This is a fantastic fitness tracker! I had a Nike+ Fuelband that I got as a gift before this and while it did not track a whole lot of meaningful data, it did provide me motivation to reach my daily goal and made the whole experience of exercising into a fun little activity. It gamified my daily activities, by giving some trophies and such. So, I finally decided to get a more fully featured fitness tracker. After much research, I decided to settle on Fitbit and I further decided to get the Blaze as it is new, had more features than the Charge HR and has a very usable touch screen display.
1. BUILD QUALITY (Size and weight):
One fear I had when getting the fitbit blaze was its size and weight. I previously used to wear a fairly large traditional watch by Casio, and it was big and clunky and heavy. The band was also very irritating. I later stopped wearing it completely as a result. The Nike+ Fuelband was tiny, about have the size of the Fitbit Blaze and was very light and so I was very comfortable wearing it everyday. I did not even feel it was there. So I was worried that if the Fitbit was too heavy, I may not wear it regularly.
Much to my delight, the fitbit was very light. The first time I wore it, it felt as light as a feather and I could hardly feel it on my wrist! The first impression I got was extremely positive and made me very happy indeed! Secondly, the size of the device is very small. It is about as thin as a regular watch, perhaps even thinner than some chunky watches! It's easily half a centimeter thinner than my traditional Casio watch, so I suspect this to be about as thin as some of those expensive and elegant timepieces! It is definitely far thinner than the smartwatches in the market and while this is not a smartwatch and doesn't have all the bells and whistle that come with that term, it is still impressively thin. I am extremely surprised and pleased by the build quality. Fitbit have outdone themselves and managed to squeeze in all this tech in such a tiny and light package! You won't feel or look weird wearing this in a formal setting.
>> A NEGATIVE:
I don't have any irritation with the default, black band so that is super cool! But one gripe I do have with the build is the need to remove the main device from its casing to charge. This is inconvenient and may cause unnecessary wear-and-tear. But the folks at Fitbit's Help forums seem to believe that should not be a problem so I hope it doesn't become a problem.
2. INTERFACE:
Now, with the actual device: the touch screen is very responsive and bright even in broad daylight. It has a sensor to adjust brightness and makes it bright outdoors and dim indoors, saving battery. The interface is intuitive, you have the main watch face, and swipe left to access additional menus and interface from the right side. Tap the screen to get into any main menu item and continue on. You can store upto 7 exercise shortcuts to activate them right from the Fitbit, you can look at stat summary for the day, you can have silent alarms, stopwatch, countdown timer. The silent alarms can only be set on the phone and then synced to the Fitbit, although once synced you can selectively enable/disable them from the Fitbit. You have the FitStar which gives you guided workouts although I have not used it yet.
>> A NEGATIVE:
You can choose from up to 4 different watch faces, and while they are decent that is a VERY small choice. Folks at the Fitbit help forums seem to suggest that more are coming, but still we need a LOT more. Compared to the smartwatches in the market, 4 is a laughably small number of options. And the smartwatches have the option of creating custom third-party watch faces. I hope that Fitbit not only realizes a lot more first-party options, but allows some kind of a marketplace to allow third-parties to create custom looks to this awesome device! MAKE THIS HAPPEN!
3. FITNESS TRACKING:
The main thing anyone would buy this product is for its fitness tracking and here it excels! I am not a expert reviewer of these types of devices, nor did I use a ton of different devices to compare with. But, I have used this device extensively for about 3 weeks now and it excels in this department wonderfully. First, the resting heart rate and heart rate in low activities is measured perfectly. I've taken my pulse on several occasions to compare with the reading from the Fitbit, while I was resting and it was spot on. I needn't even wear it very tight to get perfect measurements. As reviewers have noted, in very intense activities, it may be more inaccurate, but that is expected in this type of optical HR monitors. Sleep tracking is pretty good as well, and while there isn't a whole lot of detail except for number of times awake and restless, the automatic sleep detection is very accurate. It is very comfortable to wear during sleep as well, and I got used to it in no time.
The step count, calorie burned, floors climbed seemed fairly reasonable and consistent. While the step count may be inaccurate, it is at least consistent, i.e. the inaccuracies are the same over time and across readings and helps compare yourself against your previous measurements. Also, by adjusting the stride length on Fitbit's website you can make the distance measurement more accurate. The mobile app is very well made as well and has a lot of useful details. Pairing was relatively easy and quick and it finds my Fitbit very easily to sync whenever I try to sync it. One tiny gripe with the Android app, which is mostly an Android issue, is that I need to turn on data, bluetooth AND location services to be able to sync the device, which seems a bit too much. Apparently, without location services active, the app cannot get the MAC address of the Fitbit.
The assisted GPS with the help of the phone is very accurate and shouldn't be too inconvenient for most people. While hardcore athletes may not want to carry a phone with them when they train, this product is not really aimed at them. And for the rest of us, we would have the phone anyway for music and calls. Plus, while I never owned the Fitbit Surge, it appears that the Surge's built-in GPS was not very accurate at all anyway. So, trading built-in GPS for more accurate GPS from the phone is a trade-off I am willing to accept.
