The sleek and attractive Fitbit Luxe is by far the most elegant fitness tracker around. It’s also currently reduced in Amazon’s Black Friday sale—a deal that makes this tracker even more desirable than usual. 

The Luxe offers a useful combination of activity, health and sleep tracking. I wore it for my Fitbit Luxe review and found it gave me the nudge I needed to be more active every day. The AMOLED screen may be small but it’s bright and colorful, and the Luxe also has stress tracking and provides mindfulness breathing exercises that you can follow on the tracker.

UK readers will be pleased to know they can enjoy a similar saving.

Amazon gives the RRP as $129.95/£129.95 but that’s no longer true, as Fitbit now has the MSRP set at $99.95/£99.99. Regardless of the starting price, the sale price represents good value. Plus, you’ll get six months of Fitbit Premium membership included, which costs $80/£80 for a year. 

The silicon strap the Luxe comes with is comfortable and unobtrusive, but I’d opt to pair it with a stylish mesh strap, reduced to $6.39, for a more stylish look.

Fitbit is offering a bigger discount on the special edition gorjana soft gold stainless steel parker link bracelet, taking $80 off the MSRP. 

It’s a great tracker for daily activity and health stats, but the Luxe doesn’t have built-in GPS (it uses your phone’s signal), and the screen is a little small to work as a running watch. If that’s a dealbreaker but your heart is set on a Fitbit, look at the Fitbit Versa 4, currently reduced to $149 on Amazon. It’s a great all-round tracker that will track your runs and other outside activities with built-in GPS.

Keep up with the latest discounts with our coverage of the best Fitbit Black Friday deals.

The Fitbit Charge 6 is the flagship band in Fitbit’s line-up and has most of the features you get from smartwatches; it’s like the Fitbit Sense 3 in a slimmer, less conspicuous design. It’s rich in features and one of the best fitness trackers for monitoring general activity and sleep, but its poor accuracy makes it less impressive when tracking workouts.

Fitbit Charge 6: Price And Availability

The Fitbit Charge 6 launched in September 2023 and costs $159.95 in the US and £139.99 in the UK. That’s $10/£10 more than the current RRP of the Fitbit Charge 5, though the older tracker had a higher RRP of $179.95/£169.99 when it launched.

You may well find this device included in sales, so it's worth checking Coach's Black Friday Fitbit deals page in November and our round up of Amazon Prime Day Fitbit deals in July and October.

How I Tested This Fitness Tracker

I’ve worn the Fitbit Charge 6 for two weeks, using it to track all my daily activity, sleep and workouts in that time. I’m a keen runner and have recorded runs most days with the Charge 6, as well as tracking strength workouts, yoga and a couple of bike rides. I’ve also tested several previous versions of the Charge, including the Charge 5, and other Fitbit devices including the Sense and Versa smartwatches.

Design And Hardware

The Fitbit Charge 6 has a similar look to the Charge 5, with a 1.04in AMOLED touchscreen on a slim silicone band that comes in three colors: black, gold/coral, and silver/white. You can replace this band with a variety of options made from different materials available from Fitbit and third parties.

I found the screen reasonably easy to read, even during activities, though it lacks the clarity of a smartwatch display. I also found that the always-on display was too dim when exercising outdoors, so I opted for raise-to-wake mode because I had to turn my wrist and wake the screen to see any stats on the move anyway.

There are two important changes to the hardware on the Charge 6. One is the new haptic button, which makes it easier to wake the device and navigate the menus. The other is the new heart rate sensor, which Fitbit says will be 60% more accurate during vigorous exercise sessions.

The Fitbit Charge 6 has built-in GPS that uses GPS and GLONASS satellite systems to track outdoor activities without your phone, along with sensors that allow it to take ECG scans and measure your electrodermal activity (EDA), skin temperature and heart rate variability. It doesn’t have a barometric altimeter, so it can’t track the floors you climb.

With a water-resistance rating of 5ATM, the Fitbit Charge 6 can withstand depths of up to 50m and it is suitable for pool swimming.

Activity, Health And Sleep Tracking

The Fitbit Charge 6 is a capable fitness tracker loaded with features that provide insights into your body. Your daily activity is monitored and you can see things like your step count, active minutes, active time and calories burned by swiping down from the main watch face. You are also prompted to tackle 250 steps each hour to stay active throughout the day.

If you’re a Fitbit Premium member you are also given a daily readiness score based on factors like your recent workouts, sleep and heart rate variability, which is measured each night. This is similar to features you get from the Oura ring and Whoop trackers, as well as Garmin watches that have the brand’s training readiness feature.

With the Charge 6, however, the readiness score was rarely of any use, since doing pretty much any kind of workout the day before would see a low readiness rating the following day. Given that I run almost daily and have done for years, I consistently got low readiness ratings even when I was fresh, though these were also skewed by the inaccurate heart rate readings during activities.

The health tracking features are more impressive. By holding the device on either side with your thumb and forefinger, you can take ECG measurements and EDA scans. The latter detects small amounts of sweat on your skin and measures your stress levels. There’s also a stress-management score in the app you can use to judge the state of your body, which overlaps somewhat with the readiness score.

In the partner app you receive insights into your skin temperature, blood oxygen saturation, breathing rate and heart rate variability, which are compared with your baseline so you can see if there are any variations outside your normal range.

There’s a lot of data to dive into and it’s impressive that such a small device can measure so much while still offering long battery life. It can be overwhelming, however, which is why it’s a shame the readiness score has been so useless for me, because it’s a good way for this data to be distilled into a simple score that indicates the state of your body. That said, getting the hard numbers on each stat and noting how they differ from your baseline is likely more accurate than relying on a combined score if you have the time.

The Charge 6 offers a high level of detail regarding your night’s rest. It struggled to track my sleep patterns accurately because I’m frequently awake in the night for longish periods with a baby. As a result, the Charge 6 often logged my sleep in multiple parts, so rather than an eight-hour period broken up with awake periods, I was logged as having slept for three hours, then another two hours, in the same night.

This seemed to negatively affect my overall sleep ratings, with low sleep scores for two stints of sleep that might add up to something better if considered as a whole. But overall, I’m not sleeping well at the moment and the Fitbit Charge 6’s ratings reflected that.

Sports Tracking And Accuracy

The Fitbit Charge 6 is loaded with sports modes, including new ones like CrossFit and HIIT, and has built-in GPS for outdoor activities. It can, though, also be set to use your phone’s GPS or, in dynamic mode, to use your phone’s GPS when available and then switch to built-in if you go out of range of your phone.

It won’t be a useful GPS tracker unless you carry your phone with you, because the built-in GPS is useless. Not only does it take ages to lock on at the start of a run or ride—to the point where I often had to start without it locking on because it was a waste of time—but when using the built-in GPS, the distance and pace tracking were inaccurate too. The GPS trace often had me running through buildings and the overall distance was wrong compared with accurate sports watches. When using my phone’s GPS the Charge 6 was more useful in tracking runs, even if it was still less accurate than sports watches with all-systems or multi-band GPS.

I found the heart rate tracking disappointing during runs, especially given the new sensor. The readings I got during almost every run were too high when compared with a chest strap, which then skewed other stats on the watch, like readiness and active minutes.

The accuracy was better during other kinds of workouts, such as strength workouts, walks and yoga. For the most part, the readings matched a chest strap during low-intensity indoor workouts, but if I did something more vigorous I found the accuracy dropped.

The Charge 6 automatically recognizes certain activities and prompts you to start a workout. Even if you dismiss this, which I did on general walks about town, so I could still see the main watch face, the activity is logged in the Fitbit app.

Another new feature is the ability to broadcast your heart rate from the Charge 6 to compatible cardio machines, like Peloton, Concept2 and NordicTrack machines, This means you can see your heart rate on screen during workouts, which can be handy, if the heart rate measured by the Charge 6 is accurate at the time.

The Fitbit Charge 6 was a disappointment for sports tracking. This isn’t its core feature, and if people are keen on sports they’ll probably buy a dedicated sports watch instead. But given what the Charge 6 suggests it’s able to do in this area, it underperforms.

Battery Life

Fitbit lists the battery life on the Charge 6 as up to seven days, with caveats that using the always-on screen and SpO2 sensor will bring that down. I tended not to use the always-on display because it wasn’t that bright, and the raise-to-wake feature was reliable. I got five to six days out of the Charge 6 between charges even with a lot of outdoor running. Given how many features the tracker has and how small it is, the battery life is impressive.

Smart Features

The Charge 6 is impressively smart, with new features including NFC payments through Google Wallet and a Google Maps app. The latter relies on your phone being nearby but can provide directions on the Charge 6 once you set it up in the phone app.

You can now control music playback on YouTube Music using the device, though this is less useful than general music controls. Google owns YouTube Music and none of the other more popular streaming services, so it makes sense, but it’s disappointing that the feature is so limited, especially because Fitbit devices offered general music controls in the past.

Is The Fitbit Charge 6 Worth It?

The Fitbit Charge 6 is a great activity tracker and the best option if you want a band, rather than a sports watch, on your wrist. It’s a subpar sports tracker, with heart rate accuracy that’s unreliable during higher-intensity activities, and the built-in GPS is essentially pointless, but if you’re mostly using it to track activity and sleep with the odd indoor workout, it will be fine.

It’s impressive how much has been crammed into the band, with an array of sensors that provide insightful health tracking and smart features that are useful at times. It’s a better all-round device than the Charge 5, though it still prompts similar frustrations, such as the poor GPS and the fact you need a Fitbit Premium subscription to get the most from the health and sleep tracking.

The Fitbit Charge 6 has been announced and Google’s fingerprints are all over the new fitness tracker that now features Google Maps and Google Pay, and which allows you to control the playback of YouTube Music on your phone. 

This is still a fitness-focused device and so other key upgrades from the Fitbit Charge 5 include a heart rate sensor that Fitbit says is the most accurate it’s ever had in one of its trackers. There are also 20 new sports modes available, including CrossFit and HIIT.

The new heart rate sensor is intended to be particularly useful during vigorous workouts, such as HIIT sessions, where Fitbit says it is 60% more accurate than previous sensors. You can now broadcast your heart rate data from the Fitbit Charge 6, so you’ll be able to see it live on cardio machines from Peloton, NordicTrack and Concept2.

While it looks similar to the Fitbit Charge 5, the Charge 6 adds a haptic feedback button, which will hopefully make it easier to navigate the fitness tracker’s menus. A Zoom Magnifier accessibility feature has been added and this allows you to get larger text on the device.

The Fitbit Charge 6 is now clearly a Google device: this starts with the fact you need a Google account to use it, though it still works with iOS and Android phones. The addition of Google Pay and turn-by-turn directions through Google Maps makes it the smartest Charge yet, and useful features have been lifted from the Google Pixel Watch.

It’s now possible to control music playback on YouTube Music on your phone, if you have a YouTube Music premium account. This is still a somewhat limited feature compared with other devices, most of which can store music, or at least control music on your phone from any source.

You can order the Fitbit Charge 6 now and shipping is to start on October 12th. It costs $159.95 in the US and £139.99 in the UK. That makes it $10/£10 more expensive than the Charge 5 costs now—though the Charge 5 did have an RRP of $179.95/£169.99 on its launch.

 Who you choose to work out with can make a world of difference to your experience and your motivation to exercise. And who better to work out with than Davina McCall, one of the UK’s most popular TV presenters with a growing sideline in health and fitness?

Fitbit Premium is offering anyone with a subscription (or anyone who wants to take advantage of a 90-day trial) the chance to work out with McCall as part of her six-week Summer Sculpt Challenge, which aims to help you feel fit and healthy for summer.

The new videos began being released in mid-April and I tried them to help you decide if it’s worth your time.

What Is Davina McCall’s Fitbit Workout Program?

 The new program comes from Own Your Own Goals, McCall’s workout app. The plan asks you to perform three workouts a week, varying the type each time. In week one, the first class is lower and upper-body, class two is cardio and core, and class three is a full-body and flexibility session.

Most of the classes require some equipment such as an exercise mat or dumbbells. McCall uses both light and medium weight dumbbells, so an adjustable pair is best (and we have plenty of options in our round-up of the best dumbbells) if you’re working out at home. 

The classes are mostly around the 30-minute mark, and in the first two weeks none is longer than 34 minutes, including both a warm-up and warm-down. 

Here Are Three Things I Liked About The Summer Sculpt Challenge…

1. The Workouts Kept Me Motivated

 I’ve never been very good at home workouts, although I’ve tried a lot of workout videos. I struggle to find the motivation to keep going and if I think about how close I am to making a cup of tea, that’s usually the final nail in the coffin. However, the trainers in the Sculpt Challenge were more motivational than most. Perhaps it was having fitness icon McCall watching me as I sweated in my living room, but I didn’t feel the urge to stop and make a cuppa. The trainers are motivating and make the classes fun.

2. You Don’t Have To Look At Your Watch

 On the right-hand side of the video—either on your phone or your laptop, if you cast from your phone like I did—you will see the workout metrics your Fitbit is tracking. These include your heart rate, calories burned and Active Zone Minutes. 

3. The Workouts Scale To Your Level

 A bonus is that the workouts are accessible for all levels of fitness, with guided descriptions of movements from the trainers throughout the videos. The intensity of each exercise can be easily adapted too with heavier weights. 

…And Two Things I Didn’t

1. It’s Still Worth Manually Starting A Workout On Your Fitbit

Even though your stats are beamed onto the screen, the watch doesn’t start tracking an event you can review in the app afterward, so if you want a complete record of your effort, be sure to start it manually on your watch. On my Fitbit Versa 4 I chose the generic “workout” activity option.

2. It Was All Over Too Soon

 I felt the classes could have been longer. With the warm-up and warm-down accounting for around 10 minutes of the routine, you’re left with just around 20 minutes’ dedicated workout time. 

However, if you’re completely new to workout classes and routines such as these, the Summer Sculpt Challenge is a great way to add a new plan to your fitness regime. I followed the first two weeks alongside my normal marathon training programme and found it easy to add the extra training in, especially on days I couldn’t be bothered heading to the gym! 

How To Sign Up For Davina McCall’s Summer Sculpt Challenge

 The classes are available only as part of the Fitbit Premium subscription. This costs $9.99/£7.99 a month or $79.99/£79.99 a year if you pay up front. The Summer Sculpt Challenge isn’t the only workout plan available on the platform, however: You’ll find everything from yoga and Pilates to HIIT, targeted strength training and even dance training videos, while owners of some Fitbit trackers get extra metrics like a Daily Readiness Score.

Other Workout Apps And Home Workout Plans To Consider

 Of course, Fitbit Premium isn’t the only workout app and Coach has tried plenty. Our review of the Peloton App found it offered great value and plenty of variety. Chris Hemsworth’s Centr app is like having a personal trainer, meal planner and mindfulness coach—and is as intense as that sounds. Apple Fitness+ is great if you own an iPhone or Apple Watch. But, the best workout app, in our opinion, is Fiit, especially now it broadcasts dozens of free fitness classes every day.

Or, if you’re trying to reduce your screen time, follow this home workout plan or this home strength training plan instead.

Where ordinary scales just display your weight, smart scales connect wirelessly with your phone and, in most cases, use an electrical current to estimate metrics such as body fat percentage, muscle mass, bone mass, water content and so on. While the accuracy of some of these measurements is questionable on home smart scales, as long as the readings are consistent it can be a useful tool to see how your body is changing in response to exercise or a change in diet.

I have reviewed several of the best smart scales, so I wanted to see how Fitbit’s new effort compared. The Fitbit Aria Air is a Bluetooth-connected smart scale and the only scale Fitbit sells. It follows the original Fitbit Aria, and the Aria 2, both of which used WiFi to connect, and both of which measured body fat percentage as well as weight. The Aria Air, however, does not measure any other metrics. It just weighs you, and then uses your height and weight data to calculate your BMI.

Fitbit Aria Air: Price And Availability

The Fitbit Aria Air Bluetooth Smart Scale is available online from Fitbit at an RRP of $49.95/£49.99. It’s also available from third-party retailers including Amazon.

The price compares well to other established tracking brands – Garmin’s Index S2 is more than twice as much – but there are cheaper models available from the likes of Renpho and Xiaomi that also measure more metrics.

Design

A minimalist square of black or white glass with rounded corners, this scale certainly looks smart. On the underside of the scale there’s a button to switch between pounds, stones and kilograms. The screen is clear and easy to read, it takes mere seconds for your weight to appear, and the reading remains on the screen for about 30 seconds. 

Setting Up

Set-up was easy: pull the plastic tab out of the battery compartment and the scale is ready to connect. It was a breeze to add the scale in the Fitbit app and connect to it via Bluetooth.

Using The App

You’ll need the Fitbit app open on your phone in order to register a weigh-in. The app will display the latest reading, but unlike most other smart scales, you need to tap “save” in order to record your weight – just having the app open is not enough to register the data. 

Multiple users can share the same scale, using their own smartphone and the Fitbit app. Although Fitbit doesn’t mention exactly how many users, it seems safe to assume it’s quite a few.

The app shows your weight, plus an average for the week. A weight trend chart shows your weight at each weigh-in plotted on a graph, and on the same graph there’s a line showing the general trend, ironing out any fluctuations and making the direction of travel easier to see. There’s also a graph showing how your BMI has changed over time. 

If you’ve previously imported data that included body fat percentage from another scale into your Fitbit account, then your last body fat percentage recording is carried over and added to your new weigh-ins. Essentially you’re stuck on that body fat percentage forever with the Aria – a frustrating situation. 

It’s a shame Fitbit removed the ability to measure body fat composition from the Aria, as this would have given it another dimension and made it feel like a truly smart scale, rather than just a digital scale that connects to your phone.

Accuracy

If, like me, you store the scale out of sight and then bring it out to weigh yourself, know that like some other smart scales we’ve reviewed it has issues zeroing on the first attempt after being moved. The first weigh-in is inaccurate and a second weigh-in takes a few pounds off. However, once it was properly zeroed, I found it accurate and consistent.

Is The Fitbit Aria Air Worth It?

Although priced a little high for something that’s essentially a Bluetooth-connected digital scale, if you already have a Fitbit device then the attractive Aria Air could be a convenient addition that allows your weight to be integrated seamlessly into the rest of your health and fitness data. But if you’re interested in your body fat percentage or any other body composition stats, you’d be wise to give this one-trick pony a miss. 

If you want a slick experience, the Withings Body Cardio is our top pick for a smart scale. If you’re on a tight budget, try the Renpho Smart scale, and if you’re a Garmin user, consider the Garmin Index S2.

The Versa 4 launched in September 2022 alongside the brand’s flagship health-focused smartwatch, the Sense 2, which looks almost identical but is more expensive. Fitbit has positioned the Versa 4 as its fitness-focused smartwatch, with built-in GPS and tracking for 40 different types of exercise.

Alongside plenty of advanced health tracking features the Versa 4 offers smartwatch features such as the ability to conduct calls through the watch, contactless payments, and Alexa voice assistant. Blurring the line between tracker, smartwatch and sports watch, the Versa 4 offers an attractive package of features for a reasonable price.

I’ve been wearing the Versa 4 for six weeks, and have tested all its features thoroughly during that time. I’ve found it convenient and comfortable, with plenty of useful features, although I was disappointed by the performance in some areas, notably GPS tracking of runs.

Fitbit Versa 4: Price And Availability

The Versa 4 is available from Fitbit and other retailers with an RRP of $229.95 in the US and £199.99 in the UK. It comes with six months of Fitbit Premium, which after that will cost you $9.99/£7.99 a month or $79.99/£79.99 a year.

By way of comparison, the Fitbit Sense 2 is $299.95/£269.99.

Design

Like the Sense 2, the Versa 4 has an attractive square 1.58in (40mm) AMOLED display with rounded edges that’s beautifully sharp with vivid colours. The slim profile makes it comfortable to wear and the Versa comes with a silicon band in four colours, although there are other straps available to buy. You can choose from a handful of clock faces, although these can be changed only in the app. 

The Versa 4 is slimmer and lighter than the Versa 3 and has one notable improvement: a physical button – hallelujah! Stopping and starting an activity is now much easier, thanks to the button, which on the Versa 3 was a touch panel that caused the Coach team much annoyance. The button also functions as a shortcut to whatever you want – Alexa, Fitbit Pay or your favourite type of exercise.

Fitbit Versa 4 Vs Fitbit Sense 2

At first glance the Versa 4 is indistinguishable from the Sense 2, but it costs significantly less. So, what’s the difference? While the Versa 4 is focused mainly on fitness, the Sense 2 adds stress management features. The Sense 2 has sensors to keep tabs on electrodermal activity (“tiny electrical changes on your skin”) and your skin temperature to log physical responses to stress (or its absence), and the Sense 2 offers ways to manage stress, such as mindfulness sessions. 

The Versa 4 doesn’t have these features, although it does track plenty of health metrics, including your skin temperature at night, and provides a daily stress management score. It also offers guided breathing from the Relax app. 

If you’re not that bothered by stress tracking and want a more fitness-focused approach from your watch, then the Versa is certainly the better-value choice.

