I wanted to love my Versa. Really I did. I tried to love it, and when I didn't love it, I tried to like it. When I didn't like it, I tried to convince myself that I could learn to be okay with it. After all, the price is great, compared to the alternatives, the Fitbit fitness tracking app is the best out there, it comes loaded with lots of fun little doodads, the interchangeable faces are pretty neato, there are all kinds of accessories available, and it, with a couple of livable exceptions with the iPhone (which I am tied to, because that's what my work makes me have), does everything I need a smartwatch/ fitness tracker to do. Theoretically.
The first time I noticed that something was amiss, my Versa started counting extra stairs. And not just a few extra stairs. Like 20-30 extra flights of stairs. I mean, I climb a lot of stairs at work, but not 40-50 flights a day. So I started poking around online, and I found that the altimeter can be affected by changes in barometric pressure. Makes total sense, given how altimeters work, and I could readily trace the problem to weather systems moving in and out. Not a big deal, I guess. It's nice to know how many flights I've climbed, but I could get used to keeping track, mentally, when my stair count was doubled. Even if it made long term tracking a bit problematic. Which it totally did.
Then I noticed that every time I rode my motorcycle, it would count extra steps and stairs. A lot of them. Thousands of steps and dozens of flights of stairs. More research found that the vibrations from the bike would add additional steps, and the wind could confuse the altimeter. These things also make sense (to a degree) because the Versa does not have a GPS, so it doesn't know how fast I'm traveling when it's reading the motorcycle vibrations as steps. Though it claims to be linked to the GPS on my phone, so it theoretically shouldn't be a problem as long as my phone is within range. That doesn't seem to be the case, however. I found a solution in an app (Drivebit) that would log ride time and allow me to stop counting when I started riding, and resume when I stopped. It worked really well when I remembered to activate it and deactivate it. Which I didn't always remember to do. Again, not necessarily a big deal from a day-to-day perspective, because I could mentally log when to deduct steps and stairs. I could even deduct them manually in the app, if I wanted to. But it did make for difficult long-term trend tracking. Especially considering how often I just couldn't remember when or for how long I had ridden.
After a while, though, I started noticing that I was having to restart the Fitbit pretty regularly to reconnect it with my iPhone for notifications, as well as to occasionally get odd little glitches or freezes in syncing to clear. I was restarting it one or two times a day. Every day. And that was only when I eventually noticed I wasn't getting notifications from my phone, or some other indication that something was amiss. I could have probably restarted it 4 or 5 times a day if I kept up on it.
Combine that with the incompatibilities the Versa has with my iPhone, which I totally could have lived with if everything else worked right, I realized I had a fitness tracker that wasn't a very good fitness tracker, and a smart watch that wasn't a very good smart watch, and a lot of ad hoc workarounds to simply get the functions to work how I needed them to work. All the neato customized watch faces in the world couldn't seem to make that better.
I had buyer's remorse. Bad. It was made even worse by the fact that my wife has the Fitbit Charge 3 and (outside of the smart watch functionality it doesn't have) has exactly zero of the problems I did. Weather doesn't seem to screw up her data. Riding her motorcycle doesn't mess it up either. And she almost never has to restart it, for any reason. So I know Fitbit can get this stuff right, they just didn't seem to do it with the Versa. (And reading what I have online, it's clear that these are widespread problems and I didn't just get a faulty unit.)
I eventually decided it just wasn't worth it. I've given the Versa to my son, who is thrilled with it but he doesn't care all that much about the accuracy and reliable functionality of it he just thinks it's cool to have a smart watch, and have purchased a 3rd generation Apple Watch, for not a lot more money than I paid for the Versa. There are some things I miss about the Versa. It's got a slimmer profile, and is more comfortable to wear all day. The Versa needed to be charged about 25% as frequently as the Apple, and I also prefer the buttons on the Versa to the crown/dial on the Apple. Also, as I said earlier, the Fitbit tracking app is second to none, where I find Apple's health tracker to be a bit clunky, and it requires multiple apps to track everything the Fitbit does. Especially sleep tracking, which the Fitbit's built in functionality is far and away better than any app, free or paid, that I've found for the Apple. I liked the Fitbit's hourly activity reminders better too. But all of that is a fair trade for a watch/tracker that does what it's supposed to, consistently, reliably, and predictably without hassle.
I really did want to love the Versa. I still wish I did. I've not written Fitbit off, and I hope they get the smart watch formula right, because frankly I would much rather wear one than an Apple Watch. Especially if Fitbit can manage to make all the functions compatible with an iPhone. I'll be watching for whatever the next generation brings, but will definitely wait to read extensively about it before buying one, which I did not do with the Versa. For now, it looks like I'll be wearing an Apple. Sorry Fitbit. I tried. Really, I did.
