Very bad news for anyone who has a Fitbit device. Google tends to destroy any "smart" devices they acquire; first they tie it more closely to their ecosystem, too much for comfort, then they remove features, then they get bored and neglect it, then you have a brick.
If you own a Fitbit (I do), it's great news. Fitbit have done an unmatched job of destroying the device already. I was honestly considering buying a different device already.
They don't support Spotify, or really any music app except the one (which I don't remember). Their subscription service provides no real value at all. Their devices track heart rate and nothing else. They simply don't innovate at all.
After Fitbit bought Pebble, they made the ecosystem poorer. The Pebble tech team was stronger than the team that absorbed them.
Fitbit customer service is excellent, but their warranty is bad, and their build quality seems poor.
My Fitbit Ionic (about $300) stopped working one month after the 12 month warranty ran out, and they offered me a 20% discount on my next purchase. They haven't lit up the SiO2 sensor on the Ionic after (3?) years.
Google is great at a lot of things, but how invested are they in being a supplier of a niche, always connected device that collects personal data every second of the ...
Wait a second! Things might be looking up for Fitbit devices! (But maybe not the users)
> My Fitbit Ionic (about $300) stopped working one month after the 12 month warranty ran out
My Fitbit Ionic stopped working 6 months into the 12 month warranty and they flaked on the warranty anyway.
Many Ionics were secretly sold without the manufacturer's warranty.
The problem turned out to be a shorted capacitor. My secretly-warranty-less ionic was sold during the Great Capacitor Shortage. Coincidence? Maybe. I doubt we'll ever know.
Yep, I bought it new in a sealed box from an Amazon third party store with prime shipping a week or two after product launch.
Fitbit said they "had" to refuse my warranty on account of having purchased the watch from an "unauthorized re-seller" because of clones, but their software already checks serial numbers for duplicates and rejects clones, so that sounds like an excuse.
Incidentally, my next watch was a Garmin, and while I tried to buy it from the official Garmin store on Amazon I found a 3rd party store on the receipt, so I contacted Garmin and ask them if this would invalidate my warranty. They said it would not. They made good on that promise two weeks ago when a fatigue crack showed up in the plastic frame.
Another vote for Garmin warranty: my strap catch broke (the little loop that holds the long end of the strap down). I chatted online with them and they shipped me the 50c catch in what appeared to be a large box that must have cost at least $4 to ship. A bit overkill but that's how you retain customers I guess.
A friend, who got me interested in the devices, had the same issue. His died. Mine, I stopped using, when it detected I was asleep for 3 hours one night and I was definitely up and using my phone for the entire time. The only reason I got it was to monitor my sleep. It is apparently useless for that.
I do not own a Fitbit, but on my older Pebble, the music integration feature allows me to play/pause the music, switch tracks (to skip that one song in the playlist I should really remember to remove), and adjust the volume.
When I'm working out or doing yardwork, it's handy to have access to these things on my wristwatch rather than trying to fiddle with the phone in my pocket. It's sounds like the most minor convenience, but I use it all the time. If that were to be limited to only a tiny number of apps (and not the Android bluetooth thing, which picks up whatever happens to be playing; usually VLC in my case, sometimes Spotify) it would be a lot less useful.
I still use a pebble 2 se, and notably the pairing of music controls and shortcuts is amazing. Without having to look at the screen, sleeves still covering the device, you can:
- Hit the back button a couple times to make sure I'm back on the watchface/home screen
- Hold down a button to shortcut into an app (e.g. music controls, music boss)
- Play/pause, control volume, go forwards/backwards (or 30sec skip in some podcast apps).
Hoping I can continue to use the device. Have any competitors come close in matching pebble's button UX?
Yeah I had press and hold on the lower button to launch music app, then IIRC the same button was skip track (or hold to fast forward).
I like my Apple Watch too, but I miss the hardware buttons and being able to do stuff without looking at it.
Apple's take is that I should talk to Siri instead of using buttons, but the 8 year wait for them to support 3rd party audio apps kept me from building any habits with that. I'll probably get used to it.
I'm still using the original pebble. Unfortunately, i'm getting hit by the screen tearing problem and it is so old that i can't even open it to fix the problem.
I don't want a watch that i have to charge daily, or i'll take it off and end up never putting it back on. I've been thinking of buying up some refurbished old pebbles as they have the exact features I want without the downsides of ALL of the newer watches/fitbands.
In what way can you not open it? Are the torx screws stripped? I did the "display shim" fix a couple times and it worked very well, but indeed it does rely on opening the case and putting it back together...
