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Fitbit has released a huge new update, bringing new metrics to Charge 4 – and some of its best Premium features behind the paywall.
The Charge 4 – Fitbit’s premium fitness tracker – receives the most love, elevating it to the Fitbit Sense health watch with temperature tracking and extensive blood oxygen data.
And the company also revised Health Metrics, which was previously the originator of paywall’s Fitbit Premium service. It is now available for free to more people and it has improved functionality to help people better understand their health data.
Additionally, users in Canada, New Zealand, and the United States can now benefit from the ECG function on their Fitbit Sense.
New features have already landed on our accounts, so let us show you.
Loads 4 new features
More interesting for Charge 4 users, the company is adding skin temperature data for this device. The temperature metric has only been found on the Fitbit Sense so far, so this is a new addition to the lineup.
And Charge 4 users will also be able to see a blood oxygen reading on the wrist. Previously, SpO2 sensor readings were only evident in the graph of estimated oxygen change as part of the device’s sleep tracking.
But like the Versa 3 and Sense, which launched the SpO2 watch face, Charge 4 users will be able to see the oxygen saturation on the device itself for the first time.
The fitness tracker form factor is synonymous with the Fitbit experience, even in the smartwatch age, so it’s no surprise that Fitbit doesn’t want to see the Charge 4 left behind. It’s now even more powerful and even surpasses the Versa 3 as a health device.
Health measures for more users
Health Metrics is available for the first time for non-premium users
If that wasn’t enough, Versa 2, Charge 4, and Inspire 2 users can now access the Data Health Metrics dashboard without a Fitbit Premium subscription.
Health Metrics is a section of the Fitbit app that displays raw biometric data from your Fitbit device’s range of sensors – and many aren’t available elsewhere in the app.
The devices above will display respiratory rate and heart rate variability for the first time – alongside old favorites like resting heart rate.
However, it is not quite the same experience as Premium users. Those who don’t pay for the subscription can only see a week’s data – while those who pay the $ 79.99 per month can see an entire month.
You can see the screenshot above, which shows the health metrics for a non-premium account on Charge 4.
Health Metrics moves towards disease detection
Health metrics showing personal ranges
But the changes do not affect all non-premium users. Those who use Health Metrics will now see their personal ranges, which are designed to help make sense of the data.
Anyone who uses Health Metrics can be a little mystified by big spikes or drops in data like respiratory rate and heart rate variability. Fatigue, fatigue, or alcohol can be factors that can cause heart rate variability to drop – and in our review of the Fitbit Sense, we criticized this part of the app for its lack of clarity for users who try to make sense of the numbers.
Now Fitbit is adding a clearly marked personal range on the Health Metrics chart – to try and add context on what our body’s usual natural rhythm is and what might be something to note.
The company’s COVID-19 study showed that abnormal changes in respiratory rate and HRV can be early signs of an infection – so adding a personal range is the first step toward something that looks like upon detection of disease.
Fitbit adds support for blood sugar tracking
Fitbit also added in-app blood sugar tracking for the first time.
While this is not detected by any given Fitbit tracker (non-invasive portable blood sugar tracking is still somewhat disabled), it does mean that those who monitor blood sugar can enter their readings through the Fitbit app.
On the surface, this will act the same as features like hydration and nutrition tracking in the Fitbit app, which aren’t connected to the device itself.
The Fitbit glucose tracking feature will also allow users to set high and low ranges for blood sugar, along with associated symptoms. And users will be able to see trends over time, to help identify patterns of blood sugar behavior.
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