Fitbit Alta: Designed To Be With You On A Daily Basis

The Fitbit Alta is the newest product released by the activity tracker company Fitbit. Learning from its previous efforts to create fully-featured tracker devices, such as the Fitbit Charge HR and the Surge, and their terribly-designed Blaze smartwatch, Fitbit delivers a gorgeous activity tracker that would pass as a luxury watch with the proper band set on.

Starting at $130, the Fitbit Alta is the first Fitbit model conceived with design in mind and not a second thought. Offering us a wide range of band choices: going from the Classic models, which come in black, blue, plum and teal, to the gorgeous Luxe models, which come in pink or graphite leather, and stainless steel. This choice range comes with something specific in mind: Fitbit wants you to replace your watch for a Fitbit as a daily driver, and it made the usability changes required to make such premise approachable.

The Fitbit Alta incorporates a waterproof, scratch-resistant OLED display with touchscreen capabilities for user interactions. This is a huge improvement from previous iterations, as it should leave screen tearing and other usability problems in the past.

Being built with simplicity in mind, Fitbit reduced functionality to keep usability in the spotlight, showing only one feature at the time on screen, for it to be easy to be checked at a glance and to keep your focus on the activity you’re doing at the time. It has no buttons, which can be surprising at first, but it is consciously made to take advantage of the new tap-sensitive display capabilities.

You can light the screen by tapping twice on Alta’s display or by flicking your wrist, and then tap the screen once to browse between the different tracking capabilities provided. The Fitbit Alta can show your daily activity levels, sleep patterns and basic fitness stats, such as steps, distance traveled, calories burned and active time.

As most Fitbits, you can sync it using your smartphone, be it an iPhone, Android device or a Windows Phone device via Bluetooth 4.0, which also lets you receive notifications of calls, messages and calendar events. If you prefer a modular approach, you can sync your Fitbit with your PC for information to be uploaded to Fitbit’s servers.

It is notorious that they’ve dropped a few sensors, like the optical heart rate monitor and the GPS sensor, but considering this device is oriented to be used as a daily driver, the decision seems to be a good choice to keep prices in line with the previous model, the Fitbit Charge HR. It also helps to improve battery life, while delivering a thinner device in the process, features that the typical user will be more thankful. However, this decision takes a toll on traveled distance’s accuracy, as there’s no GPS to compare measures to, which can be a letdown for runners on various disciplines.

The Alta has a few more tricks under its sleeve, such as a “smart tracking” feature, which makes the tracker start recording your stats when the device perceives an increase of activity and stopping after it has been on rest for long enough. On practice, however, it’s a bit spotty to get it working if you aren’t used to doing warm-up routines before exercising or something that can be easily recognizable as a high-intensity activity.

Battery-wise, it can withstand 5 to 7 days of regular use, which seems to be a sweet spot for it to be a reliable tool to count on, as with most wearable devices, high-intensity usage will take a toll on expected battery life, so be mindful of it while using it to train for a competition.

Smart tracking is a welcomed feature, as there are no buttons to start/end the recording, and the ability to do this automatically makes it be a more helpful tool to keep status tracking up-to-date. That way you won’t accidentally miss a day on your tracking record, which is a step in the right direction for wearable technologies. It can also give you reminders to get you moving if it feels that you have been sedentary for too long, setting 250-step goals.

All things said, we consider the Fitbit Alta to be an excellent device for consumers that want to enter the wearables market with something that can be used not just while exercising, but for daily use. It doesn’t bring anything revolutionary feature-wise for previous users, so it might not be appealing for users with more capable devices. However, if you already own a previous Fitbit model and want to replace it to improve general reliability while staying in the ecosystem, this is a good choice.