Lately, many people have been talking about the new tracker from FitBit, but not a single muscle on my face trembled from this. He is completely indifferent to me, and I would not even think to buy it. Many will say that I am wrong and ask how you can not love such cool devices. Can! And my personal experience of using a large number of gadgets is a confirmation of this. Yes, the opinion is subjective, but for every day I have long given up on activity trackers on hand. I'm ready to tell you why and listen to your opinion at the end. As usual, I pay a lot of attention to it and want to get acquainted with it.
There are many of them, but they are of little use.
Pros of using activity trackers
In my opinion, activity trackers have only two advantages that can be considered significant. It's price and compact size. Perhaps someone will name something else out of personal preference, but for myself I cannot dial more than two. This was the first reason why I abandoned the tracker, but more on that below.
The price is clear. There are Chinese no-names, but they are built on one common platform and are simply released under different brands. As a result, you can buy trackers from different manufacturers that work with one application. There is an alternative option, when different trackers of the same brand require different applications. But such trackers cost a penny. Often the price does not even reach a thousand rubles. True, the quality is often poor. Of course, this also happens among smart watches, the advantages of which we wrote about earlier.
With the advantages of a small size, the issue is more controversial, since wearing something larger on your hand is still quite comfortable. If I've already put something on my hand, I don't care what size it will be. It is uncomfortable for me to print with a bracelet on my wrist, but it will be with hefty “boilers” and with a miniature Mi Band. In a gym, small size is also a dubious advantage. There is enough space. I can agree that the sleeve clings to a large classic or smart watch more, but also not always.
Xiaomi Mi Smart Bands are small, but you still need to wear them.
I gave examples of why I think the advantages of trackers are questionable, now let's talk about the immediate disadvantages.
Cons of fitness bracelets
I think their main disadvantage is weak functionality. In fact, they do not know how to do anything other than showing the time and counting steps. The rest of the functions work every other time, and the data count is often very conditional and approximate. Based on this, to consider the gadget smart, my thoughts just do not turn. It's like a Wi-Fi switch. Why is he smart then? Maximum functional. Oh, this marketing!
Due to the fact that there are so few functions in the bracelet, I prefer to use ordinary watches, which can be bought for the same money and choose their design, rather than using standard versions. If the tracker supports changing straps, I can still accept it. Otherwise, no.
“But what about notifications from your smartphone?” – you say. I deliberately did not consider this a plus. The tracker that can produce at least some decent vibration costs almost like an inexpensive smart watch. They will vibrate as well, but there will be much more functions in them. And they will be better implemented. Therefore, I would rather attribute this plus to the minuses.
Why you shouldn't buy a new FitBit
At one time, I started communicating with wearable electronics with the FitBit Flex presented to me.
He didn't even have a screen, and his workout progress could be viewed on a scoreboard with four indicators. Sequentially lighting up, they showed a charge level of 25%, 50%, 75% and 100%. More information could be found in the appendix. At that time it was already very cool, I used it with pleasure. He was new. Then I changed it to other bracelets, but then you know from the first lines of this article.
Last year Google decided to go its favorite route Apple and buy FitBit with all its guts. This step is logical if you want to revive the brand or if you need its developments for your product. Hello again, Apple. Judging by the large number of leaks that periodically surface here and there, the new tracker will be released very soon. It will be called FitBit Charge 4
Perhaps something like this will look like the new FitBit Charge 4 /
British accessory store MobileFun has already shown on its website two models of the device called Fitbit Charge 4, and there is also Fitbit Charge 4 Special Edition. The 2018 Fitbit Charge 3 was also sold in two flavors: regular and custom.
The problem is that it costs between 139 and 159 pounds depending on the version. In rubles, this is about 13,000 and 15,000 rubles, respectively. Even the presence of NFC does not justify such a price for a tracker. For this money, you can buy a good smart watch from Huawei or Samsung. Users iPhone can buy Apple Watch Series 3 for about the same money.
It may be FitBit and good, but it's better to add and buy something like the Galaxy Watch, which I shared a little earlier.
Replacement straps are not cheap either. It will cost 29 pounds or about 2,800 rubles to shell out for a fallback. Well, okay Apple, everyone is used to it, but FitBit …
An additional nail in the price cap drives in the fact that, most likely, the new product will not have a GPS, which could somehow justify such a high price.
FitBit hasn't received an update for a long time. Two years have passed since the release of the third generation, so the release of the new product looks very logical, but I would not buy it.
Which tracker to buy
If we are still talking about buying a tracker, and I have not convinced you otherwise, then I would not recommend buying something more expensive than 4000 rubles. If you have a large amount for this, I would suggest taking a closer look at a smart watch. They will be more functional, more comfortable and look decent. Moreover, almost all watches support the replacement of universal straps. You can even attach a strap to Apple Watch even from grandfather's pre-war ones, if you buy an adapter. On “Alik” it can be bought for a couple of hundred rubles and assembled at home in 45-47 seconds without special skills.
Of course, the release of FitBit still has to wait, but at such a price, they very quickly fell out of my list of interests. Against the background of bred competitors, especially Xiaomi Mi Band 4, their purchase looks like a very dubious undertaking.