What Is It? – You know what a Fitbit is – it’s one of best known brands of activity trackers, which are designed to encourage you, or maybe shame you, to spend less time on the couch or in front of a screen and more time walking and exercising. The Fitbit Blaze is their latest and features all the fitness apps of their tracker “bands” plus a large color watch face. The watch pops in and out of the watchband, which you’ll need to do to charge it, and you can also choose a variety of watchbands from rubbery to leather to stainless steel. As an activity tracker, the Blaze does everything a “regular” Fitbit does: counts your steps, monitors your heart rate, tracks how many floors you’ve walked up, and automatically measures your sleep (or lack thereof), among other functions. The color touch screen is linked to your Android, iPhone, or Windows phone to alert you at the wrist for calls, texts, and calendar reminders. You can also use it to control music playback on your smartphone – the earbuds still plug into the phone but you’ll be able to skip or repeat a tune and change the volume from your wrist. The Blaze automatically goes dark to save power and is designed to light up when you raise your wrist. A charge lasted almost week for me. The watch also includes FitStar, which will coach you through a workout you can customize.
Is It 50+ Friendly? – The Fitbit Blaze is easy to use and the app, which you download to your smartphone, clearly shows your stats on the first screen. You can drill down further for more info: for instance not only how long you slept, but how many times were you restless, or in the case of folks our age, had to get up to pee. You can also follow your progress on an app for your computer. The screen of the watch face is about an inch square and I didn’t find it hard to read, especially after I turned up the brightness.
Frustration Factor? – It’s no secret that there can be troubles connecting devices to your smartphone with Bluetooth, and the Fitbit Blaze is no exception. It did connect fairly easily the first time, and the connection was good for a week. Then without warning, the phone app could no longer “find” the watch and it took me several times messing with the Bluetooth settings to get them back together. Also, to charge the Blaze, you have to remove the watch from the band and place it in a supplied USB powered charger. An induction charger would be a real improvement.
Is It Worth The Money? – Compared to the Apple Watch, which it is clearly designed to compete with, the Fitbit Blaze holds its own at a lower price and does better in the fitness area than Apple, though it doesn’t offer as much for notifications. The Apple wins the beauty contest, as usual, but I found the Fitbit Blaze more than attractive enough. Under $200 at Amazon.com.
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