Last year I bought a couple Omron pedometers because a) they tend to be more accurate than anything else I’ve found, and b) they’ll store 41 days worth of step data which can be transferred to a PC via USB.
I bought two because I tend to lose or wash them, but I’ve yet to have to break out the spare after 15 months. Battery life in that time was also very good — I only had to change batteries about every 6 months which was more than adequate.
Below is my results from 2011 graphed in the software that Omron offers for download for use with pedometer. It is trivial to export the step data as CSV and import it into other software for more sophisticated reporting, but this gives a nice overview (click the image to see a larger version):
So from March 3, 2011 through December 31, 2011, I walked/ran/crawled an average of 8,741 steps per day (I’m a lazy ass on the weekends). I really like seeing that expressed in miles: 1,508 miles in 2011 with an average of almost 5 miles per day — and the bulk of that is all of the walking around I do during my regular daily routine.
Now, if I could have just found a way to keep my calorie intake a bit lower, I might have seen that translate into a more appropriate BMI.