Windows Phone Head-to-Head App Review: Calorie Counter vs. Calorie Tracker

The Windows Telephone Market place contains a number of apps for counting and tracking calories. The two virtually popular by far are Calorie Counter by Fat Secret.com and Calorie Tracker, from programmer nVentive and LiveStrong.com. Both are currently costless on the Marketplace, so which should you choose, dear fettle-witting reader? Read on to find out.

Calorie Counter (CC)

CC is a smaller scale effort from Fat Hole-and-corner, then we'll start with information technology start. Despite its high ratings, CC has only been updated in one case so far and lacks Fast App Switching. While the developer may have abased it, the app still has a lot to offer for fitness enthusiasts.

Quick Picks

The app'due south master claim to fame is the ability to just wait upwards foods and find their nutritional info. To do this, yous swipe left or correct to the Quick Picks page and cull from four categories: Foods, Restaurants & Bondage, Popular Brands, and Supermarket Brands. Each i contains a number of subcategories – as yous narrow your selection down, you're eventually presented with a list, such as unlike kinds of eggs. Y'all can also just blazon the name of a product into the search box. One time you discover the particular you'd similar, you tin can view a option of nutritional data and its actual USDA nutritional label.

While the range of categories is impressive, the search engine could use some work. A proper search engine would find 'Cap'n Crisis' when the user enters 'Helm Crunch,' only not this app. Still, if you can't observe the food detail yous're looking for, you lot can manually add together it to the category of your choice. You'll need to know the serving size, calories, types of fat, vitamins, etc. that you'd see on a nutritional label – a reasonable requirement.

Diaries

The other do good from apps like these is the power to track your daily calorie consumption and fire. In the Food Diary, you'll enter what yous eat for meals and snacks every day. Yous add together these items by searching for the name or selecting them from categories, much like when searching for nutritional info. Users tin likewise salve meals to make the process of adding them to the diary become quicker. Equally items are added to the day's diary, calorie consumption will exist shown every bit a percentage of RDI (Recommended Daily Intake) in a picayune chart at the bottom of the folio.

The practice diary works in a similar way. You add an exercise, select from a listing of activities such as walking and running, and how long you engaged in the activity. Users tin can also select 'Other' and add stuff that isn't listed.

The layouts of both the Food and Exercise Diaries are somewhat messy and confusing. The Food Diary requires a lot of vertical scrolling when a more curtailed layout would be more useful. The RDI graph at the end is fairly worthless too. As for the Exercise Diary, it lists resting and sleeping times and calories to a higher place whatever exercises y'all enter. I would think the more of import info (the exercises) would come first, and the other stuff feels more than like a nag: "Remainder less! You can sleep when you're dead!"

Long term tracking

CC's Nutrition Calendar lists your RDI, Food (calories consumed), Practice (calories burned), and Net calories for each day of the calendar month. It'south skilful to look dorsum at these things and judge your operation, only the list is labeled kind of oddly. Besides, the RDI figures are based on a 2,000 calorie diet, whereas someone on a nutrition probably has a different number in mind – it'd be better if the app asked for your goal or helped you create one and and so adjusted its charts and such appropriately. Finally, the Weight Tracker graph allows you to input your weight at any given time and chart how it'south changed since y'all started. The graph includes one line for actual weight and another for your goal weight; employ CC long enough and hopefully these will intersect.

Finally, the app tin sync with FatSecret.com, a manifestly looking site that boasts a fair corporeality of content. Notwithstanding, I prefer the website associated with our next app...

Calorie Tracker (CT)

CT is the companion app for LiveStrong.com, a major wellness and fitness website. Every bit such, it allows users to create and/or connect their profiles with the site, sharing goals and progress between both mediums. The more encouragement to stay on target the amend, so the connectivity is definitely appreciated. Merely even if you choose not to create an online account, yous can still go a lot of mileage out of CT.

The first step in using the app is to create a profile. Here y'all'll enter some basic stuff similar height and weight. You also choose a goal, which tin include maintaining your weight or gaining or losing upwards to 2 pounds a week. Fifty-fifty if y'all set the weight unit of measurement to Kilograms, it even so expresses the goal in pounds, which could exist a slight knock against CT for international users. The app also asks for your activity level, with choices ranging from Sedentary to Very Active. Using all of this data, it calculates your daily calorie goal, a feature sorely lacking in CC.

MyPlate

This folio is the equivalent of CC'southward Food and Do Diaries in ane. CT presents the information in a super clean way with no need for vertical scrolling, a major plus in CT'south favor. Borer on a meal or the Fitness category (exercise activities) brings up a list of everything you've added for the 24-hour interval and lets you input new items. Instead of browsing for foods or exercises, yous only type the proper name in a search box. The food search engine is much better than CC's – 'Captain Crisis' brought up useful results, despite my spelling it in an unofficial way.

The Fitness search engine is similarly robust. Different CC, Tracker actually lists several types of sexual practice as exercises: light, moderate, and vigorous. Considering that sex is an integral activity in many people'due south lives, I applaud its inclusion. You can as well add custom activities if necessary.

On the downside, you tin't add foods or activities as favorites, so yous'll need to type them out every time. You can't search for food's nutritional info without first choosing a meal and searching for the particular, and then that role of the process is slower than with Counter.

Progress

The My Daily Progress page shows a bar graph with your calorie goal and number of calories remaining at the top. Information technology also lists calories consumed, subtracts calories burned, and your net calories – very clean and simple. The My Weight Progress page charts your weight on a line graph – no target weight, which was kind of unnecessary in CC's equivalent graph. Finally, the My Goal Page lists your initial weight, actual weight, weight goal, and boilerplate weight lost or gained.

Overall Impression

Both Calorie Counter and Calorie Tracker accept their pluses and minuses. Tracker is apparently gratuitous for a limited time only, but I get the impression it's been that way for a skilful while. For now we'll say they're on fifty-fifty pricing ground. Tracker looks much nicer than Counter, and supports Fast App Switching, which Counter does non. Counter's food finding feature is a step ahead of Tracker, except for the slightly sub-par text search. But as a tool for tracking food consumption and fitness, besides equally encouraging users to stay on their fitness plans, Tracker handily outperforms its rival. If you're interested in losing weight or fitness in general, Calorie Tracker is a must-download.

Calorie Counter Marketplace link

Calorie Tracker Market link

Source: https://www.windowscentral.com/windows-phone-head-head-app-review-calorie-counter-vs-calorite-tracker

Posted by: rosemanchised.blogspot.com

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