Fitbit’s newest fitness tracker Charge 3 has finally arrived, and with a $149 price tag it promises to be the company’s best all-around general fitness tracker.
The new Charge 3 keeps to a thinner, vertical-screened look unlike the watches with large screens. The comfortable rubber band comes in two sizes. Additionally, it has a woven nylon band and a perforated rubber sports band.
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What makes the Fitbit Charge 3 very different than its predecessor is the larger display and touchscreen. The larger OLED is crisp and easier to read, and has ample room to show more text messages.
The touchscreen can be swiped between different functions, or swiped up and down for notifications and fitness stats, reports CNET.
One of the best features is its shower and swim-friendlyness. It is finally water proof.
The Charge 3 has few apps, which are called modes, such as Relax mode and Exercise mode. The company might add more apps in the future, though. It also shows weather, has an alarm, stopwatch and timer.
For the watch faces, you only have a few choices. While there are hundreds of options in the Fitbit Versa, the handful of watch face styles that mix stats and time, can be selected from the Fitbit app.
Fitbit Pay is an option, but there’s no music storage or remote playback. For $20 more you get NFC pay option and an extra strap. However, keep in mind that Fitbit pay doesn’t work with as many banks as Apple Pay, Google Pay and others.
Heart rate seems a bit weird. CNET’s Scott Stein writes, “As always, getting always-on heart rate stats is helpful… but so far the readings run high. I love Fitbit’s instant heart rate readings. But my resting heart rate is reading a lot higher so far than my actual physical pulse, or what the Apple Watch on my other wrist tells me. I’ll report more on this as I keep wearing the Charge 3. It’s hard to tell what’s going on.”
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Although the Fitbit Charge 3 isn’t as feature-rich as the Apple Watch, it still boasts a better battery life (7 days) and sleep tracking.
For $149 it’s not a bad deal, compared to feature-rich (EKG, fall detection, and more) Apple Watch 4, which costs $270 and up but has a day and a half of battery life, and doesn’t feature baked-in sleep tracking.
