Music, Coaching, and 4+ Days of Battery Life—Fitbit Ionic is the All-in-One Watch You’ve Been Waiting For

Fitbit Ionic

Think back to January. Did you make a resolution? Set any goals? Vow to break a bad habit?

Now take stock of where you are today. The year is winding down. What did you achieve? Where have you fallen short? What do you want to accomplish next? And most important, how can you get there?

No, wait. Don’t answer that last question. Fitbit has the answer.

Introducing Fitbit Ionic, a watch that delivers a highly personalized health- and fitness-first experience not previously seen in other devices. With on-wrist dynamic workouts, built-in GPS, advanced fitness and swim tracking capabilities, and more, Ionic is the perfect goal-chasing companion.

So think about where you want to be this coming January and then read about all the ways Ionic can support you along the way.

10 Fitbit Ionic Features for Goal-Diggers

You Need: Personal Training
Fitbit Ionic Has: Four on-device workouts, including one that adapts based on your progress and feedback. Additional workouts will be available in fall 2017 through Fitbit Coach, a new subscription-based guidance and coaching service. 

Fitbit Ionic Fitbit Coach Integration

You Need: Motivation
Fitbit Ionic Has: The ability to store more than 300 songs (2.5 GB of storage). With the Pandora* app, sync your favorite stations or choose from curated workout stations and download directly to the watch—no phone required. You can listen hands-free by connecting Ionic to the new Fitbit Flyer wireless headphones, or any Bluetooth-enabled listening device of your choosing. Because nothing is more motivating than rocking out while you’re working out.

You Need: Consistency
Fitbit Ionic Has: A multi-day battery life of more than four days on a single charge (depending on use and other factors) and up to 10 hours when using GPS or playing music, so there won’t be any gaps in your data.

You Need: Convenience
Fitbit Ionic Has: Access to your favorite apps for sports, weather, music, and more; notifications from apps on your smartphone like Facebook, Gmail, Instagram, Slack, Snapchat; and Fitbit Pay, which allows you to make purchases using Ionic wherever contactless payments are accepted. Over the coming months you will be able to add eligible US American Express cards, as well as Mastercard and Visa credit and debit cards from top issuing banks in over 10 markets across the globe, including ANZ, Banco Santander, Bank of America, Capital One, HSBC, KBC Bank Ireland, OCBC Bank, Royal Bank of Canada, UOB and US Bank with more countries and banks planned soon.

Fitbit Ionic Fitbit Pay Integration

You Need: Variety
Fitbit Ionic Has: A new Run Detect feature that automatically tracks real-time heart rate, pace, distance, elevation, and split times; an interval timer; and an exercise mode that can capture real-time stats of over 20 types of activities, including biking, bootcamp, circuit training, elliptical, golfing, hiking, kickboxing, martial arts, Pilates, spinning, stair climber, tennis, walking, weights, yoga, and—drumroll, please—swimming! With water resistance up to 50 meters and industry-leading lap counting, you can also use Ionic in the pool and see your real-time laps, exercise duration, and calories burned for pool swims.

Water-Resistant Fitbit Ionic

You Need: Route Tracking
Fitbit Ionic Has: An integrated antenna that provides a stronger connection to GPS and GLONASS satellites, delivering leading GPS performance. That means you can leave your phone behind and still get accurate heart rate, pace, distance, elevation, and split times right on your wrist, as well as a map of your walk, run, or ride in the Fitbit app.

You Need: Customization
Fitbit Ionic Has: Fitbit Ionic OS, the company’s new operating system for smartwatches, that will be regularly updated to add new user experiences. This includes the Fitbit App Gallery, where you can select the apps and clock faces that reflect your own personal needs and style. Leading partner apps available on Fitbit Ionic at launch include Pandora*, Strava, Weather powered by global leader AccuWeather, and Starbucks Coffee Company**. (If you’re interested in building apps for the Fitbit App Gallery, you will be able to use the Software Development Kit (SDK), including our Web-based developer environment Fitbit Studio, starting in September 2017. To learn more, visit dev.fitbit.com.)

Fitbit Ionic app partners

You Need: Heart Rate
Fitbit Ionic Has: Enhanced PurePulse continuous heart rate tracking with greater accuracy during high-intensity training for exercises like cycling, weight lifting and elliptical. PurePulse also allows you to better measure calorie burn all day and during workouts, see real-time heart rate zones, and track your resting heart rate 24/7. Other popular Fitbit heart-healthy features—like Cardio Fitness Score, Relax, and Reminders to Move—are also included.

