Fitbit has announced that it will give all users some of the data locked behind their Fitbit Premium subscription for free. This includes historical data such as your resting heart rate readings, skin temperature, etc. over the past 90 days, so you can better identify trends in your health and fitness.
All data is available in Fitbit's Health Metrics dashboard and includes respiratory rate (number of breaths per minute), skin temperature measurements (taken while you sleep to ensure your daily fitness score is more accurate) , heart rate variability (the time between heartbeats and its variations), oxygen saturation or SpO2, and your resting heart rate. You can see all this data from the last 90 days of use on the Fitbit of your choice.
Previously, even users of the best Fitbits had to subscribe to Fitbit Premium to see this data, while users of the best Apple Watches, Samsung Watches, and Garmin fitness trackers could access similar data sets for free. This decision brings Fitbit closer to its competitors and is good news for new entrants.
However, people who already pay for Fitbit Premium have one more reason to cancel the service. Since Fitbit has made this data available to everyone, the set of exclusive features that a Premium membership gives you has been effectively reduced. We can expect some dissatisfied Premium users to cancel their subscription and start using Fitbit's free features again.
Without a Premium subscription, the Fitbit app is still perfectly usable, giving you detailed information about your workout, step and calorie counts, sleep stage analysis (light, deep, and REM), and a sleep score, among other things. other information. The Premium subscription goes further, consolidating your sleep and training history into a daily fitness score. It also offers meditation exercises, exercise videos, recipes, a monthly wellness report, and more detailed graphs of its 90-day historical data.
Analysis: too little, too late?
It's no secret that Fitbit has received a lot of bad press over the last year. Google wanted to take over Fitbit and squeeze the best parts of the platform into its Pixel Watch, but it doesn't seem to know what to do with the rest of the Fitbit lineup. Retroactively changes and removes features like offline music, party challenges, and more that made Fitbit great in the first place. With a lackluster launch of the device in September 2022, Fitbit as a brand failed.
This latest announcement is the first positive news we've seen in a while, with Fitbit adding features rather than removing them. People who don't subscribe to Fitbit Premium have all the more reason to stick with Fitbit rather than switch to a competitor because all their historical data is now available for free.
Newcomers are more likely to choose a device with more free content available, while longtime non-Premium subscribers will appreciate being able to review their data from the last 90 days.
However, despite this goodwill gesture, Fitbit hasn't really resolved the issue you've been having. The removal of offline music, third-party apps, and crippling the global Fitbit community by removing groups and challenges has infuriated many users, and just check the tweets and responses from Fitbit's official Twitter account to see this. will go between its user. base.
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This new development might encourage some people to buy a Fitbit Inspire 3, but I don't think delivering a little more data is enough to stop angry Fitbit users from jumping ship.