4. BATTERY LIFE:
Amazing. While it is decent to average according to fitness tracker standards, it is miles ahead of smartwatches. It gives you about 5 days of regular use, while smartwatches can only muster a day or two. What is impressive about this is that Fitbit manages to squeeze so much battery into such a small package, much smaller than many smartwatches, and that too while powering a full-color and touchscreen display. Other fitness trackers cannot boast about the latter part and that's what's impressive. And this long battery life softens the blow of needing to remove the tracker from its housing every time you need to recharge it - at least you do it only once every 5 days!
4. SMARTWATCH-LIKE FEATURES:
The smartwach-like features were pretty reasonable but limited. The Blaze can get some limited notifications from a connected phone and control music. The music control requires you to pair the Blaze bluetooth in classic mode with the phone. This took a lot of effort to setup initially and was frustrating. But once setup it was mostly seamless. The disadvantage is that you can control music only when not recording an activity on the Blaze as when recording a workout, the interface gives you no option to control music, which in my opinion is a huge mistake. Most of the time when I am interested in music control, I am recording a workout with the Blaze!
The notifications are pretty decent but it only allows you to get notified of text messages and calls and calendar events. You cannot answer calls from the Fitbit (I think you can at least pick-up/decline calls if paired with an iPhone but not an Android) and you cannot respond to texts. You cannot get notifications from emails or other apps. And even text messages is limited to a particular app. You can choose to receive text notification from either Google Hangouts, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, default SMS app and a few other choices, but you can only pick one of these apps! I would prefer if Fitbit fully bakes this feature and allows us to get notifications from any app. I don't see why this is going to be a technical limitation or even messing with the overall experience of using the Fitbit.
In any case, I never bought the Fitbit to serve as a smartwatch and get notifications as I can always pull my phone from my pocket for this purpose. But a more fully baked feature can help others who would also like smartwatch-like features.
Overall, I think this is a pretty solid offering from Fitbit. It is my very first Fitbit and I am enjoying every second of using it! I am having a lot of fun pouring over all the stats it collects and hopefully get more healthy over time! I just want Fitbit to incorporate a lot more clock faces and open up the notification platform to enable a lot more notifications! PLEASE DO THIS!
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 | Fitbit Blaze Smart Fitness Watch, Black, Silver, Small (5.5 - 6.7 inch) (US Version) | Fitbit Versa Lite Edition Smart Watch, One Size (S and L Bands Included), 1 Count | Fitbit Versa Smart Watch, Black/Black Aluminium, One Size (S & L Bands Included) (Renewed) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Customer Rating | (7764) | (2620) | (5152) | (608) |
| Price | $320.00 | $396.99 | $249.50 | $79.95 |
| Sold By | JMEGoods | LookiLoos (S/N Recorded) | ShoppersplaceMS | Re-Com |
| Color | Black | Black, Silver | Mulberry/Mulberry Aluminum | Black |
| Compatible Phone Models | Apple iPhone 4S | — | — | Apple iPhone 4S |
| Item Dimensions | 10.04 x 1.67 x 0.43 inches | — | 1.94 x 4 x 8.9 inches | 4 x 2 x 8 inches |
| Item Weight | 1.44 ounces | 1.44 ounces | 1.41 ounces | — |
| Operating System | android, ios | — | Android | windows 10 |
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FitBit Blaze Review
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Customer reviews
Is Fitbit Blaze still useful when many watch makers and smart watches are being pushed to the market daily? Lets find outI was a fitbit user before this, I owned the first gen Fitbit Charge HR. My wife and I both owned one. It was good, it does what it advertised till it broke down a few weeks back. I then start to look around for a replacement. What I needed were,1. A 24/7 heart monitoring2. A battery life of minimum 3 days3. Sleep tracking4. A screen5. Steps tracking6. Distance tracking7. Stop watch8. Not bulky9. Minimum rain and splash proofAdditional feature that will affect my decision1. Water resistant, so I can take it for a swim or shower2. GPS module included so I do not need to carry my phone when I jog3. Music ControlI started to look around, and ended with Garmin Vivo Smart series and Fitbit Charge HR 2, they both met what I wanted, and Garmin actually have the additional features that I would like to have. I almost go for Garmin, until I started to look into Fitbit Family of activity tracker. I found out fitbit surge will fit the criteria too, albeit with a mono display screen, which made it feels a bit of outdated.Long story short, I then chose Fitbit Blaze in the end and after receiving it and using it for 3 months now, I am going to pen down my thoughts on it.Fitbit Blaze is a squarish module tracker which is removable from the strap itself, allowing you to get creative with your watch strap. There are lots of alternative watch strap that you can purchase to suit different events that you will be attending.Build Quality (9/10)Default watch strap is made of silicon with diagonal texture strip. I like it because it does not get uncomfortable when I wear it for my basketball games and jogging session. It does not irritate my skin but for some, it might. The square module itself seems to be constructed nicely. It is a square and nothing more. Button are accessible and you will get the hang of it without reading the manual.Screen (8/10)No fancy technology on the screen used. From the specs it looks like a low quality screen, I will not disagree, the pixel that made up the digits can be easily seen when watch is put closer to the eyes. However on daily occasions, the distance from the glance we made to view the time, is far enough, and the screen do look bright and clear enough.There are four modes to the screen adjustment – Dim, Normal, Max, Auto.I used only Dim, in order to maximise the battery. It is hard to see under