FITBIT VERSA REVIEW
The Good The Fitbit Versa is a compact, lightweight smartwatch and fitness tracker with an improved interface for easier fitness stat readouts. It’s water-resistant to 50 meters, and works with iOS and Android. Many of the apps and watch faces are useful and fun. Multiday battery life beats the Apple Watch.
The Bad Its battery life falls short of other Fitbit fitness trackers. The apps and watch faces aren’t always easy to load. Music transfer to the watch is complicated and limited. The pricier tap-to-pay model is only available outside the US. There's no on-board GPS and the charger is bulky.
The Bottom Line The Fitbit Versa is the best fusion of smartwatch and general fitness tracker under $200, if you can live with its limitations.
8.0OVERALL
wake up to a buzzing on my wrist, in gentle pulses. It's my Fitbit Versa's alarm clock. I'm able to use the silent alarm because I'm wearing my Fitbit smartwatch to bed. I'm able to wear it to bed because Fitbit's new watch lasts several days on a charge. I love that. It's a nice flashback to my days of wearing the Pebble Watch -- the upstart smartwatch pioneer that Fitbit acquired in the closing days of 2016. In fact, the Versa is literally, as a coworker said, like the Apple Watch and Pebble had a little baby.
I wore the Fitbit Versa while paired to an iPhone X during a week I spent in San Francisco, running around all day at meetings, getting tons of messages and doing three workouts. It's been comfortable, low-key and useful. It gets messages from my phone -- iPhone or Android. The Versa is fully water-resistant for swimming, and it's easy to track my steps, heart rate or start a workout. It's pretty great! And so far, when using the Versa -- coming in April for $199, £199 or AU$299 -- I miss absolutely none of the features of the more expensive Fitbit Ionic.
Is the Versa the best Fitbit ever? Maybe, but its battery life so far has been less than I expected: three days, not four. Still, that longevity runs rings around the Apple Watch. And while the Versa lacks the Apple Watch's deep hook-ins to your phone -- and built-in GPS and cellular options -- it's far more affordable, too. Ultimately, I love how Fitbit has chopped away all of the Ionic's unnecessary extras, and focused on the basics. If you can embrace its limitations -- and the Apple Watch Series 1 isn't on sale -- the Versa is the best fitness-friendly casual smartwatch in its price range.
What's great
The Versa feels small to me. But that compactness is a positive. It feels less bulky than the 42mm Apple Watch Series 3. But it's also wide -- wider than the Apple Watch -- and the square screen has a lot of bezel around it. Still, I like the design a lot.
It's also thinner than the Apple Watch. The included rubber band feels great. Extra bands, like Horween leather and a metal mesh band, look really nice, but were a little difficult to attach. The mesh band needs manual adjustment, unlike Apple Watch's magnetic strap.
The touchscreen is also much more responsive than the Ionic's. Three buttons handle shortcuts for music controls, notifications, exercise start times and alarms. Clicks and click-and-holds can be customized to do other things. You'll have options.
I can get what I need pretty quickly on the Versa, as a smartwatch and as a fitness tracker, and that's what matters most.
The battery life is enough that I can wear the watch to bed. I like wearing watches to bed: I can check the time, I can set alarms, I can track sleep -- all of which Fitbit does a decent job of. It keeps me aware of my terrible bedtime habits.
This Fitbit is also waterproof to 50 meters, like the Ionic and the tiny Flex 2. I wore it in the shower all week, but didn't get a chance to swim with it.
Fitbit's updated on-watch OS has a better design in small ways. (Ionic users are getting the same update, too.) The remote for controlling phone-connected music actually makes sense now, with controls all on one screen. A swipe-up dashboard for fitness tracking stats includes more data. Not as much as I'd like, but the best it's been on a Fitbit: I can scan weekly progress, see recent workouts and look at my resting heart rate.
I compared steps and heart-rate tracking against an Apple Watch Series 3 on my other wrist, and against handgrip heart-rate readings on hotel gym elliptical machines. It offered similar readings and accuracy.
A little world of apps
Fitbit has an app store now, called the App Gallery, that launches from within the Fitbit app. Last year's Fitbit Ionic got these apps back in December, though there will be fewer Versa-compatible apps until they're optimized for the newer watch.
Still, there are more than 50 to try already, including some quirky offerings and watch faces that recall the glory days of the classic Pebble Watch -- everything from tip calculators, apps for Nest and Philips Hue light controls, a Starbucks pay-by-barcode app, Flipboard news headlines and Strava. Others include Yelp, the NY Times and E-Trade.
There are many more watch faces, ranging from quirky and nerdy to absolutely ugly. Some are free trials that require payment beyond Fitbit's app, which gets weird. But there are enough watch faces that I don't get bored with the options, and many offer plenty of stats like fitness, battery life and weather.
What you're missing
The Versa lacks deeper-connected functions that the Apple Watch has: I can't ping my phone. I can't easily sync music. I can't respond to messages with iOS (Android allows canned quick responses). I can't take phone calls via speakerphone. I can't make easy wrist payments -- in the US, the Versa doesn't have Fitbit Pay, but everywhere else it'll come standard, but even then, Fitbit's bank support is limited. I can't use a voice assistant for quick-action things like setting timers. And I can't do things like get directions with maps. But hey: Your phone does all that, right?
Recording workouts is easy, but I don't find the readouts as good as what the Apple Watch offers -- I can't see as many lines of stats and I can't tell the time while working out -- and music controls aren't easy to juggle. Fitbit Coach, a subscription service for workouts, costs extra per month (I haven't used it yet with the Versa), and I'd prefer not to pay for a service for my watch.
Music storage is annoying, too: There's only 2.5GB of onboard music storage, and tracks have to be sideloaded from a computer, unless you subscribe to Pandora or Deezer and sync playlists with those services. None of these options are as good as what the Apple Watch, Google's newly rebranded Wear OS watches or Samsung Gear watches can do. But it's there if you're patient enough to set it up and connect Bluetooth headphones.
I love it despite its shortcomings
If you're OK with those shortfalls, the Versa is really comfortable, surprisingly nice-looking and fun to wear. The shorter-than-most-Fitbits battery life, still slow-to-download apps and clunky main interface hold it back.
Sometimes I even like that it's a little less deeply hooked in to my phone, because that means I am, too. It's a good companion, with just enough connected smarts.
If you're looking for a general everyday fitness watch right now, I think this is the best option if you're not interested in an Apple Watch.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment