Fitbit Air Review: The screenless tracker to beat

Best Prices Today: Google Fitbit Air

Whoop has dominated the in-depth health tracking scene for a good while, but now the Fitbit Air is here to offer an alternative for the masses.

For almost as long as I’ve been testing smartwatches and fitness trackers, I’ve also had a trusty Whoop Strap on my other wrist, filling in the gaps with tons of information, the likes of which my other wearables couldn’t hope to capture. It’s been a love-and-hate relationship, including the time that it gave me the worst sleep score of my life on my wedding day, at which point it was flung unceremoniously into a drawer, but on the whole, I’ve very much enjoyed my time with Whoop.

My Whoop Strap 4.0 was the device that woke me up to the effects of alcohol and excess caffeine on my sleeping pattern which, at the time I’m writing this, has allowed me to cut down on the latter and completely cut out the former. It’s a great bit of tech with some great intentions, but the biggest issue with Whoop has always been the hefty annual subscription, without which the device is only good for being a fashion accessory. It’s precisely this issue that the new Fitbit Air seems poised to fix.

At just a fraction of Whoop’s cost (from £84.99/$99.99), Google’s latest Fitbit device has already generated a lot of chatter in the run-up to its release, and after having spent a couple of weeks with the screenless fitness tracker strapped to my wrist, I have a lot to add to the discourse.

Design & Build

• Screenless design
• Very comfortable around the clock
• Comes in four colours (five in the US)

The most obvious difference between the Fitbit Air and pretty much any other wearable on the market is that there is no screen whatsoever. If you’ve been a fan of fitness trackers for as long as I have, it feels like an homage to the days of the Fitbit Flex and the Jawbone UP24.

While that might seem jarring at first, especially when everything has a screen nowadays, it allows the Fitbit Air to be far more inconspicuous when worn, and that’s no bad thing. In essence, the Air is a small pebble-like device containing various sensors which pops into the strap.

I honestly can’t remember the last time I wore a fitness tracker that felt as comfortable as this

I honestly can’t remember the last time I wore a fitness tracker that felt as comfortable as this. Something that is no doubt a result of the Air’s minuscule 12g weight (including the standard band), making it ideal for anyone who’s always been put off by the idea of wearing a smartwatch due to the added bulk.

Being so compact, the Fitbit Air is wonderfully fit for purpose as the expectation is that it needs to be worn around the clock, but its presence is rarely felt so it can sit comfortably and without irritation. Even after a more intensive workout like an outdoor run or a stint on the treadmill where I’ve built up a sweat, it never outstayed its welcome.

At the very least, if I did want to allow a bit more air to reach my wrist, then adjusting the new Fitbit is no bother at all. Unlike the Whoop Strap, which uses a slightly more convoluted system with its default band, the Fitbit Air uses a simple velcro setup, which I much prefer as it can be adjusted quickly.

It’s also very easy to remove the actual tracker itself from the included band once it’s off your wrist, so you can swap in one of the extra bands available to buy separately, if you want to strike a different look.

By default, the included band uses a woven material that feels durable but is also soft against the skin, and there are four colours, including Obsidian (which you’ll see in this review), Lavender, Berry and Fog.

There’s an extra Stephen Curry special edition that’s only available in the US, taking on a two-tone grey and orange aesthetic that I wish could be bought here as well, but I appreciate that the basketball player doesn’t have the same recognition in the UK.

Software & Features

• Pairs with the all-new Google Health app
• Brilliantly designed with a clear layout
• Health Coach is a game-changer

Because the Fitbit Air is completely without a screen or any buttons, actual interaction with the device itself is severely limited. You can double-tap it and a little LED light will flash to let you know if the battery is above or below 20% (although you’ll get a notification on your phone when it drops that low anyway), and you can set a vibrating alarm through the app that is also dismissed via a double-tap, but that’s it.

Everything else is relegated to the all-new Google Health app.

This new software comes at the expense of the existing Fitbit app as well as Google Fit, and although it’s certainly the end of an era, I must say that the Google Health app is one of the best of its kind that I’ve used in a long while. In a very ‘Material You’ fashion (the style of recent Android versions), the app’s layout is clean, and it’s separated into four easy-to-understand tabs: Today (which serves as your main dashboard), Fitness, Sleep and Health.

As someone who moved over from using an Apple Watch to the Garmin Venu X1 almost a year ago, while I love the tech that the company puts out, the app experience can sometimes be a right headache with simple things hidden behind layers of menus. It’s exactly the kind of UI Rubik’s Cube that would make me think twice about recommending a Garmin watch to someone who’s less tech savvy, but I wouldn’t have that same hesitation with the Google Health app.

Right at the top, with a wonderful splash of colour, you can see your overall step count in relation to your target, alongside the distance you’ve travelled, calories burned and the number of days you’ve exercised throughout the week. A little swipe left and you’ll see more data at a glance such as how long you slept, whether or not your key vitals are in check, and more.

