We’ve seen the headlines: Google’s Fitbit Air - the Whoop killer!

And there’s some justification to the claim: the hardware is really good, generally accurate on par with devices like Whoop and Amazfit’s Helio Strap, but it has an Achille’s Heal in the form of the Google Health app.

Now, it isn’t terrible, you can live with it, but for a ‘premium’ health app from a brand as big as Google well, it just looks a bit… Fisher Price. And that’s without even mentioning the AI, which dominates the premium version of Google Health, but which is prone to fantasies and gets very obsessed about whether your partner stayed over or not and that’s why your sleep score is up or down.

But I have got used to it and, for the price point, I’m happy with it. 

And then I saw another post that said: Fitbit Air + Bevel = Whoop Killer! from u/vahram_sf

I’ve known about Bevel for a long time but I’m an Android user, for my sins, and I’ll die on the hill with my Pixel 10 Pro before you move me to an iPhone. Not because I’m anti-iOS, but I am just so embedded in the Google ecosystem that I really don’t want to change.

Why isn’t Bevel on Android? Well, it’s because Bevel is apparently designed specifically to integrate with Apple Health and the Apple Watch hardware, and relies on proprietary iOS integrations to generate advanced strain and recovery metrics…

Except I do have an iPad so, out of curiosity, I installed Bevel and connected it to my Google Health account and: FML - here’s a genuine Whoop alternative for people who don’t want to pay Whoop’s prices.

What is this BS about needing to be proprietarily integrated into Apple’s health eco system? Everything is there. There’s no integration with Apple Health or the Apple Watch, because I haven’t got Apple Health set up and I don’t own an Apple Watch. And yet Bevel, with its latest update that integrates with Google Health, has everything and more that I need in a much nicer interface than Google Health.

Yes, the app is brilliant. Yes, it looks so Whoop that it’s no surprise Whoop have raised a suit against them. Yes, as an ex-Whoop user I would fall in love with Bevel straight away. And all they need to do is port their app over to Android.

So, are Bevel missing an incredible opportunity to clear up the health app market for people who just want a straightforward tracker and clean, easy to understand app?

If this was available on Android I would pay the annual fee without blinking. $99 (£85 uk) one off cost for the Fitbit Air and then $99 per year subscription for Bevel (instead of $99 for Google Health Premium)? Versus Whoop’s annual subscription fees starting at $199 per year for the entry tier and about $350 for the top?

Come on Bevel. Take my money. All you’ve got to do is put it on Android. And then you would have the Whoop Killer.

I worked out later in the day and my fitbit told me I was in "peak" at just 125 bpm

I tried the premium trial and the multiple AI summaries each day are really repetitive and basically worthless.

Is there anyway I can cancel this early or do I have to see out the full 3 month trial? I’ve disabled notifications at least.

Edit: To clarify I mean a way to fully turn off the premium features before my trial ends

I really like to see my heart rate live while I'm working out and having this data displayed on the lock screen would be huge.

I was comparing the technical specs between Fitbit Air and Garmin Cirqa and noticed a big difference in their official operating temperatures:

• Fitbit Air: 0°C to 35°C / 32°F to 95°F (Source)
• Garmin Cirqa: -20°C to 60°C / -4°F to 140°F (Source)

For winter activities it seems tight for the Fitbit Air. What are your thoughts?

I just updated on my phone but unfortunately cannot find any changelog from the Google Health Community blog. If anyone knows the changelog, please let me know!

at least once a week it registers awake times while I am aspleep. most of the time it misses the beginning of the sleep. today it registered over an hour of awake time during a sleep like a stone.

Google, figure this out! Ever since it was down earlier, it's been terrible. I can't even search for ground chicken! Where did all the food go?????? FIX IT.

My other metrics don’t seem that bad, but I noticed that this new metric that is tracked is consistently “low”? HRV goes into “Resilience” rating, and my HRV is typically low but I don’t know how accurate it is.

I am playing a chess tournament every week, and, with focus and tension, my HR goes between 100 and 150 for 2.5 hours which contributes a lot to my weekly cardio load.