Battery Life

Fitbit claims the Versa 4 (like the Sense 2) offers a minimum of six days of battery life, which I found accurate. A fast-charge feature means you can get 24 hours of juice from a 12-minute charge.

Smart Features

As well as receiving notifications from your choice of apps on your phone, the Versa 4 allows you to take calls on your watch. The sound isn’t of great quality from the watch’s built-in speaker, but it does allow you to pick up calls you might otherwise miss.

You can set up on-wrist payment via Fitbit Pay and, in a recent change, Google Wallet too. That’s a welcome change since at the moment few bank cards are supported by Fitbit Pay in the UK. I had issues getting Fitbit Pay to work at first – an awkward moment holding up the bus queue ensued – but after setting it up a second time it worked fine. 

The Versa 4 has Alexa voice assistant, which can give you location-based info – it correctly recommended where I could get a coffee nearby, for example.

Although Fitbit is now owned by Google, there’s still no sign of Fitbit’s trackers running Wear OS, and one of the limitations of the Versa 4 is that it won’t run third-party apps. From the app you can add a limited number of Fitbit’s own apps to your device, such as Relax (guided breathing) and Find My Phone.

From the watch, it’s easy to navigate the software and you can rearrange the tile-based system with taps and flicks on the watch’s touchscreen. It’s a shame there’s no music storage or third-party music apps like Deezer, which the Versa 3 had, and even the basic ability to control music playing on your phone has been removed from the 4, which is a disappointment.

Activity Tracking

As we’ve come to expect from Fitbit, the daily tracking on the Versa 4 is excellent, counting steps, flights of stairs climbed, distance travelled and Active Zone Minutes (based on the near-universal recommendation of 150 minutes of moderate activity a week). It encourages you to take 250 steps every hour, which is more than required by the hourly move alert from Garmin.

The default clock face has a pleasing colourful stripe that fills up illustrating your steps taken, Active Zone Minutes and heart rate.

“Today’s activity” is a useful summary screen presenting all your main stats, with tappable icons that take you through to more detailed info. Much like Garmin sports watches, there’s also a heart rate graph for the last two hours, with your minimum and maximum BPM for that time period.

The useful Daily Readiness Score – a Premium-only feature – interprets your health and activity data and gives you an idea of whether you’re over- or under-training. It’s similar to Garmin’s body battery score.

Sleep Tracking

As usual, the high-quality sleep tracking sets Fitbit’s devices apart from others. Fitbit has a habit of hiding its best features behind a Premium paywall, but even non-premium users get Fitbit’s sleep score and sleep stages, with detailed info about how much time you spent in each stage and a benchmark. Premium users get even more detail and long-term trends in Sleep insights.

Another feature limited to Premium subscribers is your Sleep profile, which analyses your sleep data and trends, labelling you as a particular animal (the usefulness of this is debatable) and offering tips to improve your habits. 

Health Metrics

The Versa 4 collects data while you sleep – your breathing rate, heart rate variability, night-time skin temperature and SpO2 – which can give you an overview of your health, perhaps indicating when you might be run down and need to give yourself a break.

Fitbit uses your sleep and health data to give you a daily stress management score out of 100. It’s a useful indication of your general stress levels, but if you want more detailed real-time stress tracking, you’d be better off with the Sense 2.

The Versa 4 also looks out for heart problems: it can notify you of abnormal high or low heart rate readings when you appear to be inactive, and it also looks for signs of AFib, an irregular heart rhythm condition.

Exercise Tracking

The Versa 4 is billed as a fitness-focused watch and it lives up to this with 40 types of activities to choose from. There’s no need to select a handful of your most often used exercise types – all are readily available to use on the watch. Best of all, it’s easy to stop and start any activity with the button.

The watch has seven exercise types with auto recognition: walk, run, outdoor cycle, elliptical, sports, aerobic workout and swimming. You can set the initial amount of time before the auto-recognition kicks in and logs a workout.

Outdoor exercise activities have GPS tracking, although it’s not comparable to the accuracy of a dual-band sports watch. Every time I logged a walk, run or cycle, GPS was slow to connect, sometimes requiring up to 15 minutes, and the accuracy of the tracking wasn’t great – the log of the route often jumped around the map erratically – although both problems did seem to improve over time. The GPS also saps the battery considerably – the watch will last just five hours with GPS enabled.

Heart rate tracking was similarly underwhelming – it was usually in the right ballpark but often missed spikes during exercise. I wasn’t expecting the optical wrist-based reading to be totally reliable, as opposed to a more accurate chest strap, but it would make it hard to train based on your heart rate zone.

For casual exercisers logging the odd run or cycle, the GPS and heart rate tracking is just about acceptable, but for anyone who trains regularly with a goal, it’s not up to scratch.

Is The Fitbit Versa 4 Worth It?

For most casual exercisers the Versa 4 has the basics covered, and it comes in an attractive smartwatch package. However if you’re serious about fitness and want accurate GPS tracking that connects fast, you’re probably better off looking at one of the best fitness smartwatches or best running watches, such as the Garmin Forerunner 55 or the Coros Pace 2, both of which are cheaper and offer better sports tracking. 

If you want proper smartwatch features with your fitness tracking, you could consider the Apple Watch SE 2 (from $249/£259) or the Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 ($279.99/£289). 

Within the same tracker-smartwatch cross-over category, the similarly priced Garmin Venu 2 ($249.99/£229.99) offers a comparable package of smart features and we rated its sports tracking more highly. It’s also been around for a while so if you’re patient you’re sure to find it in a sale. If music storage is important to you, check out the Garmin Venu Sq 2 Music ($299.99/£259.99), which connects to subscription streaming services like Spotify and Amazon Music, allowing you to save playlists to the watch.

However, if you don’t mind missing out on some smart features, and won’t lose sleep over GPS or heart rate accuracy, the Versa 4 is worth considering at this price.

There are always a lot of great Black Friday Fitbit deals available each year, and picking out the best fitness tracker from the sales can be a tricky affair. If in doubt, however, it’s always smart to simply pick up the cheapest Fitbit in the sales, because most of what you buy with a Fitbit is access to the excellent ecosystem.

The Fitbit Inspire 2 is a great example of this. It’s reduced to just £44.99 in the Amazon Black Friday sale and while it’s not the newest or most feature-rich device in Fitbit’s line-up, it’s the best deal going.

As you’d expect from a Fitbit at any price, the Inspire 2 is an excellent activity and sleep tracker, and its slim design and monochrome display mean it’s a subtle presence on the wrist, so you can wear it with another watch.

Despite its small size the Inspire 2 lasts 10 days on a charge even while tracking your heart rate continuously. It also tracks your workouts automatically and logs your active zone minutes, so you can monitor your progress towards a weekly goal of 150 minutes. It’s the perfect tracker to put on and forget about, knowing that it’s logging all your activity and sleep to check in on later.

Fitbit did launch the Inspire 3 recently and it does have a brighter colour screen than the 2, along with SpO2 tracking, but otherwise it’s not a considerable upgrade on the older device. You can get the Inspire 3 for £69 in the Amazon sale, but we’d be getting the cheaper Inspire 2 ourselves, and there’s one more reason for that we haven’t mentioned yet.

If you buy the Fitbit Inspire 2 you get 12 months of Fitbit Premium included, which unlocks more insight into your sleep and activity in the Fitbit app, along with advice and guided workouts to help you live a healthier life. If you buy the Inspire 3 you only get six months of Fitbit Premium for free. Given that it costs £7.99 a month to subscribe to Fitbit Premium, or £79.99 a year, that’s a lot of extra value you’re getting with the Inspire 2 on top of its cheaper price.

It’s easy to think that because you’ve tried one Fitbit, you’ve tried them all – and to some extent, that’s true. There are very few surprises with the Fitbit Inspire 3, but on the plus side, you do know exactly what you’re getting: a well-designed, lightweight tracker that logs your activity, along with a detailed companion app showing you lots (and lots) of data. 

Improvements over previous Inspire models include a colour display with an always-on feature and SpO2 tracking, which measures your blood oxygen saturation.

I tested the Inspire 3 for more than a month to see how it fared against the best cheap fitness trackers, wearing it most of the time to track my daily activity, exercise, health metrics and sleep.

Fitbit Inspire 3: Price And Availability

First announced on 24th August 2022, Fitbit’s Inspire 3 is available now and costs £84.99 in the UK or $99.95 in the US. You get a six-month Fitbit Premium membership included when you buy the tracker, which must be activated within six months of the purchase. You can cancel this before the free access period is over or continue with the subscription at £7.99/$9.99 a month or £79.99/$79.99 a year.

The Set-Up

The Inspire 3 comes in a neatly packaged box with a quick-start guide to get you up and running. You need to download the Fitbit app to start using the device and will be prompted to charge the Fitbit fully when you first switch it on, which took an hour and a half. Once that’s done, the tracker syncs automatically with the app.

Overall, set-up was very straightforward and I didn’t have any issues. It is, however, worth taking some time to go through all the available features – several need to be manually switched on before they’ll start tracking data.

Design

I tested the Black Case with the Lilac Bliss band, but you can also buy Midnight Zen (black) or Morning Glow (orange) bands. Both small and large straps are included.

The colour touchscreen has an always-on display option and a variety of clock faces. It is on the smaller side, which meant I didn’t really use it to check call, text or app notifications, and on some screen layouts the text was cut off or awkwardly displayed.

The band itself is secure and never came loose during testing. It looked like new after more than a month of wear. You can also purchase different straps or a clip to attach the device to your clothing if you prefer a pedometer.

The central display, though slim when viewed from the front, is quite chunky from the side. I have small wrists, and despite using the smallest band that was included, the fit was gappy around the sides of the display – there was no way to get it to sit flush against my wrist. This meant that the watch felt clunky and I was certainly aware that I was wearing it at all times.

Battery Life

The battery on the Inspire 3 can last up to 10 days, although I found it lasted for three days with the display set to always-on and tracking one workout a day. To combat this, you can turn off the always-on display, which eats up the battery life. Helpfully, Fitbit sends an email whenever the watch needs recharging.

App And Health Tracking

As expected with Fitbit, the sheer amount of data you can access is impressive. An at-a-glance overview on the app shows steps, distance, calories burned, Active Zone Minutes (time spent with an elevated heart rate), sleep score, resting heart rate, menstrual tracking and more. You can also log food and water intake, and weight.

Some metrics are available only to Fitbit Premium members. A six-month Fitbit premium membership is included when you purchase the band, so it’s worth taking a deep dive into the features while you have free access, then deciding if it’s worth the additional cost. 

Premium also includes a daily readiness score (an indicator of how prepared your body is for physical activity), advanced sleep analytics, video workouts and recipe inspiration – as well as extra mindfulness sessions.

The band monitors your heart rate, showing your current bpm and resting heart rate on the app home screen. You can also check previous data, view your resting heart rate over the past 30 days, see an estimation of your cardio fitness score and how it compares with that of others your age, and see how many minutes you’ve spent in three different heart rate zones: fat burn, cardio and peak. 

The band also notifies you if it spots a high or low heart rate (using pre-set thresholds, which you can customise) or if it notices an irregular rhythm, which can be a sign of atrial fibrillation. If you do get one of these notifications, the app prompts you to make an appointment with your doctor and provides irregular rhythm readings to share with your physician. 

The Inspire 3 also includes an SpO2 sensor, which can be viewed by swiping up from the clock face on the band or within the Health Metrics section of the app. There’s also the ability to connect a separate blood glucose meter or app.

Menstrual cycle tracking is also available on the app, although you will have to manually log your data for this, inputting patterns, symptoms and ovulation test results. The more data you enter, the better the algorithm becomes at predicting your period and fertility patterns, and you can opt to turn on push notifications for this.

Exercise Tracking

There are 20 activities available to track, including walking, running, cycling, swimming, yoga, tennis, circuit training, weight lifting and golf. You can set up six shortcuts on the watch to tap into these tracking modes. The watch allows you to simply start a session or set a particular goal, such as Zone Minutes, distance, time or calories for your workout. 

There’s no built-in GPS tracking on the Inspire 3, but it can use connected GPS to map your route during outdoor exercise (you’ll need to bring your phone with you in order for this to work).

During workouts, you can see real-time stats including steps, distance, laps and heart rate. I tested the band during walks, indoor bike rides, swims, yoga sessions and strength training, and generally found it to be accurate. The steps and heart rate matched data recorded by other trackers and the workout logs synced automatically with the app.

Keen swimmers, take note – the screen doesn’t respond well when wet. This is something that Fitbit is clearly aware of, since it has designed a “water lock” mode that’s accessible when you swipe up from the clock face. This is activated via two firm taps, which takes quite a long time to master. There’s no automatic stroke recognition, with tracking limited to duration, distance (you need to set the pool length) and pace.

Sleep Tracking

Fitbit calculates your overall sleep score using duration, quality and restoration, giving you a figure out of 100. You can also delve further into the different sections in the app, including graphs showing your time asleep and awake, sleep stages such as Deep, Light and REM sleep, your sleeping heart rate, restlessness and estimated oxygen variation (designed to spot breathing issues).

The watch includes a Sleep Mode to block notifications and stop the screen from lighting up each time you turn over and this works very well. You can also use Smart Wake to wake you up during a light sleep stage within the 30 minutes leading up to your set alarm time. This is meant to help you ensure you’re waking up at the best possible time, but when I tried it, I just snoozed the alarm and fell asleep again (not sure I can blame that on Fitbit, though).

Is The Inspire 3 Worth It?

I enjoyed using Fitbit’s Inspire 3. It allowed me to take stock of my current habits and implement healthier ones, such as taking more steps each day, getting up and stretching at regular intervals and going to bed (slightly) earlier. It also helped me notice and feel good about the days where I exceeded my step goal, slept better than I thought or increased my Active Zone Minutes.

The Fitbit app is well designed and easy to navigate, with plenty of explanations and tips to help you make the most of the statistics. The sleep tracking, heart monitor and SpO2 sensor are all accurate and consistent. However, the sheer volume of data on Fitbit Premium is quite overwhelming and most people purchasing at this price point will be happy with the basic data provided by the band itself, which is still very comprehensive.

I preferred the design of the cheaper Huawei Band 7. It has a larger, more responsive display and a more snug fit against my wrist. Huawei also caters to a wider variety of workouts, as well as automatically recognising your stroke during swimming. That said, if you’re a stickler for stats, you’ll be hard pushed to find a more detailed data log than provided by Fitbit.

Elite athletes or serious swimmers will need more specialist sports watches or dedicated swimming watches – the small screen and difficulty dealing with water are likely to be an issue. However, on the whole, the Inspire 3 is a great entry-level fitness tracker at a very reasonable price.

The Fitbit Sense 2 feels like an in-between fitness tracker, one that is essentially a placeholder in Fitbit’s range ahead of the launch of smartwatches that are more fully integrated with Google.

It’s a good health watch and fitness tracker, but it’s a poor smartwatch, lacking several features that are available on the original Fitbit Sense. While the health, activity and sleep tracking are good, the sports tracking on the Sense 2 was often inaccurate during my testing, and it’s hard to recommend compared with other Fitbits like the original Sense or the cheaper Fitbit Versa 4, let alone rivals like the Apple Watch or Garmin Venu 2 Plus.

Fitbit Sense 2: Price And Availability

The Fitbit Sense 2 was announced in August 2022 and went on sale the following month. It costs $299.95 in the US and £269.99 in the UK. It comes with a six-month membership to Fitbit Premium which unlocks extra features like the daily readiness score. The continuing cost of Fitbit Premium is $9.99/£7.99 a month or $79.99/£79.99 a year.

If you can play the waiting game, you may find the Sense 2 cheaper in annual sales. Check for Black Friday Fitbit deals in November and Amazon Prime Day Fitbit deals in July and October.

Design

The Fitbit Sense 2 is lighter and thinner than the original, and it’s a more attractive watch that sits more comfortably on the wrist as a result. The most welcome change to the design is the addition of a physical button – the touch panel sensor used on the original Sense was a frequent cause of irritation.

While the AMOLED screen is not quite as bright and attractive as other smartwatches I’ve tested lately, like the Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 Pro and Apple Watch Ultra, the display on the Fitbit Sense 2 is clear to read inside and out. Generally, the touchscreen is responsive but on a few occasions it noticeably lagged. Hopefully that’s just a bug that will be ironed out over time.

I tested the Fitbit Sense 2 with the standard silicone band, which I find tends to pull at hairs on my arm and isn’t that easy to tighten and loosen as a result. I’d prefer to upgrade to one of the woven bands for a more comfortable experience. The Fitbit Sense 2 has a 5ATM waterproof rating so you can swim and shower with it.

Health Tracking

After using it, I don’t think of the Fitbit Sense 2 as a smartwatch or sports watch – it’s a health watch, since this is where all of its best features come to light. Like the original Sense, the Sense 2 can take an electrocardiogram (ECG), measure your blood oxygen saturation and skin temperature, and track your electrodermal activity (EDA). The key improvement on the 2 is that it tracks EDA continuously throughout the day to help monitor your stress levels.

Your heart rate and heart rate variability also inform your stress rating, and the Sense 2 will prompt you to log your mood throughout the day. This involves picking from one of eight emotions – excited, happy, content, calm, sad, worried, frustrated and stressed. As a buttoned-up Brit I’d love to see “broadly fine” added to that list for a more accurate reflection of my feelings, but for those keen on stress tracking the new features take a comprehensive approach that may help you recognise stress triggers and manage them.

The Sense 2 will also prompt you to take EDA readings or do guided breathing sessions to help you reduce your stress levels. Of all the fitness trackers I’ve tested, the Sense 2 goes furthest in its focus on stress.

At the time of writing I am a bit under the weather and it’s worth noting the Fitbit Sense 2 did spot the rise in my skin temperature overnight. This temperature sensor is also integral to the menstrual tracking on the watch.

Activity And Sleep Tracking

As with all Fitbits, the activity and sleep tracking on the Sense 2 are impressive. The user interface on the watch has been improved too so it’s easy to check all your daily activity stats in the widgets you swipe through, and there are challenges within the Fitbit app that can help motivate you to increase your step count each day. 

There are more engaging challenges in Fitbit Premium, as well as the daily readiness score which provides an activity target based on an estimate of how much exercise your body can handle. I’m still disappointed that features like these are locked behind a paywall, especially when you’re already spending $300/£270 on a fitness-focused watch.

You also miss out on some sleep analysis like sleeping heart rate and restlessness if you don’t stump up for Fitbit Premium after six months, but even without the extra analysis I was impressed by the sleep tracking on the Sense 2. The Sense 2 had a couple of misfires where it broke up my unbroken sleep into two portions and gave me a low sleep score for each, but in general it seemed to track accurately, and the colour-coded breakdown you get in the app is clear and detailed.

Sports Tracking

The Fitbit Sense 2 has 41 workout modes to choose from, more than double what was available on the original Sense, and you can set up each workout mode to show the stats you want. Up to a point, anyway; keen runners will miss useful stats like lap pace. The Sense 2 will also track several types of exercise automatically and it has built-in GPS for outdoor activity tracking.

My first run with the Sense 2 was a disaster. Despite two long attempts the watch simply could not lock on to GPS and actually gave up trying itself after a while, something I’ve not seen before on a tracker. The distance and heart rate stats it recorded were dreadful on that run, but thankfully things have improved since. It has found GPS pretty quickly on the three runs I’ve used it for since, and while the GPS tracks and pacing stats have still been less accurate than dual-band GPS devices like the Apple Watch Ultra and Garmin Epix 2, they are good enough for casual use. The Sense 2 uses GPS (the American satellite system) plus GLONASS (the Russian system) for its tracking.

However, the heart rate tracking has continued to be poor, with the Sense 2 logging a very high heart rate throughout my runs, much higher than the reading of a chest strap monitor (which is a more accurate type of heart rate monitor than an optical wrist-worn monitor). The heart rate tracking has been better during yoga sessions, but overall the optical tracking on the Sense 2 has all the usual problems you get with wrist heart rate trackers, and it’s a shame you can’t pair an external sensor to the watch to get more accurate readings.

Smart Features

Simply put, the Fitbit Sense 2 is not a smartwatch. The original Sense wasn’t as smart as devices like the Apple Watch, but it had a small third-party app store that contained some useful apps like Spotify and Starbucks, offered music storage and controls, WiFi, and access to Google Assistant. Bafflingly, the Sense 2 loses all those features, and while Google Maps and Google Wallet are set to arrive on the watch at a future date, right now it’s a considerably worse smartwatch than its predecessor.

You can see your notifications on the Sense 2, as well as a weather forecast, pay for things with Fitbit Pay and access Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant. But the Sense 2 is not only less smart than the original Sense and true smartwatches like the Apple Watch and Samsung Galaxy Watch, it’s fallen behind Garmin smartwatches like the Venu 2 and Venu 2 Sq.

Battery Life

Fitbit lists the battery life of the Sense 2 as up to six days, or five hours of GPS tracking. That second number seems bizarrely low, given that the Apple Watch Ultra offers 12 hours of GPS tracking with power-hungry dual-band GPS, which suggests Fitbit is using an older, less-efficient GPS chipset in the Sense 2.

With the always-on screen enabled, brightness turned up, notifications enabled and tracking a run every other day or so, the Sense 2 would last three days, which is pretty good for a fitness watch with an AMOLED screen.

