Note: This article was first published on 8th May 2018.
Should you get a smartwatch? That’s a tough question. Most people don’t need one. You can get notifications on your smartphone just as well, and a fitness tracker for less money.
That’s where the Fitness Versa hopes to fit in — a smartwatch that does both notifications and fitness tracking for less money. At S$318, the Versa costs less than other smartwatches, which usually start from S$400. That includes the Versa’s own older brother, the Fitbit Ionic, which retails at S$458.
Works mostly like the Fitbit Ionic, but the Versa looks better
The Versa includes many of the Ionic’s features, but there are sacrifices to get the price down. There’s no GPS and battery life is down from five days to four days (which is still impressive). But the Versa is more attractive than the Ionic. The Ionic looked like a blocky monitor on your wrist. The Versa is thinner, with rounded edges that might actually pass for a watch.
The classic band is pretty stiff.
However, the classic band the Versa ships with is disappointing. It isn’t as comfortable as the one on the Ionic (and certainly not as enjoyable as the Apple Sport Loop). Changing straps is difficult. And it’s a letdown that the Versa and Ionic straps aren’t compatible with each other.
The charger is … an interesting idea. It cradles the Versa so that it faces upwards, and locks the smartwatch down. You release it by pinching both sides. It’s clever but also blocky. A simpler and thinner charger would have sufficed.
The charger has a clever release mechanism but the whole thing is blocky.
Fitbit OS, which powers the Versa and Ionic, is rudimentary. Swapping watch faces, for example, involves a trip to the Fitbit app on the phone, picking a face, and a quick reboot. You can’t customize any of the widgets so you’re stranded with whichever stat is showing on the watch face. There are Fitbit and third-party watch faces to pick from, which range from ‘fine’ to ‘just no’ in attractiveness.
Changing watch faces involves a trip to the watch gallery and a reboot of the Versa.
You navigate the Versa through gestures and the three physical buttons. Swiping up, for example, brings you to a useful Today screen. You can check stats like the number of steps you took today and your current heart-rate.
One minus point is the lack of calendar support. You can’t see your calendar in Today and not anywhere on the Versa. There also aren’t that many apps for Fitbit OS. For your listening pleasure, you can download Pandora stations or Deezer playlists. But the last time I checked, most of my friends are on Spotify. You can transfer and play around 300 songs, so good news if you (still) have any MP3s lying around.
How the Versa handles notifications is also quite simple. Don’t worry if notifications don’t come in at first. You’ll have to activate notifications app by app — and you can only do so after each app has sent a notification to your phone.
And once the notification arrives there’s nothing you can really do about it on iOS. You can’t reply or check off a to-do. You can accept or reject calls, but you can’t talk through the Versa. Canned responses, on the other hand, has just come online for Android-paired Versas.
I did find this third-party cool retro-looking watch face.
Gets tracking mostly right, but it’s the Fitbit app that shines
The Fitbit smartphone app is a shining light among fitness apps. The app makes it easy to see your key stats on a single page, while Apple’s Health and Garmin’s Connect apps are too obtuse.
Having a benchmark lets you know if your stats are in the healthy or unhealthy range (if you trust Fitbit’s benchmarks).
It’s great how the app doesn’t just track how you’re doing, but also gives you a benchmark for people your age. So you can tell if your sleep or resting heart-rate needs work. Having actionable analysis, not just performance tracking, is key to making an activity tracker useful. Unfortunately, Fitbit giveth and Fitbit taketh; the app still refuses to share data with Apple Health.
Like the Fitbit Ionic, I found the Versa accurate at tracking when I woke up and went to sleep. It even helped me see how long I’d woken up in the middle of the nights during some bad nights. The Versa’s long-lasting battery and slim design is a key reason why I can wear it to sleep — I could never do so comfortably with the thicker Apple Watch.
The Versa seems to get resting heart rates mostly correct, and it does the same for steady-state exercise. But the Versa is slow to catch up when it comes to high-intensity intervals. And you should know that there’s a long thread on Fitbit’s forums where some users report higher than usual heart rates being reported.
(Note: As a general rule, I prefer to use consumer fitness trackers to get a ballpark for trending performance over time. If you need precise measurements for medical reasons, you should consult with a doctor.)
The battery often lasts me for three to four days, upon which I charge the device.
The Versa could be your first smartwatch
There’s more I could nitpick about the Versa, like how the display doesn’t always turn on when you raise your wrist. But then I remember that the Versa is S$318 and I bite my tongue.
Other smartwatches cost more. The Garmin Vivoactive 3, for example, will set you back S$449. The Samsung Gear Sport costs S$448. The Wear OS smartwatches from Fossil start at S$469. The Versa, in comparison, is quite affordable.
But if you own an iPhone, I’d still suggest you get an Apple Watch. At S$318, the Fitbit Versa is S$60 cheaper than the basic Apple Watch Series 1. And the Series 1 is two generations behind the latest Apple Watch Series 3. But an Apple Watch is still the smartwatch that works best with an iPhone, even if it’s an older one.
The Fitbit Versa may not win our best smartwatch of the year award. But it provides decent performance, and is an affordable smartwatch for the curious who want to give smartwatches a try but don’t want to blow a lot of money on one.
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