Google launches the activity bracelet Fitbit Air

It’s been a long time since Google launched a new Fitbit device, but now it finally happened. The new Fitbit Air is an activity bracelet, but it lacks a screen. Instead, the focus is on it being light, comfortable and stylish. The bracelet therefore does not work for those who want to keep an eye on their wrist to see the time and number of steps, but is rather a cheaper alternative to a smart ring.

The pedometer itself is a small box, Fitbit’s smallest, which is hidden in the bracelet. Since the wristband is the only thing visible, Google has a large range of wristbands, including a special edition with basketball player Stephen Curry, and it should be easy to change the wristband.

Fitbit Air measures steps, heart rate, heart rate variability, sleep and can detect atrial fibrillation. However, it lacks built-in GPS, so to log runs it relies on the cellphone’s GPS. Barometer is also missing so it cannot measure how many stairs you have climbed.

Workouts can be detected automatically, or started via the app, which has been drastically redesigned and renamed Google Health. This is also where you see all the health data. The app is free but has a premium service with a new health coach based on Gemini. Three months of Google Health Premium is included when you buy Fitbit Air.

The Fitbit Air has a battery life of seven days, and five minutes of charging should provide a day of use, while it takes 90 minutes to fully charge. It is, of course, significantly better than Google’s watch Pixel Watch, and one idea is that you should be able to use the Fitbit Air as a complement to the watch, and put the watch on charge overnight while the Fitbit Air measures sleep. Therefore, in Google Health you can have a Pixel Watch and a Fitbit Air connected at the same time. How the app prioritizes between them remains to be seen.

As I said, the Fitbit Air does not have a screen, but it has vibrator feedback, which can be used for silent alarms, among other things. You can set the alarm to sense where you are in the sleep cycle so that it wakes you up when you are sleeping the most shallowly within the interval the alarm time is set to.

Google points out that the Fitbit Air is the entry-level model in their range, and that the other Fitbit models such as Charge 6 and Inspire 3 continue to be sold. However, the Fitbit Air costs slightly more than the Inspire 3, the price is SEK 1,199, and you can buy extra bracelets from SEK 429.