Wearables, product categories and user experience
I first wrote about Fitbit in June 2012, after trying out for three weeks a device that changed many of my ideas about food and exercise, allowing me within a couple of months to stabilize my weight around the 83 kg mark, down from around 100 kg. I’m not suggesting everybody could achieve such spectacular results, simply that in my case, the combination of this type of device with a borderline obsessive compulsive personality like mine certainly did.
More than three and a half years later, I faithfully use my Fitbit, and am showing no signs of so called wearable fatigue; in fact I would feel pretty strange without something to tell me how much exercise I take each day.
A few weeks ago, for a change, I decided to use an Apple Watch I got as a gift, an interesting device, but one I had previously decided to wait to wear at least until the second generation came out. My Fitbit at the time, a Surge, didn’t really make sense with the Apple Watch: wearing two watches at a time, one on each wrist, felt weird. However, I soon realized that the Apple Watch didn’t provide a full enough resume of my physical activity. Not only did it not measure my pulse in real time (only when requested) or during the night, but its metrics (moving time, exercise time and standing time) looked to me much less familiar and rigorous than the Fitbit’s steps, kilometers, floors, calories used, etc.
My reluctance to let go of the Fitbit was also related to the need to charge the Apple Watch every night, which meant it provided me with no information about my sleep, as well as having no alarm discreetly vibrating on my wrist. Over the last couple of years I have become used to this way of waking up (I leave the smartphone alarm on by the bed in case, but have never had to use it), and I’m not prepared to change things. So I swapped to an earlier Fitbit, the Charge HR, and put it on my other wrist. Wearing a watch on one wrist and a band on the other is easier than wearing two watches, and allowed me to assess both devices.
A few weeks into my experiment, the results are interesting. On the one hand, it’s clear the two devices are very different in terms of the detail they provide. There is a certain correlation between the two readings, but they are very different in absolute terms. The Fitbit measures things like moving my arms as steps. The Charge HR calculates the distance one has walked by multiplying the number of steps by the length of an average pace, while the Surge, which has GPS, also has its limitations in terms of accuracy. Heart rate, despite the recent class action, didn’t seem worryingly imprecise, pretty much matching the Apple Watch’s estimate.
I’m not that concerned with the accuracy overall of the metrics, as long as any error is standard, which it clearly is: what I need is a daily metric that allows me to compare my activity with my goals (and with my friends’ activity, since in the longer term, this is also about motivation and, somehow, healthy competition). If my Fitbit tells me that I haven’t managed 5,000 steps, then I know that I spent the time sitting in front of my computer, which is bad for my health and that I need to get out and exercise in some way. But being absolutely positive that my 5.000 steps were in fact 5.000 steps is not important at all, as soon as the errors are evenly distributed from one day to the next.
The Apple Watch is fine for these kinds of metrics, although it might take a little getting used to after the Fitbit. But the main problem with the Apple device is the battery life. The Fitbit was able to monitor my activity for a week without the need for a recharge: I almost forgot it was powered by electricity. The models that read my pulse usually last between three and four days, but instead of waiting until I get a low battery warning from the device, I find easier to recharge them each morning while I shave and shower, more than enough to keep them always sufficiently charged.
The need to charge the Apple each night was a clear disadvantage. I never had any problems with it, and every time I plugged it in to charge there was still around 30 percent battery life, but as said, knowing that the thing had to be charged overnight was a bother.
The Apple Watch is much more versatile than the Fitbit, which isn’t marketed as a smartwatch anyway. Being able to use the Apple Watch as an smartphone’s surrogate screen, a way to monitor activity is useful; the Fitbit can be used to identify incoming telephone calls, but is in no way comparable to the Apple Watch’s multi-use screen.
Over the course of the couple of weeks wearing the Apple Watch, I have to say that while it is reasonably comfortable to be alerted to emails, meetings or my soccer team scoring a goal via my wrist, it’s not much of an advantage over the phone, which is in my pocket anyway. I guess if you keep your smartphone in a bag and that makes you miss its alerts too many times, having a smartwatch could be useful.
These are a few of the main questions that are at stake when it comes to the future of the smartwatch. It is interesting to see that the category wasn’t featured heavily at the recent CES in Las Vegas. Similarly, Fitbit has just seen its share price drop sharply following the release of its new model, the Blaze: investors were disappointed because they thought that rather than a fitness watch, it was going to be a fully functioning smartwatch, and they found it wanting compared to similarly priced smartwatches.
In reality, we’re talking about two different product categories here, which prompts the question as to whether the market can sustain both. Perhaps the market is waiting to see if the two converge, in which case Fitbit’s focus on fitness could be its undoing. Let’s not forget one of the ten commandments of marketing: product categories are not created by companies, but instead by consumer perception…
As things stand, it’s hard to see which way things will likely go. For me, the Apple Watch as an activity monitor doesn’t quite cut it, and the surrogate screen, although interesting, isn’t enough of a compensation. At the same time, I have to accept that in my case, I probably fall between two stools, as the saying goes: I’m not an athlete who is going to be seduced by using the Fitbit when out running, because I’m also going to have to take the smartphone along as well; while the Apple Watch just doesn’t have enough fitness trackers.
Apple’s decision to rid its shops of Fitbit products in October 2014 showed that it saw them as competitors, even if, strictly speaking, they aren’t. For the moment, I think I’ll keep wearing one of each, although obviously in the long term, that’s not going to be a solution the market will buy.
(En español, aquí)
