Google Fitbit Air: two weeks of app use, battery and wear

After using Fitbit Air for two weeks, I’m mainly sharing my experience with the apps this time.

Before discussing the apps, I’ll first cover battery life and wear.

- The official battery claim is seven days, but I measured 9–10 days with daily commuting and six hours of high-intensity exercise each week. Charging is also very fast: it takes about ten minutes to go from 20% to 80%. I always charge it to 80%; apparently, that is better for the battery.

- The tracker is fairly prone to scratches. I was still very careful with it, but it may have been scratched by hard particles on clothing because I often wiped it with my clothes, as shown in image 1. There are more serious examples on Reddit, where sunscreen and DEET-containing insect repellent severely corroded the surface. The plastic material really does need attention. I no longer apply skincare essence to the wrist wearing the tracker; apparently, skincare essence can also corrode the casing.

Two apps compared

Compared with Fitbit, GH (Google Health) feels more like a child’s logic and intuition: the information is too scattered, without good logic or organization. As shown in image 2, GH changed the interface for Fitbit Air so that one-third is used for the dashboard and two-thirds for activity and automatically detected movement notifications. It completely caters to this screenless tracker while sacrificing the Pixel Watch family.

Images 3–6 show that Fitbit’s information summaries and organization are very intuitive. Each level of tapping reveals more detail, whereas GH does not work intuitively in this way and scatters information in different places. No wonder some people say GH was “vibe coded.” We’ll see whether future updates bring major changes.

Regarding the data, after using GH with Fitbit Air for two weeks, its resting heart rate began to trend toward Fitbit’s results; early on, it was consistently a little higher. For sleep data, Fitbit defines awake periods more generously, while GH counts only awake periods longer than five minutes. As a result, Fitbit reports a shorter sleep time, but its score is higher than GH’s.

Finally, there is the Premium Ask Coach feature. You can search for the activation method yourself. One point to note: avoid automatic proxy-server selection. During these three free months, I feel it can teach some basic knowledge about exercise recovery and diet. Coincidentally, I felt unwell after exercise twice in the past few weeks, something I had not experienced for many years. Through GH, I learned about recovering at home, eating more healthily and judging whether I should go to hospital. I plan to ask more questions and learn more during the remaining free period, hoping to learn some basic knowledge before it ends.

The recovery advice I remember most clearly was to keep warm. At first, I wondered whether this was based on traditional Chinese medicine because I had asked the question in Chinese. Later, Scott, the coach, told me it was based on sports-science recovery theory. It reminded me that my parents had always told me to wear more layers and keep warm. Sometimes our prejudice against our parents runs too deep.

Overall, I still really like Fitbit Air. I was so eager that I sold my Pixel Watch and have decided to wear this tracker all the time. Its slimness is especially impressive—almost perfect. It is far better in this respect than my previous watch.