direct sunlight under the DIM mode. If needed you can always set it to AUTO. On daily usage indoor and most outdoor situation, I find the DIM mode sufficient.Touch screen is responsive, and there is nothing for me to complain about.Customer Service (10/10)They are top notch, upon receiving my Fitbit Blaze, I only realised a small dent at the bottom of my watch and I contacted the Fitbit Support Team. After a couple of emails, they actually offered to send a replacement to me. It only takes 2 days for them to make the decision, and about 1 week for the replacement to reach me. I am happy, that they took attention to my enquiry and acted on it.I wasn’t expecting them to make a decision so fast. They were above my expectations.Battery Life (9.5/10)Normal smart watches last about 24 hours. Even the latest fossil Q is no diff. Some tracker last 3 days while others which utilises changable battery last for months.Newer tech with kinetic energy will have a infinite battery life. For Fitbit Blaze, it last me usually for 4 to 5 days. This is inline with what they advertised and what I have expected.My bluetooth is on to PAIR mode 24/7, you can choose to off it if you want. And I am on DIM mode for brightness of my screen.It got a score of 9.5 because in comparison with garmin and apple watch, it triumphs over them. I am satisfied with the battery life.But of course, if they eventually adopts the kinetic energy tech, it will definitely be 10.Features (8.5/10)Fitbit Blaze is one that function like a smart watch and activity tracker. The features include- Smartphone notifications. You can choose what kind of notifications to receive via the Fitbit App- Music control via Bluetooth, however it does not work when your music playing device is connected to another device via Bluetooth. For example I connected my phone to my Bluetooth headphone to listen to my music. Fitbit Blaze will not be able to use the music control function, even though it is connected to my phone as well. However notification still comes in.- VO2 matrix- Breathing under the Relax Mode- Linked with Fitstar for different exercises- Exercise mode which can help you track different kind of exercises you are doing- Sleep tracking which will separate sleep stages into – Awake, REM, Light and Deep Sleep. There are also benchmark and 30 days average for you to compare the quality of your sleep- 3rd party app which can be connected to inject “Fun” into your watch. App like Wokamon, a virtual pet app, which will take the steps taken and convert it to experience for you to level up your own pet that you are raising in the app.This section did not get a higher rating because of the loss of music control function when my music playing device has got another Bluetooth device connected to it. I also look forward to a GPS module included and a waterproof rating so I can safely take it to swim.App (9/10)Apart from the need of switching on my GPS on my phone, the rest is good. The interface is easy to use, and it is easy to change the settings around. You can arrange the positions of the stats that you want to see in the Fitbit App. You can connect with your friends and with all the badges, it can act as an extra motivation to keep you going.Final wordsWhat I would like to see is probably an integrated mic, so I can do voice note to my phone and reply voice messages, however I do understand that it will then move the tracker towards a smart watch. I do think fitbit can excel well in that field too!Well, thankfully, I guess I made the right choice. Albeit some features I wanted like GPS module and water resistant aren’t there, it still make a good day to day tracker and a semi smart watch. I can change the strap anytime I want. For sports and for work. I am happy with their customer service even though some will disagree.I will never know if the heart rate monitor is the most accurate, but I do know at this current moment, nothing can be 100% precise, so I use it to see abnormal heart rate activity in me which is useful. If you are a previous fitbit user, this will make a nice upgrade. The app is as good as before too. With the price tag, the value is hard to beat.I do think that this is meant for people with moderate exercise activity and is not meant for hard core trainers. It is meant to monitor your well-being and encourage a more active lifestyle, it is versatile in its outlook and enough features to make it a semi smart watch. So why not?I am a regular Amazon Prime Shopper and Reviewer, if my review helped you in making a decision, please mark the “Helpful” button. It tells Amazon that folks are in fact reading reviews like this! Thanks!
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Top reviews from the United States
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Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 18, 2016
1. BUILD QUALITY (Size and weight):
One fear I had when getting the fitbit blaze was its size and weight. I previously used to wear a fairly large traditional watch by Casio, and it was big and clunky and heavy. The band was also very irritating. I later stopped wearing it completely as a result. The Nike+ Fuelband was tiny, about have the size of the Fitbit Blaze and was very light and so I was very comfortable wearing it everyday. I did not even feel it was there. So I was worried that if the Fitbit was too heavy, I may not wear it regularly.
Much to my delight, the fitbit was very light. The first time I wore it, it felt as light as a feather and I could hardly feel it on my wrist! The first impression I got was extremely positive and made me very happy indeed! Secondly, the size of the device is very small. It is about as thin as a regular watch, perhaps even thinner than some chunky watches! It's easily half a centimeter thinner than my traditional Casio watch, so I suspect this to be about as thin as some of those expensive and elegant timepieces! It is definitely far thinner than the smartwatches in the market and while this is not a smartwatch and doesn't have all the bells and whistle that come with that term, it is still impressively thin. I am extremely surprised and pleased by the build quality. Fitbit have outdone themselves and managed to squeeze in all this tech in such a tiny and light package! You won't feel or look weird wearing this in a formal setting.
