps accurately. But 2-axis and 3-axis accelerometer mechanisms can count steps accurately when tilted, carried in a pocket or on a lanyard. Choose a pocket pedometer or wear-anywhere model to have a choice of where to wear it. Pedometer watches include those that only track dedicated walking workouts rather than all-day steps -- needing to be started and stopped. But some newer designs are made for tracking total daily steps and are always running.

If you wear your pedometer to count total daily steps, choose one that is small enough and comfortable enough for all-day wear. It needs to clip securely so it doesn't fall off. Add a safety leash for good measure. The display should be easy to read without removing the pedometer from your waistband. If the pedometer has a reset button, it should configured so you can't accidentally reset it.

What Do You Want Your Pedometer to Do?

Total Daily Steps: The simplest pedometers only count your steps and display steps and/or distance. This may be all you need to track to keep yourself motivated towards a goal of 6000 steps per day for health, or 10,000 steps per day for weight loss. However, some pedometers (or pedometer functions of other devices) are built for using only during workouts rather than running all day.

Workout Tracking: If you want to use your pedometer primarily to track dedicated walking workouts, you will want one with a workout feature or the ability to reset it. Some pedometers reset themselves at midnight and you can't use them only for specific workouts. But many advanced models have the ability to both count total daily steps and to track specific workouts.

Beyond the Count: Many pedometer models have more features. You should note which ones are most important to you when comparing models.

Distance estimate.
Calories burned estimate
Ability to time and track specific workouts
Memory: review past days
Clock
Stopwatch/exercise timer
Alarm
Speed or pace estimate
Goal setting and progress towards daily goal
Upload to computer or cell phone app
Pulse monitor

Pedometer Distance Accuracy

Accuracy starts with the mechanism. Accelerometers are more accurate than spring models.

Count off 100 steps and see what the count is on the pedometer. If it is off by more than a few steps, adjust where you are wearing it. You may have to experiment with where to wear it. Sometimes moving it just an inch or two makes a big difference.

Accuracy of the distance estimate depends on measuring your stride length and setting your stride length correctly. Some models just ask for your height and use a standard formula. If this isn't accurate for you, you may have to set it with a different height to get more accurate distance readings.

You can check the accuracy of the pedometer's distance estimate using a known distance.

Walking Speedometers/Odometers

You can use Timex, Garmin, and cell phone apps that use GPS sensors to track your speed and distance continuously -- but only outdoors -- and they won't work on a treadmill. Other devices may use an accelerometer sensor in/on your shoe to measure this data. These accelerometer devices need to be calibrated for the best accuracy. They work indoors as well as outdoors and can be used on a treadmill.

Source: About.com