Fitbit Ionic hands-on

Key Features

• Review Price: £299.99
• GPS and GLONASS
• Heart rate and relative SPO2 sensor
• NFC
• 2.5GB onboard storage
• Waterproof to 50m with swim tracking 

Hands-on with the Fitbit Ionic: Fitbit’s first fully-fledged waterproof smartwatch with 4-day battery

• Release date: October 2017
• Price: £299.99/€299.95

Fitbit made some high-profile acquisitions recently in the form of Pebble and Vector, two companies known for their smartwatch smarts. So it’s little surprise that its subsequent new device could be considered its first true smartwatch.

Fitbit’s new flagship wearable takes the best component parts of many of Fitbit’s recent devices like the Surge, Blaze and Charge 2, making it the ultimate Fitbit for those wanting advanced sports tracking alongside smartwatch convenience and customisability.

Fitbit Ionic – Design and screen

The first thing that struck me about the Fitbit Ionic was how much it looked like a more refined Fitbit Surge mixed in with a bit more of the fun styling of the Fitbit Blaze. There’s going to be a choice of three different colour combinations at launch, alongside the typical Fitbit customisation option of replaceable silicone or leather straps. These detach with quick release clips on the back, meaning you can adapt the Ionic to the occasion.

While the Ionic looks far from an elegant traditional timepiece, it’s got a sort of retro appeal to it. I was rather fond of its boxiness. The other notable aspect is just how light it is on your wrist. For something you’ll likely want to wear all day and night, this is important and the Ionic felt really comfortable. There’s a standard watch buckle so no fiddling around with some of the awkward clasps of Fitbit devices of old.

The watch is flanked by a single button on the left and a pair on the right, which almost feels Pebble watch-esque.

Like the Fitbit Flex 2, the Fitbit Ionic is the second Fitbit to now be water-resistant to 50m, which is fantastic. Even if you’re not a swimmer, not having to worry about getting the watch wet in the shower is a convenience you quickly learn to appreciate.

New is a Relative SPO2 sensor, which can detect your blood oxygen levels. Fitbit hasn’t announced an actual use for this just yet, but possible applications could be for medical conditions such as sleep apnoea, potentially taking sleep tracking to the next level. This isn’t the first wearable to detect bloody oxygen levels, though, in the past there’s been the Withings Pulse O2.

Fitbit is promising an impressive 1000nits of brightness from the screen, which is as bright as the Apple Watch 2 can reach and as high as a proper HDR TV. What this really means for a wearable is you shouldn’t ever struggle for visibility even under the brightest outdoor conditions. The touchscreen display is 1.42-inch with 348 x 250 resolution.

From my time with the Ionic I found the screen bright, vibrant and sharp, making the stronger emphasis on the visual interface much more apparent. Fitbit has replaced many of the animated examples with actual people taking you through each exercise. You can expect better guidance from the watch face itself, so an easy to see screen is critical when you’re busy sweating away.

Fitbit Ionic – Specs and sensors

In terms of sensors, the Ionic has GPS built in, much like the Surge. It improves on this with support for GLONASS as well, meaning improved location accuracy. While trackers like the Charge 2 and Blaze required connected GPS from your paired smartphone for location, the Ionic is more of a phone-free experience.

If you listen to music while exercising you’ll have another reason to not need your phone as the Ionic has around 2.5GB available to you for storing music. As you might then expect, there’s Bluetooth pairing for wireless headphones. Fitbit is actually releasing its first pair of Bluetooth wireless headphones called the Fitbit Flyer alongside the Ionic.

NFC is also included and this also bolsters your phone-free experience. You can use the new Fitbit Pay service for contactless payments, much like Apple Pay on the Apple Watch and courtesy of Fitbit’s other acquisition of payment company Coin. Handy if you find yourself out on a run and needing to make an emergency purchase.

Around back is the usual Fitbit PurePulse heart rate monitor, but it now sits completely flush with the rear of the Ionic’s body, rather than extending slightly as with previous trackers. It’s a small difference but supposedly should help with comfort and heart rate readings. Inside you’ll find the usual accelerometers and gyroscopes used for all-day and sleep tracking.

Fitbit is promising an impressive 4-day+ battery life, which I can only assume is without any battery-draining GPS tracking thrown in. Even then, that’s still impressive and one of the biggest bugbears about any smartwatch.

Fitbit Ionic – Exercise and activity tracking

You can expect all the usual Fitbit exercise and activity tracking you’d find on Fitbit’s higher-end trackers, so expect the usual step-counting and more advanced sleep tracking. There’s more advanced exercise tracking that makes use of the Ionic’s new features, such as the real-time swim tracking that takes advantage of the waterproofing. Now you’ll be able to see live information on the screen during your swim such as the laps.

Automatic run tracking means you can just head out and start running and when the Ionic detects your movement it will automatically get a GPS lock and begin recording your run. Auto pause will also pause your run whenever you’re held up, such as at traffic lights.

The big change is that Fitstar, as seen on the Blaze, is being rebranded as Fitbit Coach and plays a prominent role on the Ionic. Fitbit Coach will have three workouts pre-loaded on the watch, one of which is a dynamic option. This means at the end of a workout, you can state how you found it and the next time the difficulty will be adjusted accordingly to make it continually challenging and motivating.

Fitbit Ionic – Smartwatch features

All great smartwatches live or die by their apps and this is a difficult one to gauge at present. Fitbit will be releasing an open SDK in September, allowing developers to create their own watch faces and apps through Javascript in a similar fashion to Pebble’s ecosystem in the past. This ease of development should hopefully mean a wide catalogue of apps down the line.

At launch for the UK, I only had mention of Strava being available. In the US the likes of a Starbucks and Pandora app should also be ready for launch. Fitbit told me that development should be approachable and submission to the app store straightforward. If you fancy just creating a watch face for yourself and friends, there’s going to be a way to selectively share your designs without having to submit for approval.

Otherwise, you can expect the usual smartphone notification mirroring but I was told that for things like messages, there’s no way to currently reply from your wrist. It’s just a passive experience, which sounds rather limiting. As there’s no built-in microphone, there’s no smart assistant or message narrating, either.

First impressions

I came away very excited for the Fitbit Ionic. There’s real potential for a great phone-free experience for fitness enthusiasts with all the sensors you could want alongside music storage. The design and comfort were two aspects I liked and the screen looked really great. If the Ionic can get anywhere near the battery estimations that’s also another feather in the Ionic’s cap.

Right now, the smartwatch side is still a bit of an unknown. Until more developers get onboard, it could be limited, and the inability to at least reply to messages in some manner could be a major shortcoming. Still, if the developer community gets onboard in a similar fashion to Pebble but with added incentive from Fitbit, there could be some great apps for the Ionic.