I’ve been wearing the Fitbit Air for about two months, and the nicest thing about Google’s wearable is how quiet it is. Not in terms of noise, but in how much attention I need to give it.
Unlike flashier, louder wearables that demanded my attention, the Air sat unnoticed on my wrist, quietly gathering my health data and tracking my exercises.
For that exact reason, it’s also the perfect sleep tracker — and even though I gave up sleep tracking years ago, I’ve found myself wearing a device to sleep again. The Fitbit Air is different enough that my previous complaints no longer stand.
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I almost returned my Google Fitbit Air for broken sleep tracking until I changed one setting
A single tweak in Google Health revived the sleep points I’d been missing
I gave up tracking sleep years ago
Ignorance is bliss
I was sleep tracking before it was cool. My sleep-tracking habit began around 2010, while I was at university.
I used Sleepdroid, a competitor to the Sleep as Android app that won the sleep tracking app wars. Those sorts of apps died out with the rise of sleep-tracking wearables, and until last year, I kept up with the new sleep-tracking trends every step of the way.
And then, after 15 years of data, I decided to give up tracking my sleep. This wasn’t a decision I took lightly, but I did it because science told me it was for the best.
According to a study, people who were told by tracking that they had slept badly acted as though they had — even if they’d slept fine.
In short, checking your sleep-tracking data in the morning could fool you into feeling worse throughout the day. It’s the placebo effect at its simplest: you’re told you slept badly, so you feel worse throughout the day.
I didn’t want any of that, so I decided it was time to stop. I gave up tracking my sleep, and I happily laid my smartwatch on the bedside table at the end of each day.
That was, until the Fitbit Air came along.
All the data with none of the judgment
Being screenless is a big advantage
By the time I got my hands on the Fitbit Air, I’d been sleeping without a tracker for some time. However, I wanted to put the tracker and its AI coach to the test. So I wore it to bed for about a week, and I noticed something odd.
I didn’t check the stats on most days. The first morning after wearing it, sure. I checked it then. But after that? It completely slipped my mind.
I suspect this is because the Fitbit Air is different than almost any wearable I’ve used before. Almost every wearable I’ve used before has a screen, while the Air, as I’m sure you’re aware, does not.
As a result, there’s no immediate pressure to check my stats when I wake up, or whenever I happen to glance at my wrist. It’s there as an alert when I wake up; it lives on a watchface. The judgment is there, waiting for me.
Smartwatches want to show you the data they’ve gathered, and I can turn that off, but that feels like it removes the point of a smartwatch.
With the Fitbit Air, the data is nestled away inside a small piece of black plastic. I can’t access it from there, and I won’t see it until it syncs with my phone.
And bless its tiny processor, but the Fitbit Air’s syncing is slow. By the time I saw the notification on my phone, I already knew how I was feeling that day.
Depending on when I pick my phone up from the bedside table, it could be hours after I’ve woken up. And after coffee has done its holy work, how I slept the night before is moot.
The Fitbit Air lets me avoid the trap. I get all the advantages of sleep tracking, with none of the downsides I wanted to avoid. The AI Coach uses my sleep data to better inform its metrics, and I get to live in my blissfully ignorant cloud.
You don’t need a Fitbit Air to get this
Maybe launch your smartwatch across the room when you wake up
I didn’t really need the Fitbit Air to have this revelation.
I could have had the same experience with my Samsung Galaxy Ring, for instance. And if you like smart rings, it’s a good way to get the same sort of experience. But smart rings aren’t for me, especially when the Fitbit Air exists.
For me, the Fitbit Air has been the perfect device. It does everything I want from a health and fitness tracker, and it does it quietly.
I know I’m going to keep wearing mine for a long time, and it’ll take a really special wearable to replace it.
8.5/10
Battery Life
7 days
Health sensors
Optical heart rate, 3-axis accelerometer, temperature sensor
Dimensions
35 x 17 x 8.3mm (Module)
Water Resistance
50 meters