Sense 2 user experience

[iakko]

I've just started using my brand new Sense 2 and the first thing I've noticed is how dramatically lagging is interacting with the user interface.

Going into daily activity, scrolling down to steps, distance, heart beat etc it's disgusting how slow and laggy is the interface responding on swipes and scrolls. I've also tried on notifications and it's more or less the same.

Hey you, product owner of Sense 2 project, did you ever tested it once before selling it? Unbelievable!

I've reset and configured it again, restarted it, but no difference.

That's crazy, if I willy not received any help and find a fix on this, I'll return it back for sure and goodbye fitbit!

Moderator Edit: Clarified subject

[kingphil69]

Getting only a few notifications seems to slow the sense 2 to a crawl. So bad that one screen (ie today stats) overlays the home watchface, and trying to get to settings there's so many overlayed panels or tiles or whatever that you can't even scroll down.

Only option is to hold the side button until it reboots.

Absolutely disappointing given the price paid for four year old tech. Guess fitbit had to squeeze all the hardware out before the pixel watches came out. 

[rbittman]

This is an interesting comment. I’ve been a Fitbit user from a Charge 4, to a Versa 3, and now the Sense 2. The Sense 2 has a much snappier interface than those other devices. No lag on scrolling nor on moving tile to tile. The lag on the Versa 3 was really apparent, so I’d say they really improved this a lot.

But your experience is different. What are you comparing it to?

Ive used some other devices as well: one from a Chinese company that had nothing but problems and was very inaccurate to the point of being laughable. I also had a Garmin  that was good for athletic progress, but terrible on health features. It seems no company does everything well. In my opinion, fitbit provides the best feature set for the price for my needs. You may not agree! 

[kingphil69]

My prior was a fitbit versa 2

The sense 2 appears to have the same cpu but a bloated UI. (best way I can think to describe)

But the fact that scrolling the UI resulted in overlays not disappearing... Imaging looking at tiles that are transparent and eventually you are looking at 6 different pages on one screen.... Should have snapped a picture before force rebooting it. 

I'm about 85% convinced my best option is to send it back and get a versa 2 (old one died from a swim) or sense 1.  The fact I can't control Spotify is absolutely disappointing.. Not to mention setting up snore detection when connecting it, and now magically it doesn't have it. 

[rbittman]

Your Sense 2 sounds defective. And if Spotify controls on the watch, and snore detection are important features to you, I’d stick with the Sense 1.

[kingphil69]

Do you work for fitbit or Google or otherwise represent an authoritative source of such opinion or information? Or are you only trolling people with negative reviews of fitbit products? 

[rbittman]

No and no. 

[iakko]

I've contacted the FitBit support and after going through some common remediation like rebooting and resetting the Sense 2, they provided me a replacement of the device (without asking, they simply activated the replacement process by default).

I don't think this is going to resolve, I feel like it's a software problem due to hardware shortage in terms of resource, but I'll give it a try.

[t.parker]

@iakko it probably won't. The framerate of UI is very low on Sense 2. I did measurements which gave me the lowest of 10fps, and the highest 24 - 25fps. There are lags causing worse frame dropping but they are more like a single occurrence hiccup so I haven't counted that. The screen refresh rate is 60fps (so hardware is capable of rendering smooth 60fps) but Sense 2 isn't able to achieve even half of that rendering performance. Too much workload between animation frames. It makes an impression of running everything on a single thread, especially since input touches are delivered with delay, too. If you go to the Run or Bike settings to turn on/off GPS and you try to turn it off you can see UI blocking for a while which means the whole operation takes place on the UI thread. I believe that's the case for most of the workload hence the UI is so sluggish. This also affects overall responsiveness. Poor hardware and poorly written software. A replacement device isn't a solution.

[iakko]

Hi @t.parker, as a software developer I totally agree with you on the analysis and that's why I'm upset by the fact that instead of contacting me to understand the real problem, they simply shipped me a new unuseful device. The incredible thing is that it's so poorly performant that should be clear as the sun that it need improvements.

[asiayeah]

Same experience here. I read a few early reviews said the UI is much snappier. However, in real life testing, it's not faster at all. Sometimes it's not responsive. I am comparing it to my fitbit Ionic.