Fitbit can charge 3 review: Peppering a health tracker with smartwatch powers

New apps

The charge 3 does not have a third-party app platform like a smartwatch does, but the basic programs it does have make the device extra advantageous than Fitbit’s other trackers. aside from the pastime app, there is also a calm down app for guided respiratory workouts, a climate app for showing every day forecasts, Timers and Alarms apps, and a Settings app where you could alternate the gadget’s monitor brightness, vibration levels, and extra. Fitbit plans to deliver more apps to the charge 3 sooner or later as well.

in spite of what equipment is strapped to my wrist, it turns into my default timer tool so i was happy to look Fitbit consist of a timer on the can charge 3. I also at all times have an alarm or two set on my wearable so take me back to the fact to take medicinal drugs and such, so the Alarms app turned into another welcome application. frequently, essentially the most elementary programs are the ones used the most on every kind of technology, and wearables aren’t an exception. Even when wearing an Apple Watch, I do not use the Philips Hue app anyplace close as a good deal as i take advantage of the native timer app (the latter has a everlasting complication spot on all of my favorite watch faces).

The inclusion of those apps makes the charge three believe greater in a position than gadgets just like the Flex 2 or the Alta HR. you are extra likely to flip to the can charge three all over the day for issues that don’t seem to be related to exercise, nonetheless it’s now not so complicated or novel as to perpetually demand your attention.

special edition can charge three contraptions have NFC for Fitbit Pay so clients can maintain their wallets at domestic after they go out for a run. this is another smartwatch elevate-over function, nonetheless it has much less of an have an impact on as a result of the inability of onboard GPS on the charge three.

The equipment can map running, cycling, and different endeavor routes if you have your telephone with you all over training thanks to its related GPS feature. however I regularly consider NFC and GPS to go hand in hand—in case you don’t desire anything else bogging you down should you’re practising, you’ll depart both your smartphone and wallet at domestic. With handiest NFC help, you’re pressured to convey your smartphone if you want to capture any GPS statistics.

additionally, the charge 3 has no track capabilities—no onboard song storage, no tune controls. that is truly dangerous, now not best since it forces clients to instruct with their smartphones if they need to listen to music in any respect, however additionally would not make it simpler to listen to music whereas practising. notwithstanding you do not intellect bringing your smartphone along on a run, the charge three can’t be used to without delay skip a track or pause the song you are at the moment being attentive to. song handle has become ubiquitous among most wearables on the $ 150 range and above (even the new Garmin Vivosmart four has it; Ars’ evaluation is coming quickly), so it was disappointing to see it ignored of the charge three.

Sleep

I went to mattress with the cost 3 on my wrist each nighttime. Fitbit has committed lots of time and substances to its gadgets’ sleep monitoring capabilities. The cost 3 and other Fitbit contraptions computer screen circulation and coronary heart price when you sleep so we can inform you how a whole lot light, deep, and REM sleep you got, in addition to how a whole lot time you spent conscious.

essentially the most at ease Fitbit gadgets to sleep with are (naturally) the thinnest and lightest ones. The Flex 2 and the Alta HR are stronger to sleep with than the charge three, but that doesn’t make the adventure of drowsing with the charge three horrible. due to its light-weight design, i used to be not ever uncomfortable while snoozing with it. I also wore it a bit much less tightly on my wrist than I do all the way through unsleeping hours, and it still perpetually captured my coronary heart price every night.

There is never a whole lot new to file about sleep tracking and Fitbit’s Sleep Insights characteristic. The charge 3 logged my fall-asleep and wake instances appropriately, and it seemed to list my sleep degrees appropriately, too. Sleep perception tid-bits are rather simple, and sometimes the app gives you a familiar reality about sleep or how americans all over the world sleep in its place of personalised assistance. in spite of the fact that they’re now not interesting the entire time, or not it’s value checking out the each day Sleep insight to peer if you can observe it to your existence.

The second day: workout routines, heart expense, and greater

due to the mute notifications all the way through sleep choice, I got an excellent night’s sleep the first nighttime with the cost. Upon sensing my groggy wakefulness, the device delivered signals from my smartphone as soon as I bought out of bed the next morning and made my way to the gymnasium.

whereas the charge 3 cannot count number weight lifting reps, it’s nonetheless an honest equipment to wear to the gym thanks to the a number of activities it could music. It simply so came about to be a cardio day for me, so I put the charge three to the look at various on a stair-stepper, an elliptical, and an indoor bike.

virtually each exercise profile means that you can set selected desires now to aid you attain distance, time, or calorie goals—a primary for Fitbit gadgets. If I set a goal, or not it’s always for time seeing that I actually have best a certain amount of time obtainable every morning to exercise. New to the cost three, these desires can aid beginner and advanced fitness fanatics educate extra correctly.