Is The Fitbit Sense 2 Worth It?

The Fitbit Sense 2 is not worth it – unless you are absolutely desperate to know more about your stress levels. Even then I’d recommend the original Sense instead, which is now regularly available for around or under $200/£200. You lose the button and continuous EDA tracking, but gain several smart features and save money.

I’d also recommend the Fitbit Versa instead if you aren’t concerned about using the Sense 2’s health tracking features like EDA and ECG measurements, since otherwise the cheaper Versa 4 has all the same features.

Outside the Fitbit range the Garmin Venu 2 and Venu 2 Sq Music are both more impressive sporty smartwatches available for a similar price. Both have music storage and access to the (admittedly limited) Connect IQ app store, and both are far more impressive sports trackers, even if they don’t have the advanced health tracking capabilities of the Sense 2.

If you’re looking for a true smartwatch at a similar price, then the Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 offers full Wear OS support, even if its sports tracking is also pretty weak, while iOS users should definitely look at the Apple Watch range – whether it’s the cheaper Apple Watch SE 2 or the Apple Watch Series 8 – for better smart features and sports tracking.

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, and a Prime Day by any other name would throw up just as many Fitbit deals. At least that's what we thought but the US Amazon Prime Big Deal Days (or Prime Day 2 as everyone is calling it) features no—zero, zilch, nada—Fitbit deals.

In the UK, prices have dropped, but not quite as far as Prime Day in July. The only notable difference being the inclusion of the Versa 4. It’s the best Prime Day Fitbit deal in our opinion.

Of course, that may change, so we begin with a set of quick links so you can check deals at various retailers.

Quick Links

US Quick Links

• Amazon: Check Fitbit deals on Amazon
• Dick's Sporting Goods: Fitbit deals available for store pick-up
• Best Buy: Check for deals on Fitbit watches and trackers
• Walmart: Check for discounts

UK Quick Links

• Amazon: Up to 42% off
• Argos: Price check Fitbits
• Very: Inspire 2 for £44
• John Lewis: Price check Fitbits

The Best Amazon Prime Day UK Deals On Fitbits

The headline Fitbit deal from Prime Day 2 is the inclusion of the Fitbit Versa 4 in the sale.

The Best Prices From Prime Day July 2023

These deals are over, but we’ve noted them below to help you evaluate future deals on the same devices.

• Fitbit Sense: Sale price £147, saving £72.99
• Fitbit Luxe: Sale price £75, saving £54.99
• Fitbit Inspire 2: Sale price £39.41, saving £54.99
• Fitbit Charge 5: Sale price £94.05 saving £75.94
• Fitbit Versa 3: Sale price £119.70 saving £80.29

The Best US Amazon Prime Day Deals On Fitbits

We are very surprised to report there are no Fitbits included in the Amazon Prime Big Deal Days sale. We will update this page if anything changes.

The Best Prices From Prime Day July 2023

These deals are over, but we’ve noted them below to help you to assess subsequent deals on the same devices.

• Fitbit Versa 4: Sale price $139.95, saving $60
• Fitbit Sense 2: Sale price $229.95, saving $70
• Fitbit Charge 5: Sale price $99.95, saving $46
• Fitbit Luxe: Sale price $99.95, saving $30
• Fitbit Inspire 3: Sale price $79.95, saving $20

FAQs

The Fitbit Charge 5 is a considerable upgrade on the Charge 4, sporting a colour screen and an array of new sensors so it can take electrocardiograms (ECG) and measure stress via your electrodermal activity (EDA). The Charge 5 also has built-in GPS to track outdoor activities without your phone and Fitbit’s new Daily Readiness Score feature, which gives you activity targets based on how well recovered you are each day.

These new features come at a cost, however, with the price of the Charge 5 inflating to £169.99 – a substantial increase on the £129.99 price point at which the last few generations of the Charge have launched. While the Charge 5 is the most intelligent tracker band I’ve come across, offering all the features you get on Fitbit’s top smartwatches in a sleeker frame, the inaccurate tracking I experienced during testing undermines its on-paper promise. It’s one of the best fitness trackers, but its crown is slipping. 

Fitbit Charge 5: Price And Availability

The Fitbit Charge 5 went on sale in September 2021 and cost $179.99 in the US and £169.99 in the UK. Since the launch of the Charge 6, the RRP of the Charge 5 has now been reduced to $149.99 / £129.99.

If you can play the waiting game, you will find the Charge 5 cheaper in annual sales. Check for Black Friday Fitbit deals in November and Amazon Prime Day Fitbit deals in July and October.

Design And Hardware

The Fitbit Charge 5 is a worthy update on the Fitbit Charge 4 based on its looks alone. The new tracker is 10% thinner and has rounded edges, plus a 1.04in (26.4mm) colour AMOLED touchscreen that is a significant upgrade on the grayscale display of previous generations.

It’s a great-looking device with a fashionable range of bands, something Fitbit does particularly well. However, I found the silicone sports band it’s packaged with surprisingly uncomfortable, tugging on arm hairs every time I put it on, to the point it was sometimes hard to get a tight fit without it causing irritation. If you experience a similar problem you can upgrade to one of Fitbit’s fabric hook and loop bands (£29.99) to avoid this.

There are also updates under the hood: the Charge 5 has several new sensors that allow it to take ECG measurements and EDA scans. Like the Charge 4, the 5 has built-in GPS for outdoor activity tracking and an optical heart rate monitor.

The Daily Readiness Score

Fitbit’s Daily Readiness Score feature made its debut on the Charge 5, but is now available across most of the company’s range of devices, though notably the Charge 4 did not get the update. 

This score assesses how prepared you are for physical activity today and is based on three factors: your recent activity, the quality of your sleep over the past few days, and your heart rate variability during deep sleep. These are measured against personalised baselines and adapt to your fitness level.

Your score is accompanied by appropriate activity recommendations and advice. For example, if you have a high readiness score you’ll be given a more ambitious Active Zone Minutes target (explained below) and receive suggestions for workouts that can help you hit it. On the other hand, if you have a low readiness score you’ll be advised to focus on recovery, with recommendations for things like yoga or meditation sessions, and tips on how to improve your sleep.

Since the score is based on personalised baselines, it takes 14 days to fine-tune your results before you can expect accurate results. However, even after three weeks I found that my readiness scores were pretty useless, probably because I run almost every day. This is normal for me and something I’ve done for several years, but I was consistently given a low readiness score of 10 out of 100 simply because of high levels of past activity. The only time my score changed was after a rest day.

Based on my experience the daily readiness score simply isn’t that smart, and it’s a long way off what you’ll get from other devices that offer similar ratings like the Oura ring or Whoop 4.0, which do get to know you well and adjust their scores appropriately. The Fitbit Charge 5 never seemed to learn that I can run every day and recover fine, and simply dished out low scores because I had exercised the previous day.

It might be a useful tool for those who exercise three or four times a week, but even then, my experience makes me wary of saying it’s giving reliable advice. I don’t think it’s a major step up on simply looking at your sleep scores – the Charge 5 offers the usual excellent Fitbit sleep tracking and analysis.

However, what’s more disappointing about the readiness score than the iffy results I experienced is that it’s locked behind the Fitbit Premium paywall. A six-month subscription to Premium is bundled with the Charge 5, but after that it costs £7.99 a month or £79.99 a year. It’s a shame to see an interesting new feature given an ongoing cost, especially on a £170 device.

Health And Activity Tracking

To take an ECG measurement with the Charge 5 you fire up the ECG app and hold your fingers against the panels on either side of the device. The measurements can detect signs of atrial fibrillation, and if it finds any it’s worth getting checked out by a doctor. The ECG app works as expected for me and it’s a useful addition that’s available to all users of the band.

The EDA scan works the same way, holding the sides of the screen for a set duration – the default is three minutes. This scan measures the electrical activity in your skin and essentially checks how stressed you are. After the scan you’ll be told how many “EDA responses” you had during the test. A lower number indicates less stress.

Your EDA scans also inform an overall Stress Management Score in the app, which takes your sleep and activity into account. There seems to be some overlap with the readiness score, and it might be a case of picking one score to guide your activity.

Within the app you also get health stats covering your heart rate variability, blood oxygen saturation, breathing rate and skin temperature, with more historical data available to Premium users than to free users, who get seven days of stats.

Naturally you also get top-notch everyday activity tracking with the Charge 5, including Fitbit’s Active Zone Minutes, which are a better daily target than steps or anything else. The device will log how much time you spend in different heart rate zones, with the goal of hitting 22 active minutes a day when your heart rate is raised. This adds up to 150 a week in line with NHS recommendations.

However, one surprise omission from the Charge 5 is an altimeter, which means it will not track the flights of stairs you climb each day like previous generations have.

Sports Tracking

While the health and everyday activity tracking on the Charge 5 holds up, I found its sports tracking significantly less impressive, primarily because of the inaccurate heart rate tracking I experienced doing pretty much any sport, and the poor GPS tracking it produced during outdoor runs.

The Charge 5 retains built-in GPS, a piece of hardware introduced on the Charge 4. You can also use your phone’s GPS if you carry it with you during outdoor exercise, and I’d suggest doing so because the built-in GPS on the Charge 5 is dreadfully inaccurate.

The built-in GPS came up significantly longer than other devices, recording 1-2km more over runs of 10-12km, while the GPS tracks it showed in the app afterwards were awful, completely missing the routes I actually took.

The results were better using connected GPS, but if you don’t take your phone on runs and are hoping the Charge 5 will cover your tracking without it, think again. It also takes a long time to lock on to GPS, several minutes longer than other watches.

After a few runs where I had to hang around waiting for GPS to lock on, I stopped bothering and just used the SmartTrack feature on the band, which automatically logs a run without you having to start up an activity. This doesn’t produce particularly accurate results and you don’t get a map of your route in the app afterwards, but given that the results when using the GPS weren’t great either I preferred the convenience of just setting off.

The heart rate accuracy during workouts was also poor, even during relatively low-intensity sports like yoga and slow-paced strength workouts. On a couple of runs the Charge 5 had some spells where it recorded the same heart rate as a chest strap, but generally it was either too high or too low – which also scrambles the accuracy of your Active Zone Minutes score and calories burned.

In my opinion the only people satisfied by the Charge 5’s sports tracking will be those who just want a log of their workouts, including duration. If you are training with purpose and require accuracy to follow a plan effectively, the Charge 5 falls well short of that mark. Also, it’s still not that easy to see your stats during workouts despite the brighter colour screen – the display is just a bit cramped.

Bearing in mind that at £170 the Charge 5 is in the same price range as absolutely excellent sports watches like the Coros Pace 2, Polar Ignite 2 and Garmin Forerunner 55, there’s no reason for people who do want to track their workouts accurately to buy it.

Smart Features

The Charge 5 also disappoints on the smart features front. Music controls for Spotify and the weather app have been removed. It still has Fitbit Pay as well as timers, alarms and notifications, but again there are smartwatches available for a lot less that offer a lot more on this front, like the Huawei Watch GT 2e.

Battery Life

Fitbit lists a battery life of up to seven days. The Charge 5 I’m testing has needed charging every two to three days when tracking outdoor activity regularly. If you have the always-on screen turned off and don’t use the GPS or connected GPS as much, the battery lasts five days comfortably.

Is The Fitbit Charge 5 Worth It?

You really have to have your heart set on a tracker band rather than a watch to consider the Fitbit Charge 5 at £170. Even then there are bands from Huawei and Honor that offer a lot of the same features for well under £100, and the Fitbit Luxe, Charge 4 and Inspire 2 bands offer great activity and sleep tracking plus access to the Fitbit ecosystem for a lot less as well.

It’s the health tracking that sets the Charge 5 apart, as well as the impressive degree of analysis you get in the partner app. However, because Fitbit has locked part of that analysis behind the Premium paywall, the Charge 5 looks like poor value – especially since the workout tracking accuracy has been so unimpressive in my experience.

Every year there are great Black Friday and Cyber Monday Fitbit deals to take advantage of, and with Fitbit refreshing its line-up of smartwatches and fitness trackers extensively in 2022 there were many older devices ripe for discounts.

In the end it isn't just older Fitbit watches and trackers that have been discounted during the Black Friday sales, with deals cropping up on the latest Fitbit launches including the Sense 2 and Inspire 3, both of which are reduced on Amazon. 

Perhaps the stand out deal is on an older device though, with the Fitbit Inspire 2 reduced to under £50 on Amazon UK. We had hope that might nudge down even further on Cyber Monday, but it hasn't happened and £44.99 is still an outstanding price for such a capable fitness tracker with one year of Fitbit Premium included.

Cyber Monday marks the end of the sale period, so it's your last chance to grab a deal on a Fitbit device. Don't miss out!

Quick Links

UK Deals

Amazon: Up to £90 off

Fitbit: Reductions on the Sense and Versa ranges

John Lewis: Up to £30 off

Currys: Up to 50% off

Argos: Up to 25% off

US Deals

Amazon: Our first port of call for Fitbit deals

Fitbit: Up to $100 off already

Walmart: Up to $80 off Fitbit products

Target: Up to $100 off

Dicks Sporting Goods: Up to $80 off, plus a price match guarantee

Macy's: Up to $100 off

UK Cyber Monday Fitbit Deals

US Cyber Monday Fitbit Deals

The original Fitbit Inspire came in two forms: Inspire and Inspire HR. The latter added a heart rate monitor for cardio analysis, sleep stage tracking and guided breathing exercises, making it well worth the extra £20.

This time, Fitbit has released one model, sensibly including a built-in heart rate sensor. The generational change is actually pretty marginal: this time around, you get Active Zone Minutes and improved battery life. That doesn’t sound like a big upgrade, but Fitbit sweetens the deal with a year’s worth of Fitbit Premium (£79.99) included.

The Fitbit Inspire 2 is likeable enough if you treat it as a basic fitness tracker and pedometer, but as soon as you try anything more advanced it becomes painfully obvious that you need to pay for something larger and more capable – one of the best fitness smartwatches or best running watches, for example. The tiny screen’s limited word counts makes notifications awkward to read and the same is true with running stats – one per screen with fiddly navigation to cycle between them while moving.

Then there’s the question of value. On paper, the Fitbit Inspire 2 doesn’t offer much more than the best cheap fitness trackers, the likes of the Amazfit Band 5, Honor Band 5 and Xiaomi Mi Band 5 which all go for less than half the price. The Inspire 2 may include that year’s worth of Fitbit Premium, but not everybody will see this as essential.

In the end, the Premium service plus the comfort, style and excellent Fitbit app, justifies the cost – but only just. If you want to be smart with your money you would spend £40 more on the Fitbit Charge 4 or £60 less for a band from Xiaomi or Honor.

Design Of The Fitbit Inspire 2

At first glance the design has barely changed: a small, plastic lozenge clipped into two rubber straps. One difference becomes apparent pretty quickly once you start using it, and it’s a change for the worse: the button from the first generation Inspire has been removed. Or, rather, inverted. You now have to pinch either side of the device to operate it, which is far less responsive, especially when you’re trying to interact with it during a run.

You can also interact with the device using the touchscreen, but this is even more fiddly. While the Fitbit Inspire 2 is 37 x 16.8mm, the actual screen part is hidden away in the middle of this, and, by my inexact measurements, is just 17 x 10mm. That’s tricky to interact with while stationary, and is even more so when running or cycling.

While the black and white OLED screen is sharp and bright, the size means it’s not great for displaying notifications. It can only show a handful of words at a time, making it a bit useless for anything other than knowing when you should reach for your phone. Even in the settings menu, you have to wait for the captions to scroll across before it’s clear what each means.

In other words, if you want a device that you regularly interact with rather than one that you can set and forget, this likely isn’t for you. But if you treat it as a smart pedometer, it’s very good: it looks stylish but understated, and it’s comfortable to wear for extended periods. With the black rubber band version we tested and a screen that’s off until woken, it’s largely invisible, although there are patterned and double wrap bands if you’d like to make more of a statement. Or, if you don’t want it on your wrist, Fitbit sells a case for it so it can be clipped on to your trousers/skirt/shorts. Obviously you won’t get the heart rate measurements this way, but it’s a welcome option.

Health Features On The Fitbit Inspire 2

Before we get to steps and activity tracking, the Fitbit Inspire 2 does have a few extra features worth highlighting. The best health feature has been a mainstay of Fitbit bands for some time, namely breathing exercises. If you decide you need a moment of calm, your Fitbit Inspire 2 can help you achieve that. Swipe down and select the Relax icon and the device will guide you through two or five minutes of breathing, where you match your inhalations and exhalations to the onscreen prompts. It’s a simple and welcome addition, where you can see genuine impact thanks to the built-in heart rate reader.

A welcome addition is that the device will display your current weight, if you’ve entered it manually into the Fitbit app or – as in my case – connect to some smart scales to automatically fill in the blanks. I’ve not seen that so prominently before and it’s genuinely useful, especially as it lists weight in stones and pounds when my scale insists on kilograms.

Other features are less valuable. There’s a window for water drunk, which would be handy except that as far as I can tell it can’t be changed on the watch itself, so to stay on top of your hydration you need to manually enter it on the app on your phone. A simple “add one glass” button, as on past Samsung fitness bands, would have been sensible.

Tracking Activity On The Fitbit Inspire 2

The main activity tracking on the Fitbit Inspire 2 is still steps, which is easily viewed by waking the device and swiping up. People get worked up about the accuracy of these things but in truth they’re all approximations, and the only important thing is that the figures are internally consistent. In other words, you just need to know whether you managed more steps than yesterday.

The big new addition is Active Zone Minutes, an innovative way of accounting for the quality of your movement, as well as the quantity. While strolling to the shops and power walking there may be the same number of steps, Fitbit will log Active Zone Minutes spent doing the latter, as detected via your raised heart rate. You have a target of 150 minutes a week – a target straight from the NHS no less – and pushing yourself into a higher heart rate zone contributes twice the minutes.

It’s hard to fault the idea or the implementation here, even if it may seem a bit too simplistic for serious fitness addicts.

Otherwise, the Fitbit Inspire 2 allows you to track running, cycling, swimming, treadmill, weights and interval workouts. The first two of these piggyback on your phone’s GPS to provide speed and distance data, while the rest track heart rate, the duration of exercise and an estimate of the calories burned.

Running With The Fitbit Inspire 2

The Inspire 2’s performance is decent but let down by the same design issues. The tiny screen means you can see only one data field at a time, and by default it’s distance travelled. You can swipe to see other fields, but the small form factor is a pain here too, requiring you to awkwardly stab at the tiny screen with one finger – tricky when going at speed. A button would have made a world of difference.

Even seeing this single data point isn’t seamless. I couldn’t get the device to wake up just by moving my wrist, no matter how sharply or purposefully I did it. Instead I had to squeeze it, which again feels unnecessarily fiddly when in motion.

There are two types of runner: those who rely on data on the fly to inform their performance, and those who trust their instincts and look at the data later. For the former, the Fitbit Inspire 2 is a tough sell, but for the latter it works pretty well. Despite lacking the on-board GPS of the best running watches, I found the data recorded on the device was only between 0.03 and 0.08km off the GPS-toting Garmin Forerunner 245 on my other wrist over short 3-4km distances, with just 3bpm difference between average and max heart rate.

That’s close enough for me, and the strength of the Fitbit app comes not just from the ease of measuring performance, but from getting inspiration or competition from your friends and colleagues. No other wearable company’s app does the latter quite as well as Fitbit.

Fitbit Premium

The Inspire 2 may cost up to three times as much as fitness trackers that offer a similar exercise experience, but it has a trick up its sleeve, and it’s a doozie: a free year’s subscription to Fitbit Premium.

Normally £7.99 a month or £79.99 a year, the service offers a whole bunch of welcome extras in three areas. These are “advanced insights” with extra sleep states and a wellness report; premium challenges and games; and guided video and audio programmes on everything from nutrition and meditation to bespoke workouts and running guides.

The guided programmes are the star of the show and they’re undeniably well done. Plus, the audio programmes are very handy for a device that, as mentioned, isn’t great at giving you live feedback on the wrist.

But it’s hard to escape the feeling that everything here is optional. The guided workouts are great, but while the content is personalised to your feedback, it’s ultimately not much better than the free videos you can find on YouTube with a little digging around. And while “advanced insights” sounds invaluable, in reality it covers things like breathing rate and heart rate variability which most people wouldn’t think are essential.

All in all, it’s a welcome addition and certainly makes the Fitbit Inspire 2 better value, but not everyone would feel the need to subscribe were it not bundled.

Sleep Tracking With The Fitbit Inspire 2

One area that benefits from these advanced insights is sleep tracking and it makes for an extremely thorough experience. While most fitness trackers have one page for each type of sleep, Fitbit divides each night into three – Time Asleep, Deep and REM, and Restoration – with each getting a graph of its own, percentage breakdowns, explanations of what everything means and tips to improve in each area.

