Last week, Google introduced that new Fitbit units will arrive subsequent 12 months. A shock, little doubt, however a welcome one. This follows a latest revamp of the Fitbit app, which incorporates an AI private well being coach for Fitbit Premium customers.
I’ve been essential of Google’s dealing with of Fitbit prior to now. Since Google started buying Fitbit in 2019, there was an infinite sequence of destructive headlines, a few of them written by me. For starters, the European Union imposed a 10-year moratorium on Google utilizing the information it collected because of the sale of Fitbit for promoting functions within the European Economic Area, prompting considerations that Google would use Fitbit knowledge for invasive promoting in different areas.
The Fitbit Versa 4 and Fitbit Sense 2 smartwatches launched as pretty primary smartwatches with earlier options eliminated, and Google, in a quote to Engadget, stated there can be no extra after this. I suppose it is smart to go away Fitbit units because the slim trackers they as soon as have been and maintain the Pixel Watch as the one annual smartwatch within the vary, however Google dismantling the Fitbit ecosystem for waste and knowledge, retaining what it desires and discarding what it does not, has been an actual blow to many current Fitbit customers and has led to a decline in Fitbit-branded units.
However, that is to not say that the present technology of trackers is not good. While we did not get alongside very properly with the Fitbit Charge 6, giving it simply 3.5 stars in our evaluate, the funds Fitbit Inspire 3 remains to be a stable set-it-and-forget-it tracker. It’s light-weight, slim, and might be worn with a clip or saved in a pocket or in your wrist. It options computerized exercise detection (as soon as arrange, you simply have to start out working for Fitbit to document it) and has per week’s battery life.
It’s all the things a Fitbit must be, together with arriving with six months of Fitbit Premium. With the brand new AI Personal Health Coach, the free six-month service ought to provide you with all the things it’s essential to begin constructing good habits, even in the event you do not proceed paying for the service. Fitbit Premium has quietly develop into a 4.5-star service that has made it to our checklist of the very best health apps.
Since the Google Pixel Watch 4 and its many Fitbit options work so properly, it is with trepidation, amid the various years of destructive press, that I’m actually trying ahead to a brand new set of Fitbits.
Follow the instance of the Apple Watch SE 3
The panorama has modified since Fitbit unveiled its first digital pedometer at a TechCrunch occasion in 2009, and the health tracker market has develop into saturated. These units are low-cost to make, low-cost to purchase, and range wildly in high quality – for each Xiaomi Smart Band 9, there are many different Amazon dupes that are not price your time. Companies like Jawbone now not exist. There’s room on this murky area for a trusted model and it is time for Fitbit to prepared the ground as soon as once more.
To do that, it’s price trying on the success that Apple has had with the Apple Watch SE sequence. While testing the Apple Watch SE 3 after months of testing nothing however chunky Garmins, the Apple Watch Ultra 3, the Pixel Watch 4, and the Coros Apex 4, the Apple Watch SE 3 virtually felt weightless in my hand (in any case, it is fabricated from a lighter, cheaper nylon-plastic composite as an alternative of metallic) and felt rather more like a health tracker than a watch.
At the identical time, it had all the things informal health fanatics and Apple customers may actually need, and it got here at an reasonably priced worth.
A Fitbit Inspire 4 or Charge 7 may actually be handled like a Pixel SE. The Pixel Watch is a thick, domed gadget with heavier metallic components and tons of communication options, whereas the Fitbit is the skinny and lightweight choice that also provides entry to the wonderful Fitbit Premium service and its new AI coaching system. Sharing a little bit of the design language would assist: perhaps the identical band colours because the Pixel Watch 4, or redesigning the Fitbit’s physique a bit to make it nearer to the Pixel Watch 4’s pebble aesthetic.
It may even get a brand new title – many individuals I do know nonetheless seek advice from health trackers as ‘Fitbits’ out of behavior, so a single new gadget referred to as the ‘Google Pixel Fitbit’ would not be too costly. This would place Fitbit because the cheaper, slimmer, fitness-oriented different to the bigger, do-it-all Google Pixel Watch 4.
I’d forgotten how good light-weight health trackers may very well be till I attempted the Apple Watch SE 3, and I believe it is time for Fitbit to place itself as a “Pixel Watch SE” of kinds. We hope that the unique health tracker can return to its earlier heights; Now all we want are our group options.
