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I've got my hands on the brand new Fitbit Edge, and I really, really like it. But, there are a few things about it that genuinely confuse me. Now, I literally just got this, so I haven't spent much time with it, and Google is only letting me talk about certain things. But, I want to give you some first reactions starting with the design. For those of you who are just learning about the Fitbit Edge, it's very much like the basic Fitbit wearables people have been using for years now. There's an OLED touchscreen that you can swipe and tap around on, easily removable straps for limitless customization, and sensors underneath to track all the classic health stats including steps, heart rate, sleep, SpO2, ECG, skin temperature, and more.
The big difference with the design this year is the shape. Fitbits have typically had very thin and tall aspect ratios, but the Edge has an oval shape that makes it look like a mashup of an older Fitbit and a Pixel Watch. Honestly, I really like it. It looks a lot different from most other trackers on the market and wouldn't be out of place on your wrist during pretty much any occasion, whether at the gym or at a fancy dinner. It's a shame that the bezels are so thick though. Yeesh. Thankfully, this new design doesn't have any effect on its durability. The Fitbit Edge has a full IP68 rating against water and dust, and also has a 5 ATM rating for swimming. Unless you're doing
some deep sea diving, this will work just fine for you. Oh, and for you folks out there who like to climb mountains and such, you'll be happy to know that the Fitbit Edge has an altimeter. This is something Fitbit used to not put into its trackers for some reason, but it didn't make that same mistake here. So, you'll be able to track things like stairs and elevation, which is great. The Edge is also pretty thin at just 11.5 mm, or about 1 mm less than the Pixel Watch 5, which is already pretty thin for a smartwatch. However, it's much, much thicker than the Fitbit Air, the screenless tracker Google launched
earlier this year. One other design element we need to talk about is charging. This is the charger that comes in the box and if this looks familiar, that's because it's the exact same charger as the one that comes with the Fitbit Air. That means you can have one charger next to your bed and you can charge either your Fitbit Air or your Fitbit Edge with it, which is awesome. Obviously, I wish you could also charge your Pixel Watch with the same charger to really lock in the idea that these are three members of the same family, but hey, two out of three ain't bad.
Google says the Fitbit Edge can last for a week on a full charge, but this metric assumes that the always-on display is not active. If you have the AOD on, you will see much less battery life. Either way, Google also says you can get enough juice for one full day of usage with just 5 minutes on the charger. That means, theoretically, if you charge this every time you take a shower and you shower once a day, then you'll always be good for battery life, which is awesome. Of course, I haven't been able to test this yet, so we'll just need to take Google's word for it for now. What's really cool here though, is that for the first time ever for a Fitbit, the battery in the Edge is replaceable,
similar to the Pixel Watch 4 and Pixel Watch 5. You just use these tiny screws here to open it up and swap out the battery cell. Those of you watching this who are big right-to-repair advocates will be disappointed to hear that's the only thing that's repairable, but hey, you got to start somewhere and I think it's a pretty big win that if your battery craps out on you, you don't need to toss the whole thing. You can just pop in a new battery and go on your merry way. If you've been using Fitbit stuff for a long time, you'll remember that Fitbit went through this phase where it didn't want physical buttons.