It does offer some genuinely interesting insights. For example, on one night I found that I spent 81% of the night below my waking resting heart rate, and the remaining 19% above it. But does it actually help you sleep better? I’m not entirely convinced. While the guided meditation and sleep exercises in Fitbit Premium may help, the tips in the app are on the predictable side (don’t drink alcohol within three hours of going to sleep) and while there’s plenty of data, it still ultimately comes down to telling you whether you slept well or poorly – something most people can tell from the way they feel on a given day.

Battery Life On The Fitbit Inspire 2

One of the biggest improvements over the first generation of the Inspire comes in the form of its battery life. Fitbit promises you’ll get ten days (double that of the HR) which seems just about true, but that involves keeping the screen at a barely visible “dim” setting. Plus, the more exercise you do while connected to your phone, the more this figure will drop.

Despite this, I was quite comfortably getting seven days of use with brightness turned up. That puts the Fitbit Inspire 2 in pretty solid company as far as stamina is concerned.

Should You Buy Something Else?

Thanks to the inclusion of Fitbit Premium and the overall quality of the Fitbit app and community, I’m inclined to say that the Fitbit Inspire 2 just about justifies its £90 cost. But if any of the issues raised in this review sounds like they would grate, there are plenty of other options to consider.

On the cheaper end of the spectrum – app and Fitbit Premium aside – there’s very little to distinguish the Fitbit Inspire 2 from recent bands from Xiaomi, Honor or Amazfit and they go for around a quarter of the price. So if you’re after a basic pedometer and don’t care about community or fitness videos, they’re definitely the value option.

For people who enjoy exercising and are looking for a device to complement that passion, I’d recommend spending a bit more. The £130 Fitbit Charge 4 includes built-in GPS and a bigger screen, making it an obvious recommendation if you’re set on the fitness band look. Alternatively, the Garmin Forerunner 45 (£159.99) is a far superior beginner running watch while the Polar Unite (£134.50) is the best beginner fitness watch – and both are regularly discounted.

Fitbit Charge 4 In-Depth

Using The Fitbit Charge 4 To Track Activity

The Active Zone Minutes feature debuted on the Charge 4 (and has now been rolled out across the current line-up) and supplies stiff competition to 10,000 steps as the everyday activity goal to pay attention to. The feature asks you to raise your heart rate for 22 minutes a day, which adds up to the globally recognised, NHS-approved recommendation to be active for 150 minutes over the week. And in accordance with this widely recognised goal, every minute of vigorous activity like running counts twice towards the tally – Fitbit works this all out for you, like the best fitness trackers do. The Charge 4 works out your personalised heart rate zones, based on your resting heart rate and age, to calculate what counts as activity and vigorous activity.

Fitbit isn’t the only brand to integrate the 150 minutes’ activity guidelines into its devices, but it’s made it a more engaging target to aim for. For one, breaking the weekly target down into a daily 22-minute one has the effect, at least for me, of making it feel more achievable. The feature is also put front and centre: the Charge 4 buzzes and presents a message when you cross the threshold into a different heart rate zone, whether that’s during an activity you’re tracking or you just legged it to catch the bus.

Of course, all this depends on the accuracy of the heart rate monitor (HRM), but everything looks rosy on that front. At the beginning of the first test run the HRM locked on to my cadence rather than my pulse for five or so minutes, putting me in the peak heart rate zone for what was an easy run, but it soon settled to be in line with the heart rate recorded by the GPS multisport watch on my other wrist. After a firmware update, the Charge 4 was bang on during the second run, mostly within one to two beats of the reading on the more expensive device, occasionally straying into three beats’ difference. That’s a solid showing against a device that costs five to six times as much. The Charge 4’s HRM also automatically clocked when I was playing tag with my child and logged a batch of active minutes.

The Charge 4 includes two other features that exist on any Fitbit device with a heart rate monitor: resting heart rate and cardio fitness score. Both are good measures of your general fitness, but Fitbit does the cardio fitness score (an estimate of your VO2 max) really well, placing your score in the context of your cohort and suggesting ways to improve it.

The Charge 4 still logs your steps and tracks your progress towards a target of 10,000 steps. It also provides challenges to help you hit that goal regularly. There’s nothing really new here, but that’s OK. Fitbit does it as well as anyone else. The Charge 4 will also turn your steps into a distance travelled figure, estimate your calorie burn and track how many flights of stairs you have ascended.

Put it all together and you have an everyday tracking offering that is unsurpassed.

Fitbit Premium

One problem people experience when buying a fitness band to improve their health and fitness is finding an activity to do for the band to track. Fitbit Premium is, in part, a way to address this. It includes a wide and growing range of workouts, as well as more structured exercise plans and programmes to coach you towards, for instance, reducing your salt intake or improving your sleep.

The workouts and training plans are accessible for beginners – the running plans especially are done at a target pace most people will find eminently achievable. The coached programmes are simply advice articles drip-fed over a few weeks, along with reminders to do certain things. It’s well executed and useful, but it is ultimately a paid-for service.

Not to begin with, though. At the moment, a three-month trial is available to everyone, even those who don’t own a Fitbit, if you’d like to check it out before purchasing. The Inspire 2 is bundled with a year’s free subscription and the Sense smartwatch six months, so it’s a little disappointing Charge 4 owners only get the standard three months, but it’s a useful, initially-free service which will help get you started with a more active lifestyle. Unless you really find it compelling, we’d skip the £7.99 monthly fee once the trial runs out and consider other apps and services. We’re fans of Fiit.

Using The Fitbit Charge 4 To Track Running

Avid runners will probably give the Charge 4 the side-eye, but it suits anyone who is just starting out, runs occasionally as a part of staying active, or signs up for a running event on a whim.

With the addition of built-in GPS the Charge 4 becomes a much better device to track running. While previous Charges and most other Fitbits could connect to your phone’s GPS, the tracking – on a Fitbit or other brands who use connected GPS – often fails to match built-in GPS for accuracy. I also know of a few people who skip the extra steps needed to establish a live connection between the device and phone, tracking runs using steps instead. I suspect that’s pretty widespread behaviour, and a shame considering those people are missing out on the more accurate distance and pace stats they’re paying for.

Built-in GPS also brings Fitbit into step with other major brands. I can’t think of a launch in the last 12 months – other than Fitbit’s – that didn’t have built-in GPS, including the £60 Honor Band 4.

Fitbit uses the American GPS satellite system (more expensive devices have the option to also use alternative Russian, European Union or Chinese systems), and I found discrepancies when I compared it with a top-of-the-line multisport GPS watch I was also using. The Charge 4 seemed to be reliably overclocking the distance covered, with a 0.1km discrepancy on a 4.35km run, a 0.42km difference on a 9.18km run, and 0.3km on a 7.5km session. It’s a little concerning, but it is also manifestly unfair to compare the Charge 4 with a watch more than four times its price, and those three runs hardly constitute a rigorous, scientific test.

One key consideration with all GPS devices how quickly using it drains the battery. Fitbit quotes five hours of GPS and my experience bore that out, with one 50-minute run draining the battery from 59% to 38%. That’s a decent showing, and means that the Charge 4 would see a lot of people through what’s likely to be the biggest challenge of their running career – a marathon.

The other important part of built-in GPS is how fast the device can find a signal, because if you make people wait too long they’ll give up and set off regardless. When I waited for a signal it took somewhere between 20 and 30 seconds, a solid performance from a sub-£150 device in my book, but it did even better when I didn’t bother waiting and relied on the Run Detect feature instead. This seemed to catch a signal on the move and automatically start recording a run within that time frame, sometimes sooner. Once, out of four times, I relied on Run Detect and the feature didn’t kick in, although the run was recognised and logged – I just didn’t get a route map and pace and distance stats afterwards.

To my mind, this is the killer feature that will suit the type of everyday exerciser who isn’t invested enough in the accuracy of the stats to wait before setting off. It’s the ultimate convenience, requiring nothing from the person wearing the device and giving them a heap of better information in return.

GPS and Run Detect are two features that the watch allows you to toggle on and off. There’s also Auto Pause, which can be useful if you run in a busy city and want the watch to pause while you wait at traffic lights, and Heart Rate Zone Alerts which notifies you when you enter Fitbit’s Fat Burn zone, or cross from the Fat Burn zone to Cardio, or Cardio to Peak. Before you start searching for a GPS signal you can also set a distance, time or calorie goal, or one for Active Zone Minutes. On the phone you can set automatic laps, so the device will notify you of your progress after a set distance, time or amount of calories burned.

One of the biggest let-downs is the Charge 4’s screen, which was hard to read in bright midday sunlight. It’s lovely and bright in the morning and early evening, but if you find yourself regularly running around lunchtime that’s something to bear in mind.

During the run, tapping the screen cycles you through pace, average pace, heart rate (which has an icon to denote the zone you’re in), calories, steps, time of day, distance, time elapsed, distance travelled in the current lap (if automatic laps are set to on), and Active Zone Minutes achieved. Distance and time elapsed are permanent fixtures in a smaller text size at the top and bottom of the screen, respectively.

There’s also an intervals mode which includes GPS tracking so you can set simple work and rest periods, and repeat them a set number of times. However, the lack of average pace stat on the watch is a glaring omission and suggests it was designed for gym-goers rather than runners.

In the app, the data’s laid out in an easy-to-read way, with a map of your route and an overlay of your heart rate zone or pace, splits, elevation, heart rate and calories burned. And most importantly, it’ll export to social activity app Strava easily.

Using The Charge 4 For Tracking Exercise

There are 21 exercise modes to choose from, with the ability to load six on to the watch at a time. The difference between each indoor or outdoor type will be minimal, but it will help you to log your exercise history more precisely. Usefully there’s an interval workout mode where you can set work and rest periods, and how many rounds to repeat that pattern for, in the app then transfer it to the device to follow. If you like to follow time-based workouts from the internet then it’s a great help.

The Charge 4 is also waterproof enough for pool swimming and can count lengths, although it won’t stretch to stroke recognition like Fitbit’s smartwatches. You have to set the length of the pool in metres or yards, 10 being the minimum. In the pool all you get on the device is a timer, with the lengths counted and estimate of the calories you burned available afterwards in the app.

The Charge 4 also has Fitbit’s excellent automatic exercise tracking which I mostly use to track bike rides. I ride to get around, rather than as “exercise”, so can’t be bothered to wait for GPS to connect or even to interact with the watch. The Charge 4 has never failed to recognise a bike ride, with no input from me.

Using The Fitbit Charge 4 For Sleep Tracking

Sleep tracking is one of Fitbit’s strongest suits and the Charge 4 executes it as well as any other device in the lineup. You get an overall Sleep Score out of 100 for an at-a-glance rating, as well as a breakdown of how this worked out. There’s an awful lot of information to digest but it’s easy to navigate, it’s concisely explained and it gives you tips to help you improve. The advice isn’t groundbreaking, but it’s got a reasonable chance of being effective.

The Charge 4 includes a SpO2 sensor, which informs the Restoration portion of your overall Sleep Score. SpO2 sensors are appearing on more devices than ever before, but to me the usefulness is questionable. Here I think Fitbit is using it judiciously.

The Charge 4 can also use its ability to track which stage of sleep you’re in to wake you at an optimum time. When setting an alarm on the device, swipe up to turn Smart Wake on. Once you’ve set the time, the device will rouse you once you hit a period of light sleep in a 30-minute period before the alarm. The idea is that you won’t be woken from a period of deep sleep, leaving you drowsy.

Using The Smart Features On The Fitbit Charge 4

Across its range of devices Fitbit’s smart features are a bit of a let-down, especially when it comes to the most recent smartwatches, but for a fitness band the Charge 4 does a decent job.

The stand-out feature is the inclusion of Fitbit Pay as standard (previously it was only available on the Special Edition of the Charge 3). Fitbit Pay still doesn’t work with any major high street bank except Santander, but there are eight challenger banks which will work with it.

The other major addition is a Spotify app, but despite being talked up in the pre-release hype, it’s a flop. Essentially it’s a souped-up remote for a premium Spotify account, allowing you to control the app on different devices and navigate through playlists, although it doesn’t allow you to store and stream playlists offline.

What really grates is that on older Fitbits there used to be generic music controls that could perform the basic play-pause-skip-volume functions better than whatever headphones you were wearing. That’s gone and been replaced by something that has marginally better functions, but can only be used with one streaming service and you have to pay for the privilege of performing tasks your headphones can do. As you can tell, this really sticks in my craw, but in the context of fitness bands – which you don’t really expect to do much music-wise – I can tolerate it. It’s a different matter when it comes to Fitbit’s smartwatches.

Getting notifications is subject to the same quirk as on all Fitbits. I use an iPhone and while notifications from Apple’s apps – calls, texts, calendar – are automatically relayed, to get anything else beamed to the watch, it must first have issued a notification on your phone after you’ve installed the Fitbit app. You’ll then have to go into the Fitbit app and turn on notifications from apps like WhatsApp, news apps, and even Fitbit’s own app.

If you use an Android phone you can set up a series of quick replies to texts that can be triggered from the device.

The Design Of The Fitbit Charge 4

The Charge 4 is a stylish band, but if there’s one area in which it falls down against the competition it’s the greyscale screen. You’ll find more vibrant colour screens on £50 bands from the likes of Huawei and Honor. Otherwise the screen reliably wakes up when you turn your wrist and the touchscreen registers swipes accurately. These may sound like basic things to get right but many bands don’t – even smartwatches can fall at this hurdle.

The recessed button on the left-hand side of the device is also usable – much more so than on Fitbit’s Versa 3 and Sense smartwatches, where it has frustrated us no end. Perhaps it’s because the Charge 4 is narrower so easier to pinch.

True to form, Fitbit offers a bevy of different straps which are easy to swap in and out. Currently there are textured woven bands (£29.99, currently reduced to £22.99), sumptuous Horween leather bands (£59.99, currently reduced to £44.99) and upgraded sports bands (£24.99, currently reduced to £18.99). In the world of fitness bands, Fitbit offers a more stylish range of options than any other brand. It’s only when you get to smartwatches that you find real competition in this area.

Battery Life On The Fitbit Charge 4

The battery has always been one of Fitbit’s strong suits and I’d wager protecting that reputation is one of the reasons built-in GPS was passed over time and again. The Charge 4 has a quoted seven-day battery life, but when running for between 30 minutes and an hour every other day, I got between four and five days out of a full charge. When avoiding running, that stretched to six or seven.

The Charge 4 takes about an hour and a half to go from empty to full, and while it’s not the worst I’ve seen, the charger leaves something to be desired. The clip makes it secure, but there’s no click or other indication that you’ve lined up the connectors correctly, so it’s worth double-checking the device is actually charging, unless you want to risk returning after an hour to find a still-dead device.

Should You Buy Something Else?

The Charge line is historically priced at £129.99 when launched and normally dips under three figures after 18 months to two years. However, a little over six months after its release the Charge 4 dropped to £99.99 for Black Friday and that discount has persisted. For such a new device that price represents cracking value.

On paper, the latest Huawei, Honor, Xiaomi or Amazfit bands match up well to the Charge 4 and seriously undercut it, but while they’re all capable devices, they don’t offer as slick an experience as the Charge 4. If you feel like you need more guidance to improve your fitness, the Charge 4 is worth the extra money.

The Huawei Watch GT 2e is also regularly found at the reduced price of £99.99. It has a flashy colour touchscreen, storage for music (although not if synced with Apple smartphones) and far superior sports tracking, especially when it comes to running. But it lacks the convenience and automation of the Charge 4.

The Polar Unite is a better choice if you already spend a decent amount of time exercising and want to build on that. The sleep tracking matches the Charge 4’s and the Unite uniquely spins that information into three personalised workout recommendations for that day. The Unite does lack built-in GPS, though (you’ll find that on its more expensive stablemate, the Ignite) and while its RRP is similar to the Charge 4’s, It hasn’t experienced the continuing price cut.

There’s also a case to be made for the slimmer Fitbit Inspire 2, especially because of the year’s complimentary subscription of Fitbit Premium, but now that the price difference is essentially £10, we’d go for the larger screen of the Charge 4.

There are plenty of brands making fitness trackers and smartwatches, but Fitbit remains the most well-known with a name that’s almost synonymous with fitness trackers. We’ve tested and reviewed every Fitbit since 2014’s Charge 2, as well as models from all the other major manufacturers; while we wouldn’t go so far as to state definitively that Fitbit makes the best fitness trackers, all its wearables are accurate and easy to use, and provide illuminating information about the state of your health and fitness. Fitbit also offers those qualities in a range of devices, from budget bands to sensor-packed smartwatches, and this guide is intended to help you whittle down the options and home in on which will suit you best.

The first question to ask yourself is are you, or are you buying for, a child? If the answer to either question is yes, congratulations, the Ace 2 is the right Fitbit for you. It’s the only one designed for children, which means it gives parental oversight for who the child can befriend on the Fitbit network and also that certain features, like weight tracking, are turned off.

For adults, a quick way to narrow down which Fitbit to plump for is to consider the form factor. Do you want a smartwatch like the Sense, Ionic or Versa, or do you want a band like the Inspire or Charge?

Another way to decide on the right Fitbit is to consider which features each one has and which might be valuable to you. Here’s a run-down of the major features and which devices include them.

• NEWSFLASH: Amazon Prime Day Fitbit Deals Rated

Fitbit Features

Heart rate monitor

Why you’d want it: All Fitbits estimate your step count, but a better metric to focus on is Active Zone Minutes, which was launched earlier this year with the Charge 4 – but any Fitbit with a heart rate monitor has it. It tracks your progress towards 150 minutes of moderate aerobic activity (or 75 minutes of vigorous activity) a week, a target the NHS advocates.

The 24/7 heart rate monitor opens up access to Fitbit’s impressive sleep tracking features and also your Cardio Fitness Score, which is an estimate of your overall cardiovascular fitness and equates to a VO2 max measurement. For both, Fitbit offers context by comparing your stats against the average for your sex and age range. For the Cardio Fitness Score it also offers advice on how to improve it and estimates what effect a set of activities could have on your score, giving a useful target to aim for.

The heart rate monitor is also used for menstrual health tracking, to help people track their cycle and predict periods and windows of fertility. It requires a fair amount of manual input, however.

Which Fitbits have it? Every device bar the original Inspire has a heart rate monitor.

GPS

Why you’d want it: We recommend that runners and cyclists get some form of GPS on their device. It affords far greater accuracy when tracking distance than just using a device’s accelerometer.

Which Fitbits have it? The Sense and Versa 3 smartwatches and the Charge 4 band offer built-in GPS. The Versa 2, Inspire 2 and Inspire HR have connected GPS, which means the device will connect to your phone via Bluetooth to acquire a GPS signal. In our experience, built-in GPS is more accurate than connected GPS.

Waterproof

Why you’d want it: Beyond worrying about damaging your watch if caught in a deluge or if you forget to take it off before stepping in the shower, swimmers will want one of the best swimming watches to track their aquatic activity. This used to be a gap in Fitbit’s range, but every device in the current line-up is water resistant to 50m, although you’ll get better tracking the more you pay.

Which Fitbits have it? The Inspire family simply tracks your time in the pool and estimates calories burned. The Charge 4 will automatically count laps, although don’t expect this to be perfect, while the Sense and both Versa smartwatches can track your laps and pace in real time and display it on your device’s screen, as well as recognising which stroke you used.

Music

Why you’d want it: You like to exercise to music but don’t like leaving your phone at home or in your gym locker. If music is a key consideration, you may be better off looking at other brands, since Fitbit’s integration with streaming services in particular lags behind the competition.

Which Fitbits have it? You can store and stream music to wireless headphones on all Fitbit’s smartwatches. There’s also integration with streaming services Deezer and Spotify, as long as you have premium subscriptions with those providers. Deezer allows you to sync playlists offline, but the Spotify app, in truth, acts like a glorified remote control. In contrast, Spotify allows playlists to be stored on Garmin and Samsung devices to play offline. The cheaper Charge 4 band includes the Spotify app, but it can’t store music.

ECG

Why you’d want it: Sensors in the Fitbit’s smartwatch range make it possible to detect a condition called atrial fibrillation, which is an irregular heart rate rhythm that increases the risk of things like strokes. It’s not a replacement for a medical diagnosis, but it can be a spur to see your GP. If the device results in a condition being caught early that is obviously an invaluable benefit, but for most it’ll be a feature of limited day-to-day use.

Which Fitbits have it? The feature is offered on the Versa 2 (as well as the older smartwatches that don’t appear in the current line-up, the Ionic, Versa and Versa Lite) via a third-party app called FibriCheck. There’s a one-day trial, then access is £3.99 a month. The Sense smartwatch has a built-in Fitbit app for taking an ECG.

See related 

• The Best Fitness Trackers
• The Best Fitness Tracker Deals In The Sales
• The Best Heart Rate Monitors

Fitbit Devices Overview

Here’s a run-down of the current line-up.

The cheapest tracker in Fitbit’s range, the Inspire will set you back just £69.99 and is a perfectly good everyday activity and sleep tracker. However, it lacks a heart rate monitor, and many other features and insights that you can get on the Inspire 2, which is just £20 more, so for most people it’ll be worth making the upgrade. However, keep a keen eye out during sales periods when we’d expect the price to drop to £50 or lower.

