With a staggering 27 million active users globally, Fitbit really does have the whole fitness world in its hands.
And it’s the new generation of the
The biggest revelation of the new watch is the introduction of Fitbit Premium, a paid service where your stats on sleep, nutrition, fitness and even breathing and stress are analyses and communicated more individually.
But for mere mortals like me who just want a great all round fitness watch, the Fitbit Versa 2 has Spotify, and using my headphones I can tap into my smartwatch and my playlists when running (from the watch), so I no longer need to run with my phone. Hallelujah!
It also means I can fast forward my play list whilst driving without touching my phone (which is against the law in Australia). Another plus for me.
Amazon’s Alexa is also on board. As long as you have an Amazon account you can log in and sign up and ask Alexa for the nearest sushi bar, number of calories in your burger or just about anything else. The answer to your question appears on your Fitbit screen. Also useful during, say, a cycling class.
The sleeping component is also excellent, as the app has detailed graphs on rem, light and deep sleep. Translated, that means you start to see not just the length of your sleep, but the real quality of your sleep and where things are not working within your sleep cycle.
Tracked over several weeks, this makes it easy and obvious to see if things are not working in the bedroom for you (when sleeping that is). This is then useful in a lot of ways, but especially for discovering sleep apnea or any other obstructive health issues.
In the US, the Fitbit premium service is taking it even further, trialling personal practitioners -in others words you have a qualified expert who has your medical data and monitors your progress, whether your goal is to lose weight, sleep better or get healthy.
They then give ongoing advice directly to you about how to improve your health depending on the stats your smartwatch has collected over the past weeks or months.
Fitbit gave me a Versa 2 to trial and there is no doubt this is a terrific, easy to use product.
And at $329.95 it really does give the Apple Smart Watch – starting at $650 for the newest model – a decent run for its money.
Even simply as a watch to tell the time, I do like the Fitbit Versa 2, and the extra bands and colours add to the user experience.
It’s a lot of fun, easy to use and really does push my fitness. Click here for more.