The Ultimate Fitness Smartwatch Is Here
Fitbit’s family of fitness trackers is welcoming a new member with Fitbit Surge, their fitness “superwatch.” That’s right; you can forget the smartwatch, the iWatch, the Apple Watch and whatever else has already happened in wearable world. This is a smartwatch, people, ready to help you train smarter, go farther and be in the loop while you do it.
The Surge will monitor steps taken, calories burned and continuous heart rate, and it can display incoming calls and texts, too — but unlike many smartwatches, you aren’t able to respond, check emails or watch videos. Hmm, that smartwatch is sounding just a little less super, isn’t it?
But Surge has other specs that will make you want to strap it on over, say, Apple’s first wearable. It’s a bit of a hybrid, somewhere between a connected wearable and a sporty activity tracker. The Surge comes with GPS, heart rate monitoring, activity tracking, “smart” notifications like call and text notifications and even lets wearers control music from their wrist. The only thing you can’t do with Surge is swim, but it is water resistant, so it can withstand sweat and rain. Hello, runners. With multi-sport functionality, Surge lets you track every aspect of your training. And when you’re done training and, say, snoozing, the wristbands helps you get more out of your night with an advanced sleep tracker that monitors how long and how well you sleep, and a silent alarm that wakes you up using vibrations is way more soothing than that buzzer on your iPhone.
Because Surge can track multiple activities at a time (up to seven) you can use its specialized exercise mode to automatically activate GPS tracking for your favorite activities like cycling, elliptical, running, walking and yoga. Track steps, heart rate, distance, calories burned, steps climbed and more, then view all of your fave activities on your Fitbit dashboard to understand your progress with charts and graphs.
It comes in black, blue and bright tangerine wristbands and features a touchscreen and a battery life of up to five days. Surge will automatically sync every 15 minutes, uploading new data to your compatible device. Sounds handy!
The dashboard is also where you can log workouts, map routes and view your monthly exercise calendar. Motivate yourself and go after your goals by sharing your stats with friends (on the dashboard, Twitter or Facebook,) send cheers or taunts and compete on the leader board — hey, someone has to hold you accountable, amirite? You can also utilize the food log to track calories and get ready to celebrate with a well-deserved badge awarded to you when you celebrate a fitness milestone. It may not be a total replacement for your smartphone but it may be the perfect wearable for the Sporty Spices out there.
Do you foresee a Fitbit Surge in your future? What smartwatch has you wanting more? Give us your thoughts in the comments below.
