Gadgetory

Fitbit once again attempts to make a hybrid fitness tracker in SmartWatch in one when I reviewed the Fitbit blaze a while back it was a good concept but was still far away from smartwatches like these Samsung gear s 3 or the Apple watch now with the new ionic this is Fitbit second attempt in my personal opinion to blend the two but this time it's after the acquisition of the SmartWatch company pebble I personally paid for this at the retail price of $300 when it was first released be sure to click on my affiliate links down into the description below those links will give you the most updated prices in real time you never know when these things might go on sale I'm Jimmy with jims review room and I'm here to help you make that purchase decision welcome everyone to another review going over the physical features first the watch looks hella better in person than on camera top-down or looking directly at it it looks modern and almost futuristic for the side profile it does look big I'll omit that and it looks something like the movie Blade Runner or so with its sharp lines but again in person you can't see it or tell that it has a big casing now two straps come in the box both small and large on the back of the ioniq there's quick release buttons that works much better and faster than most other watches out there and the fact that the watch face or display itself is one units this makes the ioniq less cumbersome to handle versus the old-school blaze now the longest time they've had this or worn this was six days straight basically the time it took that during the battery from full to dead with no GPS or notifications on now I'm averaging about five days with notifications on this included text messages emails and such coming through and those initiating runs that kicks on GPS and continues heart rate tracking I'm draining about 10% of better life per 30 minutes of running now I do take it off during showers just to prevent soap scum buildup and let my wrist breathe a little bit you don't want that patch of brown under your watch if you don't wash it there but every other time I worn this during today while I'm at work and throughout the night to track my sleep now no question it's been comfortable and I haven't had any irritation on my wrist either now let me know in the comment section below if you had that nasty red rash from other activity bands before was it Fitbit or was it another brand in general taking a closer look all buns were very tactile and clicky also wearing this for the past several weeks it hasn't shown any signs of wear Nicks marks or scratches on the side of the casing or the screen touching base on the display I really enjoyed it the colors are vibrant it's also bright indoors but more importantly bright outdoors as well the one issue I noticed this is me coming from the Smart Watch experience the animations are a little choppy not a big deal but it takes away from the experience a bit and especially after paying $300 nonetheless it's still very much functional with the display Fitbit gives you 17 different watch faces some more vibrant than others and most I actually enjoyed big numbers useful information like steps and heart rate are shown and down to a good selection of colors that help differentiate the info a finger response on the touchscreen feels to be improved here a bit more intuitive and I don't have to re swipe several times to make sure the screen moves tapping on the screen to give you guys a quick walk through every watch face is a little bit different but this will give you some sort of an idea here this is the watch face from the factory there's time of course steps heart rate which is measured every five seconds when you're not in a workout and last is calories burn other watch faces will tell you distance walked and how many stairs climbed and this one I know many ask about the coronagraph watch face works as a simple quickly accessed stopwatch now tapping the right button gives you steps steps per hour which is new to me here current heart rates again measured every five seconds plus resting heart rate down below distance calories burned floors climbed and active minutes now backing out here pressing the bottom right button gives you several activities you can initiate to start recording and segmenting here running biking and swimming are some of the most popular ones but check out the list on the right side here on your screen for my complete listing now before getting deep into the fitness portion of the video I want to touch base about the software and features built in no yes you do get automatically sleep recording and this is possibly the big reason why I love fitness trackers / smartwatches they're just simply more comfortable to sleep with on now with Fitbit for those who are new or haven't used them they provide some of the best sleep analysis differentiating light sleep deep sleep REM sleep even in times that you're awake in my assessment the ioniq is accurate as you can see I've been working stupid hours here and sleeping after midnight in some days now piggybacking on sleep right on your wrist you can set up silent vibrating alarms you can customize up to eight different alerts all with different days of the week here from my use of waking up in the morning I thought the vibrations stronger than most others on the market stronger than other smartwatches which was a huge plus for heavy sleepers there's also an additional setting to turn up vibrations to maximum now moving on and getting back to the physical watch I love this feature yeah able to store music on the ioniq and leave your phone behind there's up to four gigs of on-board storage and you can pair it via bluetooth to wireless headphones or earphones to work now the only issue transferring music over Wi-Fi to the activity tracker didn't work for me but instead use the physical wire and downloaded the Fitbit app to my laptop at first it was a bit cumbersome but after the physical connection it was very much straightforward to transfer music back and forth now similar but surely not the same as a SmartWatch your people that received notifications on your watch this is one of the biggest reasons why I like smartwatches as it makes incoming text messages alerts and such much more convenient and ripping out your phone the text messages show up tapping on it does reveal the entire message older hybrid fitness trackers used to only show a summary but the only thing I found missing for messaging there's no way to respond back other text on screen or by voice which was a bummer now one word of caution when emails come through the subject line is truncated so you might miss out on some info they're going into the apps that are available for the ioniq this is where it's severely lacking and I'll flip through the watch quickly here you can see there's a dedicated stopwatch feature weather app which looks gorgeous by the way Pandora and Strava is offered and last I'm assuming Fitbit has some kind of partnership with Starbucks that's on there too and that's basically it although the ionic is more of a hybrid the SmartWatch features we're very limiting you know what happened great to see some third-party apps a lot more that is since this watch has built-in GPS how about gules turn-by-turn navigation now if that's too advanced how about Yelp maybe an uber app how about a calendar so I can see what's planned for my day here all right jumping over to the fitness side of things really quick Fitbit has always been one of the favorites if not my favorites because of how simple they are the screens and layouts are very much easy to read and they're mid-tier to the higher-end bands offers a lot of value as stated earlier this has GPS which was accurate and found my location reasonably quick there's a heart rate sensor on here which I've tested and like most risk-based heart rate trackers it was so slightly off but accurate enough for the average consumer I'm still a Oh Chester Epps but I can see why some would say those chest straps are uncomfortable it's seriously a trade-off now the ioniq is also water resistant up to 50 meters or 165 feet which is phenomenal and beats almost every mainstream SmartWatch out there most fitness bands - now I had dunked this into water for a quick test and it still functions perfectly fine going over running since that's the most popular activity you do receive step counts calories burned real time heart rate that samples every second now versus five seconds average pace real time pays which I like distance duration and last is the actual time or clock now from the workout screen you can hold down the top right button here and access your audio there to pause play shuffle and skip songs so overall with my assessments the ionic like most of fitbit's lineup has amazing fitness tracking you want the best sleep tracking features it's comfortable looks unique and pretty modern here but in the end it's very much lacking these Smart Watch features now my conclusion if you're wanting a fitness tracker and want all the bells and whistles also better battery life than most smartwatches the ionic is great but the notifications messages showing up and even Fitbit wallet pay it feels as though they're just bonuses the reason being dedicated smartwatches these days around that 330 to 350 dollar price range can be had with heart rate tracking very robust health apps more smart features like controlling their nest thermostat estate 1 and the third-party app support is vastly diverse in the end smartwatches simply offers the best of both worlds and not just one in my opinion like Fitbit here save a few dollars and get something Fitness focus with a few bonuses or spend 30 to 50 dollars more and get it all comment down below which one do you want for yourself