The Fitbit Versa 3 offers a range of helpful tools by combining a fitness tracker and a smart watch for the on the go, busy person… Or someone like me who thought it’d be cool to know my resting heart rate and just discovered the rest along the way. And boy there was a lot to discover, such as my heart rate rests higher at work than when I’m at home.
Ah, capitalism.
The Versa 3 offers a range of health tools, from heart rate monitoring and steps taken, to menstrual tracking and mindfulness. Optionally the app also let’s you track water and calorie intake, and also helpfully tells you how many calories you’ve burnt so far that day. The most interesting for me however, was the sleep tracker.
If worn while sleeping, the Versa 3 will keep an eye on your heart rate and breathing patterns, which definitely sounds like a weird dystopian future, but it also means that it can track your sleep cycles. I’ve never been a particularly good sleeper, so being presented a graph of how my sleep cycles between light, deep, REM and being awake gives me some insight.
I have no idea what to do with that insight, but I definitely have it!
The best part about the sleep tracking is the alarm. The Versa 3 has a vibrate alarm that gently nudges you awake without loud noises. It can also be set to wake you up at the best part of your sleep to ensure you won’t wake groggy. You know, how you feel when your cat wakes you to insist that they be fed RIGHT NOW at 3am. Once you set your alarm, it will go off within the half hour before you’ve set whenever the best time for you is. Just make sure to test the vibrate alarm before you trust it for work, or that important flight; if you’re a heavy sleeper, it might not get you up.
Along with all the neat health tools, the Versa 3 is also a very functional smart watch. You can receive calls on it, but will need to boost the volume and take the microphone off mute first. Once you’ve got it all working however, it offers a reasonable sound and mic quality, even if you do have to walk around with your wrist at approximately chum level.
You can also read and answer texts with a selection of premade options. Options that can be customised with any short answer you want. Any answer you want. Be as mature or as immature as you feel inside.
There are a lot of hidden gems on the smartwatch side of the Versa 3. Find my phone, for example makes your phone chime out, even if it’s on silent. You can control your Spotify from your wrist, but not play music through the actual watch, and in true smart technology fashion, you can even pay by waving your wrist at a pay wave machine.
As far as smart watches go, the Versa 3 offers it all at a reasonable price when compared to the Samsung and Apple watches on the market, and has all the health tools to boot. You can even download an app to roll D&D dice, just in case you forget yours or have a surprise tabletop game waylay you.
Speaking of surprises, you don’t need to fear a sudden downpour, or worry about taking your fitbit off while you swim or shower. Advertised as ‘swim proof’ rather than waterproof for what I can only assume is legal reasons, it did hold up well in the shower and doing dishes.
I wouldn’t say the Versa 3 is designed for use in the shower, simply because the hot water hitting the touch screen seemed to confuse it a lot, causing a lot of random menus to be opened and closed. It ended up just freezing a bit, and turning the screen on and off instead. It did seem to get over it after a minute and a quick dry off though.
The Versa 3 manages to not only be very useful, but look good doing it. I had the gold case and midnight blue band, which looked very striking together. I definitely had a few jealous friends. Unfortunately the band comes in a matte finish, which feels nice on, but has already started to rub off around the edges after only a month.
A month is also how long it took for ‘Leah P’ to try to friend me via the fitbit app, so we could compete against each other for how many steps we could do. Which is actually kind of cool, and with a group of people, or even just one friend to compare yourself to I found it much easier to motivate myself to take the long way round to get those last few steps. Sadly Leah is not a real person. I know this because she had an average step count of “- -“, which I can only assume means she has never used the fit bit app, and because she does not like to wear shirts.
Am I being subtle enough? She was a porn bot, and not nearly as interested in matching steps with me as she originally promised.
If all else fails and you just can’t get into the step tracking, or the ability to read tiny emails on your wrist, there is a huge selection of watch faces. From Christmas themes, to Animal Crossing. From the PokeWatch to the Eiffel Tower, rainbows and famous art pieces, there will be at least one design that takes your fancy. Even if you only used it as a watch, at least it would look good at the same time.