It’s a Whoop dupe. That was my first thought after I noticed the brand new $99 Google Fitbit Air. You possibly can hardly blame me. The band is screenless with a metallic material clasp. My eyes flickered between the Fitbit Air and my wrist, the place I’m carrying a Whoop MG. Was I not seeing double?
However as my press briefing went on, my opinion began altering. The Air is type of just like the OG Fitbits that Whoop then duped as soon as Fitbit went all in on smartwatches. Assume again to 2012, when the Fitbit One may clip to your pants, be changed into a pendant, or dangle from a keychain. That system was largely a pedometer, whereas the Air is extra of a contemporary, modular sensor that may be popped out of 1 band and caught into one in all three others. However in some ways, this appears like a return to Fitbit’s roots — a easy band for informal monitoring.
“The fact is correct now, wearables have made big developments, however for lots of people, they’re nonetheless both too difficult, too cumbersome, or too costly,” Rishi Chandra, Google’s vp of Well being and Dwelling, tells The Verge. “That’s the place the Fitbit Air got here in. We needed one thing you could possibly give to your youngsters and oldsters that they might simply placed on their arms. They don’t need to study something new.”
The sensor pops out of the band, permitting you to swap straps. Picture: Google
In comparison with earlier Fitbit trackers, the Air is 25 % smaller than the Luxe and 50 % smaller than the Encourage. It weighs a mere 12g with the band, and 5.2g with out. There are not any buttons, although there may be an LED charging gentle and haptics for silent alarms. Sensor-wise, it’s not as excessive tech because the Pixel Watch, nevertheless it’s received the staples: an optical coronary heart charge sensor, gyroscope, accelerometer, blood oxygen sensor, and pores and skin temperature sensor for sleep monitoring. You possibly can dunk it in water as much as 50 meters, and the battery lasts seven days on a single cost. That’s considerably disappointing, nevertheless it was typical for old-school Fitbits, too. A minimum of this one purportedly will get you someday of juice with a five-minute cost. It’ll additionally work concurrently with a Pixel Watch — which means that if you happen to’d choose to put on the latter throughout the day and an Air for exercises and sleep, now you can. (Not too long ago, Fitbit hasn’t supported a number of units.)
However the Air is just not a sign that Google’s reviving Fitbit because it was. That is Fitbit’s first {hardware} product in almost 4 years, nevertheless it comes alongside the dying of the Fitbit app. Beginning Might nineteenth, the Fitbit app and Android’s Well being Join app will likely be consolidated into the only Google Well being app. The Fitbit Premium subscription? That’s additionally being rebranded as Google Well being Premium, although the worth received’t change. To high all of it off, its AI-powered Well being Coach is leaving beta and rolling out to the general public.
That is hardly stunning. Since Google acquired Fitbit for $2.1 billion in 2021, it’s been slowly however absolutely integrating Fitbit into the overarching Google umbrella, a lot because it did with Nest. The transition hasn’t all the time been easy. Longtime Fitbit customers had been enraged by a number of widespread outages, deprecated options like challenges, and a confused wearable lineup as soon as the Pixel Watch was launched. Then, in early 2024, Fitbit’s authentic management was laid off.
Right here’s what you get with a subscription versus what you get at no cost. Picture: Google
“I do know will probably be exhausting for folks. It was exhausting for us internally,” says Chandra, referring to the rebrand. “However as we take into consideration the longer term, the place the well being app must go, the well being app is just not going to be particular to Fitbit {hardware} … We wish to be a well being coach to an Apple Watch person, too. That’s why we needed to make the model change.”
Another excuse, Chandra says, is that the present well being knowledge market is solely too fragmented. Prior to now, Google itself had two separate apps: Fitbit and Well being Join. Earlier than that, it was the Google Match app. Many wearable customers have their knowledge saved throughout a hodgepodge of apps, together with Strava, Garmin, Peloton, and so on. Their medical information are sometimes saved on different techniques. In some instances, well being app knowledge may be siloed relying in your telephone’s working system. Which is why, Chandra says, Google Well being will likely be iOS appropriate and finally work with third-party wearables like Garmins, Whoops, and Oura. (To begin, nonetheless, it’ll be restricted to Pixel and Fitbit units.) This platform-agnostic strategy additionally harkens again to the Fitbit of yore. It’s simply that this time, it’s beneath Google’s title.
Even so, the Google Well being app received’t come as a shock to many Fitbit customers. There’s been a public preview beta since October. In a briefing, Google stated almost 500,000 customers had participated within the beta, and the corporate obtained over one million bits of suggestions. Primarily based on that suggestions, Google says the ultimate model will add again lacking options (the preview didn’t embrace cycle monitoring, for example), extra flexibility with the health teaching, a extra customizable interface for highlighting metrics, a extra correct sleep algorithm, and a much less chatty AI coach.
What the brand new Google Well being app will seem like. It rolls out Might nineteenth. Picture: Google
“For us, this isn’t a ‘We’re launching this and see you in six months or a 12 months, then hopefully we’ll replace it,” Chandra says, emphasizing that the plan is to proceed pushing out frequent updates primarily based on suggestions.
By bundling these three bulletins, Chandra says Google is making an attempt to jot down a definite narrative. In a nutshell: Right here’s a easy, reasonably priced system for the common individual that pairs with a consolidated well being knowledge platform, full with a built-in AI coach. Purchase in, and also you’ll get probably the most streamlined, low-effort strategy to get customized insights and take management of your well being. On this case, you will get adaptive health plans, chat with the AI about your medical information, use your telephone digicam to log meals, and ask how your varied well being metrics relate to one another.
Google is much from the one wearable maker trying this — and in a parallel universe, I’d guess that an unbiased Fitbit can be embarking on this street too. However, like Apple, Google is among the solely gamers that might make good on the information consolidation a part of the equation. However the half that everybody’s presently stumbling on is the AI. I’ve examined almost all the key AI well being, health, and vitamin coaches. They’re both hallucinatory dogshit or ineffective e book studies. That’s to not point out knowledge privateness fears concerning delicate well being info. (On that entrance, Google says it would proceed to maintain Fitbit knowledge siloed from its advert enterprise; AI mannequin coaching is opt-in and turned off by default.)
Google, persuade me that is higher than regurgitated e book studies. Picture: Google
“It is a very exhausting downside,” concedes Chandra when pushed on this. “The rationale why we did the general public preview is that we’d like to ensure we didn’t make large errors. The rigor right here is completely essential … however we’re going to make errors. We’ll attempt to make clear these errors once we can, and we’ll attempt to come clean with them and hold bettering the product as we go.”
It’s a giant swing. Customized well being is the holy grail of the wearable and well being trade proper now. Each new wearable launch, optimized metric, and AI function is hurtling towards this objective. I’m no fortune teller. I don’t know the way Google’s well being gambits will play out. What I do know — and Google will doubtless disagree with me — is that the outdated Fitbit period is certainly over.
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