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FitBark Dog Activity Monitor

Eric Griffith
 & Eric Griffith Senior Editor, Features

Our team tests, rates, and reviews more than 1,500 products each year to help you make better buying decisions and get more from technology.

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The FitBark Activity Monitor is an affordable, unobtrusive fitness tracker that takes your dog's total physical activity into account, but falls just short of our Editors' Choice. - FitBark Dog Activity Monitor
4.0 Excellent

The Bottom Line

The FitBark Activity Monitor is an affordable, unobtrusive fitness tracker that takes your dog's total physical activity into account, but falls just short of our Editors' Choice.

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Pros & Cons

    • Easy-to-understand activity information.
    • Very light and unobtrusive.
    • Attaches to any collar/harness.
    • Long battery life.
    • Waterproof.
    • Web-based dashboard.
    • Social aspect helps compare canines.
    • Lacks Wi-Fi, so you must buy a base station for offsite monitoring.

Fitness trackers for pets might sound like a sketch out of Portlandia, but an active lifestyle is every bit as healthy for your furry friends as it is for you. The $99.95 FitBark Dog Activity Monitor is an unobtrusive fitness tracking device for canines of all sizes that syncs with clever software on your phone or computer to check in on your dog's activity levels. It's easy to use and offers a unique social aspect, though the Whistle is a slightly more attractive option thanks to its lower price and built-in Wi-Fi.

Design and Features
True to its name, the FitBark is an activity tracker for dogs. The device itself has a 3-axis accelerometer inside. It's not really for cats or humans because the software behind it isn't intended for those species; that said, it could probably track a feline with a modicum of accuracy.

The plastic unit, shaped like a dog bone treat, is only 0.28 ounces, which is comparable with the Tractive Motion (the lightest tracker we've seen at 0.25 ounces), and half the weight of the Whistle. It measures 1.1 by 1.6 by 0.4 inches (HWD), and comes in five colors: blue, gray, green, pink, and red. It's waterproof (rated IPX7) as long as the rubber plug covering the micro USB charging port is tightly sealed.

The size and shape of the FitBark put it at both an advantage and disadvantage compared with the Whistle. The latter's heavier, larger and also fits on a collar, but it's big enough that it won't work for toy breeds. But there's a good reason for its size: The Whistle has built-in Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, so it can communicate activity data directly to a smartphone app, sending it to your home router and over the Internet. So even when not home, Whistle users can get their dog's activity info.

With FitBark, you only get Bluetooth, unless you pony up an additional $79.95 for the FitBark Wi-Fi Base Station. It's a cute plastic dog house you plug in via micro USB, connect to the FitBark smartphone app, then let run near your router. It then relays the FitBark's data to your account online.

Things are better in the battery department. The FitBark uses a micro USB connection to charge its Lithium-ion battery (battery life is quoted at 10 to 14 days, depending on use). That's a big step up from the proprietary chargers used by other trackers like the Whistle and PetPace (and even most Fitbits, for that matter). The animated GIF below indicates the FitBark logo on the device having a soothing pulse as it charges, but the LED in mine just kind of glared when plugged in.

FitBark charging with "soothing glow"

Final Thoughts

The FitBark Activity Monitor is an affordable, unobtrusive fitness tracker that takes your dog's total physical activity into account, but falls just short of our Editors' Choice. - FitBark Dog Activity Monitor

FitBark Dog Activity Monitor

4.0 Excellent

The FitBark Activity Monitor is an affordable, unobtrusive fitness tracker that takes your dog's total physical activity into account, but falls just short of our Editors' Choice.

Get It Now

Buy It Now

About Our Expert

Eric Griffith

Eric Griffith

Senior Editor, Features

My Experience

I've been writing about computers, the internet, and technology professionally since 1992, more than half of that time with PCMag. I arrived at the end of the print era of PC Magazine as a senior writer. I served for a time as managing editor of business coverage before settling back into the features team for the last decade and a half. I write features on all tech topics, plus I handle several special projects, including the Readers' Choice and Business Choice surveys and yearly coverage of the Best ISPs and Best Gaming ISPs, Best Products of the Year, and Best Brands (plus the Best Brands for Tech Support, Longevity, and Reliability).

I started in tech publishing right out of college, writing and editing stories about hardware and development tools. I migrated to software and hardware coverage for families, and I spent several years exclusively writing about the then-burgeoning technology called Wi-Fi. I was on the founding staff of several magazines, including Windows Sources, FamilyPC, and Access Internet Magazine. All of which are now defunct, and it's not my fault. I have freelanced for publications as diverse as Sony Style, Playboy.com, and Flux. I got my degree at Ithaca College in, of all things, television/radio. But I minored in writing so I'd have a future.

In my long-lost free time, I wrote some novels, a couple of which are not just on my hard drive: BETA TEST ("an unusually lighthearted apocalyptic tale," according to Publishers' Weekly) and a YA book called KALI: THE GHOSTING OF SEPULCHER BAY. Go get them on Kindle.

I work from my home in Ithaca, NY, and did it long before pandemics made it cool.

The Technology I Use

My first computer was a Laser 128, an Apple II-compatible clone with an integrated keyboard, matched with an eye-straining monochrome green monitor. I used it to type papers in college for other people for money...until I discovered the Mac SE in the college computer room. That changed my life. My first cellphone was a Samsung Uproar—the silver one with the built-in MP3 player from the Napster days (the pre-iPod era).

I use an iPhone 15 Pro hourly and an iPad Air infrequently (but I'm always in the market for a cheap Android tablet). I have a PlayStation 5 just to play Spider-Man, and several Windows machines, including a work-issued Lenovo ThinkPad. I talk to Alexa and Siri all day long. I do the majority of my computing on a 15-inch LG Gram laptop attached to a Thunderbolt hub to run a multi-monitor setup—I overdid it on the power needed to simply work from home.

I'm most at home in Microsoft Word after decades of writing there. More and more, I turn to services like Google Docs, using tools like Grammarly. I use Google's Chrome browser due to an addiction to several extensions I think I can't live without, but probably could. I use Excel extensively on data-intensive stories, but for chart creation, we've switched over entirely to using Infogram for interactive features that are hard to find elsewhere. I do a lot of graphics work for my stories, but limit myself to the free and amazing Paint.NET software to edit images.

I'm a firm evangelist for using the cloud for backup and syncing of files; I'm primarily using Dropbox, which has never failed me, but I also have redundant setups on Microsoft OneDrive, plus extra picture backups on Amazon Photos and iCloud. Why take chances? For entertainment, mine is a streaming-only household—my kid has never seen network TV and barely been exposed to commercials, thanks to Roku and Amazon Music. The house is peppered with smart speakers from Amazon for instant gratification and control of smart home devices like multiple Wyze cameras and Nest Protect smoke detectors. I've got accounts on all the major social networks, to my horror. I have a robot vacuum for each floor of the house. I want a 3D printer, but not sure what I'd use it for.

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