Google Fitbit Air review: Not the Fitbit you | Tech News

The Google Fitbit Air, to present the first new Fitbit since 2023 its full identify, isn’t the Fitbit you keep in mind. The model’s early trackers circa 2014 have been enjoyable, no frills devices that tracked steps and motion and pitted you in opposition to your folks to see who may stroll the furthest.

Pioneering gadgets like the Fitbit Flex and Fitbit Charge inspired people to take up train more usually and perhaps get a little fitter and happier. Sometimes there was a screen, but it surely wasn’t that distracting. If you needed to run a marathon, there was all the time Garmin. Then in 2021, Google acquired Fitbit.

I’ve been carrying the Fitbit Air for 13 days, and regardless of its screenless design recalling these early Fitbits, that is a Fitbit in identify solely. For all intents and functions, the Fitbit Air is a Google fitness tracker, a very stripped down different to the Pixel Watch 4.

It’s a tiny pebble-like tracker with a coronary heart price sensor that clips into a cozy materials band, amassing your steps, coronary heart and motion information all through the day. It prices £84.99, the very same as 2022’s Fitbit Inspire 3, which has a show. The Air is the Fitbit to get if you need to monitor fundamental stats with out the distraction a screen brings to most smartwatches.

The design of the Air alerts Google is taking pictures for Whoop, a rival subscription model fitness tracker widespread with severe athletes and backed by stars equivalent to Cristiano Ronaldo and Rory McIlroy. Also screenless, it passively collects your fitness information, with all insights present in its data-heavy app.

In a change timed to coincide with the release of the Fitbit Air, the Fitbit app is no more. In its place is the Google Health app, which is the Fitbit app rebranded. You can solely log in to this app with a Google account.

Gone are the leaderboards and challenges Fitbit followers will fondly keep in mind, and Google is even deleting all the Fitbit badges as soon as ceremoniously awarded to present Fitbit customers who’ve needed to switch their information to a Google account.

It’s additionally axing the enjoyable sleep animal function that matched up your slumber patterns to an animal’s, together with a full app interface redesign.

We now have a data-first dashboard with Google Gemini AI entrance and centre. It’s much less intimidating than Whoop’s app, and is designed to present you actionable suggestions in your fitness and sleep, with the skill to log meals with photographs, join rival fitness apps and even join your medical data. The latter option, which is principally set up thus far with US healthcare suppliers, is a doubtlessly slippery slope. When healthcare suppliers can see your Fitbit (sorry, Google) health information, it leaves the door open for future nefarious incentives to offer prospects reductions on health insurance coverage and different providers if they’ve the newest gadget.

In the right here and now, if you pay the £7.99 per thirty days subscription payment, you may ‘Ask Coach’, which brings up a ChatGPT-like dialog with Gemini. This is the place you can let the AI know your back hurts or you need to do three runs per week, or, in my case, that I’ve a new child, which is why my sleep patterns are so wrecked.

If you’ve learn this far and are questioning when I’m going to speak about the Fitbit Air and never the Google Health app, sadly that is reflective of the expertise of utilizing the Fitbit Air.

As a screenless fitness strap, the Air depends completely on the app expertise, identical to Whoop does and like these early Fitbits as soon as did. And now, that app is totally Google’s, and it wants you to let it know what’s occurring in your life for it to present you the best suggestions.

That leaves the Fitbit Air in an odd place, concurrently attempting to be like the early, fundamental Fitbits, however linked to an app embracing the AI age. I can’t help however really feel the Google Health app will probably be more helpful to Pixel Watch homeowners, who can more precisely monitor more sports activities and actions from their wrists. The app feels overblown if you have a Fitbit Air simply to rely steps and sleep.

Along with the app’s identify change, Fitbit Premium is now Google Health Premium. It nonetheless prices £7.99, and affords personalised health plans utilizing the Google Health Coach AI, provides more detailed insights into sleep, provides entry to a library of exercises and mindfulness periods.

That mentioned, you don’t need to pay a subscription to get fundamental metric monitoring. Not paying leaves you with exercise monitoring, sleep monitoring, health monitoring of coronary heart, coronary heart price variability, respiratory price and blood oxygen ranges, in addition to logging weight, food, water and your temper.

I discovered the Air a little too eager to file steps, which it did when doing issues like washing up. It additionally struggled to know I used to be on a stroll when pushing a pram reasonably than swinging my arms. But the coronary heart price metrics appear correct, and the tracker can detect potential atrial fibrillation, however not carry out an ECG because it lacks the {hardware}.

In testing the paid model of Google Health, I let Coach find out about my younger son, in addition to my ongoing foot harm from working. After a day or two, I loved the AI’s natural language advice and the truth it took these components under consideration in discussing my dangerous sleep and regular stroll plans every morning.

But I didn’t inform the app anything for a few days, and a sample begins to emerge: with out telling the AI more about your life and habits, it could possibly’t give you enhancing suggestions. All its advice was about new child sleep debt and foot ache. It was a reminder that for AI instruments to be helpful, you need to put fairly a lot of information in in an effort to get any helpful information back.

The Fitbit Air lacks built-in GPS, however it could possibly connect with your iPhone or Android telephone to make use of related GPS in an effort to plot your run, cycle or climbing routes. For this to work, you have to begin an train from the Google Health app. It works nicely, however common runners ought to look elsewhere for a watch with a show – you gained’t need to examine your telephone screen all the time on your stats.

The Air has exercise auto-tracking, which ought to log a stroll or run even when you don’t begin it from the app, however I discovered this temperamental. It didn’t recognise my first two walks in testing. It did recognise my first run, however then began recognising subsequent walks as runs, which I needed to appropriate in the app later.

Google says the Air has up to seven days of battery life, which I discovered to be correct. Charged to full with the proprietary charging cable, I solely needed to charge as soon as in 13 days, on the eighth day of use. This is nice battery life, but it surely’s notably much less than the older Inspire 3, which might final for ten days with the always-on show function turned off.

There’s a vibration function, but it surely’s just for silent alarms. That’s helpful on your morning wake up call, but it surely’s a disgrace you can’t set it to buzz when you’re getting a call in your telephone.

There can be no NFC, so no option for contactless funds.

Perhaps I’m being harsh on the Fitbit Air, however the expertise of carrying and utilizing one in 2026 is way faraway from the enjoyable whimsy that the Fitbit model was as soon as identified for. Perhaps somebody with out fond reminiscences of the previous Fitbit will probably be much less crucial and luxuriate in the Air for what it’s: a refined, comfy health tracker that – even with out a subscription – provides strong every day health metrics and impressively correct sleep monitoring.

But most people wanting on this price vary will probably be higher served by the Fitbit Charge 6, which is usually on sale for much less than its £139 RRP. It has a screen, the similar seven day battery life, contactless funds and built-in GPS. That mentioned, any Fitbit and Fitbit consumer now has to make use of the Google Health app, which as described on this review, basically adjustments how the gadget works by way of your telephone.

The identically priced Fitbit Inspire 3 £84.99 can be a good different, with a show however much less mature design. The Xiaomi Smart Band 10 additionally matches the Inspire’s specs and options for much less than half the price at £42.99, making it a strong Air different.

The Google Fitbit Air is a good set-and-forget tracker for these with easy fitness band wants. But it’s very a lot a Google gadget, which requires a Google account and for you to inform Google’s AI a lot about your life to be at its most useful. For anybody who desires to trace more than the occasional run, you’re going to need to spend further on a more superior Garmin, Suunto or Coros smartwatch – or, as Google hopes, a a lot more costly Google Pixel Watch.