The first generation of the Inspire line included this upgrade, which – as the name suggests – added a heart rate monitor. As mentioned above, a heart rate monitor unlocks essential features. Unless you’re extremely price-sensitive or just want what is essentially a pedometer, this was our recommended entry-level device… until the next generation was announced, that is.

Read our Fitbit Inspire HR review

This is the best Fitbit available for under £100, offering a wealth of features that make it an excellent activity and solid sports tracker. The Inspire 2 tracks your heart rate 24/7 to assess your overall level of fitness and guide you towards 150 active minutes each week. It lasts ten days on a charge and you get one year of Fitbit Premium free with the device, which upgrades the level of detail you get in the Fitbit app as well as offering free online workouts, training plans and programmes to help you adopt healthy habits such as reducing your salt consumption.

The best tracker band available from any brand, the Charge 4 has built-in GPS for accurate outdoor sports tracking, while its Run Detect feature automatically triggers the GPS to start tracking – which is extremely convenient for casual runners. As well as the usual excellent activity and sleep tracking you get from Fitbit, it also has a Spotify app which turns the device into a remote control for Spotify premium subscribers, and it lasts seven days on a charge, though be aware that using the GPS significantly shortens the battery life.

Fitbit Charge 4 review

If you want a smartwatch rather than a band, the Versa 2 is the cheapest option in Fitbit’s current line-up. The Versa 2 has Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant, along with storage for music, an always-on display, and on-screen guided workouts. The RRP is the same as the next-generation Versa 3, so rest assured discounts abound. Check your preferred third-party retailer like Amazon, John Lewis, Currys PC World and Argos – they’ll all price-match.

Read our Fitbit Versa 2 review

The major upgrades in the Versa 3, compared with the 2, include built-in GPS, the addition of Google’s voice assistant alongside Alexa, Fitbit’s Active Zone Minutes weekly target, and an upgraded heart rate monitor.

The Sense is Fitbit’s most advanced wearable, and its key extra features compared with the Versa are sensors that measure a wealth of health stats, including skin temperature, breathing rate, heart rate variability and EDA (electrodermal activity). The watch can also take an ECG measurement from the wrist without a paid-for third-party app, and it uses the data to help estimate your stress levels and provide advice on how to manage them. Thanks to all these features it’s pitched as a health watch, but the Sense is also a great sports, activity and sleep tracker too.

• NEWSFLASH: Amazon Prime Day Fitbit Deals Rated

Should I Consider Buying Something Else?

Yes. Although it’s a decent fitness watch, the Versa 2 lags well behind what is offered by the best fitness trackers, old and new. Its biggest rival is the Apple Watch Series 3 now that that watch has been surpassed by the Series 5 and reduced to £199.99. It’s a couple of years old, but the Series 3 has better hardware than the Versa 2, featuring built-in GPS and a more attractive screen and design, and it beats it on software too. It runs the most up-to-date Apple Watch operating system and the Apple App Store is on a completely different level to the meagre offering available for Fitbit smartwatches.

It’s not only the Apple Watch 3 that provides competition, however. Serious runners on a budget should get the cheaper Garmin Forerunner 45, and people who want better general sports tracking should consider the Polar Ignite (£174.50), which has guided workouts and brilliant sleep tracking all included in its price – no subscription required.

If you want music then the new Garmin Vivoactive 4 will link to Spotify Premium accounts to sync your playlists to the watch. It costs £239.99 or £259.99 depending on the size, and you might also be able to pick up a deal on the Garmin Vivoactive 3 Music, which has far better native sports tracking than the Versa 2 along with Spotify support.

Even if you’re dead set on a Fitbit to gain access to its excellent app, the Fitbit Ionic is available for just over £200 most of the time, and it has built-in GPS and a far better screen.

Fitbit Versa 2 In-Depth

Using The Fitbit Versa 2 To Track Activity

At the core of every Fitbit device is excellent everyday activity tracking. Your steps, calories burned, floors climbed, distance covered and active minutes are logged each day, with celebratory animations flashing up on the watch when you hit certain goals, which can be adjusted for each metric in the partner app.

Each hour you’re also nudged to complete at least 250 steps, to ensure you don’t stay sedentary for too long. This target is a little more demanding than the hourly move alert on the Apple Watch, which usually just requires around 100 steps from you to be satisfied.

All of the above is fairly standard on fitness trackers, but Fitbit’s software and massive popularity gives it an edge on rival devices. You can guarantee someone else you know has a Fitbit, so you can compete with them in steps, or even see who is the fastest to complete a special challenge in the app, like virtually walking around California’s Pohono Trail, which is equivalent to 62,500 steps.

There are also now groups in the Fitbit app related to interests like Heart Health, Hiking and Daily Activity, where you can post on a Facebook-style feed to show off your stats, encourage others, or share a particularly hilarious meme. It’s another way you can benefit from Fitbit’s massive community – the groups have over a million members – and find support and advice from people with similar fitness goals.

Using The Fitbit Versa 2 For Working Out

Fitbit currently offers 20 exercise modes, seven of which can be loaded onto the Versa 2 at any time using the Exercise Shortcuts section in the app. Of those modes there are several workout options, including “workout” for those who like to keep it pretty general. There is also an interval workout setting where you can set up your interval lengths, along with weights, bootcamp and circuit training modes, as well as individual modes for cardio machines like the elliptical and stair climber. There is no rowing mode, however – you’ll have to use the workout mode for that.

As on all trackers these modes differ only in name, showing the same stats, with duration, heart rate and calories burned being the key ones. Presumably different algorithms are working behind the scenes to make sure the calorie burn is precise when doing, say, circuit training compared with a bootcamp workout.

These basic workout modes are fine, but the guided workouts you can get on the Versa 2 are more useful. As well as Fitbit’s own Coach app, there are now apps from companies like TRX and Gold’s Gym that offer free workouts you can follow on the watch. There isn’t the vast range of apps you get on the Apple Watch, but sometimes having less choice can be good – you can find a workout quickly and get going.

If you want more workouts, a Fitbit Premium subscription will unlock lots more of them plus training plans in the app; there are other providers behind those workouts too, like Daily Burn and Yoga Studio.

Using The Fitbit Versa 2 For Running

The Versa 2 doesn’t have its own GPS, but can connect to your smartphone to use its GPS during runs, which it will do at the start of your run. I found it took a surprisingly long time to connect to my phone for this before runs, though, to the point where I sometimes just gave up and ran using the Versa 2’s accelerometer to track distance instead of GPS.

Most people run with their phone, and I do most of the time, but to not have GPS in a £200 watch is pretty weak – there’s no other fitness watch at that price without built-in GPS. Also, when using my phone’s GPS the Versa 2 produced pretty inaccurate distance recordings, with excessive smoothing around corners that resulted in shortened total distances. The accelerometer was just as accurate, which is to say neither were as accurate as a watch with its own GPS built in.

The other factor that makes the Versa 2 a poor pick for runners is that the screen isn’t that bright and easy to read when you’re outside. That’s especially true of the always-on version of the screen, which shows your running stats but is so dim you can’t read them while on the move. Activating the full display nearly always took a press of the button on the Versa 2 as well, because the gesture-wake feature rarely worked for me, so to see my running stats I’d have to press a button and then squint at a dull screen. Far from ideal.

Runners are brilliantly served by a range of watches under the £200 mark, so if running is your main sport I’d definitely look elsewhere – the Garmin Forerunner 45, Coros Pace and Polar Ignite are all much better than the Versa 2 for running, and cheaper as well. If you’re looking for a general sports watch with music that can track the occasional run or treadmill session, then the Versa 2 is OK, but even then the lack of built-in GPS and dim screen make it frustrating to use – I’d prefer to have the Apple Watch Series 3 on my wrist for runs in that situation.

Using The Fitbit Versa 2 As A Smartwatch

One of the major new features on the Versa 2 is Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant, and it (she?) has been integrated seamlessly. Press and hold the single button on the Versa and Alexa pops up, and the Versa 2 recognised any question I asked of it with barely a misstep – not easy, since I mumble and talk too quickly.

Alexa always responds with text for privacy reasons, which I appreciated. When comparing Alexa’s responses with Siri’s, I found that both were reliable in giving me the info I asked for quickly, including things like local store opening times and the weather. I’m not a big user of voice assistants, but Alexa is as good as any others I’ve tried.

Less impressive is the introduction of a Spotify app. The Versa 2 is restricted to controlling Spotify on your phone, rather than being able to link with your account over Wi-Fi to store your Spotify playlists and play from the watch independently. You can use the watch app to switch between playlists, but that’s the only advantage over the controls on any decent pair of headphones or the standard music remote control feature on Fitbit smartwatches which can control any music player on your phone. You also have to be a paid-up subscriber to Spotify Premium to access this unimpressive bonus. It’s a bit of a flop, especially since you can sync Spotify playlists across to many Garmin and Samsung smartwatches to stream offline. Deezer premium users can do this on the Versa 2, but that’s been available to Fitbit smartwatch owners since the launch of the original Versa.

A recent update to the Versa 2 has made it a little smarter in one regard: you can store a few watch faces on the device itself and swap between them without using the app, which you used to have to do. It’s a small but welcome change.

I’m also cautiously optimistic about the Fitbit app store, which now has more useful options than in the past, with a couple of workout apps standing out in particular. It’s still hopelessly barren compared with what you get with an Apple Watch or a device running Google’s Wear OS platform, but it’s better than the Garmin Connect IQ app store.

Fitbit Pay, on the other hand, has stalled as far as I can tell. Santander remains the only UK high street bank available and although there are workarounds (third-party apps like boon., which operates like a prepaid MasterCard), most people won’t be able to use NFC payments easily on the Versa 2 owing to the lack of partners.

Using The Fitbit Versa 2 For Sleep Tracking

Fitbit’s sleep tracking has always been a strong point, especially compared with the undercooked offering from Garmin and the non-existent tracking on the Apple Watch, and there is now more depth than ever before.

Each night you are given a simple sleep score out of 100, which is based on time asleep (which accounts for 50 points), deep and REM sleep (25 points) and restoration (25 points). The first two are self-explanatory, but restoration is more interesting: it’s based on sleeping heart rate compared with your overall resting heart rate, and how much you toss and turn at night.

It’s all useful information that’s easy to understand, and you get your sleep score and general info on the watch now, whereas in the past you had to use the Fitbit app. To my knowledge only Polar offer similarly comprehensive sleep tracking, and Fitbit manage to convey the information more clearly.

However, there are still accuracy problems. Sometimes the Versa missed the actual time I fell asleep and marked some periods awake in the middle of the night as light sleep. Also, one night I was up for so long in the middle of the night (I have a baby) that the Versa ended up dividing my sleep into two sections – not a big problem, except you need to sleep for three hours to get a sleep score, so one two-hour section of my night wasn’t given a rating and the other didn’t take into account the two hours’ sleep I did have in that first section.

These are quite small problems compared with the positives of Fitbit’s sleep tracking, which is certainly a big part of the Versa 2’s appeal, but it’s a part that’s going to cost you more. The restorative sleep feature requires a Fitbit Premium subscription. A three-month trial is included with your purchase but after that it’s £79.99 a year. The Versa 2 costs £200 – you shouldn’t have to shell out extra money to get access to much-publicised features like this. With the Polar Ignite, which is cheaper than the Versa 2, you get similarly in-depth sleep tracking and you don’t have to pay any extra.

How Often Am I Going To Have To Charge It?

If you’re exercising outdoors every day you’ll have to charge the Versa 2 every two or three days or so, assuming you have the always-on screen activated. You can get four days out of it if exercising less. That’s fairly good given that it has an always-on screen – the Apple Watch lasts just 18 hours – but you get the same from the new Garmin Venu and its always-on screen is brighter than the Versa 2’s, so you can read it easily when outside.

Turn the always-on screen off and you can get up to six days from the Versa 2, which also has a battery-saving mode that adjusts the settings to eke out more life from the watch if you’re running low on juice.

Where Can I Wear It Without People Laughing At Me?

Pictured: Kim Shui for Fitbit Versa Collection, £49.99 each

You need have no concerns on this front, because the Versa 2 is a smart bit of kit. Fitbit has designed it to be sleeker and better-looking than the original Versa, partly by taking the word Fitbit off the front of it but also by reducing the size of the bezel around the screen. It looks great, and Fitbit maintain its reputation as the best brand for accessories by offering a range of straps and wraps (£24.99-£89.99) to pair with the watch to suit all styles.

I’ve tried a lot of Fitbits: the Alta HR, Charge 2, Ionic, Versa and Charge 3, and none of them have disappointed. In large part that’s down to the features they have in common – cardio fitness score, sleep tracking and insights, automatic exercise recognition – and the easy-to-use app. After spending a day wearing the Inspire HR, I feel like I’ve seen it all before, which is great because at £90 this device has a cheaper launch RRP than any of the Fitbit devices mentioned above. 

If you're looking among the best fitness trackers to find the best Fitbit for you, you'll find that the Inspire HR and its even cheaper sibling, the Inspire (£70), are the entry-level options in the new Fitbit line-up, replacing the One (a pedometer with a clip), Flex 2 (a bracelet without a screen), and Alta and Alta HR (the Inspire forebears).

I wouldn’t take a second look at the basic Inspire, however, unless you’re really just after a wrist-worn step counter. For an extra £20 the Inspire HR gives you swim tracking (although the lack of an altimeter means it won’t count laps for you), connected GPS so the device can connect to your phone when you’re running and cycling to show your pace and plot your route on a map, and a heart rate monitor which grants you access to three notable features.

The first is the cardio fitness score, an estimate of your VO2 max. Most trackers have this now, but Fitbit adds something unique by comparing you with people of your gender and age group and, where needed, giving you advice on how to improve your score.

Fitbit applies the same trick to the second feature that sets Fitbit apart – sleep tracking. Your slumber is broken down into awake, REM, light and deep sleep, then you’ll see how that night stacks up against your 30-day average and the typical range for people in your demographic. It makes clear when the amount and quality of sleep you’re getting is a cause for concern.

The final extra unlocked by the heart rate monitor is female health tracking. Not something I’ve tried, but certainly something that sets Fitbit apart.

It’s a compelling offering and something that feels slickly executed when you get your hands on it. The body of the device is petite at just 16.2mm wide, 37mm long and 12.6mm deep. That last measurement sounds a bit chunky but the back is curved so it sits comfortably on the wrist, and at a featherlight 28g I barely noticed it was there.

Currently, the Inspire HR comes with a black, lilac or white band (with both small and large bands included in the box so you don’t have to worry about buying the wrong size). The band is made from silicone which helps it stay put during exercise and it looks pretty good, although if you’re not a fan there are several other accessories available – bands in stainless steel mesh (£59.99), prints (£24.99), leather (£34.99) and – a new look for Fitbit – a leather double wrap (£34.99). I haven’t seen these in flesh so can’t say if they’re as smart in person as they are on screen, but I did change the strap and it was an easy sprung bolt affair, so if you buy an alternative band you certainly won’t find you’re put off using it by a fiddly swap process.

The Inspire HR’s touchscreen is responsive and one of the major upgrades from the Alta HR, which you operated by tapping the bottom of the device. There’s also one button on the left-hand side which operates as a back button in the menus and a pause and stop button during manually tracked activities.

Flick up to scroll down through your day’s stats, steps, current heart rate, total calories burned, active minutes, distance travelled and how far you are towards the goal of 250 steps an hour. Scroll up to choose an exercise you want to manually track, follow a two- or five-minute breathing exercise, set an alarm or a timer, or find the limited settings menu to turn GPS and the heart rate monitor on or off. Swiping left or right or tapping the home screen cycles through the smaller secondary stat on display: date, steps, heart rate, distance travelled, calories burned, and active minutes. There are also ten styles of watch face to choose from in the Fitbit app.

So far I’ve taken the Inspire HR on one run, tracked one bike ride and tested the automatic tracking with another bike ride.

The first run wasn’t as smooth sailing as I had hoped. It didn’t take long for the Inspire HR to connect to my phone (you’re required to open the Fitbit app) but the GPS signal kept flicking in and out, with the device buzzing each time. It didn’t help that it was hard to read the screen in bright but overcast conditions in the middle of a March day. I finished with pace readings that made sense and a map that looked right (pictured, left), although it was way off once I zoomed in (pictured, middle).

To be fair, I was running in central London with my phone in a flipbelt by my stomach so I wasn’t really giving the device the chance to shine. It’ll need more testing, but even if these problems continue, it’s to be expected at this price point, and for the casual runner it’s serviceable enough. The good news is that the connected GPS was much better on the bike ride I tracked (pictured, right), and later in the day the screen was much easier to read as well.

The automatic tracking worked well, nailing the right amount of time for my cycle commute and correctly identifying the bike ride. It even identified a “sport” session on Sunday morning which I believe was a loaded carry – the items carried being 35kg of children.

I’ll continue testing the Inspire HR, but I’m confident my opinion on it won’t change. It covers all the basics for a casual exerciser and it covers them well. So well, in fact, I question who would need to pay the £40 to upgrade to the next Fitbit, the Charge 3. That extra cash will get you a larger screen, and a device that can track the floors you’ve climbed and lengths you’ve swum, set and send quick message replies if you’re on Android, and Fitbit Pay if you get the special editions (another £30). Considering the combination of its features and the price, the Inspire HR looks hard to better.

Buy Inspire HR from Fitbit | £89.99

The Fitbit Charge 2 was Fitbit’s best-selling tracker and deservedly so. It was the first device to feature the cardio fitness score, resting heart rate and fantastic sleep tracking. There was connected GPS and an interval timer, which I found invaluable when training for my first half marathon. And of course it carried all of Fitbit’s stand-out steps and activity tracking. Coach’s five-star rating still stands two years later and it more than holds its own against today’s competition.

The Charge 3, released in autumn this year, keeps all of those positives and brings more to the table in a more polished package, but the Charge 2 dropped to £80 in the Black Friday sales and appears to have stayed there, which raises the question: are the Charge 3’s upgrades worth the extra £50? That will depend on you, but with the gift-giving season bearing down on us this early hands-on review should help you make up your mind while we keep testing it – and decide whether it deserves a place in our best fitness trackers.

Before I detail the new features and my experience of them, it’s worth me reassuring you that the problems with the connected GPS people on Fitbit forums have experienced (as I did, but not other reviewers strangely) seem to have been resolved. For the first week or so the device would just not connect to my phone, but I assume an update was applied when I reloaded the Charge 3 on to my Fitbit account after swapping it out for the Ionic while I ran a 10K race. Now, the Charge 3 connects swiftly when you start an exercise on the device and you have an active connection with the Fitbit app.

Design

As for the differences that might make you plump for the Charge 3, the biggest one is swim tracking. While the tracking doesn’t match up to that on Fitbit’s smartwatches, with stroke recognition being left off the Charge 3, at least Fitbit’s been smart enough to allow you to set the pool length in one metre or yard increments, with a minimum size of ten yards – essential if you swim in a city centre gym’s space-starved option.

The live display, however, is very basic, offering just a stopwatch while you’re splashing away. Laps swum, pace per 100m and calories burned are displayed on the app once you’ve synced – the bare minimum. This is only an initial test, but my 20-length swim of a 25m pool clocked in at just 19 lengths. I tried another 20 lengths to see if the auto-recognise feature would kick in, but sadly not. I’d still say swim tracking is a valuable addition, though – it’s perfectly serviceable for casual swimmers and the features aren’t out of line with similarly-priced general fitness bands.

A swathe of other improvements are confined to the look and feel of the device, with an inset button and a larger touchscreen (the earlier version used the button and banging the bottom of the device to navigate). It’s nicer, sure, but cosmetic.

The notifications have improved, too. With the standard calls, texts and calendar notifications expanded to include apps – in my experience Fitbit seemed to offer notifications from any apps I had allowed on my phone including Citymapper, email and WhatsApp.

The battery life has also increased. Fitbit quotes seven days and I found the Charge 3 made that marker easily, stretching to nine days when I couldn’t use connected GPS and so got very light use out of it. Not that connected GPS is a battery hog – my 40-minute bike commute knocked just 2% off the battery. Plus, it seems like it has a quick charge function, going from 4% to 30% in 15 minutes, but taking an hour to reach 90%.

Is the Fitbit Charge 3 Worth It?

There are two more major additions which fall under the headings “mostly useless” and “currently useless”. The first is Fitbit Pay, available on the £150 special edition. Unless you bank with Santander or the handful of smaller banks which support this feature, it’s of no use to you (or, currently, me).

The Charge 3 also packs a relative SpO2 sensor like the Versa and Ionic smartwatches do. However, like those devices, it’s not being used. Fitbit has said it has plans to start testing it this year, but I’m not holding my breath that it’ll become a sleep apnoea detector (one potential use) any time soon.

While the above might sound like a negative review of the Charge 3, I’d urge you to take it as criticism of the new features only. The Charge 3 is a fine device that looks better than ever and is a great companion for people who like to keep active but don’t take it too seriously. But then, so’s the Charge 2, and as a “budget-conscious” consumer (to put it nicely) I’d probably pocket the £50 and plump for the Charge 2 for £80. However, if someone was going to buy me one, say for Christmas, that’d be a different matter entirely.