You Need: Rest
Fitbit Ionic Has: Sleep Stages and Sleep Insights, two innovative features that give you access to information previously only accessible in a sleep lab. Sleep Stages uses accelerometer data, heart rate variability (the time between beats), and proven algorithms to estimate how long you spend in light, deep, and REM sleep stages (as well as time awake) each night. Sleep Insights uses your Fitbit data—everything from your diet to your exercise patterns—to uncover what may be affecting your sleep and then offers up personalized guidance on how to improve it.

You Need: Style
Fitbit Ionic Has: 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. It’s also compatible with a variety of high-quality accessories: classic bands in blue gray with silver gray buckle, charcoal with smoke gray buckle, and slate blue with burnt orange buckle; two-toned breathable Sport Bands in blue gray and coral, black and charcoal, and cobalt and lime; as well as hand-crated and perforated Horween leather bands in cognac and midnight blue.

Fitbit Ionic Product Family

Elevate Your Activity-Tracking Experience Today

Fitbit Ionic is available for presale 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.

Fitbit is also partnering with adidas to deliver a Fitbit Ionic special edition device and training programs in 2018. This relationship will leverage adidas’ robust performance program expertise with Fitbit data and insights from millions of global users to help athletes of all levels perform better, play better, and feel better. Get notified when it’s available

*Pandora Plus or Pandora Premium subscription is required. US only.

**The Starbucks app is available in the US and Canada only.

19 Comments   Join the Conversation

19 CommentsLeave a comment

  • Hey Danielle, can you tell us how long the estimated battery life is while running GPS? I’m an avid hiker who currently uses a FitBit Surge. My hikes can last for 10+ hours, and the Surge’s battery life will usually die before the end of my hike when running GPS (~7-8 hours).

  • Hello Danielle,

    Some of the new features will be available for blaze version as well? I’m only speaking about the software changes of course – nothing related with hardware as GPS.

  • Hi Me and my friends looking forward for the introduction of a clip model fitbit like fitbit one. That will be very convenient for many working professional.

  • Hi Danielle, thanos for this blog.

    Do you know if this model will include interval training but rather than only on timing also on distance? As a runner, I do speed training every week (e.g. 6 intervals of 1000 meters) but this has not been possible in the past. Would this feature be available in the new watch?

    Thanks

  • Any idea if it will be more accurate in terms of measuring calories burned while using the heart rate monitor?

  • So does new model have the same lame band design as the Surge (looks nice but when it fails your screwed as cannot replace even if watch is fine…not very sustainable / green) ?

  • So it looks like you do not need to carry your phone to have the GPS working, but I assume you do need it to listen to music on your route?

  • I’m a current Fitbit Aria and previous Fitbit One owner (until it got run over by a car), and I have a Pebble Time.

    The Pebble Time’s fitness features aren’t as good as the Fitbit One, but I wasn’t going to lose the Pebble like the One, either. I looked at the Blaze, and wasn’t impressed.

    The Ionic looks a lot more promising than the Blaze did, and I like the embedded GPS and Bluetooth music. The ability to go for a run/hike without a phone is a big plus.

    Things that I consider important:
    Step counting
    Sleep tracking
    Readable in sunlight
    Always-on display (at least an an option)

    Questions:

    1. It appears to have Pebble-like notifications. It mentions SMS and email, but what about things like calendar events? And event timers? With my Pebble, if I have a 3pm meeting in my Google calendar, the watch can remind me 5/10/15 minutes beforehand. Can the Ionic do that?

    2. Currently, I can respond to SMS with canned replies directly from the watch. So if I get a text, I can hit a button and the sender gets “I’m currently driving, I will contact you when I arrive”. Can I do this with the Ionic?

    3. Can the watch control the phone’s music player? It’s great that it has onboard music, but I’d like to be able to control my existing playlists on my phone as I currently do.

  • Will this fitbit stand up to rugged obstacle course racing like Spartan and Tough Mudder? These involve mud crawls, wall jumps and dunking in muddy pits. Rough tough &rugged is what I’m looking for.

  • The description says it connects to my favorite apps. However, will this send me ALL text alerts that I normally get on my phone? For example, I often get hockey score updates or alerts from my home security system – will the Ionic sends those alerts as well?

  • I have seen reference to new fitbit Ionic watch being readable in the sunlight. Can U expand on this. Very discouraging to not be able to see display on my Charge2 device.

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