Review: Fitbit Luxe, A Stylish Activity Tracker

Within the sport of health wearables, it’s laborious to present everybody what they need. That’s why Garmin affords a seemingly endless array of watches, Apple presently sells a minimum of three Apple Watches, and Fitbit has an array of wearables from kid-centric trackers to a smartwatch the corporate hopes can at some point detect early symptoms of COVID-19.

The Fitbit Luxe, which retails for $150, is the latter’s newest style-focused health tracker. It makes an attempt to supply some smartwatch luxuries in a tool that appears like a bit of bijou. The Luxe is a cute tracker, nevertheless it has some questionable decisions and oversights to pay attention to—most of that are endemic to Fitbit gadgets.

For those who’re in search of an ultracasual health tracker and a classy sensible gadget in your wrist, the Fitbit Luxe may very well be one in every of your finest choices. For those who’re trying to get lively and keep lively, although, it’s possible you’ll need to look elsewhere.

It’s trendy, little doubt

Fitbit Luxe

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Appears are the primary attraction of the Fitbit Luxe, and the particular version is especially placing. It passes decently as a bit of bijou, due to its golden physique hooked up to a stainless-steel, golden-colored “Parker Hyperlink Bracelet” made by California-based jewelry brand Gorjana. When understanding, you’ll need to swap it out for the included silicone band, although, as Fitbit notes the Gorjana bracelet could discolor after extended contact with sweat.

This particular version fetches an extra $50 on prime of the Luxe’s base value, or you should buy the hyperlink bracelet separately for $100. There are additionally leather and stainless-steel bands, amongst others, to select from.

If model is essential to you with this sort of gadget, it’s possible you’ll contemplate these comparatively expensive equipment. In any other case, the $150 base value—a $50 enhance over the much less opulently geared up however equally purposeful Fitbit Inspire 2—will be the candy spot between model and value. Not everybody needs an exercise tracker that appears like a LIVESTRONG bracelet with a display.

The Luxe’s vivid, colourful OLED touchscreen is the opposite main aesthetic distinction from the Encourage 2. In comparison with the black-and-white OLED of the Encourage, the Luxe display provides depth and vibrancy with its inky blacks and pops of shade when the display’s on. This contributes to the Luxe’s higher-end feel and look. It’s a tiny display, measuring at lower than an inch, however fortunately it doesn’t really feel too cramped for studying fast bits of knowledge.

Consumer interface and efficiency

The place issues get a trifle annoying is the Luxe’s consumer interface. Fitbit’s by no means been dwelling to essentially the most intuitive wearable UIs, however in melding the simplistic carousel-based UI of typical health trackers with extra frequent smartwatch functionalities, Fitbit has achieved an honest job of maintaining issues usable. There are some shortcomings, although.

The very first thing you’ll discover is the Luxe’s gradual response to inputs. It’s a full step behind no matter swiping or tapping gesture you’ve made. Whether or not that’s by design—maybe to deal with the truth that your finger covers your entire display as you work together with it—or not, it in the end feels laggy and low cost. The sluggishness could trigger you to double up on inputs, even after you’ve grown accustomed to the delay.

Smaller quirks, just like the double-tap gesture required to return to the house display, take some getting used to. In that case, it’s important to goal the highest of the display so as to keep away from errant inputs, however this works effectively as soon as you have bought the dangle of it.

Essentially the most irritating oversights cope with train performance. Initiating the swimming exercise on the Luxe routinely locks the display from additional inputs till a mixture of faucets is achieved, however there isn’t any locking possibility for some other exercise. As a boxer, nevertheless, it is a operate I’d depend on closely.

Actually, this oversight renders the Luxe completely ineffective for kickboxing, an exercise that is preloaded on the tracker by default. Except you’re shadow kickboxing—i.e., not utilizing a bag and gloves—then this exercise mode will always set off inputs inside your gloves because it did for me. 9 out of 10 boxing periods, the Luxe would screw up my monitoring by pausing or canceling the exercise altogether.

There’s no skill to manage your music from the Luxe, both, and there is no option to put an activity-tracking session within the background whereas doing one thing else. For those who’re midsession and need to test a textual content or set a timer, you’ll have to finish the exercise totally to make use of some other a part of the Luxe’s consumer interface.

So far as notification dealing with goes, the Luxe is usable. For the reason that display is so small, it’ll require a faucet and a scroll or two to learn even quick messages, nevertheless it will get the job achieved with little fuss. Inanely, although, you should allow notifications for every app, one after the other, inside the Fitbit app settings. And you’ll solely add an app to the notification whitelist after you’ve arrange the Luxe and acquired not less than one notification from the app of curiosity.

Because of this, when you haven’t acquired a notification from an app since organising your Luxe, receiving its alerts in your Luxe isn’t even an possibility. Consequently, you should periodically go into the Fitbit app and test to see which notifications you possibly can whitelist as extra apps finally ship you an alert. It’s completely bonkers and borderline punitive.

Nonetheless, the Luxe is technically an exercise tracker, not a full-featured smartwatch. So, when you like Fitbit’s method to health however need options like music management and a roomier and considerably smoother UI, maybe a Fitbit Sense or Versa can be extra your pace. Though, these may even pressure you to endure the wanton notification setup course of, amongst different points talked about above.