Fitbit Versa In Brief

For anyone who’s not taking their fitness really seriously (like, triathlete serious), I think Fitbits are the best choice for activity tracking as well as recording runs and time spent in the gym. And Fitbit’s second stab at a touchscreen smartwatch has taken a big step forward in what else it offers. There’s slick offline integration with music streaming service Deezer and the first high street bank coming onto Fitbit Pay. I’d wager that the Versa will be as popular as Fitbit’s biggest smash, the Charge 2.

Buy from Fitbit | £200

See related 

• How To Pick The Best Fitbit For You
• The Best Fitness Trackers
• Fitbit Ionic Fitness Tracker Hands-On Review
• Fitbit Charge 3 Review

Fitbit Versa In Depth

Using The Fitbit Versa To Track Activity

Fitbit has nailed tracking your daily activity and the Versa performs in the same way as the Ionic and Charge 2 by tracking steps with an accelerometer and floors climbed with an altimeter. Each metric has daily targets, and badges available for all-time highs over 24 hours and cumulatively over your lifetime. There is also an hourly step target of 250 to hit to ensure you’re staying mobile throughout the day.

There are also challenges leaderboards, solo adventures where your steps take you own famous routes (like the NYC marathon) and unlock vistas, or adventure races where you virtually race a friend around a famous route with your steps.

The Versa also keeps track of your active minutes, adding up any exercise you record and logging any period of moderate activity, like walking, automatically.

It’s a compelling mix of tracking and motivational features. If you’re really only after something to see how generally active you are you won’t be disappointed (although if that’s only what you’re after, the Fitbit Charge 2 will do all that for a considerably lower cost).

Using The Fitbit Versa For Working Out

There are a number of workout options to select on the Versa, 19 in total, seven of which can be loaded onto the Versa. The gym-based ones include weights workout, workout and circuit, but they’re different in name only. They will all track duration and heart rate, using the latter to estimate your calorie burn. The live tracking screen shows three metrics at once: two smaller numbers on the top and bottom which are static (although you can change them in the settings on the watch easily before you start) and a larger middle metric that’s an editable list you can scroll through by swiping or using the Versa’s left-hand button. Thank goodness Fitbit included the latter. Anyone who’s tried to control a touchscreen when they’re a sweaty mess gasping for air will know having a big fat button to press is a blessed relief.

There are also options for cardio machines like the treadmill, elliptical, stair climber and exercise bike (called spinning in the app), but these also just track duration, heart rate, calories burned and, where appropriate, steps and therefore distance. Conspicuous by its absence is a mode for rowing machines but as far as I can see there’s no reason not to just use the general workout tracking mode.

The Versa does have an intervals mode, which many competitors don’t include. It’s bonkers not to have it frankly – it’s one of the features I use the most. The Versa’s version is well done, although you have to set the duration of work and rest periods, and repetitions in the app then sync it over. This is quick and easy to do, but it would be quicker and easier if it could be done on the device itself. I also recommend turning the device’s vibration level to strong in settings, because there’s nothing worse than working into a rest period.

The Versa also comes preloaded with Fitbit Coach, a subscription app (an extra £30 a year) that may well be worth the expenditure. We tried one of the three free sample bodyweight workouts and it was a satisfying circuit that demoed each exercise on screen before leading me through work and rest periods. The premium offering looks promising, with a wide range of bodyweight workouts that apparently can be personalised, as well as run and walk coaching. We’ll update our review once we’ve had a chance to get to grips with it.

As far as I’m concerned the Versa is as good a wrist tracker for fitness classes and gym work that you’ll find. It doesn’t attempt to count reps, but I haven’t tried a tracker that nails the accuracy and usefulness of this developing feature yet.

Using The Fitbit Versa For Running

If you’re a runner, even a causal one, and you’re buying a fitness tracker it’s worth getting a device with GPS so you can get accurate distance, elevation and pace stats (and get on Strava). The big change between Fitbit’s first smartwatch, the Ionic, and the Versa is the change from a built-in GPS chip to assisted GPS, where the Versa has to connect to your smartphone to acquire a signal (just like with the Charge 2). While I prefer running without a phone you only have to look out for people holding their phone in one hand while running or wearing an armband phone holder to see most are happy to carry one along.

I thought this assisted GPS would have made it quicker for the Versa to lock on to a signal, but I found the Versa takes just as long, if not longer than the Ionic, to find a signal. It seems to help if you have the Fitbit app open on your phone and sync it with the watch, but even then I spent longer than I was happy with standing in place tapping my feet impatiently.

While the Versa is supposed to have the Run Detect feature, which automatically recognizes a run and fires up the GPS, it didn’t work for me on two test runs. It’s a real shame because it’s one of my favourite features on the Ionic.

Beyond those frustrations, though, the Versa has everything I’d want in a run tracker, and I bet it will satisfy the vast majority of runners too. The mid-exercise screen can be customised with a static top and bottom stat of elapsed time, duration, pace, average pace, heart rate (which is colour-coded so you can see which heart rate zone you’re in), calories burned, steps, time of day or lap time, and you can choose which of those metrics will be shown large in the middle of screen. You can also set the screen to be always on (although this will drain the battery faster).

The stats are all nicely displayed afterwards in the app, including a map of your route, splits and time spent in different heart rate zones. It doesn’t include information on cadence – like Samsung, Garmin and others do – but if cadence really matters to you I imagine you’ll be better served by a dedicated running watch. Most importantly, at least for me, it exports smoothly and quickly to Strava.

I also occasionally run intervals so was delighted to see the inclusion of GPS in the interval feature. However, there’s no pace stat available in this mode. Sure, I could go off my heart rate for work periods, but I find pace much easier and there’s no reason I can think of why it wouldn’t be included. Fingers crossed this will be included in Fitbit’s third smartwatch.

RECOMMENDED: The Best Running Watches

Using The Fitbit Versa For Cycling

Like most fitness trackers with GPS, the Versa’s offering for cyclists is very similar to that for runners, minus the steps. It works for casual cyclists, especially commuters, but committed riders will want to look elsewhere, especially because the Versa won’t connect to things like power meters.

The Versa includes Fitbit’s automatic exercise recognition feature. This won’t trigger GPS but it will log the activity, keep tabs on your heart rate and contribute to your active minutes tally. I was surprised that the Versa struggled to maintain Fitbit’s normally accurate standards. On one occasion my 40-minute commute by bike was logged at just over an hour and pushing a pram was also logged as a bike ride (to be fair, though, my wrist was in a similar position to holding handlebars).

Using The Fitbit Versa For Swimming

The Ionic was the first Fitbit with a screen that was waterproof, but at launch the offering was a bit bare bones, just tracking time and calories burnt in the pool. Now, the offering’s much improved and the Versa can count lengths, measure your heart rate and recognise different types of strokes – even my far-from-perfect ones.

That’s all good stuff but perhaps the biggest improvement is a tiny one. The length of the pool setting has gone from a few pre-programmed options to being customisable to as little as 10 metres – pretty important if your favoured pool is the tiny one in your gym. My closest one, for instance, is a random 13 metres, which the Versa can now handle.

In my opinion there’s still a little way to go in terms of feature before it’s right up there with the best waterproof trackers. A SWOLF score which gives an indication of your efficiency would be useful, for instance, but the Versa has a much improved feature set and people who like to keep fit in their local pool will welcome this addition.

RECOMMENDED: The Best Waterproof Fitness Trackers

Using The Fitbit Versa As A Heart Rate Monitor

The Versa’s heart rate monitor unlocks a number of Fitbit’s best features, including sleep tracking, a better estimate of calorie burn, resting heart rate and your cardio fitness score (something akin to VO2 max) – the last two are both good measures of your overall fitness.

The cardio fitness score in particular is an extremely useful feature. Not only will Fitbit put you on a spectrum so you can see how you compare with other demographically similar athletes, it suggests how much you’d improve if start doing certain things like exercising regularly. To my mind that’s a seriously well designed and highly motivating service that no other fitness tracker brand offers.

In terms of accuracy, I found that the Versa has the same issue all Fitbits, and to a greater or lesser extent, all wrist-worn trackers have – struggling to keep up with rapid changes (for instance, when running intervals) and when you’re working at your peak. As I think this is a tracker that’s suited to a wide range of fitness levels, that’s not much of a problem, but if a more accurate reading is important for you look elsewhere, especially since the Versa won’t pair with a heart rate strap.

RECOMMENDED: The Best Heart Rate Monitors

Using The Fitbit Versa To Listen To Music

One of the big new features launched with the Versa has been integration with Deezer, a music streaming service and Spotify rival. Each Versa comes with a three-month Deezer premium subscription (normally £10 a month) that allows you to save music to your watch and play without an internet connection. And it’s surprisingly easy to do this. On the smartphone or desktop app, you simply star a track and the next time your Versa is plugged in and connected to WiFi it syncs the music over every time without fail. That’s almost Apple-grade ease of use.

As someone whose physical (including in the sense of music files on a local hard drive) music collection has dwindled over the years, this has been something of a revelation. It brings the Versa into line with the music streaming features Samsung and Wear OS devices offer with Spotify and Google Play apps. Is there any difference between Deezer and Spotify? Probably, but not that I noticed.

There’s also a Fitbit player which allows you to transfer audio files you own to the watch. You’ll need to download a Fitbit program to a computer, which will then sync to the device over WiFi. I found it easy enough (just not as easy as with Deezer) to set up and transfer files over, and there’s space for around 300 songs.

Bluetooth headphones connect easily to the device, but on occasion I found that the streaming got a little choppy, as if some gremlin was rapidly pressing pause and play. These issues resolved themselves quickly and weren’t too frequent but it could get pretty frustrating when I was trying to match my stride to the beat. Still, if you’re running with assisted GPS you can always play music off your phone and it’s better than having your ears assaulted by your gym’s playlist.

Using The Fitbit Versa For Sleep Tracking

The Fitbit Versa has the same sleep tracking features as any Fitbit with a heart rate monitor, which means the sleep tracking is top-notch. You’ll get a breakdown of time spent in light, deep and REM sleep, although occasionally I woke to find the Versa hadn’t been able to get a good enough reading so I just got a total time reading – the first time this had happened to me wearing a Fitbit.

The killer feature that sets Fitbit apart from the competition is comparing the breakdown of your sleep against other Fitbit users (who are legion) in your demographic. The benefit is that you can see if it’s worth spending some time trying to improve the quality, rather than just duration, of your sleep. The app also offers a few tips, but of course there’s plenty of advice out there on how to do this.

Importantly, the Versa is also light enough and small enough to feel comfortable on the wrist while you sleep, and the battery life means you rarely have to decide between tracking your sleep or charging it.

RECOMMENDED: The Best Sleep Trackers

Using the Fitbit Versa As A Smartwatch

The Versa offers the usual notifications relayed from your smartphone. It’ll buzz when something comes in or you can swipe down from the top of the screen to see the last 15 notifications. You do have to do a bit of manual set-up though, going into the app and turning on notifications from each app. Confusingly at first, each app won’t appear on the list until it’s sent you a notification on your phone after you set up your Versa.

In terms of controlling your smartphone, one of our markers of a true smartwatch (but something that’s rarely achieved unless the manufacturer of phone and wearable are the same), the Versa will allow you to answer calls on your phone and now allows people with Android phones to set up five quick replies of 60 characters or less to ping back to texts or messages from apps like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. We haven’t had a chance to try this so we can neither confirm nor deny that you can load up your favourite “welp” GIF.

Traditional fitness tracker manufacturers like Fitbit and Garmin struggle to offer as many, and as many high-quality, apps as Apple or a smartwatch built on Wear OS (Google’s Android for wearables). Fitbit’s app offering has slowly got better but it still lags way behind what I want. The big players who have come on board include Strava (although it only displays stripped down stats from recorded activities), the New York Times (limited to headlines and one sentence on ten stories), Starbucks (which puts a payment loyalty card on your wrist) and a controller for Philips Hue smart light bulbs.

There are other smaller developers making apps of varying quality and usefulness. Some are a crapshoot, but things like a Pomodoro timer (a well known productivity protocol where you work in 25-minute bursts) is useful.

There are also plenty of watch faces to choose from, including the toddler-friendly pet cat (or dog) which you feed with steps. It’s like a Tamagotchi for the wellness age.

Fitbit Pay, launched with the Ionic, has seen an almost complete failure to launch in the UK. While major banks in the US are on board, until recently only challenger banks Starling and Danske offered it. Santander has signed up now, so here’s hoping it takes off so you can make contactless payments from your device.

How Often Am I Going To Have To Charge It?

Not that often – maybe twice a week if you use all the features. Fitbit quotes four days but I found it easily stretched to six days when we weren’t using assisted GPS or music and turned off all notifications.

Once I started properly testing it I used up 90% of the battery over four days and three nights, which included the following: a seven-minute workout using the Fitstar app; a 20-minute workout; a 15-minute swim; a 36-minute bike ride without GPS; one hour 35 minutes of cycling using assisted GPS; close to two hours of streaming Deezer; and regular WhatsApp notifications. If you ask me, that’s a lot. The Samsung Gear Fit2 Pro can barely get through a day without using any features, ditto the Mobvoi Ticwatch S.

Charging from zero to full takes about an hour and a half and, in a change to Fitbit’s usual leads, the Versa uses a cradle with spring-loaded side clips that holds the Versa securely in place.

Where Can I Wear It Without People Laughing At Me?

Everywhere. It’s a lot more stylish than its forerunner the Ionic, thanks to a slimmer, square black body (although the screen is off-centre to accommodate the Fitbit logo). There are also many more interchangeable bands available, from the standard rubber band (black, white, grey, peach and periwinkle, the latter a lavender-esque hue, £25 each), to leather (cognac, lavender, midnight blue and saddle stitch, £50 each), to metal bands (£70-£90, black metal mesh FTW).

The tiny bolts that attach the watch to the straps aren’t as easy to use as the mechanisms on other Fitbits, which may make having different straps for different occasions and activities frustrating.

Should I Consider Buying Something Else?

There are now a number of activity-tracking smartwatches around the £200 mark available but I think the Versa is the pick of the bunch thanks to its superlative tracking chops and battery life, as well as its improving smart features. The Samsung Gear Fit2 Pro has better swim tracking and smart features, but can’t compete in overall tracking and battery life. The Mobvoi Ticwatch S is the smartest smartwatch with plenty of apps and an in-built microphone for “OK Google” commands, but its activity tracking doesn’t match up and the battery won’t last a day. I have yet to try the Suunto 3 Fitness but it’s shaping up to be more of a training-focused offering.

I think the trickiest decision may come when choosing between this and another Fitbit. While the Charge 2 is an older model and doesn’t offer swim tracking or the smartwatch features, you should have no trouble finding it for £100. And if looks aren’t that important to you you’ll probably be able to find the Ionic for £250 for less. And because it shares the same operating system as the Versa, you’ll get all the same features as well as being able to leave your phone behind on a run.

Fitbit Alta HR In-Depth

Using The Fitbit Alta HR As A Heart Rate Monitor

The original Alta now costs £100 (although it can be found for even less online), so is it worth spending an extra £30 for an optical heart rate monitor? Yes it absolutely is.

The addition of heart rate monitoring means greater accuracy in tracking the calories you burn and results in a more detailed breakdown of sleep (more on that later). The Alta HR can now also give an estimate of your resting heart rate, an excellent indicator of general fitness.

RECOMMENDED: What Is A Healthy Resting Heart Rate And Why Does It Matter?

A few months after launching, Fitbit upgraded the app to offer Alta HR users Cardio Fitness Score, a feature that had previously only been available on the Charge 2 and Blaze. It’s an estimate of VO₂ max, or how efficiently your body can use oxygen, based on your resting heart rate and other bits from profile including your weight. While this could have been just another number, Fitbit cleverly places you on a spectrum of people of the same sex and age range.

Subsequent screens in the app then suggest how much you could improve the score with exercise, especially HIIT, or if you drop 5lb (2.3kg) of weight. If there’s one complaint we have with fitness trackers it’s that numbers are often provided without any context, so we give Fitbit a big hand for adding this feature and explaining it.

After exercising you’ll find a breakdown of your session in the app, which will give you a line graph of your heart rate for the duration and a breakdown of time spent in certain zones: fat burn (essentially light exercise), cardio (moderate exercise) and peak.Reviewing the times spent in certain zones is especially useful if you take a HIIT class where, if properly structured, you should be hitting the peak zone regularly, if briefly. It acted as a timely reminder to us, at least, that we should put more effort in.

One question with all wrist-based heart rate monitors is accuracy and the ability to respond quickly to rapid changes in heart rate. We haven’t tested the Alta HR against a chest strap (which are inevitably more accurate), but we found it mostly passed the “that’s reasonable” test. Our resting heart rate moved around appropriately according to how active we were and there were no outlandish readings when we looked at the screen during exercise.

Occasionally, however, we did find it didn’t display a heart rate during exercise even though we were wearing it according to Fitbit’s guidelines for exercise (tight and two finger-widths above the wrist bone). This was pretty rare, though.

RECOMMENDED: The Best Heart Rate Monitors

Using The Fitbit Alta HR For Step Counting

The 10,000 steps goal took a bit of kicking earlier this year, although Fitbit can happily point to its 2017 focus on heart rate and sleep to avoid some of the heat. The step goal is still front and centre when you open the Fitbit app, but we’re fine with that – 10,000 steps is a perfectly legitimate marker and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

There’s also the option in the app to change the step target up or down, depending on your starting point and progress.

We found ourselves hitting the 10,000-step goal a little earlier in the day than usual (we are very much creatures of habit) so the Alta HR may be a bit more sensitive to movement, but not outrageously so, and we have no way of knowing if our previous tracker was more or less accurate.

With all things tracker-related, it’s not really the absolute number that counts, it’s how it changes over time. Fitbit seems to know that and offers breakdowns of your steps over a day, a week, a month, three months or a year.

One feature that can be found in other models in this price bracket, but isn’t present on the Alta HR, is an altimeter to count stairs climbed. In the Fitbit range, that’s present in the Charge 2 and above, but Fitbit can be forgiven the omission on the Alta HR. They’ve already managed to fit a heart rate monitor into the Alta’s svelte frame.

Using The Fitbit Alta HR For Running

The Alta HR automatically recognises and categorises 15 minutes or more of running as an exercise event (although you can reduce this time limit in the settings). Afterwards it provides you with the time spent running, a graph of your heart rate and the time spent in the three heart rate zones, calories burned and steps taken.

Strangely, Fitbit doesn’t take a stab at estimating the distance you ran (something Garmin’s Vivosmart 3 does a decent job of), although it will give you the distance travelled in the day.

But, if you’re happy to run with your phone, you’re able to track distance (and therefore pace) using your phone’s GPS. Once you’re done and check your exercise log, you’ll see the app’s married the GPS data with the heart rate SmartTrack noted.

Considering assisted GPS is one of the main differences between the Alta HR and the Charge 2, it’s surprising Fitbit left this workaround in.

Where the Alta HR does fall down, however, is that it can’t see any of the GPS info (time, distance or pace data) on your wrist as you run. In fact, because SmartTrack isn’t shown on the screen at all you can’t even see a timer of how long you’ve been running for. You can keep tabs on your heart rate, which is useful if you’re following a training plan and like to use heart rate zones instead of terms like easy, steady and tempo, or if you’re looking to run intervals. But if you are that into your running that you’re planning on intervals, we’d recommend the Charge 2 – which has a feature dedicated to just that.

RECOMMENDED: The Best Running Watches

Using The Fitbit Alta HR For Cycling

Although there’s no cycling option when starting GPS tracking in the app, it’ll still match itself up to a SmartTrack cycling event. Otherwise the Alta HR tracks exactly the same things for cycling as it does for running. It works if you’re a casual cyclist – perhaps a commuter like us – and want the activity to count towards your goals, but if you’re at all into cycling the Alta HR will feel feature-light pretty quickly.

Using The Fitbit Alta HR For Swimming

The Alta HR isn’t waterproof so don’t take it into the pool or the shower. Fitbit only offers swim tracking on the cheaper Flex 2 – it seems to be one area that Fitbit’s happy to leave to the competition for now.

RECOMMENDED: The Best Waterproof Fitness Trackers 

Using The Fitbit Alta HR For Calorie Counting

The addition of heart rate data should make the estimates of calories burned more accurate, although we can’t test whether that’s true or not. It’s useful that Fitbit tracks total calorie count, including those burned at rest, which is essential if you’re counting calories to lose weight.

The Fitbit app sets a calories burned target based on your profile info, although you can edit this. If you log food in the Fitbit app, it’ll also give you a dynamic calorie count as well as a breakdown of macronutrients (carbs, fat and protein).

If you eat a lot of processed food this could be very useful because there’s a barcode scanner that’ll bring in all the info. It’s less useful if, like us, you cook wholefoods and have little idea of the weight of food you’re eating. You could spend a week diligently measuring and recording the regular items you make, but we couldn’t bring ourselves to perform such a soul-sucking task.

Using The Fitbit Alta HR As A Sleep Tracker

The Alta HR is the cheapest wearable in Fitbit’s line-up that offers Sleep Stages, which uses the heart rate monitor to add REM tracking to the breakdown of awake, light and deep sleep that’s common across brands.

