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Product Review: Fitbit Ionic


Now that the Fitbit Ionic has been in the marketplace for the better part of a year, I figured it was a good time for the cheapo to go ahead and review it.

The Fitbit Ionic debuted late last year with an MSRP of $299, and the Fitbit store is still charging this inflated price. Amazon has it discounted down to $280, but this is still way too much. $200 seems like a pretty fair price for a new Ionic, but since they just released their Versa model watch at that price point, I guess they feel like they needed to keep the Ionic as their premium/GPS model. El Cheapo picked up his Ionic for $150 used on Craigslist.

My impression of the watch falls somewhere between meh and good. I'm going to compare it to the Fenix 5X because that seems to be the best basis of comparison even though most people in the market for the Ionic are probably deciding between it and the Apple Watch 3.

I haven't tried an Apple Watch and will never buy one. I've tried an Android LG Sport Watch for a short time. The battery life is so horrible on those devices, I can't ever see myself owning and wearing one. Having to recharge a watch every day, day and a half, seems like an impossibly tall ask. I can't imagine why anyone would ever wear one.

Battery life on the Ionic is outstanding, and the watch is very comfortable. It's not a 2 week champ like the Garmin Fenix 5X, but it's also not a hockey puck on my wrist either. The heft of the 5X definitely took some getting used to, and even after you were used to it, there were times you just wanted to take it off and give your wrist a breather. The Ionic will get you through 3 days with heavy use, 4 days with normal use, 5 days if you're rarely checking the time and are pretty sedentary.

With the Garmin, I also felt this extraordinary sense of guilt in owning a $500+ watch that was only going to depreciate rapidly whether I wore it or not. I felt like I needed to decide whether I could wear it full time, and I ultimately decided against it and unloaded it. I don't think my Ionic will be my daily driver, but for only a $150 expenditure, I'm fine with laying it in the drawer and using it on occasion if I feel like it. (Spoiler: I'm probably going back to the Fitbit Flex 2)

The Fenix definitely looked cooler and more manly. The looks alone almost had me keep it - almost. My feeling is that Garmin didn't have any expectation that any woman would ever want to want to wear it, so they figured they might as well build the biggest baddest thing they could. However, the coolness factor definitely becomes a problem if you wear dress shirts with any regularity, as it will get in the way, big time. I don't wear long sleeved shirts with cuffs that often, but you can see a picture in my 5X review of what it looks like. Basically, you have to either leave that cuff unbuttoned and rolled up or button it short of the watch because you ain't sliding it under it when you want to check the time. There was also that no-so-small matter of leaving the Fitbit ecosystem, which I love.

The Ionic isn't small but shouldn't cause too much trouble sliding under sleeve cuffs. However, it also looks like something from the Jetsons - kind of an 80's take on what a futuristic watch would look like. It doesn't look terrible but just a little weird. I'm sure they wanted to make it kind of gender neutral, although I don't see too many women wearing these.

The Ionic differs from the Fenix 5X in that it has a better display and touch screen, but the 5X has an always-on display - something I didn't realize until now how much of a necessity that is for me. One of the things that is maddeningly frustrating with this watch (but is probably the same with any watch without an always-on display) is having to waive your wrist around half the time to get the watch to light up. I'm constantly doing time checks, and every time I do, I feel like that's one more hit on the battery that I'll wish I hadn't taken a few days from now.

It is definitely nice being able to see your heart rate, weather, and all of your output stats on your watch face, but it's not that much of a chore to see them on my phone, either. Well, my phone can't take my heart rate, but everything else shows up there.

The Ionic also gives you much better analysis of your sleep as it factors in your heart rate to better calculate your sleep cycles. That's nice but not really all that crucial. My Flex 2 doesn't have an HR monitor, so the sleep analysis is a little cruder.

The Ionic will also calculate your VO2 max (fitness score) based on your resting heart rate and your exercising heart rate paired up with your GPS on runs. However, I'm pretty sure any of their heart rate watches will do the job since, even if they don't have GPS, they can leverage the GPS on your phone to help with this computation or you can manually enter in your distance for the same net effect.

Ultimately, these features are nice, but I really grown to like the simplicity of the Flex 2. I don't have to do anything to it but just charge it every 4-5 days and it auto-detects the activities that I like to track. I can also pair it up with any of my other dumb watches, which have always-on displays, and will still tell me the time if my Fitbit battery dies. The syncing with the Ionic seems to be a little hit or miss, which is a major pain. I had no problems with syncing my Flex 2.

So, after giving it a weekend, I think I'm going to just go back to the outstanding Flex 2. I'll hold onto the Ionic in case I later decide that I really want the advanced analytics, but for right now, I'm just going to stick with simple.

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