Popular fitness tracker manufacturer Fitbit today entered into the smartwatch market. The company has unveiled its first smartwatch, dubbed as Ionic. The Fitbit Ionic watch runs on the company’s custom Ionic OS. It will come with a price tag of $299.95 (around Rs. 19,200).
The Ionic smartwatch from Fitbit comes with sleep and activity tracking, a heart rate monitor, GPS integration, smart notifications and good battery life. In many ways, this is an upgrade to the Fitbit Blaze, company’s earlier hybrid watch.
Fitbit Ionic Watch Features
The Fitbit Ionic has an aluminum casing and is 38.6mm in size. The company has developed its own custom Ionic OS to run this watch. So, you will not be able to use Android Wear apps on it. The watch will be compatible with both Android and iOS devices.
It has a built-in optical heart rate sensor and it will show real-time heart rate during training and also tracks your resting heart rate round the clock along with the variability. Fitbit’s earlier PurePulse heart rate sensor has been upgraded, and the new sensor now tracks heart rate more accurately according to the activities being done such as running or cycling.
Further, it comes with multi-day battery life which is supposed to offer more than four days worth of battery life on a single charge. If your exercise routine requires traveling, it has GPS tracking and GLONASS too. Speaking of exercise, the usual training modes are available along with swimming. Notably, the Ionic smartwatch is water resistant up to a depth of 50m and has a swimming mode.
The watch can run several apps as well including Strava, Pandora, and AccuWeather. Moreover, you can get notifications from Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and other apps. The watch will also house a 2.5GB storage space for 300+ songs to listen over Bluetooth.
The smartwatch supports mobile payments as well and you can use Visa, Mastercard, and American Express cards in over 10 markets. Fitbit will also roll out the Fitbit Pay, which will work similarly as Apple Pay and Samsung Pay.
Pricing and Availability
The Ionic Watch is priced at $299.95 and will go on sale starting from October. In the US, it will be available through major retailers like Amazon. However, there is no information about its availability in other countries.
