Something definitely has been off at Fitbit - I had their first device and then after swearing off smartwatches got a new Fitbit for Christmas. 10 months later I'm on my 3rd watch from them - the first one stopped taking a charge after a few months, the second one the screen went out in a week or two. I'm hoping the third time is the charm
Meanwhile try one, then try an older Apple watch, the Fitbit is straight up trash (with nicer battery life.) Fitbit UX is bad, and requires tons of interaction between the phone and watch and is remarkably hard to use, even switching watch faces requires digging multiple screens into the fitbit app and a 30+ second sync period, on the Apple watch this is known as 'swiping right' or at worst, holding down and tapping 'add new'.
The Pebble was worlds better at this, when I used the Versa I was surprised by it. It sells tons even though Wear OS is way ahead.
Don't discount this feature on a fitness tracker. The most recent Apple Watches are better in this respect compared to the first one, but the battery life is still measured in hours, rather than days.
The UX for a Fitbit as a smartwatch is honestly horrible. The Pebble acquihire prioritized watch apps, in (what I see as) a belief that watch apps are necessary to compete with Apple. Resources would be far better spend improving the first-party UX and apps first, before opening up the ecosystem to outside developers. The iPhone dev kit trailed far behind the initial iPhone launch.
Oh I totally agree, but Apple's advertised battery life is to ensure CSAT and does not reflect reality.
Fact of the matter is that my Series 4 watch has about 2 and a half to three days of battery life, rather than the marketed 16 hours, especially when used like a fitbit (Apple's estimate bundles in music streaming, navigation, and hardcore workouts, and is tested on the smaller model, which has a smaller battery.)
I was a huge pebble fan, I still use my Pebble 2 and Time Round sometimes, the Apple watch is in another league as per what it can do, but I honestly think the Pebbles were still a better product than Fitbit's watch at doing what fitbit is trying to do. Sure the Fitbit has a nicer screen, but what do they do with it?
Exactly this. I’ve grown tired of Fitbit’s lack of cohesive bug-free products — simple things like adjusting the volume of Bluetooth headphones were known bugs for years without progress — and I had to make a choice between jumping off the bandwagon or sticking with Fitbit.
Battery life kept me. Being able to go 4-7 days without thinking about the watch is paramount. I also don’t want to charge every night because I want to track my sleep! So Fitbit won out.
I wish they could succeed independently. They have so much love and stickiness in my friend group and we all love the simplicity of simply an advanced fitness tracker without all the weight of a full-fledged phone on your wrist. Sadly, it seems like they don’t know how to run a company effectively. Which is a shame because I really really don’t want to move to Apple or Google products or anything else in this category until they solve battery life.
Just a heads up: you can get literally weeks out of garmin watches, depending on model and usage patterns. Your concern is exactly why I sold my moto360 and never looked back.
A watch that needs to be charged once in a few days is actually worse than one that could use a charge every night.
Charge at night is a habit that can easily be adjusted to our daily schedule. btw Apple watch does last a full day (I meant 16+ hrs) with decent use, unless you are playing music out of it all the time or obsessively checking time/calendar.
Only advantage of fitbit is that some models are easier to wear to sleep, particularly if you don't need to charge at night. However, even here, apple one is way ahead - the theater mode will make sure the super bright led at the bottom won't wake you up.
No, charge every night would be way worse. My wife uses her Fitbit to track her sleep, and it does this very well (much better than her previous smartwatch). She also tracks how much she walks during the day. A smartwatch that has to be charged every day would be useless to her.
I have no idea about the UI that some people complain about, but my wife seems to have managed to get access quite a bit of functionality in her Fitbit, so I'd say it's good enough for its purpose.
I recommend using a separate sleep tracker. I was using the Fitbit constantly and got some skin irritation when I forgot to swap wrists before bed. Though, I was using a narrow version which probably made things worse.
FWIW my Apple Watch S4 can go a whole weekend on a single charge. I don't use mine extensively, though I do use Apple Pay for every transaction that I can. You can def go 2-2.5 days on a single charge.
That's right, a watch that does literally nothing but tell the time lasts a long time on a single battery charge. If having to charge your watch is not worth the benefits/luxuries provided by an expensive smartwatch, a smartwatch might not be for you.
