Fitness tracker experts Fitbit have unleashed their first smartwatch overnight with the Fitbit Ionic launching alongside a pair of bluetooth sports headphones, an updated Aria Smartscale and new Fitbit Coach training software.
Fitbit Ionic
After years of leading in demi-smart fitness trackers, Fitbit is jumping into the smartwatch business with both feet with the Ionic. It has all the features you want from a fitness device including GPS (with GLONASS), PurePulse smart heart rate monitoring with improved accuracy, it’s water resistant up to 50m and a new feature: an SpO2 tracker for measuring blood oxygen levels.
The Fitbit Ionic is also a smartwatch running Fitbit OS with notifications, and it will even have their own app store called the Fitbit App Gallery, which will feature ‘a variety of popular apps and clock faces’. It has a full colour touchscreen which is bright and easy to read at 1,000 nits brightness covered with spherical glass. The whole lot is powered by a battery which they say will last 4 days and has 2.5Gb of storage for up to 300 songs.
The big news for Fitbit with the launch of the Ionic is the inclusion of NFC for payments. While it’s US-centric, there is a number of partners named for the payments including ANZ bank. International partners include Banco Santander, Bank of America, Capital One, HSBC, KBC Bank Ireland, OCBC Bank, Royal Bank of Canada, UOB and US Bank, and Fitbit advise there are more banks planned.
Now, when can you get one? The good news is that the Fitbit Ionic is up for pre-order now on fitbit.com for $449.95 and will be available in October.
Fitbit Ionic is available for presale today on Fitbit.com and select online retailers tomorrow for $449.95. Ionic will be available in stores worldwide beginning October 2017, including leading Australian retailers. If that’s not exclusive enough for you, then you can hold out till next year when an Adidas version of the Ionic will be released.
The Ionic comes in three different colour combos: A silver grey tracker and clasp with blue grey band, smoke grey tracker and clasp with charcoal band, or burnt orange tracker and clasp with slate blue band; Fitbit are also getting into accessories selling the bands in these colour options for $49.95 each. You can get a two-toned ‘breathable’ Sport Band accessories in black and charcoal, or cobalt and lime for $49.95 or a Horween leather option in cognac and midnight blue for $99.95.
Fitbit Flyer
If you’ve been holding out for some new bluetooth headphones, then Fitbit is also moving into that arena with the Fitbit Flyer.
They’re water/sweatproof wireless Bluetooth 4.2 earphones with a 6-hour battery life that come with interchangeable tips, wings and fins to ensure a comfortable fit. They can be paired to two devices at once for convenience and come with a built-in microphone for calls. You can control your music, or calls with the in-line control box, and hey, they apparently sound great.
They will of course connect to the Fitbit Ionic so you can go out to exercise with just the watch.
Priced at $199.95 they’re entering into a very crowded, and popular category so as to how they go when they go on-sale will come down to performance. The Fitbit Flyer bluetooth earphones are up for pre-order now.
Fitbit Aria 2 – Smartscale
Fitbit has also updated their massively popular wifi enabled smart scale which will track all the major important stats including weight, body fat, lean mass and BMI. The data is synced through the Fitbit app and into the cloud giving you access to see how that Big Mac you ate last night affected you.
The Fitbit Aria 2 will be going on-sale for $199.95.
Fitbit Coach
After dabbling with fitness training with their Fitstar Personal Trainer app, Fitbit today announced Fitbit Coach.
Starting this spring, Fitbit Coach will launch a new app update which includes dynamic, personalised fitness programs which give you more ways to work out and hit your goals. Workouts you love from Fitstar will remain, and cover all the different goals you have but with a more personalised slant, more exercises and even more motivation.
A new feature called Run and Walk audio coaching will be coming, bringing the Fitbit trainers right to your ears – maybe even through the Fitbit Flyer headphones ;).
Want to see what it looks like? Well, they’ve only supplied iOS based promos so here you are:
The Fitbit Coach program will be priced at $39.99USD/year when it launches.
Go get them
If you like any, or even all of these new products you can head over to fitbit.com to check them all out or make a pre-order now.
RIP smartwatches. As Darryl Kerrigan would say ” Tell ’em they’re dreaming”
Nothing about what the watch’s run.. UI looks like? Is it pebble 2.0 but with a different start-up logo, or have they actually made some efforts with it beyond buying it and slapping a new label on top?
Fitbit OS.