What Is a Fitbit?
Fitbit has products in two main categories–smartwatches and fitness trackers–as well as some accessories. The company is most famous for its fitness bands, of which there are three lines: Charge, Inspire, and Ace. The Fitbit Charge line is the most advanced (and highest priced). It ships with two bands, in size small and large, and comes in a few colors. Some special-edition Charge models support Fitbit Pay, the company’s mobile payment app. Charge fitness bands have features including a touchscreen, smartphone notifications, activity and health-adjacent information tracking, automatic exercise detection, and water resistance so you can take it for a swim. The Inspire is almost as advanced as the Charge. It comes with a built-in heart rate monitor, and it tracks sleep. You can get notifications on the band for calls, texts, and calendar reminders too. In fact, the Inspire line is nearly identical to the higher-end Charge with a few small exceptions. Inspire bands don’t have the built-in GPS or altimeters of the Charge, so you’ll need to use your phone’s GPS and won’t be able to track stairs climbed. They also lack the workout intensity map feature of Charge bands. Aside from those features, it all comes down to construction. The Charge is more durable. Finally, the Ace fitness band is made for kids six years and older. It’s a tiny device that attaches to a wristband and tracks steps and physical activity and can display incoming call notifications if connected to a smartphone. The Ace is splash-proof, but not swim-proof, so a child can wear it in the shower, but not in the pool. With either one, you’ll gain plenty of smartwatch features that allow you to interact seamlessly with your phone. You’ll be able to view notifications, use a specific set of apps, control your music, and even use your favorite voice assistant. Fitbit has two lines of smartwatches, Versa and Sense. Both the Versa and Sense lines of smartwatches are the most feature-packed Fitbits available. With either line, you’ll find nearly any type of sensor you could hope for in a fitness tracker, including monitoring for steps taken, heart rate, stairs climbed, sleep, and calorie burn. The Sense line of smartwatches has a few advantages over the Versa for the most serious of fitness enthusiasts. It comes with a few extra sensors that monitor skin moisture, a common indicator of stress, and skin temperature. These sensors come along with tools to manage stress and notify you of high and low heart rates. Fitbit Pay is available on both the Versa and Charge lines for mobile payments. Accessories-wise, Fitbit has a smart scale (Aria) that syncs with the Fitbit app and replacement wristbands.
How Fitbits Work and What Fitbits Do
While there’s an array of Fitbit products that do different things, the fitness bands and watches all track steps. Many can recognize common exercises, such as running and biking, and some can track swimming. You can then look at the Fitbit app to see your progress by day or by week and adjust your goals accordingly. If your Fitbit has GPS, you can also see a map of your route, pace, and elevation. You can add Exercise Shortcuts on the app or the Fitbit.com Dashboard for workouts that aren’t automatically recognized, such as yoga. There, you can add goals for each exercise, based on time, distance, or calories burned. Then you’ll be able to start and end that workout on the fly. Fitbit devices use an accelerometer to measure your movements. The accelerometer takes the movement data and translates it into digital measurements, which it how Fitbits count your steps, and measure the distance you’ve traveled, calories burned, and sleep quality. For steps, Fitbits use an algorithm to look for motions that indicate a person is walking. If you’re driving on a bumpy road, this movement can register as steps, so make sure you understand the accuracy of a Fitbit. For the best results for measuring distance and calories burned, make sure to measure your stride and log it in the Fitbit app, and keep your weight up to date. The Fitbits that count floors — flights walked up — use an altimeter that detects whether you’re doing up or down. If you’re going up, it registers one floor for about every 10 feet you go.
What is Fitbit Pay?
Since Fitbit devices run on a proprietary operating system, they don’t have access to mobile payment platforms from other parties, including Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, and Google Pay. Fitbit Pay works with Android, iOS, and Windows phones, and is available in more than a dozen countries including the United States, Canada, Australia, Singapore, and a handful of European countries. You’ll also need to connect your account to a compatible bank; Fitbit keeps a running list on its website. At the register, Fitbit Pay works similarly to the competition.
Fitbits vs. Smartwatches
Some smartwatches do all or most of the above including the Apple Watch, Samsung Galaxy Watch, and models that run Wear (formerly Android Wear). Generally, these watches are quite a bit more expensive than a Fitbit fitness band and even more than Fitbit’s Ionic and Versa smartwatches. However, Fitbit’s smartwatches have access to fewer apps than Apple, Samsung, and Wear watches, since it runs on the Fitbit OS. Also, the interface looks at acts differently from the one running on your smartphone. There are limitations in how you can interact with notifications. More advanced smartwatches let you do a lot without having to take out your smartphone, including responding to messages and even answering phone calls (LTE models only). Like Wear smartwatches, Fitbit OS watches are compatible with both Android and iOS. When it comes to mobile payments, Fitbit watches work with Fitbit Pay, while the others work with Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, and Google Pay, respectively. Think of Fitbit smartwatches as the lower cost entry-level device compared to the big guys. If the price tag is too high on the more advanced smartwatches, consider giving a Fitbit smartwatch a try to see if you even like wearing a smartwatch.