Not only do I appreciate how this immediately cuts through the noise so that I can see my most important fitness and health information right away, but this little dashboard is highly customisable.

the Google Health Coach is the single biggest shake-up I’ve seen in a fitness tracking app in years

If you don’t want to see any of what I’ve just mentioned and would rather have a dashboard that focuses solely on your readiness score, your current heart rate and the details of your recent meals, then you can do just that.

By default, the Fitbit Air is capable of tracking most of these metrics automatically but for things like food intake, you can tell the app what you’ve had or scan an available barcode, and if that’s not easy enough, you can just take a picture of the food you’re about to eat and send it over to the real MVP of the app, the Google Health Coach.

At the risk of teetering into hyperbole, I can honestly say that the Google Health Coach is the single biggest shake-up I’ve seen in a fitness tracking app in years. This AI-driven, Gemini-powered personal trainer is at your beck and call for anything you might want to discuss. Fancy building more upper-body strength, but aren’t quite sure what you can handle/where to start? Ask the Health Coach to build a plan for you based on the data it already has.

Google’s far more forgiving approach has been just what I’ve needed

In my case, as a new parent and a freelance writer who’s juggling a lot, I now have a very limited amount of time in which I can exercise, and on most days, no time at all. I explained all of this to the Health Coach and after a conversation about what I’d like to prioritise about my fitness and wellbeing, it was able to develop a workout and sleep routine that’s most likely to work around my new schedule.

What really made the difference though, is that on days when ideally I needed to get to the gym but there just wasn’t an opportunity to do so, I explained as much to the Health Coach and without judgement, it simply changed the schedule for me. As someone who’s come very close to changing to a different smartwatch entirely after being sick of the guilt trip of being told that I’m ‘detaining’ and falling through the cracks, Google’s far more forgiving approach has been just what I’ve needed.

After all, I’ve enjoyed a fairly consistent weight training regimen for over a decade now, and I know that I will get back to it someday, but now is the time when my priorities lie elsewhere and the Google Health app is the only software I’m currently using that seems to understand that. It’s a total game-changer, and I think it makes fitness tracking more accessible than ever.

The only problem is that it costs extra to enjoy this added functionality.

In order to access the Health Coach, you’ll need a Google Health Premium subscription. Thankfully, you do get three months of the service included with the Fitbit Air so you can take it for a spin and see all that it has to offer first, but once that free trial is up, it’s £7.99/$9.99 a month, or £79.99/$99.99 when you opt for an annual plan.

At the very least, this is still more affordable than the Whoop subscription and you do get access to a ton of workout videos, meditations and a good selection of healthy recipes, to help justify the expense.

As a side note, because the Pixel Watch now also uses the Google Health app, those wearables are designed to play nice with the Fitbit Air to provide even more functionality when paired up. For example, if you don’t fancy wearing the Pixel Watch 4 to bed, then you can take it off right before you go to sleep and the Fitbit Air will just take over and capture your sleep data.

You can even wear both at the same time for more data, which the app will sort through. It’s certainly not an essential pairing by any means, but it is nice to see that Google has considered its existing user base here.

The Google Health app can also sync with your medical records, but this is a feature that’s only available in the US at launch.

If you are someone who wants to have additional smart features like GPS tracking or NFC contactless payments on the go, then it is worth having the Pixel Watch in tow as the Fitbit Air is completely devoid of these features.

This isn’t much of a surprise given that it’s the same situation with the Whoop Strap, but it should be understood, as it means you can’t just go out with the Air alone and track routes and grab an iced coffee while leaving your phone at home. Many cheap fitness trackers do have these features but they come with a screen.

Fitness & Health Tracking

• Tracks resting heart rate, blood oxygen and more
• Heart rate data is impressive for the price
• Complicated stats are broken down for users

Because it doesn’t operate like a traditional fitness tracker, whereby you might select a workout onscreen before getting to it, the Fitbit Air has a few workarounds to make sure that it collects the right data related to your chosen exercise.

You can either start a workout in the Google Health app, so the Air will know exactly when the session began and what you’re doing, and you can easily tell it when you’ve finished, or you can just leave it to the Air to automatically assess what you’ve completed, just as it did with several walks I took into town.

Alternatively, as I also tried, you can track your workout with your smartwatch and then just tell the Health Coach after the fact and it’ll retroactively register a workout based on the data it’s already collected. It all works rather seamlessly, and sometimes I would go down an even lazier route and just screenshot the Garmin app and share it with the Health Coach, and it would know exactly what to do.

Sleep tracking is also surprisingly in-depth

In terms of the actual data collected, the Fitbit Air monitors a fair bit. On top of your heart rate and resting heart rate, it also tracks your blood oxygen levels and, crucially, your heart rate variability which is one of the biggest indicators as to how well you’ve rested and if your body can take on a challenging workout.