Fitbit told me that it be “exploring the probability” of bringing activity dreams to the Ionic and Versa, and i hope it does so. purpose-based mostly exercising would possible be used more on these devices, specially the Ionic, as a result of they are extra superior than the charge 3, and the Ionic targets severe athletes—most of whom train with a goal in mind.

Unsurprisingly, the cost three’s heart cost monitor stored up with my quickly-beating heart for the whole lot of my first exercising. It customarily measured my pulse within 2 BPM of the Polar H10 chest strap. One metric, akin to heart rate, fills many of the core of the reveal, but which you can scroll via other exercising statistics by means of tapping on the cost 3’s reveal. i like to go away coronary heart expense up on the display as a result of i like to peer the change as I work out, and that i admire that Fitbit additionally places its corresponding heart cost zone (fat Burn, Cardio, and height) on the display along with your latest pulse.

Even if you don’t use the recreation app, the can charge 3 can listing workout routines the usage of Fitbit’s SmartTrack know-how, which auto-detects and records definite actions after you’ve been doing them for at the least 10 to 15 minutes. Most of Fitbit’s trackers and smartwatches have SmartTrack now—I’ve used it while testing a few them with out a concerns, and it has turn into one among my favourite Fitbit elements. youngsters, SmartTrack did not work on my charge three. Two lengthy walks to my nearest teach station and one elliptical workout failed to trigger SmartTrack, and people spurts of exercise went neglected.

after I write “unnoticed,” I mean they weren’t recorded as workouts in the recreation tab in the Fitbit app. typically, any SmartTrack-recorded endeavor comes up on this page together with all other workout routines recorded using your Fitbit machine. while the Steps and coronary heart cost tabs showed my regular circulation and multiplied pulse all through the times i was jogging on the elliptical, the chunk of time wasn’t blanketed in the activity tab. Fitbit is aware of the problem and working to determine what went wrong.

The rest: Battery and ladies’s fitness

i attempted to sync the cost three to the Fitbit app as soon as everyday, but once in a while I simply forgot. luckily, the equipment shops many days’ worth of records so you can go a couple of days with out syncing—it will simply take a couple of minutes longer to achieve this for those who eventually get to it.

I always ended up taking note of the can charge three’s battery lifestyles when I synced to the mobile app. or not it’s obviously proven on the proper-left nook of the Fitbit app and within the device’s settings page, making it less demanding to notice there than on the gadget itself (a battery gauge lives on the correct of the dashboard, attainable with the aid of swiping up from the can charge 3’s monitor).

After about 4 days of day and evening use, with at the least one workout recorded day after day, the gadget was right down to fifty four p.c battery lifestyles. Fitbit guarantees at the least seven days of battery existence on a single charge; in my event, you can be able to get just a few days more than that on the cost 3, counting on how a great deal you employ it.

feminine fitness tracking

previous this 12 months, Fitbit’s menstrual cycle monitoring became obtainable to during the Fitbit mobile app. i have been using it on and off on the grounds that then so I could have a backlog of records to reference when, inevitably, I reviewed a brand new Fitbit tracker. an awful lot like committed female fitness monitoring apps akin to Clue, this function lets any consumer track their menstrual cycle by way of recording significant details and symptoms into the app everyday.

if you decide to consist of the feature on the Fitbit homepage, its square icon will function the number of days unless your subsequent period along with a circular diagram outlining your current cycle. The targeted web page shows a calendar via default with anticipated duration days highlighted in red and estimated fertile days highlighted in blue (together with a fantastic blue marker in your day of ovulation).

daily, typically at the end of the day, I went into the Fitbit app to checklist how I felt that day—and that’s the reason a less nebulous, emotional act than you think. Tapping the Log details button on the backside of the page permits you to listing particulars like bleeding, fluids, sexual endeavor, and symptoms together with headaches, pimples, disease, and more.

individuals use apps like this for a large number of factors together with monitoring ovulation instances if they want to get pregnant and self-monitoring strange occurrences that can be the outcome of a change in contraception. I primarily use this feature to hold track of all of the indicators I get all through my cycles, specially complications because I are likely to get many, close-migraine episodes all the way through that point of the month.