When I was big into running I wanted a smart watch that could play my music and connect to my headphones without needing to take my bulky phone with me
Other reasons for wanting spotify is a remote control. When I had my pebble and my phone was in my pocket I'd often use it to skip songs, drop the volume a bit, etc without having to pull out my phone each time
It's really nice to listen to music while running without your phone with an Apple Watch, it would be a really compelling feature for Fitbit to also support this functionality.
Fitbit isn't really made for serious fitness enthusiasts. If you look at its feature set and design, it's trying to give the average person a way to get data about how fit they are in the range between not fit and average. The sleep tracking, water tracking, automatic workout tracking, and other simple features are more for the average person than for a marathon runner. So it doesn't surprise me that they don't support chest straps because most people don't want to do zone training, they just want to know whether they're getting exercise that will EG condition their heart.
The problem is, you get a Fitbit as a casual person just getting into exercise - and before you know it, you've outgrown Fitbit!
That's not a great business model. They should have devices that either scale with you, or different models with feature-sets that target different ranges of users.
The people that are active and stick with fitness tracking are exactly the ones that are most likely to purchase new devices over time - either as replacements or upgrades. Instead, they switch to Garmin or some other more "serious" fitness tracker. That's a crying shame for Fitbit... the original fitness tracker.
Supporting chest-straps, or selling their own chest-strap, doesn't mean a casual users needs to buy one. But it does mean a growing serious fitness enthusiast can continue to use Fitbit, buying new devices over time.
From my experience, Fitbit still has the most polished App. It's a darn shame you can't get more out of Fitbit devices though.
As someone who has owned multiple Fitbit devices that all stopped working within the first year, good riddance. The only thing that's still working is our Aria scale and that's basically worthless now that Fitbit holds that data hostage and you need to use third party apps to sync it with anything useful (like MyFitnessPal, Apple Health, or anything else).
This isn’t correct. Their devices track sleep (amongst other things beyond heart rate), which IMO is the #1 killer app.
I have a Versa 2. They support Pandora.
I have not tried the subscription yet but plan to.
I definitely would like more innovation too, but IMO it’s still the best in class. I switched from the Band after MS discontinued. I had (and returned) an Apple Watch because of lack of good sleep tracking.
Yeah, sleep tracking is really the only thing I use mine for to get a decent idea of my cycles and at least understand how long I was sleeping. It's not perfect, but for the price and form factor it's doing an amazing job.
Nearly all other products competing in the “smart watch” category allow you to use the watch as a music source for wireless earbuds. It’s a very nice feature if you’re doing some activity where bringing your phone is impractical (like running).
There is not much "feature" in a Fitbit. You can't even correct simple numeric values of an exercise, such as the ran distance or the bodyfat percentage of the scale reading.
I can't even understand how they're able to charge as much as they do. I've owned 3 Fitbit devices and they perform uniformly worse than a cheap as dirt Xiaomi Mi Band I received as a free prize. Their battery life tops out at 2 days max and the sync feature is broken. Heck, they don't even look good
My wife's and my Fitbit Charge 2 can still get a good going of 5 days with a 3-4x hour-long exercise recording. My main issue with Fitbit is it treats us like someone who bought it for fashion. Also I prefer strength training, and to measure effort of anything but jogging and steps is out of scope for Fitbit. When I bought our Fitbit, I hoped the insights I can get out from the devices would improve over the years, because their slogan that time was about to revolutionise fitness with data. Unfortunately the usefulness of their products remain very basic.
I didn't buy a single one. I was gifted all three by different people. And they likely bought it because it has the highest brand recall of all fitness trackers outside of Apple.
Bought my chinese no-name (it probably does have a name if I saved the box, but there's no brand on the device itself) for $10. Time, stepcount, calories, distance, heart rate, BP, O2 sat, sports functions, sleep, etc. The watch does lose about 45 seconds a day, so I have to sync it once a week or so to keep the time display in an acceptable range. The app is otherwise irrelevant to me. Charge lasts about 6 days.
Step counts as well as the fitbit. Heart rate is simple. How can it mess that up? Blood pressure is relative. You don't expect it to be accurate without a cuff. Same with O2. Those can show whether you're higher or lower "now" than you were an hour ago, a day ago, but they're not intended to be accurate on an absolute scale. Sleep seems to match up pretty well with snorelabs.
Now that I think about it, I wonder how well any of them keep time without syncing to their app.
I mean, I'm not expecting them to pay a full $1 to get an RTC that keeps time up to 1s/month, but still, 45s/day is a lot, and it implies they really cheapened out on either design or components. I would mistrust even the relative measurements.
I have a Garmin fitness watch, and I mainly use it to tell the time, daily step count, and the distance/pace/heart rate/duration during runs and bike rides. I do sync the resultant recorded activities to Strava but frankly that's not very important to me.
And this is enough to justify the device for me. It only cost $150 or so, lasts much longer than a year, and earns its keep in useful functionality.
