There is such a range of fitness trackers, smartwatches, and fitness trackers that are also smartwatches, that it can be hard to know where to start. Well, Fitbit has come in with their low-cost fitness tracker designed to do exactly that. The question is, is it worth it?
Style
One thing you will immediately notice with the new Fitbit Air is that there is no screen. We are so used to them being jacks of all trades that I expected to see something more there. The Fitbit Air has ditched the screen, and instead you get all your info on your phone. The benefit you gain from this is the style.
The tracker is a small pebble that sits up against your skin, and then the wristband wraps over it, which completely disguises the device. What you wind up with is a thin fabric, bracelet-looking thing that looks nondescript. When I was wearing this one for over a week, nobody commented on it at all. Part of that is being a dad who regularly has crap hanging on his wrists, from my kids’ hair ties to random crap the kids make that I have to wear, so random stuff on my wrists is no surprise. The other part is that clever design that fits in with anything you are wearing.
With the stretchy fabric wristband and the tiny 12-gram weight, this minimalism in design made it super easy to forget it was there. It was all of a couple of hours before I completely forgot it was there until my phone probed me about stuff.
Ka pai, design department; you nailed it aesthetically and comfort-wise.
No screen, so what does it do?
Without that screen, they have been able to cram a lot into a tiny device. It has an optical heart rate sensor, red and infrared sensors, a skin temperature sensor, a 3-axis acceleratometer, and a gyroscope. There are more sensors out there, but with a focus on minimalism, this is a hell of a lot in a tiny package.
All of this data gets transferred to your phone, where the Google Health app does all the hard lifting to process the data. This does everything from keeping an eye on your sleep to tracking and trending your exercise. One area I have struggled with when it comes to smartwatches is that so many need to be charged overnight. This completely defeats the purpose of it being able to measure your sleep. This little beauty can go seven days without a charge, which means you can forget it’s there until the app tells you it needs a charge.
The app has come a long way as well. There are heaps of AI features that get enabled with a subscription, but I avoided this for testing to see how the device works without paying. Well, without paying, it still felt awfully premium. At the end of a workout it would fire me some positive messages. After a bad night’s sleep it would tell me what parts of my sleep cycle suffered, and if I walked slightly more or slightly less, it would tell me that and encourage me to have a crack at it the next day.
This had a bigger impact on me than I expected. After staying up a bit too late one night, its reminder via a push notification actually made me make sure I went to bed at a reasonable time the next night. Little prods reminding me I almost walked far enough got me moving a bit more. It made a massive difference.
It can’t do everything perfectly right?
Obviously if you want all the sensors and things like GPS, you’ll need a bigger device. But honestly, it didn’t need them. One setback is that it uses a unique charger, which is always a pain in the ass on a new device, as your old Fitbit chargers won’t fit it.
The only other thing is that the material band, obviously, will soak up sweat over time. As a pretty sweaty person, I have no doubt there is too much DNA in there already. You can wash the band by removing the pebble and can swap it out for new ones if needed over time, but how often that will be required will take much longer testing than I have used it for. Also, sorry to whoever uses my test device after I send it back; I swear I tried cleaning it.
Should you get one?
If you are looking for a fitness tracker that does that and does it well, this is a good device. Its style and functionality are fantastic, and I may seriously consider picking one up myself, as I haven’t had a fitness tracker for quite a while.
