اخبار العرب من المحيط للخليج

At the outset, let me just put it out there that the last couple of months have not lent themselves well to fitness or the idea of fitness. That combined with my inclination towards being a sloth over a hamster, it wasn’t the best time overall towards testing out a tracker.

But I acknowledge that I am part of a shrinking minority, and for those of you who are ninja-masking your way to the four-minute mile, I present the Fitbit Charge 4, a fitness tracker that makes an impact with all that it has to offer.

This is starting with the design. The Charge 4 is an extremely lightweight tracker, light enough that you will with repeated use forget that it is there on your wrist. I certainly did and that matters a whole lot to me.

On the top, you get a (boring) 1-inch monochrome OLED display that is useful sometimes, but frustratingly, quite useless at other times. One constant complaint was about using it in daylight conditions—you can’t read much at all. Ugh.

The display has a decent success rate with the whole raise-to-wake function but you will still find yourself using the haptic ‘home’ button on the side of the tracker to wake it up a fair number of times.

The design is rounded off by the charging pins and heart rate monitor on the inside, the part which sits on your wrist. Overall a design that doesn’t wow, but does not disappoint either.

Now the tracking fitness bit is where the Charge 4 shows its stripes.

The Charge 4 comes with six default shortcuts—running, cycling, swimming, treadmill, outdoor workouts, and walking. Then there are in about 20 odd goal-based exercise modes you can work with on the app.

On the face of it, it covers the average Jameel’s weekly workouts. But from where I see it, if you are invested enough to buy a fitness tracker, you are doing a whole lot more than these six default activities. A minor flaw, but I would guess also easily fixable by an update? Then again, like I noted, it still works for the majority.

Then you have the in-built GPS, a key differentiator that separates the Charge 4 from all the other ‘Charges’ that have come before it. I cannot explain how awesome this is. One of my pet peeves with fitness trackers has been the whole carrying your smartphone with you. This feature kills that need and you can take off on your run load and distraction-free.

Using the GPS on my Marina run, I found the Charge 4 to be super accurate and returning almost to the point coordinates. This feature at the price range is a big YES in the Charge 4’s corner and something that vaults it into the tracker versus smartwatch conversation.

For both running and cycling, the two workouts that one could execute with little difficulty and precautions in the UAE’s Covid-19 lockdowns, the Charge 4 tracked and processed my workouts (pace, speed, distance, time, and heart rate) flawlessly to show them up on the Fitbit app. No complaints there, and I dare say that it worked at par with my regular wear smartwatch. Once we are out of survival mode, I expect to expand the use of Charge 4 to my other activities, mainly swimming.

The automatic tracking was helpful too-if nothing else it converts the casual to something meaningful. A grocery run (walk) is automatically tracked as is the 200m bolt towards your dog at the other end of the park as it is about to chew up a dead rat. All calories are created equal, and so we should measure them no matter how they are burned.

Also of note is a new metric feature called Active Zone Minutes, which Fitbit is going to make a key pillar in its future launches. At its core, this is a motivational tool, where the Charge 4 detects and tracks time spent in each elevated heart rate zone.

Clubbed together, Charge 4 will tell you if you hit the weekly recommended 150 minutes of moderate activity, or 75 minutes of vigorous activity, as recommended by the American Heart Association. It is not a new feature for wearables per se but a first for Fitbit.

There are other neat additions and features in the Charge 4. Fitbit Pay, which will work for customers for Al Hilal Bank, Emirates NBD, Najm and RAKBANK in the UAE. I expect it will work smoothly (I did not review this because at the time of testing there were not enough stores ready to process or familiar with such payments around my abode).

There is also Spotify integration, which is both a pro and a con in one go. For yes, it is there. But you will have to take your smartphone with you on your workouts should you wish to do so. And so there goes that. Also, the music playback controls on the tracker itself are only for Spotify users. If you subscribe to any other service, this feature is a no go.

The Charge 4 also tracks your sleep and this is handy for those interested in such a thing (I am not). A SpO2 monitor, a feature not frequently seen on trackers, produces an Estimated Oxygen Variation Graph that can catch variations in your breathing during sleep. Handy but not necessary.

Speaking of zzzzz, there is also a Sleep Mode that turns off notifications and disables the display to save you from untimely distractions. Now, this is both handy and necessary.

Battery life on the Charge 4 is interesting. According to Fitbit, the battery can last up to seven days on a single charge with normal use, or up to five hours with GPS usage. Given that a runner will use a max of two hours of GPS daily, true battery life will be somewhere around four days. With my restricted use, I clocked five days and some.

Charge 4 is available for AED 699 in black, rosewood and storm blue/black, while the Charge 4 Special Edition, that comes with a reflective band, will be available for AED 799.

At that price, with the GPS and all those extra features, the Fitbit knows what’s up. I have to admit that the advanced athlete might desire something more loaded when it comes to tracking, while some (runners?) might require something more activity-specific.

But as a package of features, hardware, and design aimed an audience that is more diverse and large, the Fitbit Charge 4 comes damn close to wearing the wearable crown for now.