On trial: Fitbit Sense 2 Health and Fitness Smartwatch

Oh, it’s very smart. The Sense 2 logs my sleep and breaks down the quality, so I can become a pub bore and let my friends know how short my restoration phase was last night and that I should lower the temperature of my bedroom. It tracks my exercise, natch, telling me distance/calories/speed but also heart rate and zones (fat burn/cardio/peak).

It’s easy to set up the Fitbit Sense 2, you just need a Gmail account and the free Fitbit app. Add core info (age, weight) then basically just put the smartwatch next to your phone, some magic happens and boom, you’re away.

I could log my food but choose not to, and I log my water because I know I drink three litres a day and I like the validation. 

Where the Sense 2 really flies is in stress management. It uses all-day body-response tracking to identify patterns and can make suggestions to help you change. It sends me reminders to take time out – I’m not good at switching off but am trying to use the watch’s ‘relax breathing sessions’. Anything that encourages me to do nothing is positive.

Fitbit advises you to wear the watch fairly tightly and high up on your wrist during exercise for accurate tracking, and it doesn’t recommend comparing two devices because where you wear the tracker affects results. 

At first Fitbit says my runs are shorter and slower than they are – I know this because I run regular routes and also do Parkrun most Saturdays. But the tracking improves after a few days so either I wasn’t hitting ‘start run’ soon enough (it takes a couple of seconds to confirm GPS is tracking) or I was wearing it too loosely, or the watch was still getting used to me. Either way, it’s fascinating (to me) seeing the results. 

The watch comes with six months’ free Premium subscription, after which it would be £7.99 a month. Premium uses data to paint a more detailed picture of your health and its daily readiness score shows when’s good to push yourself, and when to chill out a bit.

It also unlocks bonus features like guided workouts and meditations. I’m a fan of the sleepy breathing exercises, though it remains to be seen whether I’ll want to pay for them in a few months’ time.

I don’t understand how a watch can become waterproof, I never have and I don’t suppose I need to, but the Fitbit is indeed waterproof to 50m so off we go to the pool. I choose swim from within exercises, set the pool length and hit start. A couple of seconds’ wait while it activates water lock (witchcraft) then I’m good to go. 

What is water lock, you ask? Well, it stops the buttons on your tracker from activating while you’re splashing about. When water lock is on, your screen and buttons are, er, locked. Notifications and alarms can still function, though.

Anyway I count my lengths out of habit (got to pass the time somehow) and the Fitbit says I’ve done one more than I counted, so I’m happy with that. Maybe the watch added a bit on for my flappy tumble turns. 

The Sense 2 suffers no ill-effects for its half-hour dunking so I take it off, dry it off and leave it off while I hit the sauna and steam room (do not wear your watch in there). 

The battery life is impressive, though as an Apple user my bar is low. But seriously – five days pass before the Fitbit politely suggests I charge it.

Of course, how you use the watch affects how long the battery lasts. I have GPS switched on all the time because I want every activity logged – because I’m obsessed – so that runs it down a bit faster.

But five days, 24 hours a day, with five runs, two swims and plenty of walks that it auto-tracked? I’m happy. 

All the fun of tracking up to 40 kinds of exercise (I really must diversify) plus health checks and temperature sensors in one light and wearable package? Sold.