>> A NEGATIVE:
I don't have any irritation with the default, black band so that is super cool! But one gripe I do have with the build is the need to remove the main device from its casing to charge. This is inconvenient and may cause unnecessary wear-and-tear. But the folks at Fitbit's Help forums seem to believe that should not be a problem so I hope it doesn't become a problem.
2. INTERFACE:
Now, with the actual device: the touch screen is very responsive and bright even in broad daylight. It has a sensor to adjust brightness and makes it bright outdoors and dim indoors, saving battery. The interface is intuitive, you have the main watch face, and swipe left to access additional menus and interface from the right side. Tap the screen to get into any main menu item and continue on. You can store upto 7 exercise shortcuts to activate them right from the Fitbit, you can look at stat summary for the day, you can have silent alarms, stopwatch, countdown timer. The silent alarms can only be set on the phone and then synced to the Fitbit, although once synced you can selectively enable/disable them from the Fitbit. You have the FitStar which gives you guided workouts although I have not used it yet.
>> A NEGATIVE:
You can choose from up to 4 different watch faces, and while they are decent that is a VERY small choice. Folks at the Fitbit help forums seem to suggest that more are coming, but still we need a LOT more. Compared to the smartwatches in the market, 4 is a laughably small number of options. And the smartwatches have the option of creating custom third-party watch faces. I hope that Fitbit not only realizes a lot more first-party options, but allows some kind of a marketplace to allow third-parties to create custom looks to this awesome device! MAKE THIS HAPPEN!
3. FITNESS TRACKING:
The main thing anyone would buy this product is for its fitness tracking and here it excels! I am not a expert reviewer of these types of devices, nor did I use a ton of different devices to compare with. But, I have used this device extensively for about 3 weeks now and it excels in this department wonderfully. First, the resting heart rate and heart rate in low activities is measured perfectly. I've taken my pulse on several occasions to compare with the reading from the Fitbit, while I was resting and it was spot on. I needn't even wear it very tight to get perfect measurements. As reviewers have noted, in very intense activities, it may be more inaccurate, but that is expected in this type of optical HR monitors. Sleep tracking is pretty good as well, and while there isn't a whole lot of detail except for number of times awake and restless, the automatic sleep detection is very accurate. It is very comfortable to wear during sleep as well, and I got used to it in no time.
The step count, calorie burned, floors climbed seemed fairly reasonable and consistent. While the step count may be inaccurate, it is at least consistent, i.e. the inaccuracies are the same over time and across readings and helps compare yourself against your previous measurements. Also, by adjusting the stride length on Fitbit's website you can make the distance measurement more accurate. The mobile app is very well made as well and has a lot of useful details. Pairing was relatively easy and quick and it finds my Fitbit very easily to sync whenever I try to sync it. One tiny gripe with the Android app, which is mostly an Android issue, is that I need to turn on data, bluetooth AND location services to be able to sync the device, which seems a bit too much. Apparently, without location services active, the app cannot get the MAC address of the Fitbit.
The assisted GPS with the help of the phone is very accurate and shouldn't be too inconvenient for most people. While hardcore athletes may not want to carry a phone with them when they train, this product is not really aimed at them. And for the rest of us, we would have the phone anyway for music and calls. Plus, while I never owned the Fitbit Surge, it appears that the Surge's built-in GPS was not very accurate at all anyway. So, trading built-in GPS for more accurate GPS from the phone is a trade-off I am willing to accept.
4. BATTERY LIFE:
Amazing. While it is decent to average according to fitness tracker standards, it is miles ahead of smartwatches. It gives you about 5 days of regular use, while smartwatches can only muster a day or two. What is impressive about this is that Fitbit manages to squeeze so much battery into such a small package, much smaller than many smartwatches, and that too while powering a full-color and touchscreen display. Other fitness trackers cannot boast about the latter part and that's what's impressive. And this long battery life softens the blow of needing to remove the tracker from its housing every time you need to recharge it - at least you do it only once every 5 days!
4. SMARTWATCH-LIKE FEATURES:
The smartwach-like features were pretty reasonable but limited. The Blaze can get some limited notifications from a connected phone and control music. The music control requires you to pair the Blaze bluetooth in classic mode with the phone. This took a lot of effort to setup initially and was frustrating. But once setup it was mostly seamless. The disadvantage is that you can control music only when not recording an activity on the Blaze as when recording a workout, the interface gives you no option to control music, which in my opinion is a huge mistake. Most of the time when I am interested in music control, I am recording a workout with the Blaze!
The notifications are pretty decent but it only allows you to get notified of text messages and calls and calendar events. You cannot answer calls from the Fitbit (I think you can at least pick-up/decline calls if paired with an iPhone but not an Android) and you cannot respond to texts. You cannot get notifications from emails or other apps. And even text messages is limited to a particular app. You can choose to receive text notification from either Google Hangouts, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, default SMS app and a few other choices, but you can only pick one of these apps! I would prefer if Fitbit fully bakes this feature and allows us to get notifications from any app. I don't see why this is going to be a technical limitation or even messing with the overall experience of using the Fitbit.
