I’M aaron from techgadgetscanada.com and now, with the release of the company’s new flagship, smartwatch fitbit sense, they’ve, once again added a host of new features and useful tools. I had the opportunity to spend a couple of weeks with the brand new fitbit sense to test and review an early heads up that if you end up liking this video and finding it helpful to please hit that like button and do give me a sub because It does help me keep making more videos that i hope everyone out there gets to watch, enjoy and learn from i’ll say right off the bat that the fitbit sense has a lot of features and it tracks a ton of data. So, with this fitbit sense, review i’m going to focus really on the newer features only and how they work, or else this could turn into something akin to a mini series i’m, also deliberately, not enabling fitbit premium. I want to see what the average basic user gets with the watch right out of the package here and without having to pay for the extra 13 a month fee. Plus, i do get annoyed at having to agree to pay upfront for the trial period because if i forget to cancel it when the trial period ends, i still end up getting the bill the month later. So if you guys are interested in me getting that fitbit premium service and telling you about it, please post that in comments below – and i can do a future video – you can expect that.
The sense, of course, has all the standard features like step tracking activity, tracking sleep metrics, and the watch will also send notifications to your phone. It might be worth pointing out that android users get a bit more functionality out of these notifications than apple users. Do that’s because android users can respond to some of the alerts while apple users can’t, but the good news is that things are improving it’s now possible to use the senses built in microphone and the bluetooth connection between your phone and your fitbit device to accept calls On the fitbit sense, even for apple users, another new option, with the new fitbit sense is the ability to integrate with either amazon, alexa or google assistant. Previously fitbit devices were only compatible with alexa on some of the models, but there is a big, but here for canadians, google assistant ain’t, available on canadian versions of the fitbit sense, at least not as of the taping of this video. So i wasn’t able to test out the google assistant feature. I did, however, enable alexa. Alexa works just fine, but you do need to tap the app to invoke her. You can’t just say her name and get a response. Your phone also needs to be nearby for this to work right now, it’s two degrees celsius, because the fitbit sense is all about health and wellness in this new pandemic era. World i’m going to focus some time here on some of those new health features of this smartwatch and what they can do as well as what they mean for you.
Fitbit sense has an ecg reader to use and take an ecg reading or an electrocardiogram reading. You first need to download the ecg app using the fitbit app on your phone, that is, unless you’re in canada. As of the taping of this video frustratingly, the fitbit ecg app is not available to canadian users. The hold up on this kind of stuff is usually that health canada needs to approve the feature which does take some time, because government apple watch did face a similar delay here in canada. So for now i won’t be delving into this feature, but i do hope to once it arrives someday. Also new is an eda reader. The new eda scan app on your fitbit sense, detects electrodermal activity, which may indicate your body’s response to stress because your sweat level is controlled by your nervous system. These changes can show how your body responds to stress. You can choose between a two minute, quick scan or one that lasts longer. You place your hand over the top of the screen, and your palm needs to touch all four sides of the metal watch frame during the scan. The results of the scanner available in the fitbit app in the today tab under the mindfulness tile and then under your journey in the app you’ll, be able to see how frequently you took the time to do a chill out session. What your heart rate was at the time, and you can log what your overall mood is at that time too.
This feature seems a bit less useful than some of the others. After all, for the most part, my readings showed as calm with a low heart rate, since i was most often taking these readings when i had a quiet moment as opposed to doing them, maybe right in the middle of a stressful situation or a looming deadline. The new fitbit sense also has a skin temperature sensor. The sense will track your own personal range of average skin temperature and then start to let you know if your skin temperature is in that range or seems to be above or below what your baseline for normal is. I guess this might be helpful in detecting the onset of fever. Beyond that, i didn’t see much use for this feature. Fitbit says it’s normal for skin temperature to vary throughout sleep and from night to night. Your fitbit sense will measure your skin temperature, while you’re sleeping only apparently factors that may cause your skin temperature to change can include things like the temperature in the room, how much bedding you’re using and your general circadian rhythms, plus your menstrual cycles for women. And if you do have a fever coming on, so maybe in this pandemic era world that might prove useful, but i hope not to find out next up. The new fitbit sense has a blood oxygen or spo2. Monitor. Monitoring your blood oxygen levels can be very useful for elite athletes or even for folks, trying to fine tune their health and metabolism and, along with things like heart rate and body, temperature can be an indicator of your overall health.
