In September, Fitbit announced it was making a fairly major update to its popular fitness tracker—now called the Fitbit One. The updated product didn't get too many functionality updates, but it did get a major one: the ability to sync with certain smartphones over Bluetooth 4.0. The Fitbit One also received a physical makeover with a sleeker design, as well as the ability to wake you up slowly in the morning, but the main selling point for many new (and existing) Fitbit owners was its new syncing ability.
The device is already on some Best Buy store shelves, but an official ship date is expected to come down the line next week. In the meantime, we've been using a Fitbit One here at Ars since the beginning of November—there are numerous upsides to the new device, but just as many downsides. Especially if you're an existing Fitbit owner wondering if you should upgrade, you'll want to read on in order to decide whether the tradeoffs are worth it.
The Pros
There are many things to like about the Fitbit One, not the least of which is Bluetooth 4.0 support. Fitbit owners have long wanted a way to sync their devices directly with smartphones, so the ability to do this now with iOS devices (Android devices coming "soon") is a hugely welcome addition. No longer are users stuck syncing with their computers at home or at the office, which often results in long periods of time without a sync at all if your dock is in one place or the other. Most of us have our smartphones on us at all times, so your Fitbit data is now updated much more often—practically in realtime—if you are using this feature in the Fitbit One.
The physical design is worth praising as well. The previous Fitbit was no ugly duckling, but the Fitbit One is smoother—both literally and figuratively. It feels nice to hold and is more modern-looking overall. The build quality also seems to be improved—we had some issues with our original Fitbits beginning to crack at the side seams, but the Fitbit One comes off as more solid and resistant to everyday wear and tear.
Part of the reason for this apparent improvement in build quality is the fact that Fitbit has separated out the clip and casing from the rest of the device. The built-in clip on the old Fitbit was convenient for attaching it to your pocket, belt, bra, or other clothing item easily, but it made the entire device subject to damage when the clip got caught. (One Ars staffer's Fitbit was ripped in half when the clip got caught on a seatbelt while he was exiting the car.)
With the Fitbit One, the device itself no longer has a clip—instead, you slide it into a rubberized casing that has a metal clip built in. The benefits to this are twofold: the Fitbit itself can no longer be completely destroyed if the clip ends up getting caught or broken, and the rubberized case makes it much more difficult for the Fitbit to slide out of your clothing. In our experience, this is a common problem—and it's very annoying to almost lose a $100 device several times a week—so the rubberized casing is a welcome change.
The Cons
But like most things in life, the Fitbit One isn't perfect. No one expects it to be. But some of the problems we found when using the Fitbit One were perplexing, largely because they could have been mitigated with a little more thought to the end-user experience.
For example, the Fitbit One no longer comes with its old USB dock that was used to both sync and charge the device via your computer. Instead, it comes with two separate USB dongles to serve those purposes: one for charging, and one for syncing over Bluetooth (we'll get to the nitpick on this in a second). Now, instead of taking up just one port on your computer, the Fitbit requires two, unless you choose to charge it from the wall with a third-party USB wall charger. Was it completely impossible for Fitbit to integrate the charger and Bluetooth functionality into one USB dongle?
You might say: "But my computer has Bluetooth built-in. Can't I just get rid of the Bluetooth dongle and only take up one USB port?" The answer to that is, unfortunately, no. It appears as if the Fitbit One only wants to sync with its desktop app over its own Bluetooth dongle, and not the Bluetooth built into your computer—or at least we couldn't get it to do so on multiple machines. This means you have to either carry around the (extremely tiny) dongle between home and work, or just avoid syncing with your computer at one of those locations. But as we mentioned earlier, the Fitbit One can now sync with your iPhone or iPad over Bluetooth, so maybe this doesn't matter as much as it might otherwise.
But there are problems with that angle, too. First, there's the fact that the Fitbit One can only sync with modern iOS devices for now (the iPhone 5, fifth-gen iPod touch, and most recent iPads), so users of other platforms are left waiting. But even on iOS devices, the implementation isn't perfect. Ever since we installed iOS 6.0.1, released at the beginning of the month, the Fitbit app crashes relentlessly. A consequence of this is that the Fitbit One itself can't sync to its own app, sometimes for days at a time.
To boot, this lack of syncing seems to make the Fitbit's time drift far off course, which results in the device constantly logging data for the wrong day.
Is it really an upgrade?
We were elated when we heard the news about the Fitbit gaining Bluetooth syncing capabilities—particularly with smartphones. This is still one of the best new features, but the company clearly needs to up its game when it comes to updating its apps and making sure the device can continue to sync. Also, you don't need us to tell you that additional platform support is needed—iOS is indeed a wildly popular platform, but Android users are a pretty large group too, and they're still waiting on this feature.
The limitations when syncing to the (computer) desktop—which apparently requires the use of the easily-lost Bluetooth dongle—are obnoxious. Doubly obnoxious when you consider that you have to charge the device with a completely separate dongle. You have to have both nearby if you want to charge and sync with your computer. And if you don't—and your iOS app is always crashing—then you might actually go for days, or even weeks, without a real sync. When you do finally get to sync, it may have identified your step or floor data as being for the wrong day, and it might think today is three weeks ago.
Do those downsides outweigh the benefits that come with (limited) smartphone syncing and an improved physical design? It's honestly hard to say either way. I can't say that I, an existing (old) Fitbit owner, would spend my own money on a Fitbit One after having had all these experiences firsthand. But on the flip side, some of these issues are related to how Fitbit's own software works—whether on the desktop or on a mobile device. Software can be updated, so it's possible that these issues may not exist in six months if the company decides to improve its software implementations.
This isn't to say the software was particularly impressive with the old Fitbit either—at least on the Mac, the background processes often died and many Fitbit owners report having to reinstall it on a regular basis. It's much more reliable on Windows—one Ars staffer says he exclusively syncs his old Fitbit over a Windows install on a virtual machine on his Mac—but that's a level of effort many users won't exert. It's pretty clear that Fitbit has its stuff together when it comes to designing a friendly, easy-to-use physical product, but there are plenty of improvements to be made when it comes to how software affects the user experience.
Update: We've heard from Fitbit iOS developer Barry Burton about some of the points in this post. He says they're "working on" allowing the Fitbit One to sync directly with Macs that have Bluetooth 4.0, and the floating days problem can be attributed to a Daylight Savings Time bug. He also instructed us to delete and reinstall the Fitbit app for the crashing problems.
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