Fitbit Ionic Smartwatch: 3 Pros and Cons

During its release, Fitbit Blaze’s predecessor had grabbed a lot of eyeballs for its new design. The lovers of the round design wanted it to look like a conventional watch. However, Fitbit kept its design like Fitbit Blaze.

One might think that the design of Fitbit Ionic is not as elegant like the Garmin Vivoactive 3. However, I believe that Fitbit Ionic is unique and different as compared to Garmin, Apple, and other smartwatches. Having a subtle and modernized look, it is sure to look great with a black tuxedo! For a more casual and wild look, the burnt orange and silver gray undoubtedly the best.

Let’s take a look at some of the features of Fitbit Ionic Smartwatch:

• Fitbit Ionic makes use of Gorilla Glass 3 from Corning which lessens the chances of scratches even if you make a consistent and rough use of it.
• It comes with a calorie, activities, step, sleep, heart rate and distant tracker.
• The watch is available in 3 color options including charcoal/ smoke gray, blue-gray/ silver gray and slate blue/ burnt orange. You can choose the color and style of your choice and customize your watch the way you want.
• Fitbit’s heart rate sensor module – PurePulse is a better as compared to FitBit Blaze. But, it isn’t perfect.

Now let us look at some pros and cons of Fitbit Ionic Smartwatch

PROS:

FitBit Pay

• The Fitbit Pay feature of Fitbit Ionic watch is quite like Android, Apple, and Garmin Play. Whenever there is a need to make a contactless payment, it enables the users to do it easily.
• FitBit Pay supports Mastercard, Visa as well as AmEx from banks like Capital One, Royal Bank of Canada, HSBC, Bank of America etc.

Listen to Music in a Stress-free Way

• Fitbit Ionic comes with 2.5 GB of internal storage for you to be able to store songs. Thereafter, you just need to attach the wireless headphone and get grooving! Unlike Garmin Vivoactive 3, you can listen to songs even when you’re not around your phone.
• One can easily download the playlists into Ionic using Pandora whenever you want to indulge into sport activities and there’s no need to carry your phone along.

Open to 3rd Party Applications

• The app gallery of Fitbit enables 3rd parties to develop apps for it. Companies like AccuWeather, Starbucks and Flipboard already use it.

Comes with Fitbit Coach

• Fitbit is the new coaching feature of Ionic. It is an upgraded version of Fitstar –the coaching feature of Blaze. Currently, Fitbit Coach has 3 different built in guided workouts.

Water Resistant

• Fitbit Ionic is water resistant and can take water levels up to 50m deep. If you are a swimmer, this works quite well for you. Just wear the watch and dive in and it will track the number of laps, calories burnt as well as your stroke style!

Battery life (4+ Days)

• Fitbit’s ionic battery excels smartwatches of Samsung Gear S3 and Apple Watches 3. It lasts for 4 days when used without GPS. However, if you use it like other smart watches for tracking your activities, it will provide you with good productivity.

CONS:

Payment Risks

• Quite like Garmin Pay, it enables you to make payments from within your watch. But, this can get quite risky as information can leak out. So, in case you use the smartwatch for making payments, you need to be careful.

Just Notifies

• This is one of the major drawbacks of the Fitbit Ionic watch. It shows you all the notifications from WhatsApp, Skype, iMessages, texts etc. However, you will not be able to reply to these messages.
• Also, there is no option of selecting the messages and deleting them. Either you can delete the messages one by one or delete all of them.

Comes with Proprietary Charger

• Fitbit still works on its proprietary charger. So, in case you decide to go on a trip, you might have to carry another charger in your backpack.

Wrapping up…

Ionic is undoubtedly one of the best wearables that Fitbit has produced. With an amalgamation of Surge’s hardware and Blaze’s software, it provides with the best of utility to its wearers. If the developers continue to develop the software of the app, there is certainly a lot of scopes. However, currently, it does not seem very distinctive as compared to Blaze.

Fitbit needs to justify its price tag which is $300 and looking at some features, it seems that there was a hurry to release it. Once the issues get resolved and it enables third-party developers to create more useful apps, the smartwatch may come of better use. You may or may not hold the purchase based on your budget and requirements. But it is better to talk to someone who has already bought it and then make the purchase.

Author Bio:
Maulik Shah is the Founder and CEO of Biztech Consulting and Solutions, a fastest growing IT solutions provider specializing in Ionic App Development.  Maulik is a tech enthusiast and writes about the various ASPects of ecommerce technology