Fitbit unveils new Charge, Charge HR & Surge digital fitness trackers
Fitbit on Monday gave fitness buffs three new options for wrist-worn activity trackers, introducing the Charge and Charge HR --?spiritual successors to the Fitbit Force -- alongside the Fitbit Surge, which the company is calling a "fitness super watch."
The Fitbit Charge and Charge HR sport a nearly identical form factor to the Force, and continue to track activity metrics including steps taken, distance traveled, calories burned, and floors climbed. They include the same small, slightly-angled OLED display that shows the current time as well as the wearer's daily statistics.
Other previous Force features --?including sleep tracking, vibration alarms, Caller ID display, and exercise tracking --?also continue in the new incarnations.
The Charge HR does the Charge one better with a more standard watch-like band closure, and adds continuous heart rate monitoring via built-in optical pulse tracking technology similar to that found in the Apple Watch. The two fitness bands are rated for seven and five days of battery life, respectively.
The Surge, meanwhile, is an all-new "fitness super watch" that comes with a larger touch-screen LCD panel. It includes a built-in GPS receiver to track larger movement statistics like pace, distance, elevation, split times, route history.
Fitbit has packed eight sensors into the Surge, including 3-axis accelerometers, gyroscope, compass, ambient light sensor, GPS and heart rate sensors.
In an effort to compete against more fully-featured smartwatches that also include fitness functionality, Surge users can receive text alerts on the device, and gain the ability to control music on their mobile phone. Fitbit says the Surge is good for seven days of battery life.
The Fitbit Charge is available now from Fitbit.com for $129.95 in black or slate, with blue and burgundy coming soon. The Charge HR and Surge will be available in "early 2015" for $149.95 and $249.95, respectively.
The Fitbit Charge and Charge HR sport a nearly identical form factor to the Force, and continue to track activity metrics including steps taken, distance traveled, calories burned, and floors climbed. They include the same small, slightly-angled OLED display that shows the current time as well as the wearer's daily statistics.
Other previous Force features --?including sleep tracking, vibration alarms, Caller ID display, and exercise tracking --?also continue in the new incarnations.
The Charge HR does the Charge one better with a more standard watch-like band closure, and adds continuous heart rate monitoring via built-in optical pulse tracking technology similar to that found in the Apple Watch. The two fitness bands are rated for seven and five days of battery life, respectively.
The Surge, meanwhile, is an all-new "fitness super watch" that comes with a larger touch-screen LCD panel. It includes a built-in GPS receiver to track larger movement statistics like pace, distance, elevation, split times, route history.
Fitbit has packed eight sensors into the Surge, including 3-axis accelerometers, gyroscope, compass, ambient light sensor, GPS and heart rate sensors.
In an effort to compete against more fully-featured smartwatches that also include fitness functionality, Surge users can receive text alerts on the device, and gain the ability to control music on their mobile phone. Fitbit says the Surge is good for seven days of battery life.
The Fitbit Charge is available now from Fitbit.com for $129.95 in black or slate, with blue and burgundy coming soon. The Charge HR and Surge will be available in "early 2015" for $149.95 and $249.95, respectively.
Comments
Sorry, Fitbit, but you have really missed the boat here. Took you way, way too long to get back in the market after the Force turned out to give users massive allergic reactions.
That does suck, but that's certainly not a deal breaker for me at this point and I wonder how many iOS 8 users really even know what the Health app is for.
On the one hand I would certainly pay an extra $100-$220 for ?Watch but FitBit's new products do have some features that aren't yet advertised for ?Watch.
For me, one major feature is a stated battery life of 5 to 7 days, and from having a FitBit Force that battery life isn't an exaggeration. Furthermore, that length allows for more than enough charging time when I take a shower each day without having to worry if I remember to charged it the day or couple days before. With more power comes more responsible (on the user to remember to charge).
Other aspect that may make it appealing to users are not having an iPhone or don't care about tethering (i.e.: being completely usable without needing another device), lighter, smaller, cheaper, and don't care about beating it up unlike when it comes to Apple's jewelry-quality design.
The only reason I wouldn't buy another FitBit is that crappy latch, but even their cheapest model which uses the same horrible mechanism might be fine now that it's doubled up on the crappy latching mechanism.
TL;DR: If the Charge HR was available today I would have already purchased it.
I think there is in the same way there is a market for dumb phones, and I'd say even more so than with the advent of the iPhone changing the handset market. I simply don't see fitness tracking going away and expect these devices to get much better and cheaper in the proceeding years.
- No Healthkit support so what happens when I have data from other places that I want to integrate? No, I don't want to pay for their premium service which provides some pretty graphs but still doesn't allow me to customise the reporting to what I want for my lifestyle. There is a growing list of apps that can pull data from HealthKit and innovation is going to happen here rather than some proprietary backwater dictated by FitBit. This is a dealbreaker.
- by the time these are available, others will also be on the market with compatible feature/function.
- Surge is being sold at above what I would pay for the components listed. Per other comments, being locked into a single plastic wristband is poor design and business on their part. They need to look at what their competitors are doing and offer consumer choice and upsell accessory options if they want to survive.
The HealthKit app is mundane, to put it mildly.
You can't export or import data, and it’s incredibly basic and limited in functionality. Pulling data from different sources is good, but when only a small part of the data is extracted from apps, it seems pretty pointless. No iPad version, no iCloud syncing, no ability to define, edit or add categories, no ability to change units, and that's only scratching the surface.
Does anyone know if these new Fitbits can display seconds with the time? My wife is an NP and needs that for calculating heart rates for patients.
I do not recommend Fitbit and I would not buy another of their products.
I would like a "buyer's guide" to lay out the best or most effective way to populate the most data in Health Kit using the fewest # of devices.
Also - how long before we get a "smart toilet" to analyze our waste? Dibs on the trademark for iPoop!
I would consider a FitBit - but I do want HealthKit integration for anything I buy. I also want HealthKit to get way way way better than it currently is.
I would like a "buyer's guide" to lay out the best or most effective way to populate the most data in Health Kit using the fewest # of devices.
Also - how long before we get a "smart toilet" to analyze our waste? Dibs on the trademark for iPoop!
Michio Kaku predicted one by 2030 I think, which could analyze waste for cancer. (He's a populist theoretical physicist)
IF ONLY SOFTWARE COULD IMPROVE OVER TIME! we could call it "soft" because--oh shit, that's exactly what software does.
durrrrr durrr
anyway idiocy aside, HK is leagues better than any third-party's data silo for the fact that it's a data aggregation framework. think about that for a while.
I'm not interested in anything from Fitbit until they add HealthKit integration.