Ionic not ready for sale

[Lasses]

Ok, I have several Fitbit products, both the new Ionic and also the Blaze. My wife an Alta. One thing they have in common is that they dont work as expected. At least not to start with. The Blaze, it took six months and several firmware updates before it was stable and now I have the same experience with my Ionic. (My wife still gives me a hard time over the Alta, why its not tracking correctly) Main issues with the Ionic are the GPS and the music playback. Dont expect to have an accurate tracking of your run and expect the music to be on and off while running. Unless you have the watch on the same side as the bluetooth reciever on your headphones. And you  only have them paired to the Ionic. If you use them for your phone there are connection issues (see my earlier post). My take is that Fitbit release not ready products and use us as beta testers. This could be ok, with a pricing that reflects the frustration not having a fully working product and a honesty in the Communication. Someone said you should be slightly embarrassed these days when you release your MVP. You should be.

[SunsetRunner]

Totally agree !!. 

The basic function of smart watch is bluetooth sync stability, and ionic is still very unstable.

I have Garmin sports watch and Xiaomi miband. Both of them are very stable.

Very disappointed of Fitbit product.  

[JGobeil]

Well, my problems with the Ionic are different.  GPS and music work great !

IMHO, there are 3 major problems:

1-  Synchronization doesn't work well and takes forever.

2-  The Fitbit app is a phone battery killer.

3-  The Fitbit app is decent to look at fitness results: sleep, resting HR, steps... but stinks with activities.  The reporting is grossly underpowered and badly presented.  The activity types are very limited and cannot be renamed - the WX is not shown - no room for notes - you cannot choose between speed and allure - there are only 3 HR zones, not the usual 5 - the values of the X and Y axis on the graphs are either not shown or very limited - the watch stores elevation but it is not shown in the graphs - and the list goes on....  It is nowhere close to what you get with the Polar and Garmin apps.  Seriously underpowered !

[Giampi71]

Not sure what phone you use but with Pixel I don't have your mentioned problems 1 and 2. Regarding the point 3 I agree with you: Fitbit has definitely never targeted the running community. Still being the Ionic a fully featured smartwatch it could be definitely great. I would however prefer if some running services like Runtastic or Strava provided a fully featured running app for the Ionic.

[indianwin2001]

I agree. Fit bit is geared more for people interested in steps and sleep. Garmin and Polar are for more serious athletic people.

[Lasses]

Thanks for the comments to my post. I was rather frustrated when I wrote it just coming back  from a morning run with a number of issues. I would actually like Fitbit to respond. I assume they monitor the community posts. 

[ScottKilbo]

I like the watch itself, but the Fitbit android app and syncing are absolutely ridiculous.  Half the time I try and start the app, I just get a white screen.  When I try and go to the list of devices, most of the time it shows no devices connected, even though I have three.  I have never seen anything like this before.  I have a Samsung Gear 2 that I absolutely cannot use on the same phone, because the Fitbit app refuses to work even a little bit when the Gear software is installed.  When I try and get help on the android app side, I'm told to do stupid things like uninstalling and reinstalling the app, and clearing the app cache.  I've tried both a number of times and it fixes nothing at all.  Those are the types of things that support will tell people to do when they have absolutely NO clue how to solve a problem.  They're just ways to get people to leave them alone.  They probably want everyone to return this thing so that they don't have to deal with it.

But then, that's Fitbit for you.  I've had many since the original Fitbit and the app has always been the weak point in this.  They cannot code an app that's worth anything.

The best thing about the Ionic is the screen.  It is bright and colorful and I don't even need to be wearing my glasses to see the original watch face.  And I don't mind the software on it.  I like the way all of that is set up.  The timers and the alarm are nice additions.  I don't use it, but my wife uses the sleep stuff and she thinks that it's pretty accurate.

I go back and forth about whether to keep it.  One of the things I liked about it was notifications.  I was even willing to retire my Gear 2 because I could get notifications on the Ionic.  The problem is that the notifications work about 10 percent of the time and the only "fix" appears to be to restart the watch and the phone.  Then the notifications work for a while and then they stop working again.  It really makes me want to put my gear back on and take this thing off for good.

[JGobeil]

I have a Google Nexus P6 running the latest version of Oreo.  If I leave any of the auto sync switches ON, it kills the battery at the rate of 10% per hour.  Can't live with that.  With all sync switches off, I have to activate sync each time I use the app if I want fresh data.  It takes anywhere from 2 to 4 minutes... A pity!

I a not a runner nor an athlete but I like to see and study how I do, measure my progress.  This if at best difficult to do with the Fitbit app.

[ChrisF1098]

I must admit I was initially pretty excited to get an Ionic. I liked the design and integration.

Now, I am just disappointed. Some disappointments are just small annoyances, others are leading to this going into a drawer never to be seen again.

1. Small annoyance. The clock faces. I had CitySkyline set to Paris, woke each day with a random city until I synced. The weather/temperature on that face and on Big Weather updated randomly, when it did update. (Developers fault you say...nah, I bought the watch from you and you are responsible for the performance.)

2. Moderate annoyance. The heart rate is off. I have loosened, I have tightened, I switched arms. It is simply not accurate. (I used my polar chest strap to verify.)

3.Largest annoyance. Active minutes. Ridiculous. I am a rock climber, mountain biker and snowboarder. Not a walker.

And here is the crux of the issue.

I was climbing for appx. 2 hours, each route taking between 15-20 minutes.  After completing this session I had "0" active minutes. I checked my phone, synced, and still nothing.

What mystifies me, is that I continued my day and met my oldest for a coffee and a stroll down a local open air mall (Pearl Street in Boulder-very flat). Not only does my Ionic seem incapable of capturing rock climbing as active minutes, instead it captured walking down an open-air mall hold a small cup of coffee as active minutes. 50mins as a matter of fact.

Seriously, what good it that? I have repeated this experiment multiple times.

Telling me to manually upload my data defeats the purpose of a GPS, HR, enabled fitness device. I can simply upload my elapsed time data on my phone in MyFitnessPal and save the money.

My overall impression is poor as a tool for automated athletic tracking.

If you are a walker, perhaps. It does track steps well and will tell you to move.

[ixiux]

100 % agree with topic main theme. I bought this device, because had hope that it will be better than android wear devices. Yea... Wrong choice 🙂 I can't understand, why all fitbit community are so excited about products. I see only few good things: the look and the size (have small wrist). A lot of better devices on the market. Everyday I wake up with one question for myself - maybe better to sell 😄