Testing the Ionic after the Versa only serves to reveal its shortcomings. It’s not a bad watch, even if my conclusions might indicate that. It’s a regular watch, with pretty good tracking features (with a couple of exceptions), and a hefty price.

The size of the watch is a feature that people will either like or hate; For the most part, the big size of the Ionic gives users a sense of sturdiness, which is a good thing; Also, it’s not a bad looking device, no matter what people are saying.

While I was saying that the increased size does have some advantages, it also means that it’s sometimes cumbersome; For example, wearing it during sleep is a problem; You never quite forget you have it on; A big problem with the Ionic is the synchronization function with the smartphone.

The Fitbit Ionic not only brings a solid, lightweight design with a beautiful screen, it also adds built-in GPS and dedicated swim functionality that the earlier Blaze was lacking.

Great design with beautiful colour display; Waterproof; GPS; Excellent platform; Continuous heart-rate monitoring; Automatic exercise recognition; Multi-sport tracking; Comfortable; Decent battery life

Touchscreen not responsive enough; Expensive; It's not that smart as smartwatches go

Pretty good battery and tracks things arlight. However doesn't work with the Samsung galaxy s9 also have to restart every few days to re sync it. Other than that does what it says

The Fitbit Ionic ($199 at Amazon) was announced in August 2017 and released in October of that year to less than rave reviews. The design wasn't great, the software felt unfinished and its price ($300, £300 or AU$450) was hard to swallow. Even worse, it arrived after the 2017 refresh of the Apple Watch ($169 at Best Buy) line, which introduced the Apple Watch Series 1 and Apple Watch Series 3.

Fitbit’s fitness smartwatch has gotten better with an infusion of watch faces and apps, but some of its extra-smart features still aren't as polished as the competition.

Fitbit Ionic has a better-than-most-smartwatches four-day battery life, while still having always-on heart rate and a comfy fit; It has features galore: waterproofing, GPS and on-wrist mobile payments, plus new watch faces and a growing app store; It works with iOS and Android, and has an excellent phone app and social community.

Wrist payments don't work with as many banks as Apple Pay and Android Pay; On-wrist music is hard to set up and use; Software and apps sometimes feel buggy.

Fitbit’s fitness smartwatch has gotten better with an infusion of watch faces and apps, but some of its extra-smart features still aren't as polished as the competition.

Fitbit Ionic has a better-than-most-smartwatches four-day battery life, while still having always-on heart rate and a comfy fit; It has features galore: waterproofing, GPS and on-wrist mobile payments, plus new watch faces and a growing app store.

Wrist payments don't work with as many banks as Apple Pay and Android Pay; On-wrist music is hard to set up and use; Software and apps sometimes feel buggy.

Does not have basic features that I really expected from smart watch, for example, "find my phone" is not available in fitbit. Only exclusive oxygen sensor does not add any value, because, per customer support only installed for a future use. Music player is very limited, e.g.

For as long as it could, Fitbit tried to avoid using the word 'smartwatch'. Even when it introduced the Blaze two years ago, which was more or less a smartwatch in terms of its shape and features, Fitbit declined to call it that.

Superb battery life; Built-in GPS works great; Light; Waterproof; can track swims; Fitbit OS is easy to use

Lack of third-party apps; Can't reply to notifications; Proprietary charging cable

A gigantic first step towards the smartwatch market from Fitbit, but is also plagued with some issues and missing features.

Looks; New functions are great; Built-in storage for music

Very finicky step counter; Prevailing Bluetooth issues

The watch is great to use as a fitness monitor. However, as a smart watch it is lacking in features. I cannot use the Fitbit Pay APP, because my bank is not on the Fitbit list. I can see my Texts and Messages, but I cannot reply like I can on my Samsung Gear S2.

When I say know, obviously I didn't know about the problem until after I had purchased it. But after the first use with huge distance errors I searched the internet and found a Fitbit Community help page for the GPS problem that went back to October of 2017.The problem is that somehow Fitbit...