Everything had capacitive buttons like the original Fitbit Sense. People hated this, myself included, and Fitbit went back to regular buttons. Well, you'll be happy to know that the Edge has a standard mechanical button that has a pretty satisfying click to it. You use this to get back to the main screen when you're doing stuff with the tracker. Speaking of the software, I can't really tell you much about that yet. There are some cool clock faces you can try out and there are simple apps like music controls, Google Maps, timers, alarms, and obviously fitness tracking. However, keep in mind that this is not a smart watch and this is not Wear OS. There is no app store and
no third-party app support. So, what you get when you take this out of the box is likely what it will always have. Google could roll out new features down the road, but it's safer to assume that it won't do that. So, if you want a tracker that can do a whole lot of things, you'll probably want to go with the Pixel Watch 5 over this. Let's touch on the band situation for a bit. Google sent me a bunch here and they are pretty easy to take off and put back on again, provided you don't have huge fingers. There are already a bunch of first-party straps and I'm sure there will be a lot more third-party ones on the way. The one downside here is that these are brand new straps. So, any Fitbit straps
you currently have won't fit this. It's a brand new design, so this isn't unexpected, but it is disappointing to think about all the straps headed to landfills over the next few months. So, let's pull back here for a second and look at these three devices Google launched this year. These kind of form a family. On the cheapest, simplest end, you have the Fitbit Air with no screen and a minimal feature set, but in a form factor that you would forget you even have on. At the top end, you have the Pixel Watch 5, a fully featured smart watch with an app store, all the health tracking imaginable, on-device AI features, and on. In the middle, you now have the Fitbit Edge, which has more features than the Air, but not
nearly as many as the Pixel Watch. The best part about this situation, though, is that you don't need to choose. You could buy all three and use them interchangeably or even have two on at once for some reason. Since all three connect to the Google Health app, the app will take all the data it collects from all the wearables and combine them into one data set. So, if you wanted, you could use the Fitbit Air for sleep tracking since it's the lightest and most minimal. You could use the Fitbit Edge for workouts, bike rides, and other activities. And then, you could wear the Pixel Watch 5 for all the other times of your life. But, the nice thing is that you don't need to do that. You
could buy just one and get pretty much everything you need for a satisfying wearable experience. But, that brings me to the confusing things about the Fitbit Edge. One of the things that's most perplexing is the lack of a speaker or a microphone. Now, the microphone I am mostly fine with. You're not going to be taking phone calls on your wrist, so it's not really necessary, but it would have been nice to be able to give the Edge Gemini voice commands. I did this with my Fitbit Sense, which didn't run Wear OS and certainly didn't have the processing power to do anything on device, but it was nice to set timers or make reminders by just talking to my wearable. But, that's not possible here because there's no microphone.
The lack of a speaker, though, is a bit more concerning. No speaker means no audible alarms, which some greatly prefer over just vibrations. To be clear, the Edge can vibrate for alarms and timers just like the Fitbit Air, but without that speaker, you won't have that extra assurance that you won't miss the alarm. Also, no speaker means there won't be any audible cue when you're following a workout in Google Health and need to switch exercises. Of course, the Pixel Watch 5 has a speaker and doesn't support this yet, either, which is really lame, Google. Get on that. But, still, the Pixel Watch 5 will get audible cues for switching exercises where the Fitbit Edge never will.
Another thing it will never get is support for NFC payments. This one is really weird because remember when Fitbit Pay was a thing? Most Fitbits had an NFC chip, even the cheap ones, and supported Fitbit Pay for contactless payments. The whole idea was that you could be out on a run without your phone, but still be able to buy a water or a coffee with your Fitbit. But then Google bought Fitbit and switched things over to Google Pay. And now, with the Fitbit Edge, we have nothing at all, which is really weird. The Fitbit Air not having an NFC chip was understandable since there was no screen and no way to authorize payments. So, someone could just take your Air and start buying stuff with it. But this
does have a screen, so it could have NFC payment support, but Google skipped it for some reason. That's really confusing and disappointing. And the final weird thing here is that the Fitbit Edge doesn't support the new algorithmic GPS feature of the Pixel Watch 5. So, the Pixel Watch 5's GPS hardware is the same as we saw in the Pixel Watch 4. So, there was no change there. But what Google did was create an algorithm that analyzes your GPS data and matches it with sophisticated GPS mapping for things like big city buildings. The idea is that the Pixel Watch 5 tracks your movement as best it can, and after the fact, Google runs that GPS data through this algorithm, which corrects it ever so slightly to give you a truly accurate picture of
your data. So, if this is all software-based, then why can't the Fitbit Edge do it? Even though the Edge's GPS hardware isn't as good as the Pixel Watch 5's, why can't it also get this post-workout cleanup? I guess it's just because the Pixel Watch 5 is more expensive, so those customers deserve more perks than the ones spending less on the Edge. It's still disappointing though. Speaking of price, the Fitbit Edge is in a pretty good position there, starting at $180. It comes in the same colors as the Pixel 11 series, Obsidian, Fog, Olive, and Canyon. Just like the Fitbit Air and Pixel Watch 5, there's also a Stephen Curry edition that costs $40 more at $220. As usual, this doesn't get you anything
extra other than an orange band with Stephen Curry's name on it. So, yeah, the Fitbit Edge has a lot going for it. I love the way it looks, the price is good, and it has all the core features someone needs from a fitness tracker. The lack of a mic, a speaker, and an NFC chip is really puzzling, but I'm not sure how big of a deal that will be once I get to start using it for a longer period of time. Stay tuned for more, but in the meantime, jump down in the comments and let me know what you think about the Fitbit Edge. See you all later.