Big whoop, you may say, but drill down into a night’s tracking and Fitbit will explain what each stage means and, crucially, benchmark you against the typical figures for your sex and age range. That’s genuinely useful.

Sleep Insights is even more useful, which make use of the mass of data Fitbit has access to. This might mean you’re treated to interesting titbits (Fitbit users sleep on average 15 minutes longer during the winter) or a comparison of your average time spent asleep to that of your demographic.

Tapping into this information could be a real game changer, and the educating of users about sleep is a real advantage of going with Fitbit.

RECOMMENDED: The Best Sleep Trackers

Using The Fitbit Alta HR As A Smartwatch

With such a small screen the Alta HR can’t match the smartwatch pretensions of the Blaze, its older, bigger brother, but it makes full use of the real estate available by offering simple notifications.

The device will buzz with calls, texts and calendar alerts (which can be turned off). When the screen’s activated the sender and, with texts, the first 40 characters of the message will scroll across the screen (40 characters, by the way, is plenty. If it’s more than that it’s probably your mum and you should just call her).

It’s a useful addition and well executed, although we found it difficult to read the Alta HR’s screen during daylight, and we occasionally activated the screen by accident and couldn’t bring the message back again.

What the Alta HR can’t do is show notifications from third-party apps like WhatsApp, a feature that’s present on one of the Alta HR’s biggest competitors, the Garmin Vivoactive HR and Vivosmart 3. Whether that’s a problem depends on you – if we were buzzed every time someone posts in our fantasy football group our hand would be permanently numb.

The Fitbit App

Syncing with the app couldn’t be easier. The Alta HR pairs over Bluetooth in a matter of seconds every time you open the app or you can pull down the home screen to manually activate a sync.

The Fitbit app is one of the easiest to use, striking the right balance between a manageable layout at first glance and sufficient depth that you continue to stumble on new screens and details a fair while after first downloading it.

The Challenges tab offers a range of gamified competitions with friends (if you know any fellow Fitbit users) and solo challenges that allow you to virtually complete a route – like the New York Marathon – through your step count. Both are nice additions that may provide that little bit of impetus needed to change your routine and up your step count.

RECOMMENDED: The Best Health And Fitness Apps

How Often Am I Going To Have To Charge It?

Fitbit claims a seven-day battery life which would be a solid effort for a device with constant heart rate monitoring – but we found it can go as long as ten days. It takes about two hours to fully charge from dead.

Where Can I Wear It Without People Laughing At Me?

Anywhere – it’s slim enough and, in black, discreet enough to go unnoticed, but there are plenty of options to change its style. The standard band is available in four colours – black, blue grey, fuschia and coral (£19.99 each), with the latter a bright statement orange that’s just the right side of cool.

Leather bands in brown (our favourite), indigo or lavender (£39.99 each) are the go-to if you’re planning on wearing it with a suit. There’s also a metal bracelet in stainless steel (£69.99) or 22k gold-plated (£109.99), and while Fitbit’s promotional photos seem to suggest these are only for women we’d be tempted by the steel version if we moved in fancier circles.

RRP £129, buy on fitbit.com | Check price on amazon.co.uk

Should I Consider Buying Something Else?

Absolutely, because a lot of the best fitness trackers are available for £130 or thereabouts. There’s the basic TomTom Spark 3 at £120 which lacks a heart rate monitor but does add built-in GPS – if you’re into running, go for this instead.

There’s the Garmin Vivosmart 3 (£130) which is packed full of features, but sacrifices the Alta HR’s ease of use and style and falls down on the cycling front by offering no info after rides.

Among the best Fitbits there’s the hugely popular Charge 2 (£140) which is very similar, but offers a few extra features and a larger, more interactive screen. But to make it as stylistically unobtrusive as the Alta HR you’d have to pony up £60 for the leather band.

Fitbit Charge 2 Deals

Fitbit Charge 2 Special Editions – 37.5% Off

Fitbit have jumped into the pre-Christmas sales (now a thing, apparently) by reducing the special editions of the Charge 2 to £100. So if you were um-ing and ah-ing over Amazon’s cheaper deal because you really wanted the blue-grey strap and 22-carat rose-gold plated tracker combo, well done for holding out. Good things come to those who procrastinate.

Buy from Fitbit | £99.99 (Fitbit RRP £159.99)

Fitbit Charge 2 – 43% Off

Now that there’s a Charge 3 you can expect to find plenty of discounts on the Charge 2 and Amazon has duly obliged. The major differences between the Charge 2 and 3 are that the 3 is waterproof, comes fitted with a (currently unused) relative SpO2 sensor, a battery life that’s extended by two days, a bigger screen and fancier buttons. If you’d rather save the £45 on the £130 Charge 3, pick up the Charge 2 for close to half price and you’ll still get connected GPS, a heart-rate monitor and Fitbit’s excellent fitness and sleep features. 

Buy on Amazon | £79.99 (Fitbit RRP £139.99)

RECOMMENDED: Fitness Tracker Deals

See related 

• Fitbit Charge 3 Review
• How To Pick The Best Fitbit For You
• The Best Fitness Trackers Of 2021
• The Best Fitness Tracker Deals: Cyber Monday 2021 Has Arrived

Fitbit Charge 2 In-Depth

Using the Fitbit Charge 2 for step counting

No matter what additions are made to the fancier Fitbits, the 10,000 steps daily target remains front and centre. The steps you’ve taken are clearly shown on the tracker’s screen and the home screen of the app, so it’s easy to see how close you are to the target. Longer walks are also automatically registered as an exercise that counts towards the Fitbit-set goal of five workouts a week and count towards your daily step total.

The new Adventures section in the app (available with all Fitbit devices) also provides a novel way to motivate you towards achieving your step goal, enabling you to plot how far those steps will take you around a trail in Yosemite National Park or along the route of the New York Marathon. Reaching one of the milestones along the route that unlocks a panoramic image of a viewpoint on your phone (think a 360° image, but about 90° of it) and, of course, badges are awarded on completion.

The Charge 2 can also alert you to a period of inactivity, vibrating briefly at ten minutes to the hour if you haven’t logged 250 steps. Mercifully, this feature can be turned off and, even if it’s on, it’ll skip the alerts when you’re sleeping.

Compared with other trackers I wore at the same time, the Fitbit tended to post a higher numbers of steps, but the differences weren’t alarmingly high.

Using the Fitbit Charge 2 as a heart rate monitor

Heart rate monitoring comes as standard on the Charge 2 (it wasn’t on the original Charge but was added to the Charge HR), so you can keep tabs on your ticker throughout the day and get a chart tracking your resting heart rate over time. As you get fitter, your resting heart rate should drop.

The heart rate tracking is reliable during everyday activities and moderate exercise, but, like most wrist-based HR monitors, it can lag a little during HIIT sessions. This means I found it tricky to get an exact fix on my HR while exercising, although I found the post-workout debriefs were pretty accurate.

Perhaps the most exciting new feature of the Fitbit Charge 2 is the Cardio Fitness Score – the equivalent of VO2 max, which measures how efficiently your body uses oxygen when working out at your hardest. Put more simply, it’s an excellent way to see how fit you actually are – the higher the score, the better – with most people falling in a range of 30 to 60.

Once the Charge 2 has calculated your score, it ranks you from poor to excellent so you can see how you measure up to your peers, as well as showing your potential for improvement. The Cardio Fitness Score provides a clear goal to work towards, something that many wearables lack.

Key to the calculation are factors like resting heart rate and weight, so exercise and weight loss will see your score rise, and HIIT training in particular will do wonders for your tally. To aid this, the Charge 2 includes a dedicated interval workout mode where you can set your rest and exercise periods.

Using the Fitbit Charge 2 to track activity

Fitbit’s automatic activity tracking works well with the Charge 2, which picks up running, cycling and walking without difficulty or any need to manually start and stop recording the session.

You can also select a variety of workouts from your wrist, including HIIT sessions, if you’re worried the Charge 2 won’t recognise your training. Occasionally it will get it wrong, and annoyingly it seems impossible to change activity type after the event. This means that if your cycle is recorded as a run, you’ll have to delete the activity entirely and enter the ride manually. Luckily these errors are rare, only occurring once while I was wearing it.

Using the Fitbit Charge 2 for running

The Charge 2 has assisted GPS, which means you need to manually connect the Charge 2 to your smartphone for GPS work (not necessarily a bad thing, GPS is a massive battery hog), although this is easily done through the device or the app.

The lack of an integrated GPS is a black mark against the Charge 2, as it means you have to take your phone with you for truly accurate run recording. When tracking runs without GPS, the Charge 2 is forced to go by your step count and estimated stride length to calculate distance and speed. As well as accurate distance and pace stats when running with GPS, the app will also display a map of your route and splits, along with the heart rate, calories burned and steps data that’s tracked with or without GPS.

Other than that, it is a handy enough tracker, especially with (non-GPS assisted) automatic recording. The keenest runners may be frustrated as some of the finer tracking points are neglected (elevation, say), but for most people the Charge 2 covers all the bases.

Using the Fitbit Charge 2 for cycling

The lack of a GPS is less of a concern when cycling, as you’ll probably have your phone with you anyway and the Charge 2 is impressively reliable at automatically recognising when you’re cycling, even when you’re just freewheeling down a hill. It can’t monitor more cycling specific measurements like cadence or hills climbed, so as with running, it’s one for everyday commuters rather than aspiring Tour de France entrants.

Using the Fitbit Charge 2 for swimming

No waterproofing means no swimming with the Charge 2, which is a shame. Fitbit’s other new offering, the Flex 2, can be taken for a dip.

RECOMMENDED: The Best Waterproof Fitness Trackers For Swimmers

Using the Fitbit Charge 2 for calorie counting

Fitbit provides a calorie goal for you automatically (though you can change this if you like), taking into account your personal metrics and the general calorie burn that goes on in the background of even your laziest days. Those who prefer to track just their active calories – those burned during exercise – will also be satisfied, with each activity’s effect on your overall total shown in the summary on the app.

Using the Fitbit Charge 2 as a sleep tracker

The Charge 2 has automatic sleep recording and solid battery life so it’s unlikely to die on you mid-snooze. Its comfortable design also meant that I had no problems wearing it all night and under most circumstances it seemed to give reliable enough results in terms of tracking my snoozes.

However, when out of its comfort zone – such as when I wore it on an overnight flight – the Charge 2’s accuracy went out the window, claiming I managed an impressive eight hours’ sleep on a 6½-hour flight. The inaccuracy was particularly annoying because if there’s one time you want to know how much you’ve slept, it’s after a flight.

Using the Fitbit Charge 2 for guided breathing

The Charge 2 also includes Fitbit's new guided breathing feature, Relax, which is the company’s first big step into the area of mindfulness. Relax uses your real-time heart rate to create guided breathing sessions over two or five minutes that act as moment of calm during your busy day. It's a nice idea, one that will probably pop up on more and more trackers, and I found that a session does help you relax for a moment. However, it wasn't something I found myself using regularly after the initial curiosity wore off.

The Fitbit app

Fitbit’s app does an excellent job of condensing all the data it tracks into a very readable dashboard so you can get a clear picture of your daily activity at a glance, and the Charge 2 syncs quickly and easily. It’s also simple to get more in-depth by selecting the relevant tile and it’s a largely intuitive process.

One slight shame is that the Cardio Fitness Score is tucked away behind the heart rate tile, rather than displayed front and centre on the dashboard.

I actually enjoyed the Challenges and Adventures section enough to regularly visit the tab, rather than ignoring the often meaningless achievement badges you get from trackers.

How often am I going to have to charge it?

The Charge 2’s battery life was impressive. A couple of hours’ charging a couple of times a week is enough to keep it clear of the red. Should you forget, Fitbit will also email you a reminder to charge the tracker when it gets particularly close to expiring.

Where can I wear it without people laughing at me?

The Charge 2 is certainly sleek enough to be worn anywhere without mocking glances, especially in the black version. You can also pick from a range of interchangeable band colours (black, blue, plum, teal and lavender, extra bands £19.99 each) and leather versions (brown, indigo and blush pink, £59.99 each), if that’s your bag, but it’s probably a little much to wear alongside a watch proper, unlike other, slighter, bands like the Fitbit Alta or Misfit Ray.

The Charge 2 can double as a smartwatch with a larger screen than its forebears, but it’s still a black and white affair and a relatively small screen. We ended up turning the smartphone notifications off.

Should I consider buying something else?

Perhaps the sternest competition it faces comes from its Fitbit stablemate, the Blaze, which offers a slightly better set of features (full-colour touchscreen and guided Fitstar workouts, although crucially no Cardio Fitness Score) in a more stylish package, all for only £30 more than the Charge 2’s price of £129.99.

Dedicated runners and cyclists will probably want more in-depth stats than the Charge 2 can provide and swimmers will obviously want to steer clear, but if it’s everyday step, exercises, sleep and heart rate tracking you’re after, the Charge 2 is an excellent choice at a good price point.

Unless you listen to the Black Eyed Peas*, you should never face any kind of judgement for your music choices when working out. If you’re going to move your body to get fitter and healthier, do it to whatever you damn well like (with the one exception of the Black Eyed Peas).

However, if you do want some ideas for what to listen to during your next workout, music-streaming service Deezer can help. A Deezer app has been available on the Fitbit Ionic and Versa smartwatches since the launch of the latter in April, and Deezer has counted up the most popular tracks among Fitbitters (as no-one calls them) in the UK, the US, France and Germany.

• Dua Lipa and Calvin Harris – “One Kiss”
• Ofenbach – “Be Mine”
• Camila Cabello – “Havana”
• Drake – “God’s Plan”
• Rudimental – “These Days”
• Petit Biscuit – “Waterfall”
• Sigala – “Lullaby”
• Bruno Mars feat. Cardi B – “Finesse (Remix)”
• Ed Sheeran – “Shape of You”
• Marshmello & Anne-Marie – “Friends”

A fine list to grace your lugs during your next sweat session, but if none of the above floats your boat, then consider the following advice on choosing a workout track from Deezer Moods editor Robin Vincent, who oversees the creation of all playlists for Fitbit users.

The key is to match up the tempo of the track with your activity, says Vincent.

“For jogging, aim for a song with a tempo of around 140bpm, such as Muse’s ‘Knights of Cydonia’, but when sprinting, the best tempo is around 170bpm. ‘Gold Dust’ by DJ Fresh is the perfect song if you’re looking to pound the treadmill.”

See related 

• How Music Can Help Your Workouts
• The Best Workout Music: New Tunes, Mashups, Rock, Hip-Hop and More
• The Only Running Music You’ll Ever Need with Trevor Nelson

Here’s Vincent’s list of suggested tempos for different workout activities, along with an example track.

• Jogging: 140bpm. Try Michael Jackson – “Beat It”
• Brisk run: 145 bpm. Try LCD Soundsystem – “Drunk Girls”
• Sprinting: 170-180 bpm. Try DJ Fresh – “Gold Dust”
• HIIT training: 125 bpm. Try Nicki Minaj – “Pound the Alarm”
• Yoga / pilates: 103 bpm. Try IDER – “King Ruby”
• Weight training: 170 bpm. Try Eminem – “Till I Collapse”

Wondering if your favourite music has a suitable tempo for your planned workout? You can count it manually using a clock and your ears, or search for it at songbpm.com. And remember, all of the above is just advice. If you want to listen to a nice podcast or The Jesus and Mary Chain while you put yourself through HIIT workout, then you go right ahead. Not the Black Eyed Peas, though.

*With apologies to people who like the Black Eyed Peas, but not the Black Eyed Peas

The Fitbit Ace is built on a simple idea: give kids a reason to get off their behinds and on their feet with an affordable and child-friendly tracker.

The Ace is certainly more child-friendly than a regular Fitbit, restricting the data they see and giving parents control over the account. At £80, it’s Fitbit’s second most affordable tracker behind the Zip and the same price as Garmin’s tracker for children, the Vivofit Jr.

But to find out if the Ace was compelling enough to command the attention of kids for the long haul, I got my hands on a pair of Aces – one for my 11-year-old girl, one for my video-game-addicted 13-year-old boy. Rather than rush to a verdict within a week, I waited until the first flush of new gadget excitement faded to see if the Ace’s appeal would diminish over five weeks.

Fitbit Ace: The Basics

The Ace is a very basic device. There’s no heart rate monitor, no GPS, no colour screen and no apps. Nor are there text and calendar alerts from a synced smartphone, and Fitbit withholds some adult-appropriate data like the potentially dubious calories burned. These are all sensible moves when your target market includes eight-year-olds.

Nor are there many customisation options of the super-bright but mono 128x36-pixel screen: there’s only so much fun to have picking from the ten different clock faces and choosing whether or not to view the clock, active minutes and battery level.

There’s not a lot to see on the device, either. Give the screen a firm tap and it will flick between screens showing the clock face, active minutes, steps, alarm details and battery status, but that’s your lot. The screen occasionally springs into life with celebratory messages, such as fireworks appearing when you hit your goal, and there’s a flower that grows the more active minutes you do.

The design is so close to the Fitbit Alta that you’d be forgiven for confusing the two; the Ace has the hallmarks of an adult’s tracker – not necessarily a bad thing. It’s in stark contrast to its nearest rival, the Garmin Vivofit Jr, which is all vibrant colours and dinosaur icons. In truth, though, the two aren’t really in competition, offering dramatically different experiences. You’ll know if your child is better suited to a Vivofit Jr or Ace at first glance.

If anything, Fitbit has played it too safe with the Ace’s design. You have two strap colours to choose from at time of purchase, blue and purple. You can switch to a more stylish strap designed for the Alta, but that’ll cost you (£20-£70 – probably best to deny the existence of £200-plus designer straps from Tory Burch and Public School) and the straps are sized for adult wrists. That said, children with larger wrists may struggle to slot their wrists in the one-size-fits-all supplied wristband anyway (check out the Fitbit sizing guide if you’re concerned).

Using The Fitbit Ace

The first hurdle I faced in persuading my son to adopt the Ace was getting him to relinquish his phone long enough for me to log into my Parent account on the Fitbit app, then add him as a child. The second problem quickly emerged: he was too old for the Ace. While Fitbit says the Ace is for the ages of eight and above, it really means eight to 12. For the sake of setting him up, I lied and made him a year younger.

Then I came to my 11-year-old daughter. So far, I’ve avoided giving her a smartphone. Fitbit’s set up the system so that this doesn’t matter – parents create the master account on their phone and then add their children. Kids can either see a limited view of their activities on their own phones like my son, or log into the app on their parent’s phone to see how they’re doing against family members.

Parents also keep control of contacts. No-one from outside your friends list can issue a (friendly) steps challenge or message your kids, making this a safe environment. The drawback: if young Susan decides she wants to challenge her friend Siobhan, Siobhan needs to be added to the parents’ friends list. Something you may be reluctant to do if it turns out Siobhan keeps blowing up your feed.

For more detail, the child needs to log into the app. From here, they have a limited amount of control. For instance, in the first couple of weeks my son enjoyed upping his own daily step target, but he lost interest after a couple of days. He also took control of the silent alarms, where the Ace vibrates, although I found this had a 0% success rate at actually waking him up.

The sleep tracking function also failed to last the distance. While my children needed no persuasion to sleep with the Ace on their wrists at first, within a week it always ended up sitting on the bedside table. Why? In part, comfort. The Ace’s design is fine during the day, but my daughter complained about it digging into her wrist at night. The other consideration is, what’s the point? It turns out my children have no interest in their sleep patterns, and who can blame them?

Another barrier to useful, regular usage turned out to be battery life. Fitbit accurately claims the Ace will last for four to five days when in use, and it only takes a couple of hours to charge via the proprietary clip-on charger – plug it into a USB port and forget about it. Turns out kids do forget about it. They would either leave the Ace to be charged for days, or tell me three days later that it had run out of battery and ask if I knew where the charger was.

So why weren’t they more into it? One clue lies in the Fitbit app, which hasn’t been tweaked enough for its audience. Click on the Challenges tab and the first thing you see is Yosemite Bases Valley Loop. Not of much interest to an 11-year-old in Buckinghamshire. Or they can choose the Workweek Hustle, despite their working life being many years away. None of this is disastrous, but nor is it kid-friendly.

See related 

• Here’s Where To Find A Bunch Of Healthy Meal Ideas For Kids
• The Best Fitness Trackers Of 2021
• Make This Healthy Banana Flapjacks Recipe With Your Kids

Fitbit Ace Verdict

So is there enough here to keep children hooked? Yes, but with caveats.

First, competition is crucial to whether or not the Ace sits on the wrist or unloved in a drawer. If my family’s five weeks with the devices shows anything, it’s that if children don’t battle for step supremacy with friends and family, then the Fitbit Ace is frankly doomed. You need to set up a group for them to challenge.

I also think that if your child doesn’t have a phone then it’s unlikely to keep them hooked. It’s all very well manually checking to see if you’ve beaten your brother’s step totals that day, but that gets tiresome after a week. You want to see it on a screen and, as my daughter discovered with her errant father, that’s not always possible. What’s the point of being the number one stepper if you don’t know and can’t boast about it?

It can work brilliantly, though. Children naturally take more steps than adults, and what’s more fun than whupping your parents, aunties and uncles at something as simple as steps?