In any case, I never bought the Fitbit to serve as a smartwatch and get notifications as I can always pull my phone from my pocket for this purpose. But a more fully baked feature can help others who would also like smartwatch-like features.
Overall, I think this is a pretty solid offering from Fitbit. It is my very first Fitbit and I am enjoying every second of using it! I am having a lot of fun pouring over all the stats it collects and hopefully get more healthy over time! I just want Fitbit to incorporate a lot more clock faces and open up the notification platform to enable a lot more notifications! PLEASE DO THIS!
One of the best overall fitness trackers, and a pretty good smartwatch replacement too!
By Abhijit Kiran on April 18, 2016
This is a fantastic fitness tracker! I had a Nike+ Fuelband that I got as a gift before this and while it did not track a whole lot of meaningful data, it did provide me motivation to reach my daily goal and made the whole experience of exercising into a fun little activity. It gamified my daily activities, by giving some trophies and such. So, I finally decided to get a more fully featured fitness tracker. After much research, I decided to settle on Fitbit and I further decided to get the Blaze as it is new, had more features than the Charge HR and has a very usable touch screen display.By Abhijit Kiran on April 18, 2016
1. BUILD QUALITY (Size and weight):
One fear I had when getting the fitbit blaze was its size and weight. I previously used to wear a fairly large traditional watch by Casio, and it was big and clunky and heavy. The band was also very irritating. I later stopped wearing it completely as a result. The Nike+ Fuelband was tiny, about have the size of the Fitbit Blaze and was very light and so I was very comfortable wearing it everyday. I did not even feel it was there. So I was worried that if the Fitbit was too heavy, I may not wear it regularly.
Much to my delight, the fitbit was very light. The first time I wore it, it felt as light as a feather and I could hardly feel it on my wrist! The first impression I got was extremely positive and made me very happy indeed! Secondly, the size of the device is very small. It is about as thin as a regular watch, perhaps even thinner than some chunky watches! It's easily half a centimeter thinner than my traditional Casio watch, so I suspect this to be about as thin as some of those expensive and elegant timepieces! It is definitely far thinner than the smartwatches in the market and while this is not a smartwatch and doesn't have all the bells and whistle that come with that term, it is still impressively thin. I am extremely surprised and pleased by the build quality. Fitbit have outdone themselves and managed to squeeze in all this tech in such a tiny and light package! You won't feel or look weird wearing this in a formal setting.
>> A NEGATIVE:
I don't have any irritation with the default, black band so that is super cool! But one gripe I do have with the build is the need to remove the main device from its casing to charge. This is inconvenient and may cause unnecessary wear-and-tear. But the folks at Fitbit's Help forums seem to believe that should not be a problem so I hope it doesn't become a problem.
2. INTERFACE:
Now, with the actual device: the touch screen is very responsive and bright even in broad daylight. It has a sensor to adjust brightness and makes it bright outdoors and dim indoors, saving battery. The interface is intuitive, you have the main watch face, and swipe left to access additional menus and interface from the right side. Tap the screen to get into any main menu item and continue on. You can store upto 7 exercise shortcuts to activate them right from the Fitbit, you can look at stat summary for the day, you can have silent alarms, stopwatch, countdown timer. The silent alarms can only be set on the phone and then synced to the Fitbit, although once synced you can selectively enable/disable them from the Fitbit. You have the FitStar which gives you guided workouts although I have not used it yet.
>> A NEGATIVE:
You can choose from up to 4 different watch faces, and while they are decent that is a VERY small choice. Folks at the Fitbit help forums seem to suggest that more are coming, but still we need a LOT more. Compared to the smartwatches in the market, 4 is a laughably small number of options. And the smartwatches have the option of creating custom third-party watch faces. I hope that Fitbit not only realizes a lot more first-party options, but allows some kind of a marketplace to allow third-parties to create custom looks to this awesome device! MAKE THIS HAPPEN!
3. FITNESS TRACKING:
The main thing anyone would buy this product is for its fitness tracking and here it excels! I am not a expert reviewer of these types of devices, nor did I use a ton of different devices to compare with. But, I have used this device extensively for about 3 weeks now and it excels in this department wonderfully. First, the resting heart rate and heart rate in low activities is measured perfectly. I've taken my pulse on several occasions to compare with the reading from the Fitbit, while I was resting and it was spot on. I needn't even wear it very tight to get perfect measurements. As reviewers have noted, in very intense activities, it may be more inaccurate, but that is expected in this type of optical HR monitors. Sleep tracking is pretty good as well, and while there isn't a whole lot of detail except for number of times awake and restless, the automatic sleep detection is very accurate. It is very comfortable to wear during sleep as well, and I got used to it in no time.
The step count, calorie burned, floors climbed seemed fairly reasonable and consistent. While the step count may be inaccurate, it is at least consistent, i.e. the inaccuracies are the same over time and across readings and helps compare yourself against your previous measurements. Also, by adjusting the stride length on Fitbit's website you can make the distance measurement more accurate. The mobile app is very well made as well and has a lot of useful details. Pairing was relatively easy and quick and it finds my Fitbit very easily to sync whenever I try to sync it. One tiny gripe with the Android app, which is mostly an Android issue, is that I need to turn on data, bluetooth AND location services to be able to sync the device, which seems a bit too much. Apparently, without location services active, the app cannot get the MAC address of the Fitbit.
