The Fitbit Air is great, but Google’s AI is too nice to be your “coach”

The Air succeeds as a minimalist, reliable fitness tracker, but Google's AI Health Coach feels unnecessary.

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[J.R.G]

"The Fitbit Air is a good wearable weighed down by a chatty AI "coach""

Personally, I'd say it's weighed down by Google.

 

[wildsman]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGD9CS2YOiY


I bought it after watching a review by this channel (Quantified Scientist) that I trust. So far it's been great - and I spent only $80 on it.

 

[CatNamedHugs]

Yes, I would love to be fatshamed by Google while they also know where I am at every waking moment of the day and use it to train their models.

 

[Chance the Gardiner]

I just got rid of my Versa 4 after (mandatory) migration of the app on a Google account. The clock face reverted to default whenever I tried to sever communication through a VPN, and to restore it I had to agree to "share" all the data collected.

No thanks.

 

[Sarty]

The Air succeeds as a minimalist, reliable fitness tracker, but Google’s AI Health Coach feels unnecessary.

So in other words, it does not succeed as a minimalist fitness tracker...?

 

[graylshaped]

But no amount of health-focused tuning will change the fundamental issues with generative AI.

And no amount of "unobtrusive" justifies giving Google an IV tap into my life. Quite the opposite.

 

[JustYourAverageJDP]

A google product. My default is to never buy because Google constantly sunsets their products and services so why should I rely on something they will kill in a year. Then its blighted with AI? Easiest no buy decision I ever made.

 

[rwhitwam]

So in other words, it does not succeed as a minimalist fitness tracker...?

You can turn off the AI.

 

[Fred Duck]

The wordiness is not only distracting but obfuscatory. I tried to read it and was confused more often than I care to admit.

I'm also mystified by the green circles. The left one reads +48 but that is apparently unrelated to the 203 of 150 cardios collected.

At first, I was amused that they stamp Premium at the top of the UI just in case you suffer memory loss. Thinking more on't, it's likely not for the user's benefit. In this age of oversharing, that branding is for followers/mates/family viewing the user's ever-so-interesting Coach reports.

Adding this information to the token shuffle produces more accurate summaries.

Still, when GCoach casually mentions, "I'll make sure to revert to your usual baseline this Friday so we don't accidentally treat this temporary boost in activity as your new permanent norm" I wonder who "we" are. GCoach and Sundar? I doubt the user will accidentally manually set a new baseline. It's also not the sort of statement a human would make.

 

[Dano40]

Robbie the robot assistant, is that you? What could go wrong if you have dumb AI execute a series of commands for you being controlled by Google, back at a data center thru the cloud yes let’s relinquish go back to the glory days of main frame computing.

 

[groghunter]

I've had the same experience as the article: love the hardware, don't love the coach.

I'm choosing to look at that as a positive: most of the features i paid for a fitbit sub to get in the past, are now in the free tier. i just got features i paid for become free, and no new features that will make me want to keep paying.

 

[Ladnil]

When Google bought fitbit they destroyed pieces of my existing fitbit's functionality. Won't ever go back after that. Garmin works fine.

 

[bugsbony]

Have you tried telling it to be less chatty and less cheerful or something?

 

[sporkinum]

Robbie the robot assistant, is that you? What could go wrong if you have dumb AI execute a series of commands for you being controlled by Google, back at a data center thru the cloud yes let’s relinquish go back to the glory days of main frame computing.

I'll have a hard time finding a keypunch and interpreter.

 

[BirdOcean]

My mom uses the Garmin app for her iWatch. I hope that thing never gets AI. I've shown my mom enough articles and videos about the downsides of AI that I think she's suspicious of it. And she's also generally not impressed by AI "art" or videos (though she does like the Iran Lego videos).

She also once said that an ad of people all chatting with AI was "sad" since "they're all interacting with something that's not a person."

I do worry about AI's effect on other people who are more susceptible to the "robot friend" thing, though.

 

[GILDude]

The wordiness is not only distracting but obfuscatory. I tried to read it and was confused more often than I care to admit.

I'm also mystified by the green circles. The left one reads +48 but that is apparently unrelated to the 203 of 150 cardios collected.

At first, I was amused that they stamp Premium at the top of the UI just in case you suffer memory loss. Thinking more on't, it's likely not for the user's benefit. In this age of oversharing, that branding is for followers/mates/family viewing the user's ever-so-interesting Coach reports.


Still, when GCoach casually mentions, "I'll make sure to revert to your usual baseline this Friday so we don't accidentally treat this temporary boost in activity as your new permanent norm" I wonder who "we" are. GCoach and Sundar? I doubt the user will accidentally manually set a new baseline. It's also not the sort of statement a human would make.