I enjoyed the usage of Fitbit’s female health monitoring function for two leading reasons: it’s handy and or not it’s correct. The every day manner of logging particulars takes all of five seconds and requires a number of faucets from the consumer. After only 1 month, the function began predicting the beginning day of my period with surprising accuracy: it has only been off via someday one time.

The app doesn’t bombard you with signals about your cycle, however it will ship a push alert a number of days earlier than your length is estimated to delivery. i would love to see greater counsel-based push signals come from the function, possibly about what you could do to in the reduction of the signs you have got most often round or all over your length. i would also like to see more particulars available to log—did you take your contraception today? How tired are you feeling nowadays? Did you have got any meals cravings? The more trackable particulars the enhanced, because it lets users listing extra tips about themselves that they can then share with their doctors if indispensable.

universal, or not it’s a wise circulate for Fitbit to include female fitness tracking features within their mobile app. a variety of people already have their favorite cycle apps—Clue, Eve, Flo fitness, Ovia, and others—but if you put on a Fitbit, you could without problems track just about all aspects of your health with only 1 app. It makes the Fitbit cellular app extra finished, and now there’s little that it does not do (syncing with Apple fitness and Google healthy can be the remaining holdout function). despite the particular Fitbit device a user decides to buy, many will seemingly reside for the stellar app experience.

a few other quirks

should you spend greater than a day or two donning a device, you be aware greater concerns and small issues. fortuitously, I best found a few with the cost 3, probably the most serious being some inconsistency with its Bluetooth/syncing capabilities. greater than once, the can charge three would not connect to the Fitbit app by means of Bluetooth, so I couldn’t sync my facts.

Fitbit suggested resetting the machine (urgent the facet button for eight seconds while the device sits in its charger), and that fastened the issue every time. After a couple of days, the issue ceased completely on its own. this is a favorable sign, but, just like the weirdness surrounding SmartTrack, or not it’s a wierd and frustrating issue that i hope isn’t widespread. Fitbit is additionally aware of this difficulty and searching into it.

I also grew to be more and more irritated at some pages on the can charge three’s display because some do not include a clock. The notification drawer, the dashboard, and opened alerts that take in the complete display don’t include the time anyplace. The equipment doesn’t default back to the watch face in case you turn your wrist down, so these pages will also be left up on the display. subsequently, flipping your wrist as much as examine the time forces you to navigate lower back to the watch face from the final web page you viewed. As a tool it is intended to change your watch, it would consist of the time on as many pages as possible.

a high-quality equal-historic, same-historic

The charge three gave me precisely what I anticipated from it: a just a little more advantageous journey than the cost 2 gave me. Third-birthday celebration smartphone signals and pastime desires add a further thin layer of practicality that the tracker did not have before, and its fine-tuned design makes it even more relaxed to wear all day long.

but in the end the charge three is boring since it’s no longer pushing health trackers ahead or doing anything actually new for wrist-bound devices. although, that wasn’t Fitbit’s purpose—it wanted to make a fitness tracker with simply ample smartwatch points to attraction to competencies purchasers in wearable limbo. I suppose Fitbit carried out that. then again, I discover it challenging to recommend the cost three over Fitbit’s Versa as a result of they are pretty much the identical device. handiest those that are stridently towards the seem of a smartwatch (or people who just don’t need to shell out an additional $ 50) should pick out the can charge three.

apart from the bizarre syncing and SmartTrack quirks I skilled, the charge three is as strong a Fitbit gadget as any. And it would not must excite because most people who will be interested in it already determined they do not desire a standard smartwatch. The Charger three easily can provide on its guarantees of bringing a bit of more than a dash of smartwatch into the health tracker mix, that allows you to possible compel many to supply Fitbit a shot.

The respectable

• up to date, lighter design.
• higher, more responsive touchscreen.
• Works with Android, iOS, and home windows contraptions.
• Now helps third-birthday party app smartphone indicators.
• strong every day exercise and sleep tracking.
• solid undertaking tracking with an accurate heart fee video display.
• effortless-to-use female health tracking facets.
• fantastic battery existence.

The unhealthy

• SpO2 display screen currently is rarely active.
• presently no longer many watch faces attainable.
• No verbal exchange tools (can’t respond to texts, emails, etc).
• NFC for Fitbit Pay is simply accessible on special edition gadgets.
• No song controls.
• unusual bugs affecting syncing and SmartTrack.

The gruesome

• does not sync with Apple health or Google fit.