Fitbit has been one of the biggest players in the wearables market with a wide range of fitness trackers. With the acquisition of Pebble, it was high time Fitbit launched its own smartwatch and today it has happened with the unveiling of Ionic. Fitbit Ionic is the first smartwatch from the company and runs a custom OS called Ionic OS, which is not based on any other platforms.
The company has promised 4-day battery life with the new custom OS, which seems pretty good compared to the other smart watches available on the market. The watch features built-in GPS as well for tracking exercises along with an active optical heart rate sensor. The watch comes with all the expected training modes that can capture real-time stats of over 20 types of activities, including biking, bootcamp, circuit training, elliptical, golfing, hiking, kickboxing, martial arts etc and is water resistant up to 50m for the swimming mode.
There is 2.5GB of internal storage for storing and listening to music offline via Bluetooth. Ionic can display notifications from apps like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat etc while apps like Strava, Pandora and AccuWeather will be available during the launch. There is also Fitbit Pay, a feature that will allow the users to make their purchases using Ionic wherever contactless payments are accepted.
Ionic offers more than 15 different clock face options, ranging from sleek and understated to fun and fitness-focused so you can customize the display to your own personal style.
Fitbit Ionic will be available for pre-sale from today on Fitbit.com and select online retailers tomorrow for $299.95. Ionic will be available in stores worldwide beginning October 2017, including major North American retailers Amazon, Best Buy, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Kohl’s, Macy’s, REI, Target, and Verizon.