The assisted GPS with the help of the phone is very accurate and shouldn't be too inconvenient for most people. While hardcore athletes may not want to carry a phone with them when they train, this product is not really aimed at them. And for the rest of us, we would have the phone anyway for music and calls. Plus, while I never owned the Fitbit Surge, it appears that the Surge's built-in GPS was not very accurate at all anyway. So, trading built-in GPS for more accurate GPS from the phone is a trade-off I am willing to accept.
4. BATTERY LIFE:
Amazing. While it is decent to average according to fitness tracker standards, it is miles ahead of smartwatches. It gives you about 5 days of regular use, while smartwatches can only muster a day or two. What is impressive about this is that Fitbit manages to squeeze so much battery into such a small package, much smaller than many smartwatches, and that too while powering a full-color and touchscreen display. Other fitness trackers cannot boast about the latter part and that's what's impressive. And this long battery life softens the blow of needing to remove the tracker from its housing every time you need to recharge it - at least you do it only once every 5 days!
4. SMARTWATCH-LIKE FEATURES:
The smartwach-like features were pretty reasonable but limited. The Blaze can get some limited notifications from a connected phone and control music. The music control requires you to pair the Blaze bluetooth in classic mode with the phone. This took a lot of effort to setup initially and was frustrating. But once setup it was mostly seamless. The disadvantage is that you can control music only when not recording an activity on the Blaze as when recording a workout, the interface gives you no option to control music, which in my opinion is a huge mistake. Most of the time when I am interested in music control, I am recording a workout with the Blaze!
The notifications are pretty decent but it only allows you to get notified of text messages and calls and calendar events. You cannot answer calls from the Fitbit (I think you can at least pick-up/decline calls if paired with an iPhone but not an Android) and you cannot respond to texts. You cannot get notifications from emails or other apps. And even text messages is limited to a particular app. You can choose to receive text notification from either Google Hangouts, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, default SMS app and a few other choices, but you can only pick one of these apps! I would prefer if Fitbit fully bakes this feature and allows us to get notifications from any app. I don't see why this is going to be a technical limitation or even messing with the overall experience of using the Fitbit.
In any case, I never bought the Fitbit to serve as a smartwatch and get notifications as I can always pull my phone from my pocket for this purpose. But a more fully baked feature can help others who would also like smartwatch-like features.
Overall, I think this is a pretty solid offering from Fitbit. It is my very first Fitbit and I am enjoying every second of using it! I am having a lot of fun pouring over all the stats it collects and hopefully get more healthy over time! I just want Fitbit to incorporate a lot more clock faces and open up the notification platform to enable a lot more notifications! PLEASE DO THIS!
Images in this review
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 29, 2017
I was a fitbit user before this, I owned the first gen Fitbit Charge HR. My wife and I both owned one. It was good, it does what it advertised till it broke down a few weeks back. I then start to look around for a replacement. What I needed were,
1. A 24/7 heart monitoring
2. A battery life of minimum 3 days
3. Sleep tracking
4. A screen
5. Steps tracking
6. Distance tracking
7. Stop watch
8. Not bulky
9. Minimum rain and splash proof
Additional feature that will affect my decision
1. Water resistant, so I can take it for a swim or shower
2. GPS module included so I do not need to carry my phone when I jog
3. Music Control
I started to look around, and ended with Garmin Vivo Smart series and Fitbit Charge HR 2, they both met what I wanted, and Garmin actually have the additional features that I would like to have. I almost go for Garmin, until I started to look into Fitbit Family of activity tracker. I found out fitbit surge will fit the criteria too, albeit with a mono display screen, which made it feels a bit of outdated.
Long story short, I then chose Fitbit Blaze in the end and after receiving it and using it for 3 months now, I am going to pen down my thoughts on it.
Fitbit Blaze is a squarish module tracker which is removable from the strap itself, allowing you to get creative with your watch strap. There are lots of alternative watch strap that you can purchase to suit different events that you will be attending.
Build Quality (9/10)
Default watch strap is made of silicon with diagonal texture strip. I like it because it does not get uncomfortable when I wear it for my basketball games and jogging session. It does not irritate my skin but for some, it might. The square module itself seems to be constructed nicely. It is a square and nothing more. Button are accessible and you will get the hang of it without reading the manual.
Screen (8/10)
No fancy technology on the screen used. From the specs it looks like a low quality screen, I will not disagree, the pixel that made up the digits can be easily seen when watch is put closer to the eyes. However on daily occasions, the distance from the glance we made to view the time, is far enough, and the screen do look bright and clear enough.
There are four modes to the screen adjustment – Dim, Normal, Max, Auto.
I used only Dim, in order to maximise the battery. It is hard to see under direct sunlight under the DIM mode. If needed you can always set it to AUTO. On daily usage indoor and most outdoor situation, I find the DIM mode sufficient.