I’d also hesitate to give it to a child aged 11 or 12. If I was going to buy a Fitbit for my daughter, I’d opt for the Alta or Alta HR. It’s that much more sophisticated, and children aren’t fond of being pigeon-holed as kids once they reach secondary school age.

That leaves the Ace with a narrow age band, and leaves me wondering if Fitbit might be wise to lower the age of its target market and add a bit more fun to the next-generation Ace – not just in the hardware design but the challenges built into the software. And if it does decide to tackle the Garmin Vivofit Jr head on, it needs to make the Ace swim-proof too.

£79.99, buy from fitbit.com/uk

When Fitbit announced its newest smartwatch, the Versa, in March it also revealed that it was adding Female Health Tracking to its app some time in May, and integrating it into the Versa and Ionic. Since this is a first for fitness trackers, as far as we know, we wanted to find out more.

At its most basic, the feature allows women to input information about their periods and symptoms and the feature will then predict when stages of the menstrual cycle will occur and send push notifications as reminders nearer the time.

Sounds simple, sure, but we expect Fitbit to eventually make smart use of the information provided (just as it did with its best-in-class sleep tracking) and the feature also includes practical information. According to a Fitbit survey from February 2018, 80% of people don’t know how many phases are in a menstrual cycle and over 70% couldn’t identify the average length of a cycle. Assuming they didn’t exclusively survey men, those numbers suggest that a bit of extra info might be useful.

Coach spoke to Dr Dawn Harper at the launch of the Fitbit Versa to get more information about the menstrual cycle and the Female Health feature.

What are the benefits of the Female Health Tracking feature?

When we were at school we were taught about the female menstrual cycle. We were all told it’s 28 days and you ovulate right in the middle and that’s the way it’s going to be. In the real world I have been a GP for 20 years with a special interest in women’s health and I don’t think I have ever met a woman who has had an absolutely regular 28-day cycle for the whole of her menstruating life. And also, the way we respond emotionally to our changing hormones can change at different times in our lives.

What this app does is keep all your health information in one place. On a personal level I think it’s good for the individual, but it’s also very useful on a medical level. When women see their GP, if they have any kind of symptoms that could be linked to the menstrual cycle, they can give us information there and then in a very quick and easy-to-access way.

What are the phases of the menstrual cycle?

Let’s assume – although it doesn’t happen! – a 28-day cycle. When women start their periods their oestrogen and testosterone levels are rock bottom, and they usually feel pretty lethargic and sluggish.

Then oestrogen and testosterone rise very quickly, so within a day or two of starting their periods, women’s energy levels start to improve. That kicks off the feelgood hormones, and they start to feel more positive, social and alert.

Interestingly, there’s a study that shows that at that point in the cycle, women are likely to eat something like 12% fewer calories a day. It’s a silly, quirky one, but if you’re going to start a healthy eating regime, that might be the time to start it. The flip side of that is that you get a greater buzz from the things you crave, like nicotine, so it might not be the best time to quit as you may miss and crave things more.

Going into the second week, oestrogen and testosterone continue to rise, and there’s some research to show that women’s memories are better and they’re more erudite. So if you’re planning presentations or negotiations, that’s not a bad time to do it. Another quirky one – throughout that first half of the cycle, and certainly in the second week, because of that testosterone women find it easier to achieve orgasm and usually get more intense orgasms. So that’s a good time to plan a dirty weekend away!

Then you ovulate, and as soon as women ovulate testosterone and oestrogen fall, and progesterone starts to rise. If we’re in that classic 28-day cycle, week three is a time when women are likely to start feeling more sluggish, they don’t sleep as well, they’re not as good with words and not as “on it”.

There is actually some evidence that if you exercise at this point in your cycle, you get a relatively greater fat burn than if you exercise at other points. That might be a motivator – you might not feel like it, but you’re going to get more bang for your buck if you exercise!

In the fourth week testosterone and oestrogen are falling right back down again, and women are more likely to be irritable, have headaches and not sleep so well. If they are migraine or irritable bowel syndrome sufferers they’re more likely to get a flare-up.

How do you think the information tracked in the app can help women?

I can see women using the app to plan their life a little bit better, and accommodate how their hormones affect them and be more in tune with how they respond to hormones.

The other thing I think people will use it for is as a fertility tracker. So you ovulate 14 days before day one of your next period. If your period is 28 days, day 14 after and day 14 before are one and the same day, but people often get that confused and think they ovulate 14 days after their last period. You can’t necessarily predict it, but if you’re starting to recognise your own cycle, you’ll be more in tune.

Can you use it for contraception?

I think to use something like this for that purpose depends on how motivated you are to use it. The more motivated you are and the more data you put in, the more accurate it will become as a predictor. It’s a really appropriate method of contraception if you’re a woman for whom it wouldn’t be the end of the world if you became pregnant.

SAFETY RECALL FOR FITBIT IONIC 2ND MARCH 2022

Fitbit has issued a safety recall for the Fitbit Ionic. An email to customers reads: "After a thorough investigation, we determined that in very limited instances, the battery in the Ionic smartwatch can overheat, posing a burn hazard. Customer safety is always Fitbit’s top priority. We’re offering a refund to Fitbit Ionic customers."

More information can be found on web page Safety Recall of Ionic Smartwatches.

This article was first published 27th September 2017 

The stunning setting of Cala Mondrago in the south-eastern corner of the Balearic island of Mallorca is the perfect location to be active, even if the temptation to spend most of your time lying on the Mediterranean beaches is tough to resist. If you can haul yourself off the sand, however, you’ll find acres of stunning natural beauty to run, ride and swim around in, all of which makes it the ideal spot to test out Fitbit’s new top-end wearable and first smartwatch – the Ionic.

From swimming, spinning and running, to yoga, mountain biking and circuit training, we put the smartwatch through its paces on the beach, in the pool and in the mountains to get a true feel for those much-touted new features, including its advanced SpO2 sensor for improved heart rate tracking and water resistance for up to 50 metres.

Here is our hands-on preview of the Ionic before its official launch on 1st October (£299, buy on fitbit.com) – look out for our full in-depth review in the coming weeks.

Running With The Fitbit Ionic

Our first workout of the day using the Ionic was a quick run, mainly to get a feel for the watch during some straightforward exercise. The first thing we noticed is that the Ionic is one of the most comfortable wearables Fitbit has made. It fits securely and comfortably on the wrist, feeling more ergonomic than previous Fitbit trackers, probably owing to its new manufacturing technique called “nano moulding”. This process uses plastic and metal together in the watch body for a lighter design. It also means it curves slightly to hug your wrist, so you forget it’s even there no matter what you’re doing.

Starting a run on the Ionic is easy enough – simply select Running from the Exercise app by swiping left from the home screen, tap go, wait for the GPS to lock on, and go. We found the built-in GPS could take a couple of minutes to fire up, though and waiting for this to kick in before we began our run was a little irritating – but it’s an issue anyone who’s ever used a GPS watch will be familiar with.

RECOMMENDED: Best Running Watche

A nifty feature though is the device’s new Run Detect tech, which will track your runs automatically without you having to press a button. That includes GPS, which will kick in by itself a couple of minutes after you get going. It’s impressive and goes beyond the automatic tracking available on Fitbit’s other devices.

HIIT Workouts With The Fitbit Ionic

Choose a standard “workout” exercise from the list before beginning an exercise like circuit training, for example, where you’re more likely to be stopping and starting, and the Fitbit Ionic will track your heart rate continuously. We are big fans of the heart rate sensor, which displays your BPM on the screen clearly and was accurate both when we were exercising and when we hit the beaches for some well deserved R&R.

Thanks to its tough scratch-proof Gorilla Glass touchscreen we found you can really get down and dirty in your workouts – even manic HIIT sessions – without worrying about damaging the display. Brightness is also high enough to see all the onscreen details even in direct sunlight, and this dims automatically when you go inside to save on battery life.

Cycling With The Fitbit Ionic

Tracking cycling with the Ionic works in the same way as running and you get similar settings at your disposal including turning on auto-pause, setting up data cues and customisable screens to display your most wanted stats during a ride.

The major bugbear here, as it was with running and other workouts on the Fitbit Ionic, is that once you’ve completed your session, you can’t view the details on the smartwatch itself. You’ll get a snapshot of your workout summary right after your exercise ends, but this will disappear once you press “done”, and you’ll have to sync the watch with the app and view them on your phone to see your ride in detail.

RECOMMENDED: Cycling Route Planners

Nevertheless, we found that the Ionic’s GPS tracked our cycle up and down the hilly terrains around Playa Mondrago with impeccable detail, providing us with the total distance, mapped routes, heart rate and total calories burned.

Swimming With The Fitbit Ionic

An especially exciting new addition on the Ionic is waterproofing and its dedicated swimming mode, which Fitbit claims is more accurate than its competitors in accurately tracking your laps of the pool.

We found the Ionic was able to work perfectly underwater and give us onscreen details of our exercise with its brightly lit display as we swam, updating the display with the number of lengths completed each time we stopped to take the next length.

The Ionic’s waterproof design also extends to open-water swimming, but unlike the Apple Watch Series 2 or Garmin Forerunner 935, there is no dedicated function for the open water and GPS won’t work when swimming.

In the pool, however, it works a treat. As with running and cycling, detailed stats are available on the app once you’ve completed your swim, including lap count, duration, a breakdown of calories burned and your heart rate data.

RECOMMENDED: Best Waterproof Fitness Trackers For Swimmers

Using The Fitbit Ionic As A Smartwatch

The Ionic isn’t a device that becomes irrelevant once you’ve finished your workout. It’s brimming with other features, starting with its NFC payment capabilities. The Fitbit Pay platform built into the Ionic means you can make purchases without your phone or wallet and will include major credit card companies like American Express, MasterCard and Visa.

While this would be perfect for an emergency pit stop at the supermarket on a long run, the feature wasn't working properly when we attempted to buy some sports gear. However, the Fitbit Ionic’s firmware was still a beta version of the software, so not all of the features were working as they will on the final version when it is launched in October.

So far the Ionic only supports those payment methods on three major banks in Europe – HSBC, Santander and Capital One. Fitbit says more banks will be added over the coming months.

RECOMMENDED: Best Fitness Smartwatch

Battery Life

One of the most crucial questions still remains unanswered: battery life. How long will the Ionic last before you need to charge it again? This figure can make or break a smartwatch these days.

After using the watch for a good 24 hours, we were impressed with the Ionic’s stamina. Obviously this depends on how much you use it for measuring workouts throughout the day, but after a full charge overnight and unplugging it at 7am, by 5pm it was still at an impressive 64%, and that was after four back-to-back, varied workouts.

Four days after the charge with minimal use, the Ionic was at a respectable 31%, having drained by around 10 percentage points a day for the three days it was used without tracking a workout. Naturally battery life depends on how much you use the Ionic, but it easily outshines the Apple Watch, for example, which always requires a nightly top-up.

The Ionic is Fitbit’s strongest fitness tracker yet, despite a few annoyances such as the inability to view past workouts on the watch itself. With its square clock face and minimal, clean design, it’s subtle in looks but abundant in useful features.

At £299 the Ionic is priced in line with the latest sporty smartwatches, including the Apple Watch Series 3 (without cellular connectivity) and the Garmin Vivoactive 3. The Ionic might not displace the Apple Watch from top spot in the smartwatch market, but it’s packed with features, is able to track all the workouts you can throw at it, and boasts a beautiful, comfortable design that will get heads turning at the gym for all the right reasons. £299, buy on fitbit.com

FitBrit 2017 is here, brought to you by Men’s Fitness and Women’s Fitness in association with Fitness First and DW Sports gym. We’re looking for the UK’s fittest men and women and you can take part in this year’s FitBrit challenge in all Fitness First and DW Sports gyms, even if you’re not a member.

So if you want to give your training regime new focus and set your eyes on the prize of calling yourself the UK’s fittest, here’s what you need to know.

What is FitBrit 2017?

It’s the ultimate test of speed, strength and stamina, requiring you to perform nine different exercises back-to-back in the fastest time possible at a Fitness First or DW Sports gym.

All times are then uploaded by a member of staff to the leaderboard and the fastest amateur athletes will be invited to the grand final in the UK in November.

Where can I enter FitBrit 2017?

All you need to do is go to your local Fitness First or DW Sports gym and take the challenge. It doesn’t matter if you’re not a member: you can get a free three-day pass so you can enjoy all the facilities as well as trying to set a new FitBrit personal best!

Entries for the competition close on the October 27th.

Share your results on social media with the hashtags #FitBrit and #Risetothechallenge.

What are the categories?

The Open category is open to everyone, giving you the chance to compete against the fittest in the country to be crowned FitBrit champion. The Masters event is for people aged 40 or over on or before the final date for submitting your time. The Team category is for two people.

The individual categories require you to complete all the events in order, while the team effort requires participants to alternate between exercises.

The Challenge

1. 800m run (0% incline)
2. 20 barbell front squats (30kg men / 20kg women)
3. Alternate arm medicine ball press-ups (20 men / 10 women)
4. 20 alternating dumbbell snatches (16kg men / 10kg women)
5. 1.5km bike (L14 men/ L10 women)
6. 30 kettlebell swings (24kg men / 16kg women)
7. 20 chest-to-floor burpees with lateral deck jump
8. 30 barbell push press (25kg men / 15kg women)
9. 400m row (drag factor 130-140)

Watch The Final Of FitBrit 2016

We review the Fitbit Flex to see if the best-selling activity tracker should be top of your fitness tech wishlist.

It’s almost impossible not to compare the Fitbit Flex with the Nike+ FuelBand – they’re both activity trackers that you wear all day on your wrist, after all. But they’re very different in their approach, and they both have their own strengths and weaknesses.

The Fitbit Flex’s greatest strength is undoubtedly its simplicity. Even if you’re a complete technophobe, you’ll have no trouble using the Flex. Everything about it is straightforward and works well – you can certainly be tracking your every move within minutes of opening the box.

Getting started

There’s a surprising amount of kit bundled with the Flex. As well as the device itself, you’ll find both small and large wristbands, a single wristband clasp, a USB docking cradle, and a USB wireless receiver.

With small and large wristbands bundled in the box, pretty much anyone should be able to find a comfortable fit. The two-pronged clasp is very easy to secure, and will keep the Flex where it should be no matter how active you are.

Although the Flex isn’t part of the wristband like the FuelBand, it really feels like an integrated device when you’re wearing it. The Flex feels noticeably lighter on the wrist than the FuelBand too, not that anyone’s likely to feel weighed down by the latter.

You need to charge the Flex before you start using it, which means removing it from the confines of the wristband. This is an easy procedure and one that’s just as simple in reverse. Once removed, the Flex slots snugly into the USB docking cradle, which can then be plugged into your computer for charging.

It’s a shame that Fitbit has chosen to use a proprietary charging connector, thus making it difficult to charge when you’re out and about. By contrast, you can charge the FuelBand pretty much anywhere thanks to its integrated USB plug, while the Withings Pulse employs an equally convenient micro-USB port for charging.

Once the Flex is charged, you can whack it on your wrist and go about your business as usual, safe in the knowledge that every step you take will be tracked and logged.

Fitbit estimates that you’ll get around five days’ use out of the Flex on a full charge, but in my experience it lasted far longer than that. I found that the battery is good for around seven days of tracking, although you might not want to let the battery get too low, given that you’ll need that cradle to charge it.

How does it work?

Like most activity trackers, the Fitbit Flex is equipped with a pretty clever accelerometer, which can track your all manner of movement. The Flex will log every step you take, while using that movement tracking to estimate other factors like distance travelled and calories burned.

The Flex can also tell – to some degree – how intensive your movement is, which means it can adjust the other variables accordingly. So if the Flex detects that you’re walking briskly, it will label those steps as ‘very active’. Unfortunately anything above a gentle stroll is considered ‘very active’, but given that it counts your steps per minute, the Flex does have some idea of when you’re running rather than walking.

The Fitbit Flex has no built-in display, which is a significant omission for a product aiming to be a competitor to the FuelBand. The only indicators on the Flex itself are five tiny LEDs. Each one of those LEDs represents 20% of your daily goal and tapping the Flex twice will reveal how many of those LEDs are lit.

If you want any further information about your daily progress, you’ll have to sync the Flex with your computer or smartphone, and view the website or app respectively.

Syncing your data

Before you can get your data off the Flex, you need to create a Fitbit account. This is relatively easy, and made all the more painless by being free. Once you’ve created your account, you then need to enter all your personal details – age, gender, height, weight and so on.

You can also enter your stride length, and unlike most activity trackers, Fitbit lets you log different stride lengths for walking and running, allowing for greater accuracy when tracking your activity.

With your Fitbit account created and your personal details logged, you can then plug the bundled wireless receiver into a spare USB port. When the receiver is recognised, you’ll be prompted to download and install the Fitbit Connect application.

Fitbit Connect is available for both Windows (PC) and OS X (Mac), and once installed it will run in the background. Whenever your Flex is close to your computer, your data will be transferred and logged online.

The Fitbit online portal is beautifully designed and easy to navigate. You can customise your Dashboard page to display the information that’s most important to you, and each data metric is presented within a tile that you can drag around to tailor how your stats are displayed.

Several of the tiles display your daily goals – steps taken, calories burned, distance walked and active minutes. When you create your account those goals are set to default levels, but you can customise them to suit you, raising them if they’re too easy to hit each day, or reducing them if you’re finding yourself demoralised when you don’t hit them.

Fitbit will award you badges that represent achievements and milestones. This kind of thing can help to keep you motivated, especially on those days when you feel like jumping in a taxi instead of walking to the office from the train station.

There’s an app for that

Concerned that you might have to be near your computer to synchronise your data? Don’t worry – you can download the free Fitbit app and log your activity all day, wherever you are.

The Flex uses the low-power Bluetooth 4.0 standard, which means that once you’ve installed the app and paired your Flex, you don’t have to do anything else. Your Flex will be constantly connected to your phone, so whenever you open the app all your latest stats will be displayed.

The app displays pretty much all the same data as the web portal, making it easy to keep track of your daily activity anytime, anywhere. It’s a great-looking app that’s incredibly easy to use and navigate, adding yet more polish and lustre to the Fitbit ecosystem.

But the app doesn’t just sync with your Flex – you can also use it to manually track other aspects of your day, such as what you’ve eaten or how much water you’ve drunk. The food database built into the app is American, but it’s still pretty useful. And you have the option to manually enter any food that you can’t find in the database.

If you use the Fitbit app to track your diet, then it will also give you a dynamic calorie readout – how many calories you’ve consumed minus the amount that you’ve burned through your activity. This is a great feature if you’re looking to lose weight, as keeping an accurate food diary is one of the foundation blocks of weight loss.

Verdict

The Fitbit Flex isn’t perfect. Its lack of built-in display and proprietary charging connector stand out as two particularly glaring negatives. It also doesn’t have an altimeter built into it, so you can’t track how high you’ve climbed throughout the day, as you can on the Fitbit One or Withings Pulse.

However, considering the Flex retails for just under £80, it’s easy to overlook some of those shortcomings. It may not be the cheapest activity tracker out there, but it’s a full £50 cheaper than the FuelBand. Of course Nike has launched the enhanced FuelBand SE, which packs new features that go some way to justifying that price difference.

Given its feature set, flexibility, battery life, impressive online ecosystem and attractive price, the Fitbit Flex makes a very strong case for itself. If you can live without a proper display on your activity tracker, the Flex could be your perfect partner.

Score: 8/10

RRP: £79.99

Manufacturer: Fitbit

So that’s what we think, but what about you lot? We asked for your thoughts through Facebook and here’s what two readers from opposite sides of the pond had to say about their experiences with the Fitbit Flex.

Chris Eccles, Staffordshire, UK

I've had the Fitbit Flex for six months now and it's a decent activity tracker for the most part, though it can be inaccurate at times. Sometimes it reacts to me typing on the computer, but barely registers when doing intensive activities such as weight training. It once counted a measly four sets for six shoulder presses, for example. However, one area it really excels in is running.

I like how it easily syncs with the computer, though you need to be careful the battery doesn't run out before syncing or you'll lose your data. Another aspect I like is the sleep tracker feature, which works perfectly. The strap itself is comfortable and it’s a good job it's waterproof because it’s easy to jump in the shower and forget you're wearing it!

All in all, the Flex is pretty good but a bit on the pricey side for what's essentially a glorified pedometer.

Chris Hurst, Missouri, USA

My company actually bought these for all its employees to promote healthy living among the workforce. I’ve been using my Fitbit Flex for a while now and have come to really appreciate it. I especially like how it can breakdown my daily activity into 15-minute increments so I can see exactly what points of the day I was most active, and the bits where I was almost statue-like.

I think it looks stylish, while still being super functional. I don't actually use the sleep tracker but have synched the Fitbit app with the My Fitness Pal app and they work well together; seamless set-up with some clever integration.

Overall, I'm very pleased with my Flex and would definitely recommend it to others.

So there you have it. Two slightly differing opinions on the Fitbit Flex that go to show you can't ever please everybody. Have you got one? What do you think? Let us know in the comments below.