Fitbit Surge review: A good fitness tracker with limited smart watch capability

While the wearable market is buzzing with the availability of multiple fitness trackers and smart watches, today we review Fitbit Surge, the flagship from Fitbit, a leading player in connected health and fitness watch.

Fitbit Surge is the most expensive fitness tracker from the Fitbit currently priced at Rs. 22,999 on Amazon. Fitbit Surge combines popular features like GPS with a continuous wrist-based heart rate monitor, all day fitness tracking with smartwatch functionality such as caller ID and text notification.

Design

Fitbit Surge is a descent mix of fitness tracker and a smartwatch in one and probably this is why the design is bulky for most of us as the watch tries to package maximum utility in it. With a huge touch screen display and broad wrist band, the watch will standout on your wrist and will probably match with your casual outfits.  The watch is an all day steps tracking and monitors sleep too which makes it quite uncomfortable to carry around throughout the day and night because of its size. It is available in 3 colors – black, blue and tangerine. 

Functions

• GPS tracking
• Multi sports activity tracking
• Purepulse heart rate
• All day steps count
• Auto sleep
• Silent alarm
• Caller ID
• OLED Display
• Music control and notifications

What we liked

• GPS and HRM (heart rate monitor) are accurate and handy to record work outs and track progress
• Multi sports tracker for running, walking, cycling, hiking and weight lifting etc. 
• Sleep tracker is very accurate and probably the most accurate one that we have ever used at Fatmarathoner.com
• Battery lasts for good 4-5 days without having the continous heart rate monitor on. Even with HRM and upto 1 hour of GPS usage per day, the battery lasted for good 2-3 days
• Well design App that lets to input food and water intake plus sync sleep record and workouts. It motivates you to do more by awarding different badges based on milestones accomplished by you
• The updated software automatically track common exercises like biking, hiking, running, and sports including basketball, soccer and tennis

What can improve

• Bulky body and strap – Was uncomfortable to wear it through all day and night
• Expensive for an fitness tracker
• Difficult yo read from the display during outdoors

Conclusion

As a fitness tracker it does well in terms of tracking multi sports including running and cycling with an accurate GPS capability and real time HRM. But the price to claim the functionality of complete fitness tracker is on higher side as we have options available in the market from TomTom and Garmin which are lesser priced. Even when it comes to owning a smartwatch, it provides only limited options as you can only see incoming alerts but can’t take any action to receive or reject the calls/ reply to messages.

Cover photo: www.fitbit.com