8-day battery, AI health coaching and no screen: Fitbit Air review

The Fitbit Air might be the anti-smart watch you've been waiting for

This $100 wearable has no screen, no notifications, no payments, and no distractions

Just pure health tracking. And after wearing this thing 24-7 for two weeks straight, I definitely get the appeal

Google absolutely nails the minimalistic design here. This one feels screenless by choice

The sensor is tiny compared to something like the Whoop Band, and then swapping it out is way easier too

I like the look of the woven band. It's my favorite, but it takes a long time to dry when it gets wet

So I end up using the Active as my day-to-day. But as a smartwatch user, I have to confess that I had some major withdrawals

For one, I would just check the time and it wasn't there and I'd genuinely get pissed

I also wanted to ping my phone. Couldn't do that either. And I kept having this feeling that it was just freeloading on my wrist

The only feedback you'll get from this device is the battery light indicator when you tap

White means you're fine. Red means you're running low. But that simplicity eventually became its superpower

and once I stopped expecting it to be a smartwatch, it just kind of faded into the background

and I forgot I was even wearing it. It helped that I didn't have to charge it for eight full days

So the Fitbit Air stayed on my wrist consistently including overnight which is exactly when most smartwatches including mine end up sitting on a charger Consistency especially at night is what makes long health tracking actually helpful

Sleep trends, resting heart rate, blood oxygen levels, breathing patterns, most of that data collection happens overnight

And even missing one night can throw off your recovery trends completely

So in some ways, this actually ends up being a better health tracking companion

than a lot of smartwatches, even though the sensors aren't as accurate

Oh, and it's compatible with both Android and iOS. So what am I about to say

Relates to you regardless of what team you're on. The app to me has always been one of the highlights for Fitbit

because it tells you all the information you want to know without over explaining it. But it's changed

Now it's called Google Health and it still has a lot of that same information. However, it's very clear where Google wants your attention these days

and that is the Google AI Health Coach. Since it's based on Gemini, it behaves like a normal chatbot, but it also knows all your

biometric data, so it can surface trends on its own and personalize your training recommendations

to exactly what your goals are. And some of the insights are genuinely useful, like here it pointed out that I might not

be in peak performance because I still dealing with that luteal phase bloating from my menstrual cycle But sometimes I suspect it going a little too easy on me just to get me to keep paying for that Fitbit premium The Fitbit Air comes with a three trial of Google Health premium

which then will cost you $10 a month to keep or $100 a year. But the minimalist design does have

a major trade-off. The automatic workout detection struggles to catch those low-intensity workouts

like pilates or weightlifting and without a screen you won't know it missed it until you check the

app later you can put it in yourself but i sometimes forget it also depends on your phone for gps

i lost signal on my six mile hike in yosemite so it split it up into three different workouts

no route map no elevation gain and no full credit for all that work even though i had a toddler on

my back but step count was accurate regardless of whether i had my phone with me i tested it for

for 2,500 steps, and it only over counted by seven, which means less than 1% difference

The other area where it struggles is with heart rate during high intensity sports

I tested it with a polar chest strap, which is our gold standard on a run

And while you'll notice that the average beats per minute is pretty similar 153 versus 150 for the Fitbit Air it in those high intensity or that like final sprint that I had that it fell short Here it kind of just trails off and plateaus but here you

notice that it actually spiked a lot. My max heart rate was at 180 beats per minute and my max heart

rate that the Fitbit Air recorded was only at 163. That's a 17 beats per minute difference, which to me

it's a big deal because I'd like to get full credit. So clearly it's not going to replace

a smartwatch when it comes to that real-time training feedback. However, I do think it could

be a really great smartwatch companion, which is probably how I would use it because it picks up

where the smartwatch leaves off, which is at night. In fact, Google lets you pair both a Pixel Watch

and a Fitbit Air simultaneously in the Google Health app. And at $100, it's not completely

ridiculous to think you might want to splurge on both because here's the kicker you don't really

need that premium subscription like you would with a whoop band for example yeah the health

coach is a nice to have and the deeper sleep insights but not necessary let me know in the

comment section would you wear both a smart watch and a fitbit air just the fitbit air or none at

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