Ionic Quality Control

[CSC1989]

I'm considering upgrading to the Ionic in a few months, but in the last couple weeks my Charge 2 screen failed. It's still under warranty and Fitbit is sending me a replacement, and that's fine. My concern is how common is it for the screens on these watches to have problems, and how likely will similar issues arise with the Ionic? 

Anyone have any insights?

[wmchapman · Accepted solution]

I'm not concerned at all.

Number of fitbits sold last year : 22.3M

Number of posts with "screen" and "fail" in the title over the last year: 274

Number of posts with "display" and "fail" in the title over the last year: 184

Number of posts with "blank screen" in the title over the last year: 526

Number of posts with "blank display" in the title over the last year: 177

1161/22,300,00 = .0052% concern. Impressive Quality Control, especially when most issues are not out-of-the-box and zero window into the users' environment, like having your internet or mobile down time being only 30 minutes last year (I wish!)

[CSC1989]

Data!

Excellent!

Thank you!

csc

Moderator edit: removed personal info

[bbarrera]

@CSC1989 take that with a grain of salt, its a forum and not ideal for generating stats.

I prefer to look at quarterly SEC statements on warranty reserves (amount of money Fitbit sets aside for warranty returns) - last year it went up unexpectedly twice, while sales dropped, which is troubling. And that is reinforced by the 1/2 star reviews on Amazon, in particular there are something like 2000+ negative reviews on Charge. From where I sit, in the past Fitbit management appears to optimize for cost over build quality. And like so many others I've always had bands fail prematurely while working at a desk and walking/cycling for exercise.

Lets hope that changes with Ionic, I'm certainly encouraged by the design (aluminum case). Keep in mind screens can and will crack, the Gorilla Glass 3 used on Ionic is officially scratch resistant and not indestructible.

[POTATOEMAN]

@wmchapman:    you are assuming that every single fitbit owner posts on this forum. what percentage of fitbit owners do you suppose have posted here ? 1% ?  .001% ?

if we assume 1% of owners have posted hers, that's 223,000 forum members.    1161/223,000 = .005206  or about .5%

or 5 out of every 1000 fitbits. 

which is still nothing to worry about

but if there are 22 million forum members here, I will buy you lunch !

[bbarrera]

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@POTATOEMAN wrote:

you are assuming that every single fitbit owner posts on this forum. what percentage of fitbit owners do you suppose have posted here ? 1% ?  .001% ?

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@POTATOEMAN Fitbit reported 23.2M active users on the February earnings call. And on August earnings call Fitbit reported over 67M devices sold.

There are 504,524 *registered* forum members (not active, but registered), its on this page: https://community.fitbit.com/t5/Community/ct-p/EN

2% users of active users are *registered* on the forum. 

Of more concern for previous devices is the unexpected increases in warranty reserves, at a time when there was a large drop in sales.

But the past isn't always the best predictor of the future. The good news - Ionic is not plastic, uses Gorilla Glass 3, and it has removable bands. Jury is still out on build quality, but the basic design is an encouraging start to believing this will be a higher quality device.

[POTATOEMAN]

ok, thanks for that !    my wild guess wasn't too far off....