Wearables firm Fitbit has announced the launch of Fitbit Charge 3, the latest evolution of its Charge family of devices which has 35 million devices sold to date.
The Charge 3 features an swimproof design with a touchscreen display, 15-plus goal-based exercise modes, up to 7 days battery life, and Fitbit?s most advanced sensor and algorithm technology in a tracker.
“With Charge 3, we are building on the success of our best-selling Charge franchise and delivering the most innovative tracker on the market, offering an extremely slim, comfortable and premium design along with the advanced health and fitness features our users want. Charge 3 gives existing users a compelling reason to upgrade, while also allowing us to reach new users who want a more sleek, affordable wearable in a tracker form factor,” said James Park, co-founder and CEO of Fitbit.
“Our commitment to consumer choice and ability to meet the demand of millions of users by offering a range of products, from trackers to smartwatches, enables us to continue to expand our share of the overall wearables market.”
Charge 3 is crafted from lightweight materials, including an aerospace grade aluminum case and Corning Gorilla Glass 3 display for a slimmer, increased durability, and more comfortable fit for men and women.
Fitbit Charge 3 is the first wearable with an inductive button, which includes new patent-pending technology that provides a streamlined, swimproof design and increased space in the device to add more sensors plus a larger battery with up to 7 days of use.
Charge 3 also delivers the most advanced health and fitness features found on a Fitbit tracker to date. With more than nine trillion minutes of heart rate data tracked, Fitbit has enhanced its 24/7 PurePulse heart rate technology for even greater accuracy during exercise compared to Charge 2, and provides a better measure of calorie burn and resting heart rate to optimize workouts and uncover health trends.
The addition of a relative SpO2 sensor — a first for a Fitbit tracker — adds the potential to estimate relative blood oxygen levels and help track new health indicators, like sleep apnea.
Fitbit started tracking sleep in 2009 and has built one of the largest databases of sleep over the past seven years with more than 7.5 billion nights tracked. The company also introduced Sleep Stages & Sleep Insights based on heart rate variability to give users in-depth understanding of sleep quality.
“Fitbit continues to harness its data to give users actionable insights into their health and wellness. For example, we’ve found that 1 in 4 people get significantly more sleep on weekends than weekdays, which implies they are trying to make up for reduced sleep during the week. We can deliver insights to these users through the Fitbit app to make them aware of how this behavior affects their well-being and suggest how to set up a sleep schedule,” said Shelten Yuen, VP of research at Fitbit.
“In the future, we hope to provide more guidance to our users to reduce the risk of disease so they can become the healthiest versions of themselves.”
Fitbit continues to make advancements in sleep and is announcing a new Sleep Score beta from Fitbit Labs that will be available to Fitbit users later this year. Using key metrics tracked by any Fitbit device with its 24/7 PurePulse heart rate tracking, Sleep Score will provide a nightly score to help give you a more complete picture of your overall sleep quality and what factors affect it.
In addition, for devices with a relative SpO2 sensor, including Charge 3, Fitbit Ionic and Fitbit Versa, Fitbit will test alerting users to breathing disruptions, which can be indicators of health issues such as allergies, asthma or sleep apnea.
“With the Fitbit Labs Sleep Score beta, we’re pioneering an intuitive way for people to understand their sleep. It’s an example of how we are continually evolving the health experience for our users,” Yuen added.
Separately, Fitbit will continue to collect clinical data to test and develop FDA grade systems for health conditions such as sleep apnea and atrial fibrillation. Fitbit is one of nine companies in the FDA’s digital health software pre-certification pilot program, which is designed to streamline the approval process for software as a medical device.
Charge 3, which will be available in the Philippines starting November 2018, is priced at P9,990 in black with a graphite aluminum case or blue gray with rose gold aluminum case. Fitbit Charge 3 Special Edition will be available for P10,990. Accessories range from P1,790 to P3,190.
