Fitbit Blaze review: More about fitness than smartness

Popular name in fitness wearables, Fitbit has launched a smartwatch, Blaze. But can this new watch compete against the popular ones such as Apple Watch, Samsung Gear S2 or Motorola Moto 360?

Uninspiring design - Smartwatches look good.  At least, the Apple Watch, Samsung Gear 2 and - with a broad, rectangular design. To charge the watch, you need to take the square plastic panel out of the stainless steel frame and plug into the separate square casing to charge. There are buttons on the sides - one on the left and two on the right. The left one is the back key whereas the two on the right comes handy during workout sessions. I showed Fitbit to many and no one really liked the design. Someone had a comment - my Casio calculator watch looked much better than the FitBit Blaze. While the Blaze is light, I wasn't really excited about wearing this smartwatch. It has got a responsive touch screen display but it isn't as good as the one on Apple Watch or Gear S2.  It has got a 1.25inch 16 colour display

Pairing takes time: Just like any other smartwatch, even Fitbit Blaze has to be paired with the compatible app. Available for iPhone and Android operating system, it took close to 20 minutes to set up this smartwatch, which is unusually long compared to any other smartwatch.

More fitness, less smart watch:  The FitBit blaze is a smartwatch but most of the functionality is similar to its earlier fitness bands. The Blaze is good at keeping a track of footsteps, active exercise calories burned, quality of sleep, resting time and more. While tracking fitness activity is Fitbit's forte, it does a good job with the Blaze too. It managed to track my sleep and middle of the night wake up sessions with accuracy. It even has an inbuilt heart rate sensor that measures the heartbeat. Most of the times, the heart rate monitor works well but sometimes it is iffy. Under exercise tracking, it has options for running, cycling, weights, treadmill, elliptical. It doesn't come with inbuilt GPS and for using Fitbit's Connected GPS feature, you will have to carry your smartphone along.

For smartwatch features, it fetches incoming call notifications, shows text alerts and calendar reminders. There is also an option to control music from the watch. But the list ends here. There are no apps that you can connect it with or any Whatsapp or Facebook notifications as you get on most of the smartwatches today.  This makes it more of a fitness watch and not a smartwatch handing communication.  The Fitbit app is well designed, offering a lot of detail about the workout sessions and daily activity.

Battery: The most impressive is the battery on the Blaze as unlike other smartwatches, you need not charge it every day. Once charged, it lasted me over five days during the testing period.

Bag it Junk it: Good at monitoring activities but isn't a good smartwatch. More fitness than smartwatch.  

Rating: 3.5/5

Price: Rs 19,990

Plus: Fitness Tracking, Battery

Minus: Restricted smartwatch features, design