Fitbit Charge 3 review: a brilliant in-between

Although the body is smaller, the screen is larger and provides more information, including the display of text messages and other notifications from your phone. Swipe down to see your notifications, up to see your stats, and left to relax or do some exercise. It's not as intuitive as it could be, but you get used to it. You can choose a dial from a range of options built into the app, including some that display your heart rate at any time. The heart rate seemed pretty accurate compared to my Apple Watch Series 4 and my old Fitbit Alta.

The new integrated relax function is a great idea in theory, although my breathing is not judged by a particularly relaxing watch in practice. When you do a good and deep breath, you are supposed to have sparks, and despite some deep breaths really excellent (in my opinion, anyway), I only have them 20% of the time, which was annoying. Nobody wants to lose to relaxation and the gamification of breathing is strange.

A big improvement over previous versions of the Charge is that it is now completely waterproof and can swim. This is great news for swimmers and sweaters. He can, with reasonable success, follow running, cycling, swimming, treadmill and weight exercises, in addition to acting as a stopwatch and you can choose from nine other exercises in the application (but you can only have six devices). However, it is important to note that there is no built-in GPS, so you will need to bring your phone when you use it if you want to use location data. In addition, it does not make music, so you always have your phone with you.

What is curious, however, is that the two main characteristics of the SpO2 sensor's 3 – sleep score and blood oxygen level – are not yet available in the application. They sound like great features, making their lack of usability at the launch curious.

All in all, it's a solid fitness tracker. Unless you're a swimmer, it's probably not worth it to go from load 2 to major upgrades, but it's certainly worth the original charge or an Alta HR.

Charge 3 is what you get when you want to keep track of your physical condition in more detail, but you do not want to spend extra money or be distracted by a smart watch. In this respect, it is exactly what it should be.