Fitbit Ace 3 Reviews | The comparison

• The comparison
• Warables
• Fitbit Ace 3 Reviews | The comparison

Two minute exam

The Fitbit Ace 3 is a Fitbit fitness tracker specially designed for children, with a recommended minimum age of 6 years and older. It's more rounded than its predecessor with a brighter display and better battery life (up to eight days compared to five on the Fitbit Ace 2) and with 50m water resistance it's also suitable for showering and swimming. It is available in dark blue with green details and in black with red details. The display is a monochrome PMOLED and there's a good selection of dials so no two Aces are the same. Because the Fitbit Ace 3 is designed for kids, it doesn't track everything an adult tracker does; for example, there is no data on calories burned or any ability to track weight loss. Children 13 and older can follow these things by creating a standard Fitbit account, which is not open to anyone under 13.

(Image credit: Carrie Marshall) For younger kids, the Ace 3 tracks sleep, steps, exercise time, and active minutes. The latter uses multiple sensors to track all kinds of activities, including jumping, trampolines, and sports, as well as the well-known step count. There is no GPS for location tracking. You or your kids can set a variety of activity goals that offer game-style rewards for reaching a certain number of active steps or minutes, and the Fitbit app has a kid view that lets kids see their activity stats, but not the rest of the family. fitness data. While the app isn't particularly geared towards kids, it does work quite well, and the numbers have proven to be a powerful motivator for our own young testers. The Fitbit Ace 3 doesn't come with many flashy features like movie links or cartoon characters, and we think that's a good thing; It doesn't look like a child's device and it turned out to be a big plus for our testers. The Ace 3 is beautiful, comfortable, and strong enough to take on the most exciting adventures.

Fitbit Ace 3 price and release date

The Fitbit Ace 3 launched in March 2021 and costs $79.95 / £69.99 / AU$99.95, direct from Fitbit (although you can find it cheaper at third-party stores). It's nearly identical to the Garmin Vivofit Jr 3 kids' fitness tracker, which costs $79.99 / £79.99 (but is significantly more expensive in Australia at AU$159).

Fitbit Ace 3 design

Like its predecessor, the Fitbit Ace 3 is a small rectangular pebble encased in a silicone band that protects it from bumps and bumps. The Ace 3 is more rounded than the Ace 2 and looks more modern as a result. It has an adjustable plastic clasp and is currently available in two options: dark blue with a green clasp and black with a red clasp. Other colored bracelets can be purchased separately. The strap fits wrists from 116mm to 168mm in circumference and is all waterproof; The Ace 3 is good at 50m, so you can stay in the shower or when your kid is swimming. The silicone strap is comfortable and easy to adjust, and we were delighted to find that unlike many kids' watch straps, the Fitbit strap didn't irritate our young tester's very sensitive skin. Where other kids' watches would cause a bright red rash if worn overnight, there was no irritation from the Fitbit during a full month of 24-hour use.

(Image credit: Fitbit) The Ace 3's display is a backlit monochrome OLED touchscreen, and you can choose from a variety of watch faces to customize via the Fitbit app. The lack of color is a bit disappointing when some rival kids' trackers are more colourful, but the Fitbit Ace 3 lasts three days longer between charges than its more serviceable predecessor. The screen wakes up when your child raises their arm and the device can be controlled by pinching the sides or swiping the touchscreen to move between the watch face, step counter, sleep monitor, timers and options like 'do not disturb' ' ”. The internal battery isn't removable and is recharged via a proprietary USB cable that's too short that plugs into the back of the Ace. You should expect to charge the Fitbit about once a week. The official battery life is eight days, and we usually get to eight or nine after a very exciting first week in which constant step checking drained the battery in just under seven days.