To give a quick summary: I look at the upcoming weather, see the times of upcoming meetings, see messages people have sent me, pause/resume/skip tracks on currently-playing music, track hikes or walks, record audio, check my heart rate, check the current time/date, and pay for stuff.
Wearing a watch during sleep is annoying and can actually lead to health issues. Get a proper sleep tracker (e.g. Withings) for this. Charging nightly is perfect for a watch, really is a pro for the Apple Watch.
What I've ended up doing is charging my fitbit for 15min every morning while I get dressed.
It's enough to go from ~60% to ~80% and fits in as a daily habit, so my watch is almost always between 65% and 80%, It can track my sleep (I exclusively use my watch for tracking sleep, tracking exercise, tracking heartrate and telling the time. I don't have notifications enabled)
Then perhaps the best feature of charging the watch in this way, is that if you forget to charge (or unexpectedly away from home), the watch will always last for 3 extra days.
And if you are going away on short weekend trips, you don't need to pack your charger, just make sure it's at 100% before you leave for a reliable 4 days of usage.
This is what I do too.
However if you look at some of Fitbit's competitors the battery life is an order of magnitude better. Wondering what Fitbit is doing to make it drop so much in comparison. Lots of more features?
My Garmin only needs to be charged about once a week. If I'm using it a lot for fitness then twice a week. Once I traveled and forgot the charger, I managed to eek nearly two weeks out of the thing. I find this much better than daily charging and have steered away from watches that need to be charged daily.
Which Garmin model? I'm in the market for a running watch and/or a fitness tracker and want to buy a decent Garmin. Most online reviews seem all over the place.
I have a Garmin Instinct. When I don't have many workouts, it gives me 2-3 weeks of battery (including instant phone notifications over Bluetooth, constant heart rate, barometer, and step tracking)
I went on a 2 week trip to Europe and didnt even bring my charger -- lasted the whole time. I've had it for a year now and it's rock solid. It's been in the ocean with me, and been smashed into rocks on backpacking trips. Still in great shape.
I don't endorse many things very heavily but this thing is amazing. It's not sexy with it's black and white screen and small selection of watch faces... But it's so nice never needing to charge it, it's basically indestructible, and does everything you'd want a smart watch to do
This is just completely wrong. Garmin watches only need to be charged every few days of normal use and it's not a problem at all. Habits are irrelevant, just throw it on the charger for a few minutes when you see the battery gauge getting low.
I want a watch that only needs to be charged once in a few days, because I want to wear it at night for it to track my sleep and wake me up and I could charge it while I shower (every 2 days, in case you're wondering).
My wife does this with her Apple Watch and she only charges it while she’s in the shower and 15 mins or so before bed. It always lasts the full day. I was surprised when I learned this. So it might not be there for you yet. But it’s close.
I charge it for half an hour after my morning workout(while taking a shower and getting ready) and for 15 minutes once in the evening I sleep. I track both my sleep and workouts, and keep it wearing throughout the day otherwise.
While it might not be as 'smart' as some other ones out there. The Nokia/Withings Charge HR has sleep tracking, heart rate tracking, vibrates and does notifications too. The battery easily lasts a month sometimes longer.
Well I've had a Versa for over a year and it's been great. Basically it's a fitbit that also shows notifications from my phone. It has some simple apps that you can use for workouts or some other single-use trivial things.
The configuration part of the fitbit companion app is frustrating. But that's where the UI belongs and where it should be fixed. I have zero interest in a watch that's an even smaller and more frustrating phone UI.
Mostly I like only having to charge my watch every 3-4 days because it's long enough to forget about needing to charge it.
The real problem to be seen with the Versa lies in the source of its software being a better example of how to build their product.
