I bought a Letscom fitness tracker because I’m cheap. There, I said it. I see people walking around with $400 Apple Watches or those bulky Garmins that look like they belong on an astronaut, and I just can’t do it. I refuse to spend half a month’s rent on something that’s basically a digital leash telling me I’m fat. So, back in 2022, I hopped on Amazon and found this thing for $28.99. It looked fine in the pictures. It had a heart rate monitor. It promised sleep tracking. I figured, how bad could it be?
The part where I admit I was probably wrong
I used to think that all these trackers used the same sensors. I had this theory—and I know people will disagree with me on this—that there’s just one giant factory in Shenzhen making every single heart rate sensor, and Apple just puts theirs in a prettier box. I was completely wrong. After wearing the Letscom for about 14 months, I’ve realized that accuracy is a luxury you actually have to pay for. I tested this thing against a medical-grade pulse ox I borrowed from my cousin who’s a nurse. Over a 42-night period, the Letscom consistently overestimated my deep sleep by exactly 22 percent. It’s like the watch is gaslighting me into thinking I’m well-rested when I actually feel like a zombie.
The build quality is… well, it’s plastic. It feels like a toy you’d find at the bottom of a cereal box. (That’s my first metaphor, and honestly, it’s the most accurate way to describe the strap.)
It’s light, though. I’ll give it that. Sometimes I forget I’m wearing it until it vibrates to tell me I haven’t moved in an hour. Which is annoying. I’m an adult; I know when I’m being lazy. I don’t need a $30 piece of rubber judging my lifestyle choices while I’m trying to finish a sandwich.
The VeryFitPro app is a literal dumpster fire
If you buy this watch, you have to use an app called VeryFitPro. Calling it “Pro” is the biggest lie since the Fyre Festival. The UI looks like it was designed by someone who has heard of smartphones but has never actually seen one. It crashes constantly. What I mean is—actually, let me put it differently: it doesn’t just crash; it forgets who you are. Every three weeks, it logs me out and wipes my history for the previous forty-eight hours. It’s infuriating.
The sync process takes about four minutes. In tech years, that’s basically an eternity. You could grow a beard in the time it takes for this watch to tell the app how many steps you took on a Tuesday.
I have a specific, probably unfair hatred for Fitbit because they bought Pebble and then proceeded to kill off the only good smartwatch ever made, but even Fitbit’s bloated app is a masterpiece compared to this. VeryFitPro feels like spyware that isn’t even trying to hide. The permissions it asks for are insane. Why does my heart rate monitor need access to my contacts and my microphone? It doesn’t. But you click “Allow” anyway because you want to see if your heart rate actually hit 160 during that jog. It didn’t. The watch said 112. Total lie.
The 2021 wedding incident
I have to tell you about the time this watch embarrassed me. I was at my friend Sarah’s wedding in October 2021. It was a small, quiet ceremony in a very echoey chapel in Vermont. Right as they were doing the vows—the “if anyone objects” part—my wrist started buzzing like a chainsaw. I had set a silent alarm three days prior to remind me to take the laundry out of the dryer, and for some reason, the “silent” alarm on the Letscom makes a sound like a trapped hornet. I couldn’t get it to stop. The touchscreen decided that was the exact moment to stop responding to my sweaty thumb. I ended up having to shove my hand into my suit jacket pocket and hold it tight against my hip to muffle the sound. I felt like an idiot. Sarah still hasn’t let me live it down.
Anyway, that’s the risk you take with budget tech. It’s unreliable in the most specific, inconvenient ways.
Stop buying expensive trackers (but maybe don’t buy this one)
I’m going to be blunt. I actively tell my friends to avoid Garmin. I see guys at the coffee shop wearing a Fenix 7 that costs $800, and they’re just ordering a latte. They aren’t trekking across the Andes. They aren’t diving 100 meters. They’re checking their Slack notifications. It’s a status symbol for people who want to look rugged but spend 10 hours a day in an ergonomic chair. It’s ridiculous. I’d rather wear my cheap, lying Letscom than be one of those people.
But that doesn’t make the Letscom good. It’s just… there. It counts steps reasonably well if you’re walking on flat ground. I tracked it on a 3-mile loop I know by heart, and it was only off by about 412 steps compared to my phone’s GPS. That’s acceptable for thirty bucks. If you just want a digital clock that also happens to tell you that you’re moving, it’s fine. But don’t expect it to change your life.
The battery life is the only thing that actually impresses me. I charge it maybe once every ten days. It’s like a stubborn old mule that refuses to die. (That’s metaphor number two. I’m done with those now.)
The verdict nobody asked for
I’m still wearing it. That’s the weirdest part of this whole review. I’ve just spent several paragraphs tearing this thing apart, and yet, it’s still on my left wrist. I think I keep it because I’ve developed a strange loyalty to its incompetence. We’ve been through a lot together. It’s seen me fail at Couch to 5K three separate times. It’s been there for every restless night of sleep I’ve had since the pandemic.
Is it a good product? No. It’s mediocre at best and buggy at worst. But there’s something honest about a $30 gadget that doesn’t pretend to be anything else. It’s not trying to be a lifestyle brand. It’s just a piece of plastic that roughly estimates how much you’re decaying.
If you have thirty dollars and you don’t mind a shitty app, go for it. But if you actually care about your health data, you’re better off just checking your pulse with a stopwatch and a finger.
I wonder if I’ll ever actually buy a “real” watch, or if I’m just going to keep wearing these cheap knock-offs until I die? I honestly don’t know the answer to that.
Don’t buy it if you value your sanity. Buy it if you’re cheap like me.