It's quite underwhelming to complete my week workload more with this than with a session of fitness.

Do you also experiment this ? Is there a fix ?

Does anyone know why this could be happening?
My zone minutes have been insanely high for the past few days, and today it says I spent 0 minutes in active zones but achieved more than 12 hours in zone minutes. I don't know how this is possible.
Yesterday and today I just worked at my desk. I didn't even exercise.

Why am I suddenly (started yesterday) earning AZMs faster than Cardio Load points!? I'm meeting my weekly goal in a day!

Don't know if this is a record. Unfortunately there is no badge anymore because Google stopped these Lifetime milestone badges:-(

My charge 3’s screen is all black.

It’s still paired to my phone.

I’ve changed the watchface.

I’ve attempted to reset it. I get two vibrations and I don’t get the reset screen.

Will anything fix it? Or will I be forced to buy a new one?

I use my Fitbit to monitor my chronic insomnia. Due to health issues my heart rate is highly erratic and I spend most of the day laying down. My bedtime is usually correct, but I frequently need to manually edit my wake time as well as remove phantom naps.

2 weeks ago I reviewed all my monthly and weekly averages for a doctor's appointment and everything was correct and accurate. My monthly averages were around 5.5 to 6.5 hours, my weekly averages between 4.5 and 7.25 hours.

Today I check and all my sleep data more than a month old has been drastically changed. All my manual edits are gone. The individual days are now completely crazy and nonsensical, but somehow magically the monthly averages are now a perfect 8.5 hours +/- 30 min.

The only reason I'm using my Fitbit so I don't have to fill out manual sleep logs for my medical professionals.

Is there any way to keep Google health from randomly going back and editing historical data!

Is there an easy way to export my sleep data into another app, or should I just start using a spreadsheet and making my own charts and averages?

(PS I'm new to posting so feel free to yell at me if I'm doing something wrong or annoying).

I got a Fitbit air on release and since then I’ve started running. I’m working towards a 10k and half marathon. I’d love to get vocal cues so I know how far I’ve run. It’s turned on in the app but it definitely has not been working. On googling it seems it doesn’t work for anyone. Has anyone managed to make this work?

I really like my air but it’s not going to work as I work towards longer runs. Just wondering how people have got around this? Do you just not bother to check how far you’ve run? Or check your phone? Or just use something different?

The old app always clocked me with very little deep sleep - almost never more than 50 min in a night.

Now, I’m either getting a lot more deep sleep- or Google health is using a different algorithm. What has been your experience?

i ordered a fitbit from amazon from the fitbit store on sale for $85. when it arrived, the package box looked weird like one side was pushed in and not properly closed. when i opened the package up, the fitbit box wasn’t sealed from the bottom and very easily openable i didn’t even have to use scissors or peel any tape off. the fitbit itself had these white specks all over that i brushed off. idk if this is normal or not. it feels kind of off. i don’t really want to return it because i got it for such a good deal but i also purchased it new not used or open box so idk what to do.

is any of this normal for a new fitbit? also do they come charged out the box? are the charger boxes inside taped up? idk if i’m being paranoid or it is really used.

My Original Fitbit Sense suddenly started showing something odd. It shows I have active zone minutes when I didn't do anything. Looking at my heart rate in the Google Health App, my HR ranges are as follows:

Peak > 157
Vigorous 130 - 156
Moderate 109 - 129
Light < 108

My heart rate is currently 78 BPM and when I look at the "SP02 Signature" watch face that has AZM, on the AZM screen it shows my heart rate as "above" with the heart icon in orange and the AZM showing in the upper right. Typically this only happens when your HR is over the Light range (so 109 + in my case). I also tried the "In The Zone" watch face (all fitbit watch faces, not 3rd party) and it shows my HR zone as "Above Zone" with all 3 arrows even though my HR is under 80 bpm.

So it's confusing that even though my heart rate reading is accurate, and my heart ranges appear normal, for some reason the Sense is thinking I'm in an AZM HR zone when my HR according to the sense itself is obviously below all AZM HR zones.

