Fitbit Ionic review: This fitness smartwatch is no Apple Watch killer
If the Ionic smartwatch is the best Fitbit can do, the company might be doomed, and the Apple Watch has nothing to worry about.
As sensors shrank and gadgets became lifestyle choices, Fitbit's propelled itself to the top of the wearables heap with ever-improving fitness trackers and bands. It was all going so well... until smartwatches like the Apple Watch and Android Wear watches arrived, promising not just a more connected life with your smartphone, but also many of the Fitbit’s own fitness-tracking features.
With the threat of multi-functional smartwatches looming overhead, Fitbit really had no choice but to counterpunch with its own smartwatch. However, while the Ionic is great as a fitness wearable, it’s simply not a good enough smartwatch to justify its $300 price tag.
SEE ALSO:How fashion brands are saving Android Wear smartwatchesThe Ionic is one of those gadgets where it’s way better-looking in person than in leaked online images. It's super light, and the angular aluminum case has a trendy ’80s vibe going for it — the shape reminds me of an old Casio F-91W watch — and I dig it.
The Ionic’s thicker than I expected, but not uncomfortably so. In fact, it’s easily the comfiest Fitbit I’ve ever worn; it’s the opposite of the company’s half-step Blaze, which was super rigid and hurt my bony wrists. It's even a nice fit when you're wearing it while sleeping.
Switching bands on the Ionic is a breeze.Credit: lili sams/mashableThe wearable fits snug on the wrist and comes with two silicone strap sizes (small and large). Swapping bands is as easy as pressing a button on the inside of the strap and clipping a new one on. Fitbit also sells leather and sport bands (a knockoff of the perforated Apple Watch Nike+ band).
The Ionic’s 1.45-inch touchscreen has great visibility in bright sunlight thanks to 1,000 nits of brightness (the same as Apple Watch Series 2 and 3). I didn’t notice it at first, but there’s a very, very gentle curve to the Corning Gorilla Glass 3 glass that covers the display and makes it easier to see from weird angles.
The screen's really great even in direct sunlight.Credit: lili sams/mashableNow, about that Fitbit logo on the thick bezel below the screen... it’s hideous. Look at the Apple Watch or the Samsung Gear S3. Do you see any prominent branding on them? Nope. My advice for version 2.0: cut the branding and make the case smaller or the screen bigger (preferable) because fat bezels look like turd in 2017.
Fitness tracking, evolved
Look at all that tracked data!Credit: raymond wong/mashableThe Ionic is first and foremost designed to track your fitness, and you can probably guess what I’m going to say next.
*Drum roll, please*
It’s a really great fitness wearable if you’re really into measuring things like steps, distance, floors climbed, calories, etc. and seeing what it all means for your health in nice, bright colorful charts and graphs in the Fitbit app.
For a $300 wearable, you better believe there’s some solid workout tech inside, like an advanced heart-rate sensor that continuously reads your pulse all day.
The heart rate sensor is pretty damn accurate and could save your life.Credit: LILI SAMS/MASHABLEThe improved sensors inside could also help detect whether you have sleep apnea, a concerning sleep condition that affects up to 25 million Americans according to the National Health Sleep Awareness Project and could lead to health problems like high blood pressure or even a stroke.
The Ionic also has a built-in GPS for more accurate reads on stats like your pace and distance. A GPS is a must for any wearable that’s even the slightest bit serious about fitness tracking, and the Ionic’s works pretty well.
I had some issues getting the GPS to work after setup (like, the weather failed to change when I went from Manhattan to Queens in New York City), but a reboot seemed to recalibrate the syncing and I had no further troubles afterwards.
All the tasty fitness data you could possibly want.Credit: SCREENSHOT: BRETT WILLIAMS/MASHABLEIf you’ve used the Fitbit Blaze or even any of the company's other bands, you’re going to feel right at home with the Ionic. The SmartTrack mode, which automatically starts tracking your stats when it detects you’ve started a workout like running or biking, is a smarter and worked better than when I tested the Blaze.
Sleep tracking in the Fitbit app.Credit: screenshot: brett williams/mashable
The SmartTracker feature automatically logged Brett's workouts after he started lifting weights.Credit: SCREENSHOT: BRETT WILLIAMS/MASHABLEMy colleague Brett, who also tested the Ionic, appreciated the weight-room tracking. Rather than focusing on individual rep counts like Garmin’s vivosmart 3, the Ionic tracks heart rate throughout the workout. He did an impromptu backyard workout and forgot to set his watch, and saw later that it had tracked the time automatically.
Water-resistance up to 50 meters means the Ionic’s now fully swim-proof. And there’s a new swim-tracking mode that records your laps, strokes, and burned calories. Swimming, too, is a SmartTrack activity. I didn’t get a chance to jump in the pool to test this, but at the very least, the Ionic has feature parity with the Apple Watch Series 2 and 3, and Samsung’s upcoming Gear Sport and Gear Fit2Pro for swimming features.
For my review, I borrowed a friend’s Apple Watch Series 2 (I have a "Series 0" first-gen Apple Watch, not to be confused with the Series 1 version, which was released simultaneously with Series 2 in 2016) and went for a few morning and evening runs, and found tracking to be pretty in-line with the Ionic. For example, sometimes the Apple Watch recorded more steps and vice versa, but the margin of error was low enough that it was negligible.
Let’s be real, a Fitbit or Apple Watch is great, but they're not a Garmin — ugly as they are — which are the wearables of choice for serious marathon runners and workout junkies, mostly because of their reputed accuracy.