Also the battery lasts for almost an entire week between charges, which is an awesome feature. My fiancee has to recharge her Samsung watch almost every day.
This is one of those things where limiting the functionality of the device enhances the usability of it. I can easily do the 3 or 4 things I actually want a watch to do on my fitbit(stopwatch, heartrate, pedometer, see who's calling) and don't have to worry about dumb stuff like receiving phone calls or watching video on a tiny screen.
Yes, that too. It's a huge plus to me that the battery in this Garmin watch lasts for a week, even with light GPS usage. I wouldn't put up with a smart watch that required charging every night; it's too much extra hassle for little additional benefit.
I loved my Garmin for the 2-3 months I had it. Great battery life and the minimal functionality I needed in a fitness watch (GPS, heartrate, steps etc.)
It eventually irritated my skin (I had burn marks right under the light) so I had to give it up. Even with regular cleaning, I could not stop the strap itching.
The nice thing about Garmin (the company) is that they gave me a full refund even though it was well past the 30-day return. I haven't gone back to do the research on avoiding the skin issues, but I hope some day I'll be able to buy a Garmin again.
In case this helps: The higher end Garmin watches have many strap options, you can try take the supplied strap off and buy a strap made with a different material from Garmin or a third party.
Also, best to take the watch off when showering, dry it completely / wipe down. Put the watch back on once you've dried off also. If your skin is super sensitive, consider taking it off sometimes at night etc.
The rubber band is the one thing that failed on my Garmin watch (and of course it did, it's rubber). I replaced it with a third-party NATO canvas strap and haven't had any further issues. This one has the benefit of more comfort in addition to more durability.
I am doing something similar with a Timex IQ+. I use it for telling the time and to tell me roughly my activity level. I don't even bother to sync it. I recently changed the battery for the first time after using it for 8 months. I bought it because just looks like a conventional watch and because I found the design to be attractive (my taste)
Apple has allegedly had spO2 monitoring capability on Apple Watch for years too without making that function available in production. I wonder if there's a similar reason for this. I mean, I can buy a $12 spO2 monitor on Amazon, and most clinics seem to use that exact model... why not let my fitness device do it too?
Yeah, they would at least have to do a 510k submittal provided they could show a predicate device existed, and that there were existing standards that they could follow. If they're making an SpO2 monitor that doesn't work like any other SpO2 monitor on the market then the FDA would probably put them in De Novo hell for a very long time.
My 5 cents. Fitbit discontinued one of their best products Fitbit Flex 2, which I'm still using. It's a 50 bucks rubber band with 1 week battery life that tracks sleep & steps.
I don't really know why they cancelled it but I'm wearing Fitbit flex and later flex 2 since they entered the market and it's a divice that I'm used to wear and forget even when I'm asleep ( compared to the Apple Watch, which nevertheless needs daily charge and is simply too bulky to wear in bed ). I haven't found any decent competitors on that part and I'm honestly afraid of the wasted hours when I have to decide what to use as a replacement.
The Fitbit Inspire HR sounds like the successor... waterproof sleep and step tracker. Lasts a week on a charge, slim design. Costs twice as much though.
100% with you, and you can see that second hand prices for it are rising. The only modern fitness tracker with beautiful style and no watchface. There are chinese copies if you are willing to put toxic tracking devices next to your body.
Yeah. I agree. Normally I’d think they’d improve things but after dropcam, I’m less enthusiastic. The consolation is that they’re not going after Garmin, so there is that.
I bought a Fitbit ionic two years ago. It was great for the first year. Then it started behaving oddly and now it doesn't work at all with Huawei phones (which I rely on now because they seem to be the first brand that doesn't effectively brick itself after 6 months from metastasizing updates and enhancements).
My solution for the past year has been to leave the device unsynced. Strangely, it still somehow manages to upload data occasionally and I have no idea how it's doing it. about once a month it just gets stuck and I need to restart the thing. I'm going to guess those two things are somehow related but I don't know quite how.
I was planning on switching to a cheap Chinese device anyway. This is the kick in my keister that will get me to do it.
I just returned my nest thermostat the day after google acquired them. I already have to work hard to protect myself from google (and other privacy abusers), why would I want to give them a physical presence in my home?
Sad if that happens, but I doubt that's Google's intent/strategy. Presumably to spend money on an acquisition, Google must think the user base that goes along with the acquisition is valuable.
Hoping this doesn't happen with the Nest Thermostat. The good news is the install base is huge, so it's not like they can just quietly brick them and have no one notice.
They already killed all their integrations, and since I exclusively set my multiple zone temperatures by voice with Alexa, when they killed the partner ecosystem I sold my Nests on eBay and bought some Ecobees that still connect with everything.
