Review of Fitbit Ionic smart watch

We wore the new Fitbit brand Ionic model smart watch for thirty days this year, to try out all its features and see how it performed. We found durability and usability to be its key strengths, and a minor aspect of text messaging abilities to be its key weakness.

The Ionic is great for all the basics of a fitness tracker — counting your steps and calories burned. Further, the Ionic adds an important feature of heart rate monitor, which shows you heart beats per minute (BPM). We found this approximately accurate most of the time — resting BPM were in the 70s, on up to 130 BPM when actively exercising. A heart rate monitor is a new key feature of a modern fitness tracker. This feature should be standard in fitness trackers going forward.

The Fitbit Ionic is a durable piece of equipment, resilient through common daily life. The Fitbit was bumped and dropped and rubbed and banged, but had no scratches or marks after all this.

The new Fitbit showed us incoming text messages, however sometimes new text messages would mysteriously not appear. This was a relatively minor annoyance, however is notable because some people rely on their watch for text message notifications. The ability to reply to text messages from the Fitbit Ionic does not exist, a feature that is missed in the Ionic but present in the Apple Watch, a notable competitor. If you rely text message notifications or need the ability to reply to text messages, the Ionic may not be for you.

There are two new exclusive features in the Ionic that set it apart from all competing smart watches — the Fitbit Ionic is water proof and has exceptional battery life. We went swimming several times and took many showers while wearing the Ionic, and the smart watch performed perfectly the entire time without issue. The battery life is significantly long — we wore the Ionic for thirty days and charged it only six times. Wearers of the Ionic can reasonably expect four to five days of continuous use with each full battery charge.

Finally, a nice new feature of the Ionic is the myriad “videos” available to view, which guide you through workouts with short demonstrations throughout, all on the watch’s screen. This feature is geared towards fitness enthusiasts who value tools that enable their exercising success.