Low blood oxygen may also be an indicator of covid19 or so i’ve been reading. The new fitbit sense has a blood oxygen monitor built in, but exactly how you use it and what you need for it to work. Isn’T completely clear. Your fitbit app shows you an spo2 app to download and you’ll need to install it from the fitbit app store in order to access it, but once you do nothing happens, i’m, really, not sure how useful this app’s going to be. You can’t just call up your blood oxygen level on the app and check in on it on any given moment or even hourly, the app tracks, your blood oxygen saturation, only while you’re sleeping and it displays it in the health metrics tab, which is a premium, only Feature on the fitbit app after you install the app you need to wear your device to sleep and once you wake up, you’ll see your data inside the app the app runs in the background. Only so with what i noted previously, i actually don’t think this would be a very useful feature for a lot of athletes who might want to know their blood oxygen level right while they’re training. I suppose this might be more useful for general health and wellness information for folks but i’m, not sure. Next up, i found the free fitbit spo2 clock face. This allows you to use your oxygen, monitor and view your results right on the watch, but again it only tracks your oxygen levels, while you sleep the clock face, will show you your nightly average on your wrist after you wake up in the morning, though it might Take up to an hour to actually display annoyingly the blood oxygen clock face must be your primary clock face when you’re sleeping for it to track your blood oxygen levels.
Fitbit says you can switch it out during the day using the clock app on the sense where you can store up to five of your favorite clock faces on the device. But i was never able to save that clock face there and i had to keep re downloading it whenever i wanted to use it overall. I found this tedious and, if you forget, to make the switch and enable the blood oxygen face, you are stuck until the next day before you can get another blood oxygen. Reading feeling stressed these days. Fitbit sense can help you track and manage your stress with its stress management. Metrics sense users will see a daily stress management score in the fitbit app ranging from 1 to 100, where the higher number means you’re, showing fewer physical signs of stress, it’s calculated on three key metrics, your responsiveness, exertion balance and sleep patterns. Fitbit premium members can see a detailed breakdown. The rest of us only get that general score number i’m going to fill you in a bit on my experience with the fitbit stress management measurements. For the most part, my stress scores were between about 70 and 85, meaning i was actually pretty chill during my testing i’d say that matches up with how i felt generally during that time period, but i did have a particularly stressful day, or so i felt, and That day, my stress score came out at 84, indicating that it was actually one of my least stressful days, at least according to fitbit, so either i’m managing stress, amazingly well, or this metric isn’t worth its salt.
Now to the battery and charging the new fitbit sense charges fast. During my testing, i was able to take it from just under 10 battery to 75 percent in about 20 minutes. A full battery on your fitbit sense should last you about six days, depending on your use and other things like how many notifications you get. I can definitely say this is one of the longest lasting watches, wearables or trackers. I have ever used and not needing to charge it. Every single night was a huge plus for me overall, i’m sad to say that i’m, not actually wowed by the new sense, at least not yet. It feels like many of the new features, aren’t quite ready for prime time yet and without them you could save yourself some bucks and opt for one of the other lower cost fitbits. To recap: the blood oxygen measurements are a bit lacking apple watch by comparison measures. Your blood oxygen level throughout the day, and you can also take an on demand measurement at any time. The version on the fitbit sense feels weak and inferior and more like a gimmick than anything relevant to someone who might truly want this feature. Google assistant isn’t available in canada yet and the ecg option is also a no show for canadians. For now, i felt, like the stress management feature, wasn’t, truly reflective of what i was experiencing on particularly stressful days on the upside. The battery life feels practically eternal and the charging is fast.
The notifications work great and i like the new addition of bluetooth phone connection for iphone users, so i can answer calls on my wrist, though, with that said, there’s no way to initiate the call on the sense only to answer it. Of course, the rest of the stuff, a fitbit does, it does extremely well step counts, are accurate, especially if you calibrate it, and i will make sure to link up my video for how to calibrate your fitbit for accuracy here on the channel. The sleep tracking seems, bang on activity, tracking and calorie burn are good. My heart rate seems accurate and i like the fact that i can get it displayed all day and i really appreciate the female health tracking too. In short, i think you can get most of the greatest fitbit features on a lower cost device right now, especially since some of the new health features like blood oxygen and ecg aren’t, yet ready for canada. Of course, i guess you could also just get your sense now and wait for those updates to trickle in fitbit sense sells for about 429 canadian, and i have been seeing it on sale for as low as 359. If you want to wait for a bargain, if you want to read this review or reference any of what i’ve talked about head over to techgadgetscanada.com, where i’ve got a full write up, posted i’ve also got some additional information there about topics like what blood oxygen is, And why you’d want to track it and how fitbit calculates your stress scores thanks so much for watching this video i’m erin until the next time you can find me on either twitter or instagram i’m at erinlyc.
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