Fitbit Ionic Review: Next-Gen Fitness Smartwatch, Last-Gen Looks
Our Verdict
With slap-up bombardment life, sleep insights, mobile payments and a full slate of features coming with software updates, Fitbit's new smartwatch almost has it all.
For
- Upwards to four-day battery life
- Music storage
- Quick and easy mobile payments
- Accurate and insightful sleep analysis
Confronting
- Design
- Touch screen sometimes unresponsive
- Non many apps (yet)
- No always-on display
Tom's Guide Verdict
With great battery life, sleep insights, mobile payments and a total slate of features coming with software updates, Fitbit's new smartwatch virtually has it all.
Pros
- +
Up to 4-twenty-four hour period battery life
- +
Music storage
- +
Quick and easy mobile payments
- +
Accurate and insightful sleep assay
Cons
- -
Design
- -
Touch screen sometimes unresponsive
- -
Not many apps (still)
- -
No ever-on display
Fitbit's first smartwatch-like device, the Blaze, wasn't well-received. Information technology lacked way, had no apps and required a smartphone for even the nigh basic functionality, like GPS. And then Fitbit went back to the drawing board.
The result is the Fitbit Ionic, which the company is calling its first real smartwatch. This device is a huge improvement over its predecessor, with features such every bit GPS, NFC for payments, music storage and an app store that lets the watch polish even when there'due south no smartphone in your pocket. I just wish information technology looked amend.
Editor's Note: The Fitbit Ionic is being replaced past the Fitbit Sense ($329), a new smartwatch that has GPS, can track AFib, and has sensors that can too monitor your skin temperature and stress, and offering guidance on how to improve. The Sense also has congenital-in music storage, Fitbit Pay, and volition concluding up to six days on a accuse.
If you own a Fitbit Ionic, nspire HR, Charge 3, Accuse 4, Versa, Versa 2, or Versa Lite, you can enroll in Fitbit's new heart written report, and the visitor volition notify you if your device detects an irregular heart rhythm that indicates AFib. Fitbit will also connect you with a doctor for a costless consultation. The Fitbit Heart Study, open to U.Due south. residents 22 years or older, is being conducted to determine how accurate its devices are in detecting atrial fibrillation, equally the first step to receiving FDA blessing. Hither'south how to sign up for the Fitbit Center Written report.
A Face Just Fitbit Could Love
Let'southward get the obvious criticism out of the mode: I hate the Ionic's blueprint. Information technology's like Fitbit took a 1980s vision of a 21st-century smartwatch and updated it very slightly with more modern materials.
The lookout is 38.6mm wide, just the 349 ten 250, colour, LCD touch-screen display takes upwardly just 29.7mm of that width. The rest is black bezel, which is thicker on the mentum where Fitbit put its logo. The bodily display should be much larger, and the bezels on all sides should exist significantly thinner.
It doesn't aid that this watch looks ridiculous on me, which fabricated it difficult to honey. The thick aluminum frame that surrounds the display and houses the springs for swapping out the Ionic'south band didn't conform to the curves of my wrist, leaving gaps large enough that I could see the lord's day through them.
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Design is subjective, and my wrist is on the minor side, and then non everyone volition have the gap problem I experienced. But companies that fail to make smartwatches in sizes that can adapt all wrists will struggle to gain widespread adoption, because they're limiting themselves to half the marketplace.
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The frame houses the GPS antenna, which Fitbit says makes for a stronger connection, but I wish the Ionic had taken some cues from the newer, round, stylishly oversized Android Habiliment ii.0 smartwatches. Even the square Apple Watch, with its rounded corners, is more fashion-forward than Fitbit's take. This device is just too large, likewise bulky and too square to work for many people.
At least the Ionic looks meliorate than the Fitbit Blaze. That's something.
Fitness Remains the Focus
Apps won't exist the reason nigh Fitbit fans buy this watch. Those are simply a bonus on top of Fitbit's suite of fitness-tracking features, which get even better on the Ionic.
The new smartwatch finally puts Fitbit features that take been scattered beyond the company'south lineup in one device. The Ionic sports GPS, continuous centre rate-monitoring, guided workouts in the new Fitbit Bus app, swim-tracking, and a run-detect characteristic that turns on GPS and starts tracking your stats when y'all've been running for two-5 minutes. You don't accept to select a workout or press any buttons; it happens automatically.
