Fitbit is an American company that is famous for manufacturing activity/fitness tracking devices. Fitbit Blaze is the company’s first product that enters the realm of smart watches. But is it a complete smartwatch? No. It is more of a fitness tracker that has some smart watch properties. It is bit of both. I have been using it for over a month. Here are some quick views
Looks and convenience
The Blaze dial is hexagonal in shape. The design might look a bit odd, but I liked it, maybe because I’ve been using round dialled watches recently. This is my first smartwatch/fitness watch. So I am not used to this technology. It fits well on my hand, and I have been using it all day, except while sleeping. Some people have reported irritations on their skin. I haven’t had any issues at all. The Blaze doesn’t have an always-on display. The touchscreen display turns off after a few seconds. But if you twist/raise your wrist towards you the display turns on. I thought its a cool feature. But I’ve noticed that while driving, this sensor gets activated and display turns on at times.
Main tracking the Blaze does is steps you take, floors you climb, and also your heart rate. It also monitors your sleep automatically. The color touchscreen is pretty responsive. Has a single main button on one side and 2 other buttons on the other. The Blaze has 4 clock phases, which you can choose from and also has stopwatch, timer and silent alarm. All of these you can control from the Fitbit app, available for download via Google PlayStore. It is also available for iOS.
Smartwatch
Now for the smartwatch part. If you have paired your Blaze with your phone, you can enable it to receive messages, show incoming phone calls and also viewcalendar reminders. You can also control music playback from your phone with a mini-remote on screen. But at a time you can only use a single app for messages and calls. Means if you want to receive text messages, there is only option to have either WhatsApp or the SMS service at a time. You cannot have both. Similarly for phone calls.
Fitness tracker
Though I am not a fitness freak, the Blaze does some nifty fitness tracking. Fitbit acquired Fitstar, a company that creates customized workouts. Fitstar appears on the Blaze in the form of three pre-installed workout sessions. There you get to see a series of timers along with instructions on what to do. Basically you get a virtual coach. It also automatically identifies your workouts, if you do it continuously for 15 minutes. You can also select your sport from modes like running, cycling, cardio etc. The Blaze does not have an Inactivity alert, which I feel is a must for people who need some kind of motivation for workouts. But the Fitbit app has it covered. It also does not have a built-in GPS, but when synced to your phone, you can use the phone’s GPS.
The battery life is great in my opinion. The Blaze gets around 4 days on a single charge. The down point here is the inconvenience in charging the device. You have to pop out the dial from its strap and put it in the charging cradle. The Blaze stores daily stats up to 7 days. So you need not sync it with the app daily. But the most annoying thing for me about the Blaze is this. It takes ages to sync the Blaze with your phone. And it’ll not sync if your phone display turns off. I don’t know if it’s my One Plus One, but many users have reported having syncing difficulties. Check the Fitbit website for device compatibility.
Overall, I’m happy with the Fitbit Blaze. But I would welcome some changes. Like having better syncing capabilities, more clock faces, 3rd-party app/widget support, etc. The Blaze is available on Amazon at Rs. 19, 999 and on eBay at Rs. 19, 699