The Pixel Watch 3 must have runners each excited and depressed

Google pandered to runners like me with the Pixel Watch 3, and barring a few errors and lacking options, it did a very good activity. But my pleasure used to be instantly tempered by means of the scoop of some other nail within the Fitbit logo’s coffin, person who limits who’ll in fact get to benefit from those new working gear.

Up till now, working with a Pixel Watch used to be a bare-bones revel in. You became at the GPS, noticed a couple of stats to your wrist right through a run, and won a easy abstract later on. 

The Fitbit OS is rather higher, regardless that I discovered positive options, like growing durations, needlessly sophisticated. Also, its day by day suggestions and Premium workout routines at all times felt extra geared against indoor workout routines. 

The Pixel Watch 3 adjustments issues, including gear like user-made workout routines, AI-generated runs in response to your Daily Readiness, a aerobic load rating that takes weeks of exercise information and your goal load into consideration, working shape insights, and a Morning Brief summarizing the whole thing you want to grasp earlier than a run. 

Google even says it progressed middle fee accuracy when working by means of lowering “gentle artifacts” brought about by means of speedy arm pumping. Based on our overview checking out, the Pixel Watch 2 used to be no slouch on this house.

It’s now not the whole thing I’d need out of a working watch, to be transparent. The Pixel Watch 3 may not help you race previous occasions. You cannot obtain offline GPX maps, and Google has but to take complete benefit of Google Maps for such things as classes or Back to Start. There’s no Garmin Coach identical for long-term coaching plans, both. But that is nitpicking, and Wear OS 5 has issues on track.

I’m extra dissatisfied that Google did not observe Samsung’s instance with the Galaxy Watch 7 and put dual-band GPS within the Pixel Watch 3. I’ve had dangerous success with GPS-only monitoring at the Fitbit Charge 6, regardless that the Watch 3 antenna must be significantly better. I will’t in reality criticize it till I check the accuracy for myself, however it does really feel like a rather neglected alternative.

So what is the actual downside? It’s that the way forward for Fitbit smartwatches it sounds as if rests at the Pixel Watch, and it stays unsure if Google intends to deliver those Fitbit insights to Fitbit-branded watches (and I would not guess on it).

Engadget’s Cherlynn Low interviewed Sandeep Waraich, senior director of product control for Pixel Wearables, on the Made by means of Google 2024 match previous this week when Waraich gave her some unlucky information.

Low requested Waraich about different Fitbit-branded smartwatches; he answered that “Pixel Watch is our smartwatch a part of the portfolio” and that any Fitbits transferring ahead would provide a minimalist revel in. He says Fitbit customers need “a easy revel in” and pointed to the Fitbit Inspire 3 for example.

He clarified that Fitbit Sense 2 and Versa 4 will stay to be had, however we won’t see Sense 3 or Versa 5 for a very long time, if ever.

Android Central reached out to Fitbit, asking if those new working options may well be added to previous Sense and Versa watches and to verify the scoop above. A spokesperson answered, announcing that Google is “very dedicated to Fitbit” and to “the shoppers that use and rely on the ones merchandise and era.” However, they didn’t touch upon whether or not we’d see those new working options to your Fitbit anytime quickly, which does not depart me very hopeful.

RIP Fitbit as a separate entity

I’ve written previously about Fitbit’s struggles as a logo, so I’ll stay it transient. Fitbit was once a top-selling wearable logo, however it fell from seventh to tenth in general gross sales in 2022, as in step with Counterpoint, and now hardly ever seems out of doors of the “Other” class on business studies.

Google lower the territories the place it offered Fitbit units in part in overdue 2023. A couple of months later, Fitbit’s executives — together with founders James Park and Eric Friedman — left Google beneath unclear cases. Since then, Fitbit has possibly fallen beneath the Google wearables umbrella, with no person left to suggest for Fitbit as a separate entity.

The closing Fitbit-branded instrument — launched earlier than the chief exodus — used to be the first rate Fitbit Charge 6. It used to be necessarily a reboxed Charge 5 with new Google apps and a Google-made set of rules for higher middle fee. We’d was hoping new Sense and Versa watches had been subsequent; as a substitute, we’re going to most probably see a petite Fitbit Inspire 4 band subsequent yr.

Here’s the issue: Fitbit’s pivot to concentrate on affordable health bands makes little or no financial sense. Look at this 2024 Canalys report appearing how smartwatches dominate elementary bands in general gross sales. In 2020, trackers and smartwatches made up 46% and 37% of the marketplace, respectively; lately, elementary bands solely account for 17%, as opposed to 37% for smartwatches. By 2028, analysts are expecting, it is going to be 12% and 48%, respectively.

Abandoning your Fitbit smartwatches for the Pixel Watch 3 and tiny Fitbit bands feels…short-sighted. It cuts out Fitbit’s many iOS energy customers, in addition to Android-using athletes who desire a light-weight health watch that lasts per week and now not a 24-hour Pixel Watch or a tiny-screened Inspire and not using a integrated GPS.

Even regardless that the Fitbit Charge 6 is the most efficient health tracker to be had lately, many of us skip it on account of the rather prime value and subscription. Jitesh Ubrani, IDC’s analysis supervisor for wearables, says Fitbit has struggled to compete towards “cheap, value-oriented manufacturers reminiscent of Xiaomi, Amazfit, or Huawei.” Why spend $160 + $10/month when you’ll pay $40 for a Xiaomi Smart Band 9?

In gentle of that, I’d at all times was hoping that Fitbit would double down on its health smartwatches, optimizing its health instrument and well being sensors at the Sense and Versa lineups, then porting the ones options to the Pixel Watch for Android energy customers who do not care as a lot about battery lifestyles.

Instead, at this fee, Fitbit will grow to be extra area of interest than ever because it pivots to the health band shape issue that the general public are beginning to abandon in prefer of smartwatches or sensible rings.

Brands like Garmin, Coros, and Polar nonetheless cater to runners, however those center of attention a lot more on coaching steering than well being information. The Pixel Watch 3 takes the opposite way, and I’m surely excited to position it thru its paces. However, Fitbit’s {hardware} may have struck a stability between health and well being, in addition to smarts and potency. That’s now not gonna occur now.