Sunday Runday
On this weekly column, Android Central Wearables Editor Michael Hicks talks concerning the world of wearables, apps, and health tech associated to operating and well being, in his quest to get sooner and healthier.
Google pandered to runners like me with the Pixel Watch 3, and barring a few errors and lacking options, it did a wonderful job. However my pleasure was instantly tempered by the information of one other nail within the Fitbit model’s coffin, one which limits who’ll truly get to benefit from these new operating instruments.
Up till now, operating with a Pixel Watch was a bare-bones expertise. You turned on the GPS, noticed a couple of stats in your wrist throughout a run, and acquired a easy abstract afterward.
The Fitbit OS is barely higher, although I discovered sure options, like creating intervals, needlessly difficult. Additionally, its every day suggestions and Premium exercises at all times felt extra geared in direction of indoor exercises.
The Pixel Watch 3 modifications issues, including instruments like user-made exercises, AI-generated runs based mostly in your Each day Readiness, a cardio load rating that takes weeks of exercise knowledge and your goal load into consideration, operating type insights, and a Morning Transient summarizing every little thing you want to know earlier than a run.
Google even says it improved coronary heart charge accuracy when operating by lowering “gentle artifacts” attributable to speedy arm pumping. Primarily based on our assessment testing, the Pixel Watch 2 was no slouch on this space.
It isn’t every little thing I might need out of a operating watch, to be clear. The Pixel Watch 3 will not allow you to race previous instances. You possibly can’t obtain offline GPX maps, and Google has but to take full benefit of Google Maps for issues like programs or Again to Begin. There is not any Garmin Coach equal for long-term coaching plans, both. However that is nitpicking, and Put on OS 5 has issues heading in the right direction.
I am extra disenchanted that Google did not comply with Samsung’s instance with the Galaxy Watch 7 and put dual-band GPS within the Pixel Watch 3. I’ve had dangerous luck with GPS-only monitoring on the Fitbit Cost 6, although the Watch 3 antenna needs to be a lot better. I can not actually criticize it till I check the accuracy for myself, nevertheless it does really feel like a barely missed alternative.
So what is the actual drawback? It is that the way forward for Fitbit smartwatches apparently rests on the Pixel Watch, and it stays unsure if Google intends to carry these Fitbit insights to Fitbit-branded watches (and I would not wager on it).
Engadget’s Cherlynn Low interviewed Sandeep Waraich, senior director of product administration for Pixel Wearables, on the Made by Google 2024 occasion earlier this week when Waraich gave her some unlucky information.
Low requested Waraich about different Fitbit-branded smartwatches; he responded that “Pixel Watch is our smartwatch a part of the portfolio” and that any Fitbits shifting ahead would provide a minimalist expertise. He says Fitbit customers need “a easy expertise” and pointed to the Fitbit Encourage 3 for instance.
He clarified that Fitbit Sense 2 and Versa 4 will stay accessible, however we could not see Sense 3 or Versa 5 for a very long time, if ever.
Android Central reached out to Fitbit, asking if these new operating options may very well be added to previous Sense and Versa watches and to substantiate the information above. A spokesperson responded, saying that Google is “very dedicated to Fitbit” and to “the purchasers that use and depend upon these merchandise and know-how.” Nonetheless, they didn’t touch upon whether or not we’d see these new operating options in your Fitbit anytime quickly, which does not depart me very hopeful.
RIP Fitbit as a separate entity
I’ve written up to now about Fitbit’s struggles as a model, so I will maintain it transient. Fitbit was a top-selling wearable model, nevertheless it fell from seventh to tenth in complete gross sales in 2022, as per Counterpoint, and now not often seems outdoors of the “Different” class on trade studies.
Google minimize the territories the place it offered Fitbit units in half in late 2023. A number of months later, Fitbit’s executives — together with founders James Park and Eric Friedman — left Google below unclear circumstances. Since then, Fitbit has presumably fallen below the Google wearables umbrella, with nobody left to advocate for Fitbit as a separate entity.
The final Fitbit-branded system — launched earlier than the manager exodus — was the respectable Fitbit Cost 6. It was primarily a reboxed Cost 5 with new Google apps and a Google-made algorithm for higher coronary heart charge. We might hoped new Sense and Versa watches have been subsequent; as a substitute, we’ll in all probability see a petite Fitbit Encourage 4 band subsequent 12 months.
This is the issue: Fitbit’s pivot to deal with low-cost health bands makes little or no financial sense. Have a look at this 2024 Canalys report exhibiting how smartwatches dominate primary bands in complete gross sales. In 2020, trackers and smartwatches made up 46% and 37% of the market, respectively; as we speak, primary bands solely account for 17%, versus 37% for smartwatches. By 2028, analysts predict, it’s going to be 12% and 48%, respectively.
Abandoning your Fitbit smartwatches for the Pixel Watch 3 and tiny Fitbit bands feels…short-sighted. It cuts out Fitbit’s many iOS energy customers, in addition to Android-using athletes who need a light-weight health watch that lasts per week and never a 24-hour Pixel Watch or a tiny-screened Encourage with no built-in GPS.
Regardless that the Fitbit Cost 6 is the greatest health tracker accessible as we speak, many individuals skip it due to the comparatively excessive value and subscription. Jitesh Ubrani, IDC’s analysis supervisor for wearables, says Fitbit has struggled to compete in opposition to “low-cost, value-oriented manufacturers equivalent to Xiaomi, Amazfit, or Huawei.” Why spend $160 + $10/month when you may pay $40 for a Xiaomi Good Band 9?
In gentle of that, I might at all times hoped that Fitbit would double down on its health smartwatches, optimizing its health software program and well being sensors on the Sense and Versa lineups, then porting these options to the Pixel Look ahead to Android energy customers who do not care as a lot about battery life.
As a substitute, at this charge, Fitbit will grow to be extra area of interest than ever because it pivots to the health band type issue that most individuals are beginning to abandon in favor of smartwatches or good rings.
Manufacturers like Garmin, Coros, and Polar nonetheless cater to runners, however these focus way more on coaching steering than well being knowledge. The Pixel Watch 3 takes the reverse strategy, and I am genuinely excited to place it by way of its paces. Nonetheless, Fitbit’s {hardware} may have struck a steadiness between health and well being, in addition to smarts and effectivity. That is not gonna occur now.