Half-baked smartwatch
Swipe left and right to browse through apps.Credit: lili sams/mashableIf this was simply a Blaze refresh, the built-in GPS, swim tracking, and improved heart-rate sensor would've been enough. But the Ionic isn't a minor update; it's Fitbit's bet on Fitbit OS, its new smartwatch operating system developed from the assets it acquired from Pebble.
Nobody said making a smartwatch would be easy, not even with the talent it got from Pebble. It's definitely difficult to balance the right amount of fitness and mobile computing into a device with such a miniaturized package.
Even Apple, Samsung, and all of the various Android Wear smartwatch makers have struggled with figuring what works. The annual revising of watchOS and how you launch apps and interact with features is proof that Apple hasn't nailed the smartwatch user interface.
The Ionic dips its toes into the smartwatch game with only a handful of features at launch. And that's the problem: It doesn't go far enough when there are more mature products like the Apple Watch vying for your money.
The basics of the smartwatch are there, but they're all half-baked in my honest opinion.
The basics of the smartwatch are there, but they're all half-baked in my honest opinion. You swipe left from the main clock face to browse through apps. You get all of your fitness features and things like the weather and timers and alarms and music controls.
But unfortunately, that's where the Ionic as a smartwatch goes downhill.
Switching watch faces is a comically slow and backwards process. Unlike on other smartwatches, you can’t switch them on the watch itself. You need to use the Fitbit app, and then wait for the watch face to sync. There’s an actual loading bar that appears in the app when the syncing happens.
You can look at the notifications, but you can't interact with them. So like why, then?Credit: Raymond wong/mashableThe Ionic shows call and text notifications, but you can't interact with them, which basically renders them borderline useless. I kept lifting up my wrist and tapping at incoming texts only to remember that I couldn't reply back from the Ionic. Might as well just get a real smartwatch then.
Fitbit Pay, which is — you guessed it — Fitbit’s own version of Apple/Android/Samsung Pay seems like a desperate attempt to compete with other smartwatches.
Ugh. Fitbit Pay?! Why?!Credit: lili sams/mashableI was able to load in a prepaid Boon MasterCard and successfully use it to buy something at a store with an NFC terminal — press and hold the left button until your credit card shows up — but I also couldn’t add my own Chase Visa or HSBC MasterCard because my banks weren’t supported. Brett also couldn't add his Capital One Visa card.
Fitbit tells us the Ionic will support select U.S. American Express, MasterCard and Visa credit and debit cards from "top issuing banks in over 10 markets across the globe" when it launches in October. Banks that have announced support at launch include: Bank of America, Capital One, US Bank, USAA and Wells Fargo. Fitbit says more will be announced later. We'll update this review once we've been able to try out our own credit cards.
That said, Fitbit Pay might be a hard sell. It’s already bad enough that a lot of places still don’t support Apple/Android/Samsung Pay, but at least the list of banks that support them is pretty long and continues to grow. It could take some time before your bank's card works, so just be aware of that.
Adding music from iTunes is frustratingly complicated. And I nearly gave up the first time I connected Pandora (you must have a paid Plus subscription to download playlists) to the Ionic because the syncing took forever. Not to mention, you can only store around 300 songs to the Ionic's paltry 2.5GB of storage.
The Apple Watch's 2GB of storage for music (it has 8GB storage total for all the other crap) isn't exactly better, but if you look at the new Apple Watch Series 3 and its upcoming Apple Music streaming or even Spotify streaming on Samsung's Gear smartwatches, you already know that downloading music locally isn't the future.
Great, you can buy Starbucks after a run. Just what fitness junkies wanna do.Credit: lili sams/mashableThe Ionic’s most defining smartwatch feature is battery life. Fitbit advertises up to four days on a single charge withthe GPS turned on. At the end of day four of testing, I still had at least 10-15 percent power leftover. It was really liberating to not have to charge the Ionic every night like I do with my Apple Watch.
It’s mighty impressive, but your mileage is also going to vary greatly depending on what features you use on a daily basis. You’re going to see weaker battery life if you listen to music with Bluetooth headphones or constantly look at a lot of notifications.
For Fitbit diehards only
Credit: raymond wong/mashableThe bar for smartwatches is extremely high. Fitbit's Ionic didn't just need to just be a good smartwatch, it needed to be better than the Apple Watch, which is more fitness-focused than ever before.
If you price it out, the $300 Ionic fits square in-between an Apple Watch Series 1, which starts at $249 and doesn't come with a built-in GPS or swim-tracking and the Apple Watch Series 3 (non-cellular), which starts at $329 and includes both of those features.
The Ionic actually seems like a good deal... until you realize that you can probably find new Apple Watch Series 2 for $300 from other retailers (it's discontinued, but Apple's retail partners are selling remaining inventory) and still get the GPS, andall of the better smartwatch features it already comes standard with.
And even if you can't find an old Series 2, another $30 isn't a whole lot more for the Series 3, so just save up and you'll get a more compact and stylish wearable that does a whole lot more.
The Ionic is fine if you're already a diehard Fitbit user, but there's nothing here that moves the needle for smartwatches. If you really want a smartwatch, get a real smartwatch.
Brett Williams contributed to this review.
UPDATE: Sept. 19, 2017, 1:33 p.m. EDT Clarified details for Fitbit Pay banks and card support.
Fitbit Ionic
The Good
Super bright screen
Top-notching fitness-tracking modes
Days and days of battery life
Really comfy on wrist
The Bad
Half-baked smartwatch features
Managing music is a nightmare
Very big if you have small wrists
The Bottom Line
The Fitbit Ionic is the most connected and advanced Fitbit yet, but it's an average smartwatch.
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