Anyone else see this? This just started out of the blue yesterday, I saw I had 95 AZM when I didn't do anything, and even just sitting watching TV this kept going up until it was at 150 AZM.

I tried factory resetting and reinstalling, uninstalled and reinstalled the Google Health App, manually set my max HR instead of using the default and it's the same problem. Doesn't appear to be an issue with the HR sensor as that's below range, but for some reason the algorithm is showing the incorrect zone info.

I play a game called pokemon sleep where the app takes the data from my phone to use it in the game but there are seemingly random days where the Google health app won't actually record my sleep or basically it will "write" my sleep data before it receives it so it records nothing. I can't seem to figure out how to force the app to "read" and "write" aka record my sleep data again. If anyone else has encountered this sort of problem and figured out a work around please let me know or point me in the right direction. I have tried all the obvious stuff like turning stuff on and off again and resyncing and removing and adding back permissions and none of them work.

I built an interval running workout in the google health app (every activity type was a run, so gps should be supported) and started the workout in the app as well. I had my phone with me (I have the fitbit air, so only phone gps), precise location on always allowed. After the workout, there is no distance or pace data. I tried troubleshooting with the coach, but we got nowhere. Location did work before when I used strava for recording runs. Does anyone know how to fix this?

Only 3 days apart.... the only difference, I started using a blackout sleeping mask... for anyone looking to improve their sleep I highly recommend it.

I have an Inspire 3. I walk/hike often. When walking, I want to look at the clock face to see the time. I can't read the small text on the stat page and don't care about whatever stats it is listing.

I know that the Google Health app has an option to change auto detect activity under Settings -> Activity -> Activity Detection. However, my Inspire 3 (or maybe something else?) seems to be overriding this. The default Activity Setting detection under app is listed as detect after 15 minutes. However, walking is detected after 10 minutes, not 15. If I change setting to 30 minutes, walking is still detected after 10 minutes. If I fully disable activity detection, walking is still detected after 10 minutes.

Rebooting phone and fitibit doesn't change any of above. Turning on/off Bluetooth or resyncing doesn't change any of above. Removing Inspire 3, then adding back Inspire 3 doesn't change any of above. Other connected device is my phone. Installed partner apps are AllTrails and Chronometer.

Hey!

I just recieved my fitbit air last week, and did some tests.

I really like the feel of it, and I'm overall totally okay with it, but here are some findings:

I bought my fitbit air to cover where I'm not using my Polar tracker (armband). The polar armbad totally cool, needs more frequent recharge, and better suited for sports, but also, after the frequent use, let's just say my girlfriend have some opinions about the armband's smell (after washing it as well).
I was curious if there is any difference in tracking in high intensity sports for the fitbit, so I did a comparation.

I shared the fitbit, overlay, and the polar heartrate (also the strava logs to share it on the same ui)

Conclusion: fitbit air sample less frequently, so you can see the tracking is more smoothed out, reacts to your heartrate way slower. Honestly this is not the end of the world, but for weightlifting I like to get under 130 bpm before going into my next round, so this annoyed me a bit that I was already half dying and fitbit air said 110 bpm.

Calories: well this was the funniest. So I think overall people shouldn't trust these trackers about overall burned calories, rather judge the consecutive measurement differences. These trackers usually have wide range of misfires especially in non standard environments.

So with the same height and weight data, my polar logged 595 calories for this session, which is I think pretty fair.

But the fitbit air logged 982 calories. I showed it to my girlfriend, that I like the fitbit air numbers better, now I can carb up! She wasn't convinced.

Also, my overall daily burn a day before (according to fitbit) around 4500 calories. I did two dogwalks, and a pretty heavy weightlifting session with high pace, but I think that is totally overblown.

So I don't understand where the calorie burn misread comes from, I'll try to check if I set up something wrong.

But honestly, if you think about it as an overall TRACKER, that logs your stuff, I'm pretty happy with it. I never wore any armbands, and I'm totally fine with this, it is so light as a festival armband.

I think I'll keep my polar for the weightlifting and more high intensity stuff, but rely on the fitbit for more day to day and casual stuff.

Let me know what you guys think!