Touch screen is responsive, and there is nothing for me to complain about.
Customer Service (10/10)
They are top notch, upon receiving my Fitbit Blaze, I only realised a small dent at the bottom of my watch and I contacted the Fitbit Support Team. After a couple of emails, they actually offered to send a replacement to me. It only takes 2 days for them to make the decision, and about 1 week for the replacement to reach me. I am happy, that they took attention to my enquiry and acted on it.
I wasn’t expecting them to make a decision so fast. They were above my expectations.
Battery Life (9.5/10)
Normal smart watches last about 24 hours. Even the latest fossil Q is no diff. Some tracker last 3 days while others which utilises changable battery last for months.
Newer tech with kinetic energy will have a infinite battery life. For Fitbit Blaze, it last me usually for 4 to 5 days. This is inline with what they advertised and what I have expected.
My bluetooth is on to PAIR mode 24/7, you can choose to off it if you want. And I am on DIM mode for brightness of my screen.
It got a score of 9.5 because in comparison with garmin and apple watch, it triumphs over them. I am satisfied with the battery life.
But of course, if they eventually adopts the kinetic energy tech, it will definitely be 10.
Features (8.5/10)
Fitbit Blaze is one that function like a smart watch and activity tracker. The features include
- Smartphone notifications. You can choose what kind of notifications to receive via the Fitbit App
- Music control via Bluetooth, however it does not work when your music playing device is connected to another device via Bluetooth. For example I connected my phone to my Bluetooth headphone to listen to my music. Fitbit Blaze will not be able to use the music control function, even though it is connected to my phone as well. However notification still comes in.
- VO2 matrix
- Breathing under the Relax Mode
- Linked with Fitstar for different exercises
- Exercise mode which can help you track different kind of exercises you are doing
- Sleep tracking which will separate sleep stages into – Awake, REM, Light and Deep Sleep. There are also benchmark and 30 days average for you to compare the quality of your sleep
- 3rd party app which can be connected to inject “Fun” into your watch. App like Wokamon, a virtual pet app, which will take the steps taken and convert it to experience for you to level up your own pet that you are raising in the app.
This section did not get a higher rating because of the loss of music control function when my music playing device has got another Bluetooth device connected to it. I also look forward to a GPS module included and a waterproof rating so I can safely take it to swim.
App (9/10)
Apart from the need of switching on my GPS on my phone, the rest is good. The interface is easy to use, and it is easy to change the settings around. You can arrange the positions of the stats that you want to see in the Fitbit App. You can connect with your friends and with all the badges, it can act as an extra motivation to keep you going.
Final words
What I would like to see is probably an integrated mic, so I can do voice note to my phone and reply voice messages, however I do understand that it will then move the tracker towards a smart watch. I do think fitbit can excel well in that field too!
Well, thankfully, I guess I made the right choice. Albeit some features I wanted like GPS module and water resistant aren’t there, it still make a good day to day tracker and a semi smart watch. I can change the strap anytime I want. For sports and for work. I am happy with their customer service even though some will disagree.
I will never know if the heart rate monitor is the most accurate, but I do know at this current moment, nothing can be 100% precise, so I use it to see abnormal heart rate activity in me which is useful. If you are a previous fitbit user, this will make a nice upgrade. The app is as good as before too. With the price tag, the value is hard to beat.
I do think that this is meant for people with moderate exercise activity and is not meant for hard core trainers. It is meant to monitor your well-being and encourage a more active lifestyle, it is versatile in its outlook and enough features to make it a semi smart watch. So why not?
I am a regular Amazon Prime Shopper and Reviewer, if my review helped you in making a decision, please mark the “Helpful” button. It tells Amazon that folks are in fact reading reviews like this! Thanks!
Is this meant for you?
By W Reveals on July 29, 2017
Is Fitbit Blaze still useful when many watch makers and smart watches are being pushed to the market daily? Lets find outBy W Reveals on July 29, 2017
I was a fitbit user before this, I owned the first gen Fitbit Charge HR. My wife and I both owned one. It was good, it does what it advertised till it broke down a few weeks back. I then start to look around for a replacement. What I needed were,
1. A 24/7 heart monitoring
2. A battery life of minimum 3 days
3. Sleep tracking
4. A screen
5. Steps tracking
6. Distance tracking
7. Stop watch
8. Not bulky
9. Minimum rain and splash proof
Additional feature that will affect my decision
1. Water resistant, so I can take it for a swim or shower
2. GPS module included so I do not need to carry my phone when I jog
3. Music Control
I started to look around, and ended with Garmin Vivo Smart series and Fitbit Charge HR 2, they both met what I wanted, and Garmin actually have the additional features that I would like to have. I almost go for Garmin, until I started to look into Fitbit Family of activity tracker. I found out fitbit surge will fit the criteria too, albeit with a mono display screen, which made it feels a bit of outdated.
Long story short, I then chose Fitbit Blaze in the end and after receiving it and using it for 3 months now, I am going to pen down my thoughts on it.
Fitbit Blaze is a squarish module tracker which is removable from the strap itself, allowing you to get creative with your watch strap. There are lots of alternative watch strap that you can purchase to suit different events that you will be attending.
