Fitbit Versa Lite Smartwatch, GPS, Charcoal/Silver

Great product and awesome customer support.

I had an Apple Watch for about a year before it cracked and lost a good chunk of glass (no idea how). It still worked fine… until I went swimming and forgot to take it off. Even rice couldn’t save it. Anyways, I didn’t feel like paying like 400 bucks for a new one, so I started looking for alternatives. I stumbled across the FitBit Versa, and I decided to purchase the Lite edition because it did everything that I wanted it to do and didn’t want to pay more for features I likely wouldn’t use. Anyways, I’ve had it for almost a month now, and it’s INCREDIBLE. It’s ten times better than my Apple Watch was. The sleep tracker is awesome, the step counter is accurate, and it’s battery actually does last for about 4 days. My old Apple Watch couldn’t be even make it through one and a half. All in all, amazing purchase, I HIGHLY recommend, especially to those who are deciding between this and an Apple Watch.

Gute Fitnessuhr hauptsächlich nutze ich sie zum Schritte zählen und Schlafindex.

I write this review as a once loyal Fitbit customer. I had the Flex and then the Blaze, which I loved, even though the battery stopped working after about 18 months. I was rather upset about having to replace a $150 watch so soon but because I really like Fitbit products, I decided to give the Versa Lite a try. If you NEVER plan on replacing the band, then by all means, purchase this watch and enjoy it. It’s fun, and has lots of great features. If you do replace bands, then get ready for a nightmare. I bought replacement bands and tried to put them on. It wasn’t just a struggle, it was almost impossible. Perhaps they’re defective, you say? Wrong. I couldn’t put back the original band. In fact, I still cannot, after half an hour and bleeding fingers. (I am not exaggerating. My fingers are bloody, which is my fault, I should have given up.) This is, far and away, the least user-friendly designed replacement band system, ever. No one should ever have to waste so much time and effort to change a band! It is horrible. Simply horrible. Why Fitbit allowed this to go to market is beyond me. I called Fitbit customer service and the very polite representative, after going through the procedure of how to put in the band (which I’m quite familiar with), asked to see pictures of the band and the holes in the watch, to make sure it’s not defective. I tried to indulge him, but honestly, there is nothing wrong with the band. He then asked me when I purchased the watch. I told him Black Friday. He said, oh, it’s new, so just get a refund. This is how Fitbit deals with loyal customers! I’ve had four Fitbits and I am told if I don’t like it, to get a refund. Well, yes, thank you, I know I can do that, and I will. But I thought a company with as many competitors as Fitbit might want to keep customers loyal. Truly sad.

I thought I did my research well enough on this device, but I was mistaken. I really wanted to love this smartwatch/fitness tracker. I don’t have a lot of needs, but I need them all met, and based on the spec sheet and advertised featureset this should cover everything.

What I liked about this device:
– Long battery life
– Lightweight
– Gets all my app notifications
– Fitness tracking

What the marketing material doesn’t say:

– Setup is a nightmare. The device ships with a firmware version that needs to be plugged into a PC in order to be able to update itself to a firmware version that can update OTA; except Windows 10 doesn’t recognize the device when plugged in and Fitbit doesn’t have drivers available on their website. Then once you get the device updated, there’s still a slew of connectivity issues getting the device to pair properly with your phone.

– The app notifications are inconsistent at best. There aren’t many apps I actually want notifications from, but the few I do want I need them consistently. Sometimes they come through and everything is great, and other times they don’t come at all and the troubleshooting steps to fix them is to reinstall the Fitbit software, reconfigure the device (and all of its settings), and restart both my phone and the watch.

Here’s the kicker: these are problems occurring in the first 24 hours! I haven’t even had the device for a full day yet and I’m having all these problems. My last smartwatch, an LG G Watch R, was made in 2014 and didn’t have any of these problems. It’s 2020 Fitbit, this level of inadequacy is unacceptable.

This device is a sleek and stylish fitness tracker, and does those tasks well enough, but if that was all I wanted there are better devices (even better Fitbit devices) that do that job. I bought the Versa Lite because I needed app notifications, and having to reconfigure the device daily isn’t going to work out for me.

I’m giving this a few more days to see if things stabilize before I return it.

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EDIT: I’ve owned this for a week. The setup process is a nightmare because it ships with a buggy version of the firmware, and there’s no way to force or sideload the update. You just have to wait DAYS until the device finally decides to update. After the update, many of the problems went away.

Coincidentally, I got myself a new phone about a day after I got the update and once I paired the FitBit to my new phone things that never worked on my old phone suddenly worked on the new one.

Pre-update + old phone: 2/5 stars
Post-update + old phone: 3/5 stars
Post-update + new phone: 4/5 stars

I’ll be updating my rating from 2 stars to 4 stars because once it’s fully updated it’s everything I wanted from it, but the horrible out-of-the-box experience cannot be overlooked. Word of advice: if you do decide to buy this, aim to get it a week before you actually want to start using it!

Ho acquistato il Fitbit come regalo per la mia migliore amica nel mese di settembre, fino ad ora ha sempre mantenuto tutte le funzionalità. Amico perfetto per chi volesse rilevare i dati essenziali giornalieri sull’esercizio fisico. Comodo e leggero.