As a Pixel Watch 4 owner, I really love (and hate) the new Fitbit Air

I’ve worn a Pixel Watch on my wrist since the original dropped in 2022, and have moved through all four models of Google’s smartwatch. Before that, I had worn a Fitbit for many, many years, starting with the original Fitbit One and moving through the Flex, Alta, Charge, Blaze, and more. I love the product line, and it’s no surprise to say that I’m really, really excited about the new Fitbit Air.

It is quintessentially the Fitbit experience I grew to love with the screenless Flex, but brought into the modern day with a sleeker design and updated capabilities. As a Pixel Watch user and fan, I absolutely love that the Air exists, but that doesn’t stop me from hating a few things about it.

Although the Fitbit Air was built by Google to be a standalone fitness tracker that can track your exercise, sleep, and heart rate throughout the day and sync with the new Google Health app, the small tracker can also serve as an excellent companion to the Pixel Watch 4.

We’ve been begging Google to add multi-tracker support for years now, just like Samsung lets you use a watch and a band or ring at the same time in its app. It’s finally happening. If you have a Pixel Watch, as I do, you won’t have to remove it from the Google Health app to add the Fitbit Air. You can have both paired simultaneously, and Google told me you can specify in the app which order of preference the data should follow for each metric.

That means I could wear my Pixel Watch 4 all day long, prioritize it for activity tracking and heart rate data, and still receive all my important notifications. Then, come nighttime, take off the large watch and switch to the thinner, lighter Fitbit Air, prioritizing it for sleep tracking. No notifications, no screens, no disturbances — perfect for sleep. Plus, it has silent smart alarms to wake me up in the morning. For heart rate, I could tell Google to prioritize data coming from the Pixel Watch, but since I wouldn’t be wearing that to bed, it should pivot to the secondary data stream from the Fitbit Air at night.

All in all, this seems like the perfect two-tracker solution that balances features and comfort, connectivity and disconnection, and offers greater versatility. Maybe I’m going on an adventure where I might scratch the Pixel Watch; I could switch to the Fitbit Air and not worry about that. Or maybe I’m looking for a screenless bracelet so I can wear a classic analog watch on my other wrist. The Fitbit Air allows that.

And although there aren’t any specific accessories like this, the pebble-like design allows for more versatile wearability. Just like with the Fitbit One and Flex series, I expect a line of third-party bands that let you wear the Air as an armband or an ankle bracelet. Maybe even clip it to your shoes for cadence measurement. The future is full of possibilities now that we’re no longer tied to the wrist.

Although a lot of you might be bemoaning the lack of GPS on the Fitbit Air, it’s not exactly the one thing I’m most concerned about. I guess I’m just used to using my phone as a companion to GPS-less trackers (such as some of my previous Fitbits and my Oura Rings). However, I’m annoyed by two clear issues with the Fitbit Air.

One is the fact that these two devices don’t use the same charger. Again. Someone please stop Google from making another charger; it’s getting ridiculous. The sad part is the chargers look so similar that, at first glance, I thought they were the same. But no. The Fitbit Air charger uses the dual-pin system of older Pixel Watches and existing Fitbits, whereas the Pixel Watch 4 charger switched to these new contact-based charging sensors.

What annoys me about this is that I need a separate charger by my bedside to keep the Fitbit Air filled up. Sure, the battery lasts seven days, unlike the Pixel Watch, and I could roll and hide the charger when I don’t use it, but that’s not practical. Google could’ve done the right thing here. It didn’t.

Another issue is that the switch from a Pixel Watch to a Fitbit Air isn’t a true 1-to-1 experience due to the different sensors. Besides the lack of GPS, the Fitbit Air has a less accurate optical heart rate sensor than the Pixel Watch 4’s multi-path sensor. It also misses an ECG sensor for AFib detection and a skin cEDA sensor for stress and body response tracking. It still has SpO2 and temperature sensors, though, at least.

While some of these missing sensors aren’t essential when sleeping, their absence means that anytime I choose to leave my Pixel Watch 4 at home and use the Fitbit Air, I’m sacrificing some extra data points on stress and, more importantly, the life-saving potential of the AFib detection.

For a $99 tracker, though, I can’t complain all that much. Maybe a Fitbit Air 2 will fix some of these issues. I would take the unified charger approach first and foremost, though.