I had a Pebble since their first kickstarter and the work Pebble did to make exactly what you are talking about blew Fitbit's current product out of the water (Even though Fitbit bought them and used their tech to make the Ionic and Versa). The Pebbles were faster, lighter, smaller, with better battery life (2+ weeks!) and a fantastic UX (By the same people who worked at Palm on WebOS). Sure they didn't have a touch screen, but they also intentionally had enough buttons to not need one. (Meaning they worked better with gloves)
Then you talk software quality, after using the Versa for a little while, the biggest problem is that its UI is such a mess to use. If you don't want to configure a watch face on the Watch, the Apple watch has that feature too and it is instant and easy to use, just like the Pebble was. Once you use everything else it's really clear that the smart features on the Versa are an afterthought that Fitbit tasked some scrum team to get done and shoved in the app in a week, marked the task as done, and moved on, forgetting that for the casual user, that is the only other thing you want to do with the app.
The other entire problem is that the Apple Watch is complex...but only as complex as you want it to be. If you never click the home button it can do everything you do with your watch with a nicer (bigger) screen, an easier, and a faster UI, and plus it has Siri and much better notification access. Fitbit is stuck between Apple and Garmin and they justy can't pick one. I imagine the Google sale would fix that pretty fast.
Buying a fitbit is just buying a fitbit like buying a Casio is just buying a Casio. If Apple Watch were some agnostic thing that didn't require dragging an entire ecosystem I don't live in with it, I'd probably consider it. Assuming the battery life didn't suck. As is I'll probably go with Garmin when it's time. Google is the kiss of death and if Fitbit is being shopped to Google then they're dead already.
My Pebble Time Steel from Kickstarter still works nicely and looks like new (I have changed the straps though).
I take it swimming, it has been dropped multiple times, it has had some hard knocks but the metal frame protects the glass and it seems indestructible. I am also surprised that battery charge still holds almost a week.
They did have great potential but apparently consumers didn't agree. And then they sold their IP to Fitbit. :(
I think consumers agreed. The company just seems to have been vastly mismanaged. I find it amazing that nobody is just copying it. Hell, Fitbit could sell exactly that model and have a winner on their hands (the Versa contains some insane mistakes).
Yeah, on the two Pebble OGs I owned, they had frequent display issues. However, it turned out it's because the display connector somehow starts wiggling loose or something.
You can actually fix the display-glitching yourself by adding a paper/cardboard shim. It actually works! There's an excellent post[0] that outlines the process. I had to redo mine because it wasn't quite thick enough, but after I did that mine was good to go for a long time. I think you might have to redo it when the shim gets worn down and doesn't put enough pressure on the display connector? Not sure...
yes - I sadly left my kickstarter edition on a beach, and tried replacing it with a steel and both watches I ended up buying had screen tearing issues. Tried all the tricks, but ended up going back to my old analog.
Probably received free replacements. I had 3 break down on me and only once did I have to pay shipping, coincidentally that was the last time I asked for a replacement. perhaps I am bitter.
Their support was great but when it doesn't perform the basic function of syncing with my phone or desktop app, what good is it? I had software and hardware problems (band breaks easily) on all of them.
Yeah, they were good about giving me free replacements whenever I had an issue, if not I definitely wouldn't have purchased a new device. I just swapped in the new replacement screen this morning, hopefully it works for a good long while
I just upgraded from Series 0 to Series 5. Passed it down to another family member. Battery still lasts whole day, and in general it was doing same tasks as a new one. Biggest issue I had with the old one is that it wasn't waterproof.
I've had the opposite experience. I've bought each gen of the FitBit. I never found the new version compelling enough to buy immediately (but that's generally how I feel about phones and computers, too). I think gen 1 had the strap break after a few years (it was annoyingly wasn't replaceable). Gen 2 did suddenly just die after a few years. In both cases the newer version had been out for awhile and competitors didn't look too compelling. Each upgrade was nice, too.
I did have a charging issue, but it was because I left the charger plugged in inside the bathroom. I guess the steam from showers corroded the charging posts causing them eventually to no longer make contact with the watch. I bought a few replacements from Amazon for <$20 total and started unplugging it when it wasn't charging and I haven't had the issue in years.
This was my experience as well. I had a Charge HR back when they first came out, and the glue holding the band to the display dissolved after about 4 months. Got a warranty replacement and it stopped holding a charge after about 5 more months. Sold that warranty replacement on ebay and got a watch from a competitor that's lasted for 3 years without trouble.
