I’ve been looking forward to the Fitbit Charge 3 more than any other recently announced smart watch and activity tracker. In fact, the prior generation Charge 2 was my favorite wearable of all time… it did what it was supposed to do with minimal distraction, solid battery life, and an approachable price point.
And, now, the Charge 3 looks to take what Fitbit did right… and make it that much better with even longer battery life along with legit water resistance and a true mutlitouch display. In fact, I recently traded in my Apple Watch … which still doesn’t provide a native step complication. I get Apple’s intent to provide a more holistic activity analysis, but I’m looking for a simple, discrete, easily comparable metric. While I’m not entirely convinced I need sleep data and not sure what to do with it, Fitbit does provide beautiful little graphs… versus Apple’s continued absence in this space (hello Beddit) and its generally inferior battery life works against in in this category, as most of us probably power up overnight. Further down the line, Garmin’s new wearable doesn’t seem as visually polished and the company seems to often launch new products with a number of software bugs. So that’s also a pass for me.
Bottom line: I’ve got my $150 Charge 3 on order and retailer ABT was kind enough to whet our appetite with the requisite unboxing.
I didn’t care for the Versa. It tried to do too much and didn’t quite succeed. Albeit my experience was marred by Fitbit cloud disruptions, so maybe poor timing on my part. My blogging partner Adam Miarka tried the Vivosmart 4 emitted some blinding red sensor light while trying to sleep with it – one of the reasons he returned. And, yes, I’ve already shamed him for not blogging his impressions.
I had been considering the Charge 3, but ended up getting the Amazfit Bip and am pretty happy with it. At 1 week of constant use, the battery is at 73%. At this rate, I can hope to get close to 4 weeks of battery life out of it.
I ruled that one out, but was looking at a similar import in the Miband 3: https://amzn.to/2Nkg0cY
Here’s another Charge 3 video, a hands on from a recent European trade show.
We picked up one. The native weather app makes me giddy. :)
https://zatznotfunny.com/2018-10/fitbit-charge-3-weather-app/