Fitbit merchandise haven’t precisely been a spotlight for Google for the reason that acquisition closed at first of 2021. It’s been clear from the beginning that the software program large’s curiosity within the wearable pioneer got here all the way down to its personal proprietary smartwatch ambitions. We noticed that play out with final 12 months’s Pixel Watch launch and can seemingly see it once more throughout subsequent week’s {hardware} occasion.
Nonetheless, whereas Fitbit units themselves haven’t been a precedence for Alphabet, it could possibly’t merely again away from the road altogether. Fitbit nonetheless has an enormous userbase of devoted followers {that a} single Pixel Watch can’t tackle. That goes double for the oldsters preferring an easier band with out all the smartwatch bells and whistles.
Greater than two years after the Cost 5 turned Fitbit’s first post-acquisition machine, Alphabet is refreshing the road. The dad or mum firm’s fingerprints are all around the press launch asserting the brand new wearable.
“Cost 6 helps you keep on observe along with your objectives,” the corporate notes, “because of superior well being sensors that, mixed with a brand new machine studying algorithm, carry you our most correct coronary heart fee monitoring on a Fitbit tracker but.”
Tying biometric sensors to machine studying algorithms could be very a lot a product of the Google/Fitbit marriage. Well being has, after all, been the inspiration of the wearables class for years now, and far of the brand new work we’re seeing is an effort to additional refine the immense quantities of well being information these units gather. It’s not dissimilar from when Google started leaning very closely on computational pictures for the Pixel line.
In actual fact, the brand new coronary heart fee monitoring tech is borrowed immediately from the Pixel Watch. This might in the end show to be the prototypical pipeline, going ahead. The groups construct one thing new for the Pixel Watch that ultimately makes its approach onto Fitbit units. That this arrives shortly earlier than Google is predicted to announce a brand new Watch absolutely isn’t a coincidence.
The opposite large addition right here is the flexibility to attach the Cost to exercise apps and tools like these from NordicTrack, Peloton, Concept2 and Tonal, for real-time metric monitoring. And simply in case you had been fearful that the Cost isn’t smartwatch sufficient, the machine is getting some first-party Google software program.
“For the primary time, we’re bringing useful Google instruments to a tracker. Cost 6 may have Google Maps and Google Pockets, making it handy to go from exercises to errands and all over the place in between,” Fitbit notes. “Navigate on the go utilizing Google Maps to get turn-by-turn instructions proper in your wrist, or seize a post-workout snack utilizing Google Pockets to make contactless funds.”
The Fitbit Cost 6 is up for preorder at the moment. It is going to run $160 when it goes on sale later this fall.