You can set up alerts to let you know if your heart rate is too low or too high, or if there are any signs of atrial fibrillation. It’s a great array when you consider how affordable the Fitbit Air is in comparison to a lot of wearables on the market, but the data it collects is surprisingly on the mark, too.

When heading out for an early morning run with the Garmin HRM 600 in tow (a chest strap heart rate monitor), the Fitbit Air barely deviated from the results that the chest-worn monitor picked up. The HRM 600 registered a peak 178bpm, alongside an average rate of 153bpm, and the Fitbit Air picked up just a single beat per minute lower on the peak but was bang on with the average. I honestly expected more of a discrepancy for a sub £100/$100 tracker, but it just means that you’re in good hands with the Fitbit Air.

Sleep tracking is also surprisingly in-depth, and it’s right up there with the Huawei Health app in terms of breaking down convoluted data into an easy-to-understand summary.

For instance, the Google Health app would explain that while my sleep consistency is good, which helps the body to adapt to a routine, the overall length of my sleep isn’t quite enough to match the challenges presented throughout the day, and that came with a suggestion that if I went to bed just 20 minutes earlier, it would make a difference. It’s easy to follow and it’s exactly what sleep tracking should be.

Battery Life & Charging

• Lasts for a week at a time
• Charges to over 60% in just 15 minutes
• Proprietary charger included

As much as I love the design and fitness tracking provided by the Fitbit Air, I found myself a bit surprised by the battery situation here.

Google claims that you can get a week’s worth of use on a single charge and I found that to be accurate in my testing, as the initial run went from a Saturday to the following one before needing a full charge.

A seven-day stint is definitely respectable, but given that the device has no screen, and the latest Whoop Strap 5.0 can last for two weeks at a time, I expected more.

On the plus side, charging is very fast

I’m also left wondering why Google didn’t mirror Whoop’s charging system, which uses a separate battery which can slot on top of the Whoop Strap and charge it up wirelessly, ensuring that there’s no break in the health tracking. Instead, you have to remove the Fitbit Air from your wrist to give it juice via the provided proprietary charger.

On the plus side, charging is very fast, as the battery was back to 61% after just 15 minutes, and reached 90% after about half an hour.

Oddly enough, the charging process was stuck at 99% for a good 25 minutes before finally reaching 100% at the one-hour and five-minute mark, but this might be a glitch in the communication between the Air and the app.

Price & Availability

The Fitbit Air carries a price tag of £84.99/$99.99, which makes it far more affordable than even the most entry-level price of the Whoop Strap 5.0, which stands at £160/$199 per year.

You can buy it from Google’s official store as well as plenty of retailers such as Amazon, Currys and Argos in the UK, and BestBuy for those stateside.

Although you can expand the feature set with the aforementioned Google Health Premium subscription (£7.99/$9.99 a month), what’s crucial is that the Fitbit Air isn’t reliant on that service, so you can simply buy the device and enjoy its core health tracking metrics. By comparison, the Whoop Strap is tied to its subscription and becomes useless without it, which makes the Fitbit Air far more palatable to the average consumer.

A subscription-free rival has just been announced, but the Luna Band is currently invite-only if you want to purchase one, with units expected to start shipping in July.

There are actual fitness trackers with a display that can be bought for around the same price as the Fitbit Air, including the Huawei Band 11 Pro, but the ability to have a distraction-free wearable is a selling point in itself, and I think that the Fitbit Air also boasts the best app experience of any competing device in its price bracket.

Check out our recommended fitness trackers and the best Fitbits you can buy.

Should you buy the Fitbit Air?

The Fitbit Air is a slam dunk for Google. Not only has it provided a proper, mainstream alternative to the Whoop Strap with a much cheaper point of entry, but it also comes with one of the best apps I’ve ever had the pleasure of testing. The best compliment I can give the Fitbit Air is that I’ll be using it as my secondary fitness tracker after this review, and I have no intention of putting it in a drawer any time soon.

It’s a sleek device to wear, and one that’s sure to appeal to anyone who would prefer not to have another device on their person with a potentially distracting screen. The data it collects is solid, and it’s presented in a very easy-to-understand fashion, which, despite the rebrand, feels like a seamless continuation of what Fitbit has always been about. You can even use it simultaneously/alternating with a Pixel Watch.

If you want to be able to glance at the time, your stats and use apps, then a screenless design like this isn’t for you. It also lacks GPS and NFC which might be critical for some users.

I do think it’s a shame that the best feature, the Google Health Coach, is only accessible via a Health Premium subscription, but given the possibilities here for effortlessly adapting to meet your needs with workout and rest suggestions that make sense, I think it’s a must-have service for anyone who wants to get serious about taking better care of themselves.

I highly recommend the Fitbit Air for discreet, distraction-free tracking at a no-brainer budget price.

Specs

• 7-day battery life
• Vibration motor
• Optical heart rate monitor
• SpO2 tracking
• 12g (with band attached)
• Colours: Obsidian, Berry, Lavender, Fog

Best Prices Today: Google Fitbit Air