PR / Business Insider
The Fitbit Sense 2* is a premium smartwatch that is more sporty than smart as its focus is on health and fitness.
In addition to a variety of activities that can be tracked, it also offers the possibility to measure skin temperature and track stress in real time.
However, since the wearable doesn’t support third-party apps, it’s somewhat limited as a true smartwatch.
For the second generation of the Sense, Fitbit has made some excellent improvements to the design. The company has also put a lot of effort into improving its health and wellness features, including sensible tweaks to stress detection. But these changes come with growing pains, especially for loyal users. As a premium flagship model, the Fitbit Sense 2 aims to be the perfect mix of fitness tracker and smartwatch. And while it boasts holistic health data, some users might be disappointed by the lack of smart features.
As far as smart features are concerned, Fitbit has made some questionable cuts. Fitbit has dropped the Google Assistant and support for third-party apps – two key aspects that you could say are more or less standard for smartwatches these days.
Add to that the Google Pixel Watch*, which is smarter than the Sense 2 and basically offers the same health features for a few bucks more (Google acquired Fitbit in 2021), and who exactly is the Sense for? 2 is actually intended.
Buy Fitbit Sense 2
Positive is:
- Lightweight, comfortable design
- Extensive health and wellness tracking, including all-day stress tracking
- Excellent battery life
What needs to be improved
- No Google Assistant
- No music storage or playback
- No third-party app support
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The Fitbit Sense 2 is built to be barely noticeable, and that’s one of its best assets. With the slim profile and rounded corners, the smartwatch is comfortable to wear day or night. And while it’s lighter and thinner than its predecessor, it features the same 1.58-inch AMOLED touchscreen display that’s easy to read even in bright environments.
In addition to navigating via the touchscreen, Fitbit has added a button to access apps and shortcuts. The original Sense featured a touch-sensitive display that could be inadvertently pressed with even the slightest flex of the wrist. So the tactile button is a welcome practical improvement, especially when training.
Health features, including real-time stress monitoring
If you’re looking for a wearable that accurately tracks your activity and offers a wide range of health features, the Sense 2 won’t disappoint. In addition to the features known from other Fitbit watches such as blood oxygen measurement, menstrual cycle recording and heart rate variability, the Sense 2 goes even further with an integrated skin temperature sensor, ECG measurements and real-time stress monitoring.
Take stress tracking, for example. Using the built-in cEDA sensor, the Sense 2 measures your body’s stress level in real time and can notify you when certain values are reached in order to reduce it. This can be done, for example, through breathing exercises or an invitation to exercise. This is a unique (and useful) feature that can help get a picture of how well your body is handling stressors on a daily basis.
This feature also extends through the Fitbit app, where you can input how you’re feeling when your watch detects a stressful event. The app’s “Weekly Summary” feature then displays each of these feelings throughout the week, giving an interesting overview of your mood.
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What the Fitbit Sense 2 records:
- steps
- Sleep
- stress level
- blood oxygen
- Irregular heart rhythm
- heart rate
- menstrual cycle
- skin temperature
- GPS and distance covered
- More than 40 compatible exercises to record
Solid activity tracking with mostly reliable GPS
We were initially skeptical about how well the GPS would work in the Sense 2, as we weren’t entirely convinced by the Versa 4*, another wearable from Fitbit. While the Versa 4 had a number of issues with GPS syncing and tracking, our experience with the Sense 2 was very different.
We found everything about the watch to be intuitive and easy to use, and never felt like we had to wait more than a few seconds for GPS syncing. Every recorded activity is automatically uploaded to the Fitbit app, so you could see all recorded training data directly after a workout. This included the total time spent in the activity and a detailed map showing where you were during the activity.
One criticism of the Sense 2’s tracking feature was its automatic workout tracking. It’s supposed to automatically detect when you’ve started an activity, but we often found it barely worked, and when it did, it wasn’t very accurate. When we manually started tracking activities, we found that distance, pace and heart rate information was consistent, while the automatically tracked exercises were pretty off the mark.
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A smartwatch with limited smart features
The watch still has Amazon Alexa integration (an odd decision given that the Google Assistant had to go). As far as apps go, the Sense 2 offers support for Google Wallet and Google Maps alongside the native health and fitness features.
Of course, there’s also text, call and email notifications, as well as a phone finder function, but that’s the bare minimum of standard features that even non-smart wearables have.
Impressive battery life
One of the biggest criticisms of smartwatches is their poor battery life. The Apple Watch Series 8, for example, barely lasts a full day. With the Sense 2, however, Fitbit has built in a battery that lasts for days. The brand promises that the Sense 2 will last around six days with all the essential apps and features. During our testing, we found that actual battery life was slightly shorter. Nevertheless, we were able to wear the watch for several days at a time. In addition, the watch only needs about twelve minutes to be charged for the whole day.
Fitbit Sense 2: Is it worth buying?
If you are looking for a fitness tracker that is also intelligent, then you will hardly find a better watch for a price of just under 300.00 euros (RRP). With new features like skin temperature measurement and detailed stress tracking, it’s a solid performance.
But despite the fact that this is a premium smartwatch that excels at health and fitness tracking, it falls a bit short when it comes to smart features. If these are important to you, you should rather choose the Google Pixel Watch*.
This article is a translation. The English original by Mattie Schuler from “Insider” can be found here: “Fitbit Sense 2 review: Fitbit’s flagship is a premium wearable that’s more sporty than smart”