Daily use

The Fitbit Ace 3 has some clever ideas to keep the kids excited, like watch faces that only come to life when you're on the go. Depending on the watch face, you can also see today's activity on the main time screen, and if you set up challenges in the app, the Ace can ping them when they're close to achieving their goals. If her child has her own phone, she can also set up the Ace to receive call and message notifications. One of the main selling points of the Ace 3 and the benefits of its long battery life is that its tracking doesn't end at bedtime. It also tracks sleep and can set a reminder that could help you with the daily challenge of putting the kids to bed. You can also set an alarm to wake them up. We found that sleep tracking had an unexpected benefit for parents: By encouraging our testers to compete against each other to see who could rack up the most sleep, we found that bedtime met with less resistance and we had more alone time with the papers on weekends. We can't promise it will last much longer, but we're really enjoying it right now.

(Image credit: Fitbit) We found that while our young tester relied mostly on stats, to the point where he finished dinner and immediately ran off to jump on the trampoline or run, our old tester liked the Fitbit alone. because it was a good watch: the activity. The tracker was "interesting" but they chose it over his usual Timex for no reason other than "it looks good". The lack of connection to the film's characters was certainly a plus here: the Ace 3's clean lines, understated colors and stickerless appearance meant it wasn't obtrusive to our older tester.

Fitness tracking

The Fitbit Ace 3's screen is noticeably brighter, making it easier to read in bright daylight, and it's easy for your child to see their activity stats without having to open the Fitbit app, though you can also view their stats in more detail . Because it's specially designed for kids, Fitbit Ace 3 doesn't track calories. Rather, it tracks active minutes, a measure of activity that comes not just from step counts, but from time spent doing other active things like jumping, trampoline, skipping, or racquet sports. That's thanks to the three-axis accelerometer and built-in heart rate sensors, though older testers may decide to cheat on their activity count by sitting on the couch while waving their arms, which our 13-year-old specifically did. to annoy his younger sister, who was running through the garden to increase the number of steps. We've found that the biggest problem with kids' fitness trackers may be making sure the trackers are worn in the first place: Like most parents, we've spent a lot of money on technology that ended up gathering dust on a shelf when the novelty wears off. But that didn't happen with any of our testers after a month of daily use. Our youngest tester didn't tell us his updated step count every three minutes, but they still monitored his steps and did extra exercises to maximize the amount of activity. In addition to fitness tracking, Fitbit also lets you set inactivity and countdown reminders, and use the device as a stopwatch. The ability to set family goals in the Fitbit app is also useful, allowing you to tease, cheer on, or challenge each other in fitness competitions. It is a very complete package.

Companion app

Although the Fitbit Ace 3 was designed just for kids, it uses the standard Fitbit app, though much of its functionality has been removed; for example, they can't be part of the Fitbit community or see how many calories they burn. However, it's clearly still an app designed for adults and suitable for children, rather than one designed for the little ones, and none of our testers particularly liked it. Setting up a child's Fitbit is different than setting up a Fitbit yourself. First, you need to create a family account, and then add your children, or at least your children under the age of 13. Although the setup process does not specify it in advance, you cannot create a secondary account for anyone over the age of 13. If your child is 13 or older, they must create their own standard Fitbit account, and then you can send them an invitation to join your Fitbit family. Standard accounts allow additional features in the app, including calorie tracking, menstrual health tracking, and access to the Fitbit community. For children who are currently only 13 years old, they will be able to upgrade their account to a standard account starting at age 13.

The Fitbit app works perfectly, but Kid View, shown here, was clearly not designed for young children (Image credit: Carrie Marshall) We opted to pair the Fitbit Aces with the main phone, which wasn't ideal: although It was great to be able to see our children's progress on the app, it also meant our phone was needed all the time. your stats or change the watch face. As far as we know, it's not possible to pair an Ace 3 with the Fitbit app on multiple devices without also using the parent's login credentials and then switching to Kid View, so it's helpful to think about which device you're using. to use before you. configure anything. First review in May 2021

Buy it if

You want your tracker to be difficult
The Fitbit Ace 3 is well protected from bumps and knocks thanks to its silicone band, which stretches around the device to protect the screen and should last a long time. Your kids don't want characters
There is no try...