That left circle you are talking about - it is showing that you currently have 203 of the weekly goal of 150 cardio load points, 48 of which you got today.

 

[bullwinkle12]

I'd love to have this or something like it as part of the band on my mechanical watch. It might end up feeling kinda chonky, but it would be the best of both worlds for me

 

[blank0]

Fitbit app was great until google bought it and run it down. The UX got gradually worse and worse and things like sleep graph started to be simply unreadable.
The new Goggle Health app fixes a lot of it, but at the same time the whole interface gets so busy that we have another problem.

 

[Rand]

When Google bought fitbit they destroyed pieces of my existing fitbit's functionality. Won't ever go back after that. Garmin works fine.

I'd love one but they are MIA in the minimalist fitness band market. The Vivosmart 5 came out over 4 years ago. I think I am going to have to break down and get one of these if they don't announce a new product in the next few days.

 

[Fatesrider]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGD9CS2YOiY


I bought it after watching a review by this channel (Quantified Scientist) that I trust. So far it's been great - and I spent only $80 on it.

WTF is a "qualified scientist"? He has a degree in something sciencey? Sounds to me like that yahoo is a salesman, not a scientist. And if he's got sponsors, he's working for them, not you.

Life lesson # 309234 (Yes, life has a lot of lessons if you live long enough): Never trust anyone selling you something. They're not on your side. They're on the side of their sponsors.

I could diatribe about why these things are just a privacy-invading, financial money drain, but I'll leave it at this:

The truth is, they created a fake need, and filled it, all for the love of $$$. But the need doesn't actually exist, and eventually you'll look back and wonder why you got your knickers in such a bunch over all that stuff. It's your choice, but you gave them your money, and your privacy for something you could have tracked very easily on your own with a little bit of knowledge.

Oh, and they are using false advertising, since it can't take read an EKG from where it is, and the graphic shows a rendering of a lead II EKG image, giving you the impression that it can output that waveform, when it can't.

Spoiler: The techical explanation.

This matters from an informational POV because an EKG doesn't just detect a heart rate. It detects damage in the heart (or the lack thereof) but requires multiple viewpoints (which is why they do a 12 lead typically for diagnosis) to determine exactly what was bio-electrically damaged.

That said, a lead II ALONE can determine prolonged PR intervals (an indication of ongoing myocardial infarction or damage from a recent one), R on T arrhythmias (which can actually stop the heart or send it into an irrecoverable v-tach or fibrillation, and are considered a major risk factor for sudden death) and bundle branch blocks (depending on waveform shape and QRS intervals, typically caused by previous damage to the heart or pathways in it) below the AV node, among other things.

Showing that graphic falsely implies the device is FAR more capable than it actually is.

$80 in pencils and pads and maybe a stopwatch would have lasted a hell of a lot longer than that POS will. But you paid for the convenience of spamming your badly recorded trends to Google, so, win for you, I guess? Your money, of course. I just wonder why you thought you needed it in the first place, TBH.

Find a health care professional you trust to give you the low-down on those things. If it wasn't FDA approved before 2025, I would not trust the accuracy of anything it reports.

 

[macosandlinux]

The truth is, they created a fake need, and filled it, all for the love of $$$. But the need doesn't actually exist, and eventually you'll look back and wonder why you got your knickers in such a bunch over all that stuff. It's your choice, but you gave them your money, and your privacy for something you could have tracked very easily on your own with a little bit of knowledge.

The same people that buy Meta/RayBan smart glasses for $500+ and feel the purchase added to their lifestyle/image?

 

[graylshaped]

You can turn off the AI.

Then what would it do?

 

[red_shift_limited]

I was on the FitBit train 10+ years ago and the devices were fine. Eventually newer ones started having their batteries die at day -1 of the warranty and the accuracy started to slip for my partner's stop counts. With the Google acquisition I have even less trust that it's a 'better' product.

Cramming AI into it, requiring an account via Google, cost being more than $50: all of these make it a no-go for me.

I've even stopped with my $35 Xiaomi Mi Fit band though. I'm tired of my phone telling me I need to exercise more or I'm not sleeping well enough and I'm old enough to know how to listen to my body.

Also, I HATE the relentless optimism and smug superiority of LLMs. There's no 'we' because there's no 'you' because it's all an output from a machine.

 

[huskcummerbund]

I appreciate that you included the exact steps required to turn off the stupid Response Simulator. Too bad Google is too damn proud of their bullshit to let you ever vanish the "Please use our AI more" button.