This feature is beneficial for those of united states who run in the mornings. When I forgot to beginning a conditioning in the Practise app on the Ionic lookout man face, it didn't affair — subsequently I ran for about a minute and a one-half, the lookout man would activate GPS and launch the Exercise app for me. Information technology logs the information for your entire run, non just the betoken where GPS kicks on, which is useful.
This watch looks ridiculous on me, which makes it hard to love.
The Ionic is h2o-resistant for upward to l meters (same every bit the Apple tree Picket) and has a lap-swim workout option in the Exercise app. I worked out with the Ionic in a pool and tin can attest to its h2o-resistance, although I am the world's slowest swimmer and can't vouch for the accuracy of the device's lap counts.
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Fitbit improved its fitness-tracking sensors and the algorithms behind them, and added an SpO2 sensor for eventually detecting sleep apnea. That feature isn't bachelor nonetheless, only I tracked multiple runs wearing both an Ionic and an Apple Watch Series two, and the heart rate data on the two devices matched upwards perfectly.
Where Fitbit Shines
With Ionic, Fitbit nails ii things that no other smartwatch has managed: sleep tracking and battery life.
Like the Accuse 2 and Alta HR before it, the Ionic uses your heart rate to graph your sleep cycles, and so yous can encounter how much fourth dimension you lot spend in REM, calorie-free or deep sleep each nighttime. The sleep and wake times are accurate, and the Ionic can as well sense when yous wake during the dark. So, when yous sync the device to the Fitbit app in the morning, it can tell you how restless your sleep was.
The Ionic finally puts Fitbit features that have been scattered across the visitor'south lineup in one device.
Although I can't say for sure how accurate the sleep analysis is, it seemed spot on. The times I remembered being restless and glancing at my bedside clock, Fitbit marked every bit time spent awake.
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Other smartwatches offering sleep-tracking apps in their app stores, but few take the battery life of the Ionic. My device lasted nigh iii days on a charge, and that included thirty-45 minutes of daily GPS utilise in the Practise app and Pandora music playback. Fitbit promises the Ionic will last up to four days on a charge, or 10 hours with continuous GPS use. I have to charge my Apple Spotter Serial ii every day after putting it through the same corporeality of exercise tracking and music playback.
Fitbit OS Is an App Platform with Few Apps
The Ionic is a full-fledged smartwatch thank you to Fitbit'southward new Fitbit Os software platform, which ways you can install apps created specifically for this device.
At that place weren't many third-party apps at launch — merely Pandora, Starbucks, Strava and a weather app from AccuWeather — but each has a core part that complements how you utilize a fitness-focused smartwatch. Listening to music offline, ownership coffee, comparison run times and checking the forecast without having a telephone strapped to your arm or in your waistband is incredibly user-friendly.
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Mobile payments are just as seamless on the Ionic every bit they are on the Apple Watch.
You install apps on the Ionic past browsing the App Gallery in the Fitbit app for iOS and Android. This is also where y'all customize settings and make changes in your installed apps, such every bit adding a city to the Weather app or adding your Starbucks bill of fare for buying a latte correct from your wrist.
Installing and managing app settings on Fitbit Bone is simple; only know that you won't have many apps to utilise right out of the gate. Fitbit rolled out out more third-party apps in December as role of its first major software update for the Ionic. The new additions include the New York Times, Flipboard, Yelp and Hue Lights. The Times and Flipboard put the day's major headlines on your wrist, though Flipboard is focused specifically on health and fettle stories. Y'all can choose between topics such as running, sleep, salubrious eating and the outdoors. Don't wait to be able to read total articles on your wrist. Both the NYT app and Flipboard give you merely the opening paragraph and a pocket-size photograph.
Fitbit said more apps are coming by the end of the year, including Nest, Uber and United Airlines. In January, Lyft, Walgreens and British Airways are expected to land on the Ionic.
Fitbit is also allowing developers to create watch faces, so you tin can tailor your Ionic's look to your taste. I wish the Ionic immune you lot to change the face up directly on the spotter, like the Apple Watch and Android Article of clothing watches do. Instead, you have to select a face in the Fitbit app on your phone and then sync the two devices then the new clock will announced. Fitbit is opening this feature upwardly to everyone, so even I can make my own sentry face (if I want to, which I don't really).
