Alexa

Three Things Fitbit Does Better Than Apple

Wearables make me cranky. Each one seems to let me down in differing, but very specific ways. By most measures, current Apple Watch models are far superior to the Fitbit Versa 2, in things like build quality and breadth of functionality. However, despite Fitbit’s wildly inaccurate non-exercise step counts (you had one job!), I swap my Versa 2 into rotation for a few select reasons. And, no, 3rd party faces isn’t really one (as most are bad). Nor is the knee-capped Alexa integration.

  1. Fitbit SmartTrack automatically and reliably captures my long walks, when I either forget to manually trigger an exercise or when I don’t want to — briskly walking alongside my daughter as she gets comfortable on her new Frozen bike, for example.
  2. Speaking of efficiently capturing exercise, the Fitbit Versa line includes a programmable button. And I’ve set my left Versa 2 button shortcut to initiate a walk. However, a long press can also be configured to deep link all sorts of exercise modes. Or, in lieu of Apple’s numerous complications, bring up music controls, notifications, the relax app, and more.
  3. For at least a few more hours, Fitbit provides native sleep tracking, whereas Apple does not. Rumor has it sleep tracking will be announced with watchOS 7 later today, although the (fuzzy) oxygen monitoring Fitbit provides may not be replicated by until Apple Watch 6 this fall.

 

Published by
Dave Zatz