Gadgetory

Fitbit has plenty of fitness trackers and smartwatches to choose from we're comparing two of the most popular fitbit's the charge three and the Versa to see which is right for you so who does comparison I want to talk about the real-world use of these not so much about the specs even though I will cover some of that this is about how it's like to live with both the Versa and the charge three and also you're probably wondering why we're doing this comparison now I mean they've been both out for a little while it's because Fitbit OS 3 has been loaded onto these finally we just kind of brought them more in terms of parity in terms of what they can do as both smartwatches and fitness trackers so let's start with design the charge 3 is obviously shaped like a lot of the previous fit bits it's small it's more of a fitness tracker with a monochrome touchscreen the Versa is much more a SmartWatch and fitness tracker hybrid it's got a color screen it's a touch screen as well and it's got a couple more buttons than the charge 3 obviously if you want something really simple and easy to use in terms of just telling you your steps your heart rate and calorie burn the charge 3 can do that really easily I like the Versa a little bit more just because it gives me a lot more metrics on the screen and I find the button system it's just a little bit more intuitive than the swiping on this charge 3 that being said you can use the same sort of gestures on both so you can swipe down from the screen to see notifications metrics and also change settings within the menus too now the display on both of them is pretty easy to see when you're inside the race to wake works fairly well on both of them as well that being said when I was doing an outdoor workout with the charge 3 in bright sunlight I found that the highest brightness setting on the screen wasn't quite bright enough for me whether that was on the automatic brightness setting or in the normal brightness setting the first there is just a little bit more bright because it has that maximum brightness so for that reason I found the Versa a lot easier to see outside as well it's a lot easier to change the straps on the charge 3 than it is the Versa the charge 3 has are just a little button that detaches the strap and you can swap in another one easily the Versa has a little metallic toggle that you kind of have to pinch and squeeze and then move the bar out of the way it's a little bit more tricky than the charge three which is nice and simple both of them use Gorilla Glass 3 to protect these screens from bumps and scratches I haven't been wearing the charge 3 as long as the Versa the Versa has developed a couple of scratches on the edge of the screen something to bear in mind if you're someone that does sort of bash around the watch a little bit ins very active maybe consider putting a screen protector on it so both of fitbit's have pretty similar fitness tracking features you can track your heart rate you can track your sleep that being said you have to have a phone in order to get GPS data if you want to track your route on something like a run or a bike both use connected GPS not GPS built in both let you set goal based exercises so you can get a notification once you've reached your calorie distance or time goal you can put six workout shortcuts on the charge three or seven on the Versa I like just having one more on the Versa it's really nice if you're someone that does a variety of different exercises and you don't constantly want to be going back and forth to the phone to add new ones in the Versa has something that a charge three doesn't have and that's the coach app that's onboard on the watch face itself so this actually runs you through a number of different workouts and exercises and it shows you visually like the moves that you need to do I really like that that being said you can get the coach app on a phone itself and then you can just put the phone down and workout alongside it but it's just really nice having it on the watch face itself when it comes to sleep tracking you can actually do it on both as I mentioned the Versa is probably a little bit less comfortable to sleep with I'll have to say just because it's slightly bigger obviously with the biggest screen it's a lot easier to see your workout details when you're in the workout on the Versa than it is on the charge three and when you finish that workout you can actually see a lot more details about it on the Versa then on the charge three plus you can go through and see a couple of previous workouts from days ago rather than the charge today which really only just shows you what you've just done and then you have to go into the Fitbit app itself I found the charge 3 was perhaps overestimating my maximum heart rate so when it was tracking it I noticed it was saying my maximum heart rate was around 200 BPM which was probably a lot higher than it's ever been tracked on any other previous fitness tracker or the Versa itself so there's just something to bear in mind if you're really thinking about accuracy here and for the ladies there is women's health tracking on both of these devices it's pretty much the same across both you can track your periods and then also predict ovulation and your fertility window so both of the fitbit's are compatible with iOS and Android and you can get the same notifications from your phone mirrored to each of these watches that being said if you are an iOS user you're only going to be able to see messages when they come through and cause you're not gonna be able to actually respond to them like you can on Android and you can also then in Android customize the quick responses that you want to send when you get a notification come through they also both use proprietary charging cables which is a bit of an annoyance if you have a couple of different fit bits or different generations of fit bits and the battery life you'll get with each of them you're going to get around almost a week on the charge tree I say almost a week because they say up to seven days I think in reality it's more just like six six and a half depending on how many workouts you do and how much you're really pushing it the Versa on the other hand will get you just around four days and that's with normal pretty much normal use with a couple of workouts thrown in each of them also comes with a so-called special edition and that gives you Fitbit pay which is fitbit's mobile wallet so you can essentially tap to pay with your credit card or debit card using an NFC terminal when you're out and about the special edition also means that it's special in terms of the price so it does cost a little bit extra I would love to see the Fitbit Versa to just come with the special edition all in the one level so it's all just the same device that being said I don't have any insider information about the next Fitbit I'm just spitballing and telling you what I would really like to see on it and it would just be Fitbit pay just brought in to the regular Fitbit Versa to device please the Versa also has a lot more apps available and then the charge three in fact the charge three pretty much has nothing you can change the watch face and they're obviously all monochrome screens and they're all what Fitbit wants you to have at the moment the Versa has a lot more apps to choose from and a lot more watch faces especially since the Versa first launched around a year ago the App Store has really built out quite a lot and so there are a lot of different apps for things that you might want to do from fitness tracking through to say news on you'll watch I don't know why you want to read the news on your watch but it's there if you do want it so that's kind of neat when it comes to music the only one that can store music is the Versa it can store around 300 songs and the process to transfer them from your computer to the watch itself gives a little bit cumbersome I would really love Fitbit versa too if you're listening to make it so you can transfer songs that you have on your phone onto the watch really simply and seamlessly over Bluetooth and Wi-Fi rather than through your computer you can also use DZ or Pandora apps on the Versa to store music offline if you want to use it and go for a run or just stream directly from there but that's about it it's these are in Pandora there's nothing else in terms of streaming services so no Apple music and there's Spotify so you're probably wondering why I haven't talked about the price of these yet and that's kind of deliberate it's because since the Versa was released about a year ago the price has changed and come down a lot there's been a lot of specials and so it's come more in parity with the charge three so really the only difference between them especially if you're getting the special edition as well is only around twenty to fifty dollars so it's not a huge question about price that's not as really significant as whether you want a fitness tracker or more of a SmartWatch itself so I wanted to just run through a little bit of a wish list for the Versa tube the Fitbit if you're listening I hope that this really comes to be because I think a couple of changes could make it a really really strong device I would love to see if you could transfer music directly from a phone and add a number of different streaming services to it I would also love the special edition to not exist just to get Fitbit pay in the regular Versa - that would be amazing and number three having GPS onboard that would just make it a really fully fledged all-around SmartWatch I think that would be a great competitor to the Apple watch as well so that's a comparison between the charge three and the Fitbit Versa I would love to hear some of your comments suggestions about what you want to see in the future Fitbit models or any questions that I didn't answer in this comparison let me know in the comments below or you can find me on Twitter and stay tuned to seen it for a lot more comparisons in versus series