Fitbit is known for offering traditional fitness trackers that typically look like simple bracelets, but today the company unveiled a new, more smartwatch-like device.
The Fitbit Blaze is described as a “smart fitness watch,” offering a square display and a design that’s reminiscent of the Apple Watch. It’s still a fitness tracker first, though, which means that it’ll track your heart rate, steps, distance, calories burned, floors climbed, and more. It’s also got a Connected GPS, and with a battery life of “up to 5 days,” you can wear it to track your sleep and set alarms to wake you up. Fitbit is also touting the Blaze’s multi-sport support for specific activities like biking, running, yoga, and more so that you can get real-time performance stats while you’re working out.
With its color touchscreen display, the Fitbit Blaze can show several different watch faces, and it can be paired with your smartphone to show notifications for things like calls, texts, and calendar events. You can also use the Blaze to control music playback.
Finally, the Fitbit Blaze offers some fashion features to help it integrate with your wardrobe. Fitbit offers several different frames and bands for the Blaze, including leather, metal, and elastomer bands that can be bought separately.
The Fitbit Blaze can be preordered from Fitbit’s website today and North American retailers like Amazon, Best Buy, and Target tomorrow. It’ll launch in March 2016. Pricing is set at $199.95 for the Fitbit Blaze, $29.95 for additional elastomer bands, $99.95 for leather bands, and $129.95 for stainless steel link bands. The Blaze is compatible with Android, iOS and Windows devices.
Fitbit is pretty well-known as a fitness wearable company, and so the Fitbit Blaze could interest some folks that want an activity tracker that’s a bit more like a smartwatch than Fitbit’s other offerings. Of course, it’s also not as fully-featured as offerings from Apple and Android Wear, which offer their own fitness tracking features as well as app libraries that are thousands deep. As I said before, though, lots of non-tech folks know about Fitbit, and so they might just buy the Fitbit Blaze because they immediately recognize the company as being fitness-focused.