Build Quality (9/10)
Default watch strap is made of silicon with diagonal texture strip. I like it because it does not get uncomfortable when I wear it for my basketball games and jogging session. It does not irritate my skin but for some, it might. The square module itself seems to be constructed nicely. It is a square and nothing more. Button are accessible and you will get the hang of it without reading the manual.
Screen (8/10)
No fancy technology on the screen used. From the specs it looks like a low quality screen, I will not disagree, the pixel that made up the digits can be easily seen when watch is put closer to the eyes. However on daily occasions, the distance from the glance we made to view the time, is far enough, and the screen do look bright and clear enough.
There are four modes to the screen adjustment – Dim, Normal, Max, Auto.
I used only Dim, in order to maximise the battery. It is hard to see under direct sunlight under the DIM mode. If needed you can always set it to AUTO. On daily usage indoor and most outdoor situation, I find the DIM mode sufficient.
Touch screen is responsive, and there is nothing for me to complain about.
Customer Service (10/10)
They are top notch, upon receiving my Fitbit Blaze, I only realised a small dent at the bottom of my watch and I contacted the Fitbit Support Team. After a couple of emails, they actually offered to send a replacement to me. It only takes 2 days for them to make the decision, and about 1 week for the replacement to reach me. I am happy, that they took attention to my enquiry and acted on it.
I wasn’t expecting them to make a decision so fast. They were above my expectations.
Battery Life (9.5/10)
Normal smart watches last about 24 hours. Even the latest fossil Q is no diff. Some tracker last 3 days while others which utilises changable battery last for months.
Newer tech with kinetic energy will have a infinite battery life. For Fitbit Blaze, it last me usually for 4 to 5 days. This is inline with what they advertised and what I have expected.
My bluetooth is on to PAIR mode 24/7, you can choose to off it if you want. And I am on DIM mode for brightness of my screen.
It got a score of 9.5 because in comparison with garmin and apple watch, it triumphs over them. I am satisfied with the battery life.
But of course, if they eventually adopts the kinetic energy tech, it will definitely be 10.
Features (8.5/10)
Fitbit Blaze is one that function like a smart watch and activity tracker. The features include
- Smartphone notifications. You can choose what kind of notifications to receive via the Fitbit App
- Music control via Bluetooth, however it does not work when your music playing device is connected to another device via Bluetooth. For example I connected my phone to my Bluetooth headphone to listen to my music. Fitbit Blaze will not be able to use the music control function, even though it is connected to my phone as well. However notification still comes in.
- VO2 matrix
- Breathing under the Relax Mode
- Linked with Fitstar for different exercises
- Exercise mode which can help you track different kind of exercises you are doing
- Sleep tracking which will separate sleep stages into – Awake, REM, Light and Deep Sleep. There are also benchmark and 30 days average for you to compare the quality of your sleep
- 3rd party app which can be connected to inject “Fun” into your watch. App like Wokamon, a virtual pet app, which will take the steps taken and convert it to experience for you to level up your own pet that you are raising in the app.
This section did not get a higher rating because of the loss of music control function when my music playing device has got another Bluetooth device connected to it. I also look forward to a GPS module included and a waterproof rating so I can safely take it to swim.
App (9/10)
Apart from the need of switching on my GPS on my phone, the rest is good. The interface is easy to use, and it is easy to change the settings around. You can arrange the positions of the stats that you want to see in the Fitbit App. You can connect with your friends and with all the badges, it can act as an extra motivation to keep you going.
Final words
What I would like to see is probably an integrated mic, so I can do voice note to my phone and reply voice messages, however I do understand that it will then move the tracker towards a smart watch. I do think fitbit can excel well in that field too!
Well, thankfully, I guess I made the right choice. Albeit some features I wanted like GPS module and water resistant aren’t there, it still make a good day to day tracker and a semi smart watch. I can change the strap anytime I want. For sports and for work. I am happy with their customer service even though some will disagree.
I will never know if the heart rate monitor is the most accurate, but I do know at this current moment, nothing can be 100% precise, so I use it to see abnormal heart rate activity in me which is useful. If you are a previous fitbit user, this will make a nice upgrade. The app is as good as before too. With the price tag, the value is hard to beat.
I do think that this is meant for people with moderate exercise activity and is not meant for hard core trainers. It is meant to monitor your well-being and encourage a more active lifestyle, it is versatile in its outlook and enough features to make it a semi smart watch. So why not?
I am a regular Amazon Prime Shopper and Reviewer, if my review helped you in making a decision, please mark the “Helpful” button. It tells Amazon that folks are in fact reading reviews like this! Thanks!
Images in this review
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Reflecto
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Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on September 27, 2018
I've had the Fitbit, followed by the Fitbit charge. Followed by this blazre. This one looks great, but the battery runs out extremely quickly. I've had it since prime day a few months ago so don't think it's the battery, just a rubbish design. Then when you try to sync after the battery has died, it takes ages to do so. I've spent the last hour without success trying to sync as I've got so frustrated previously I've left it for the last few days. I reckon 2 dates out of every week due the last 2 months I've not had a watch. Avoid buying this Fitbit! I went be buying Fitbit again...
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