No Telephone Required
A smartwatch that has to be connected to a smartphone all the time isn't all that useful, and that'southward where the Fitbit Blaze barbarous short. The Ionic is much more powerful on its own.
To outset, the device has ii.5GB of local music storage, so yous can save up to 300 songs on the device or download Pandora playlists to heed to offline (you need a paid Pandora business relationship to access that functionality). Once you shop music on the Ionic, y'all can pair Bluetooth headphones to the watch and head off for a workout without a phone. In 2018, Fitbit is bringing Deezer's offline music streaming to the Ionic.
I tested music playback with Fitbit's own Bluetooth headphones, Fitbit Flyer, which pair seamlessly with the scout in the aforementioned way that Apple's AirPods are the best fit for iPhones. (The $130 Flyer is otherwise a trivial likewise expensive for what it offers, which is a very basic sport headphone feel.)
Fitbit also put an NFC chip in the Ionic, which means you tin store a carte on the watch to make purchases. The payment process is only every bit seamless on the Ionic as it is on the Apple Lookout. You printing and agree the Ionic'southward left-side push most the payment terminal, and information technology immediately processes the transaction.
I tested the Ionic's mobile-payment feature at Whole Foods, and it was muchfaster than my usual chip-carte experience, which seems to get longer and more than arduous all the time. The Ionic requires a Pin to secure your card, and you accept to enter this number every fourth dimension you remove the scout and put information technology back on (or every 24 hours, whichever comes first). In December, Fitbit added the ability to store multiple cards in the Ionic'southward wallet and cull betwixt them at the time of payment.
How Well It Works
The Ionic's bright touch screen, which is easily viewable in daylight, works in tandem with three hardware buttons to help you navigate around and rapidly access specific features. A quick printing on the left-hand button turns the brandish on and off, while a longer press on the same button activates Fitbit Pay — more on that later.
There's no choice to keep the sentinel face on at all times. Instead, you tap to wake or toggle a setting to have the Ionic wake when you turn your wrist. An always-on display is available during workouts by borer the Settings gear in the Exercise app, but it's a battery drain.
The affect screen itself isn't every bit responsive equally other smartwatches I've used, particularly with sweaty fingers during a workout. While yous're exercising, you tin can swipe the screen to view stats — everything from footstep per mile to calories burned — just pausing and ending a workout are controlled via the side buttons on the right.
With Ionic, Fitbit nails 2 things that no other smartwatch has managed: sleep tracking and battery life.
A long printing on the bottom right button in the Exercise app brings up notifications from your smartphone, while a long press on the meridian right button brings up your electric current music so you can skip tracks. This isn't exactly intuitive; it took me a few runs to realize I could control my music from the watch direct and not merely on my headphones.
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Apps are arranged in grids of four, and you have to swipe left in the spotter face to view additional app pages. This isn't a problem right at present, because in that location are simply a handful of apps in Fitbit's App Gallery, but information technology could be cumbersome as more apps come to the Ionic. You can press and hold an app icon to motion it to a different screen or to another position on the aforementioned screen.
Bottom Line
For Fitbit users who are fans of the company'southward older devices, the Ionic is a huge upgrade. Fitbit is promising that more features — such every bit expanded NFC capabilities, more than apps, and health features like sleep-apnea alerts — are on the horizon.
However, Fitbit is launching the Ionic at the same time that Apple is releasing its 3rd-generation Apple Watch. For simply $xxx more, you can buy a more stylish smartwatch that comes in two sizes and has many of the same features as the Ionic: GPS, continuous heart rate-monitoring, swim tracking, mobile payments and offline music storage for listening to songs with Bluetooth headphones — in addition to an App Store with thousands of spotter apps instead of but a handful. The Apple Watch Series three as well offers LTE connectivity in the pricier $399 model.
Of course, the Apple Watch is useless to Android users. And Ionic offers sleep analysis, Pandora integration, longer battery life than the Apple Watch, and a customs of Fitbit users who have been encouraging and competing against one another for years. For some people, the Ionic will be the smartwatch they've been waiting for.
I just wish Fitbit had put more thought into the design of this picket. A smartwatch has to offer more than just fitness features to be worthy of your wrist, and for me, the Ionic falls but short of neat.
Credit: Shaun Lucas/Tom'due south Guide
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Source: https://www.tomsguide.com/us/fitbit-ionic,review-4679.html
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