Questions before buying a Fitbit Ionic

[SunsetRunner]

Hi,

Are looking at a Fitbit Ionic and just want to know what the people actually using it say and have also a few questions.

1. What is your personal opinion about the watch? Does it work as you thought? Functions, battery time and so on.
2. Can't find out if it support Spotify. Can only find that it support Deezer. Or is this only for the offline music?
3. I'm out running a few times a week and want to know that I have the info I want right at the display without any click. I want to have pace, time and distance at the display the whole time, is that possible?

Many Thanks!

Robert

[Wisernow]

I would recommend against a purchase. I have had no less than 5 fitbits. Each lasted approximately 1 year before developing some fatal issue that rendered it unusable except for the Ionic. It lasted less than 8 months. Really not worth the money especially since the support is basically nonexistent.

[Giampi71]

I've owned many smartwatches (Pebble, Pebble Time, LG G watch, LG G watch R, Tom Tom Runner 2, Polar m600) and not only the Ionic is the best one I used, I'm so happy about it that I started to learn to develop apps and clokcfaces for it. 

I'm also a runner and I run my last marathon with the Fitbit with a a total distance of 42.5 km (against the official 42.2 km).

Here a recent comparison made by me using Ionic and 2 competitors:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1t5qWxsxljV7dsVFDbvhyYQKh1olUM44eim6OtKRuthE/edit?usp=sharing

However I admit Ïonic for runners is very basic since you can't set any session goal, ghost run or interval training. 

No issue at all for me, really really happy about it.

[soss3osp · Accepted solution]

@SunsetRunner you came to the right decision. wait til the next really big firmware and whether there are many problems discussed here solved. of course one can have problems with hardware in around 1-2% but the main problem is the firmware. so hopefully for you and us, fitbit will soon adress the problems to finally take steps into deeper support for specific sports like running.

[SandipMane]

1. Watch is great! Good faces are available. Measurements are accurate. More or less meets my expectations.

2. I am not aware.

3. Yes, it is available. I use read these values on click at same time when I run.

Having said this, the greatest disappointment is related to app. It's really poor and doesn't make use of the data available on ionic to analyse and provide meaningful info. Garmin scores well above on this account. 

[Jillyholli]

Its a disaster. Avoid avoid avoid. Garmin products are way better - probably more expensive but far more reliable. The Ionic is incredibly glitchy as you'll see by the number of issues raised on here. I'm on my second watch after the first one wasn't waterproof and died on its first swim (I'm not alone with that one). this one still has issues synching. Poor quality and very limited apps. Poor battery life and the customer services is atrocious. I'm glad some people think its great but if you want to really use it to what it promotes as its full capacity you'll be disappointed.

[mk2654]

I was torn between the Ionic and Garmin VA3 Music. (My two main requirements were onboard GPS and music.) I initially bought the Garmin because, to be honest, I didn't identify with Fitbit strongly. I thought Fitbits were for people interested in tracking steps and Garmins were for runners. However, I had a pretty poor experience with the Garmin: the music never did work properly, and it repeatedly refused to sync to my phone unless I re-paired it as though from scratch. Set-up took forever and required troubleshooting on the Garmin forums. I didn't like the touchscreen navigation either, finding it counterintuitive. Ultimately, I couldn't make it work. I returned it and ordered the Ionic, and I'm pretty happy. The only real caveats are that I'm skeptical the battery can last through a marathon, esp. if playing music from the watch, although I've thus far made it eighteen miles. And it doesn't do intervals well. (It offers a generic interval workout, but you can't customize in a useful way.)

Garmin has more stats, but this has everything I need, which is avg. pace, current pace, distance, BPM, time elapsed. I was worried about the face not being "always on,"but that's been a non-issue because the raise-to-wake works so well.

Re: music, I switched over to Deezer when I got the Fitbit, and it's been comparable IMO.

[SantiR]

Hello everyone! Thanks for sharing all of those positive comments regarding Ionic.

I'm so glad to read so many positive comments regarding Ionic. Fitbit appreciates those a lot.

Negative feedback is also appreciated, so thanks to those users who have provided that kind of comments too. 

If you ever need to compare one Fitbit device with another, feel free to use this comparison tool. It is useful when deciding which Fitbit device to buy.

See you around! 

[soss3osp]

I really like the positive spirit of you fitbit guys. To draw the conclusion about "so many positive comments", If you neglect the forum fanboys and -girl where everything works and is glamourous, is quite amazing

[Ericws]

Rude.  Just because I like my Fitbit I am insulted. I guess it is only cool to hate here?

[soss3osp]

Believe me I did not talk about you, sorry. BTW: i like the Looks and the potential of my ionic as well. It is just the lousy software which makes me angry 

[soss3osp]

Believe me I did not talk about you ericws, sorry. Your post was honest

[mk2654]

Are you responding to me? Because, if so, you need to take several seats. I'm merely commenting to share my comparison of these two watches, information I was myself looking for prior to purchase. In doing so, I'm hopefully providing useful information. Can you say the same of your pretty immaterial comment?

[soss3osp]

Na, not at all, you gave some senseful comparison. But if one reads all the comments in this thread it is hard to summarize this as „so many positive comments“

[DramaQueenDiva]

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@SunsetRunner wrote:

Hi,

Are looking at a Fitbit Ionic and just want to know what the people actually using it say and have also a few questions.

1. What is your personal opinion about the watch? Does it work as you thought? Functions, battery time and so on.
2. Can't find out if it support Spotify. Can only find that it support Deezer. Or is this only for the offline music?
3. I'm out running a few times a week and want to know that I have the info I want right at the display without any click. I want to have pace, time and distance at the display the whole time, is that possible?

Many Thanks!

Robert

---

I'm not a runner, so I can't answer that question. For me, it works as expected.

It only supports Deezer and Pandora but I would love to see it support Spotify since that's the music service I use most. My understanding at least from the Pandora service is you can use it offline on the Ionic, but you may have to pay. I don't know how that process works since I don't use it.

You can download music from a computer onto the watch, but I don't know how to do that since I don't store music on my watch.