Bad News For Fitness Band Lovers

Uh-oh fitness band lovers.

We have some bad news for you and that 100 bucks you dropped on one.

A new study has come out from The Journal of the American Medical Association (AMA), showing that your iPhone or other digital device of choice does just a good a job, if not a better one, at doing things like tracking calories and measuring activity, Mother Jones Magazine reports.

Researchers took 10 of the top-selling smartphone fitness applications and pedometers with wearable devices, then tracked 14 healthy adults as they walked on the treadmill.

The results were that the smartphones were just as accurate and consistent as wearable devices. Wearable devices had as much as a 22 percent variation in the range of step counts compared to the observed number of steps taken. There was only a 6 percent difference in the range of the step counts from smartphones in comparison to observable steps.

So why bother with a Fitness band ? Long story short it boils down to convenience—jogging, cycling, and fitness in general are all easier when you've got free hands not encumbered by a bulky smartphone.