Surviving a heart attack 2-1/2 years ago belatedly made me a real believer in the 10,000 steps a day concept, thanks to the staff in the Coronary Heart Disease Reversal Program at the UC Davis Med Center. Daily exercise is one important component of their program, and a pedometer is a great tool to help you evaluate how much exercise you're getting, not just in 45 minutes on a treadmill or exercise bike at the gymn, but in your daily activities around your home, yard, and work. Using a pedometer daily can give you some surprising insights about your life-style. Who knew, for example, that shopping can qualify as exercise when there's walking involved? And insights often lead to positive changes.
I bought, used, and discarded a half-dozen cheap, inaccurate, poorly-designed pedometers. I would run 3 miles and find the pedometer had recorded 92 steps. I had clips break, cases split from being dropped, I jabbed myself on sharp case corners when bending over. Then I found the Omron HJ-112 at Amazon and it immediately stood out above all the others.
The HJ-112 is accurate -- within 1-2%, based on my experience. Accuracy with my other pedometers was more like 5-10%. And the HJ-112's accuracy is largely independent of wearing position -- clipped on a belt or shoe, hanging from a lanyard, loose in a shirt or pants pocket, it really doesn't matter. Most other brands need to be clipped at a very specific hip position to get accurate counts.
The HJ-112 can be easily used all day. When you're exercising, you'll probably want to use its clip or lanyard. But pedometers don't really go with business attire so when you're at work or out in public, just pop it out of it's belt clip and put it in a pocket. Omron says a purse will also do -- I'm skeptical -- but a fanny pack certainly works.
The clip is quite secure, and the clip attachment to the pedometer itself is excellent: very easy to insert/remove and in two years of use, I've never had it accidently pop off. The belt clip can work itself loose with repeated flexing if it's sandwiched between two surfaces like abdomen/thigh -- for example, squatting over pulling weeds. I learned this first hand while squatting doing repairs on the roof of a two-story house. The clip pulled off and the pedometer fell 20 feet onto concrete. It didn't survive. I chaulked it up as a life-lesson and ordered a new one from Amazon. Now when I'm doing that kind of work, I try to remember to carry the HJ-112 in my pocket. I have dropped the HJ-112 onto concrete and other hard surfaces from more reasonable heights up to 6-7 feet, with no ill effects -- the belt clip is soft, flexible plastic and a pretty-good energy dissipator. I regularly run 3-4 miles, and I've never had the clip come loose.
The best feature of the HJ-112 to me is it's Auto-Reset, which I didn't really appreciate until I used the unit for a couple of days. Each night at midnight, it stores the previous day's step count in memory and resets the current step count to zero. It stores a week's worth of step counts, which are retrieved with the Memory button, though it doesn't store any of the other computed info (Calories, Miles, etc.). This really makes it easy to use every day. No more frustration when you realize mid-afternoon that you forgot to reset the pedometer that morning. And since it has a clock, it's also able to evaluate steps per minute, which it uses to report "Aerobic steps": 60 steps/minute or higher, or 10 minutes of continuous walking.
The display is easy to read, the clock is remarkably accurate -- better than my iPod's -- though it doesn't handle Daylight Savings Time changes automatically. The buttons are nicely sized with a good, tactile feel. The battery lasts 18 months or so, and is easily replaced.
I recommend this product.Get more detail about Omron HJ-112 Digital Pocket Pedometer.
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