Over the past couple years, many companies have started focusing on health products, exploring the once niche demographic, that has slowly become important and more mainstream. While a majority of these companies are relatively new to this space, Fitbit has been producing these types of devices since its inception, with the first such product launching in 2011. Now, with its years of expertise, it has released its latest product, the Fitbit Ionic.
The Ionic looks to be a culmination of all the best parts of its fitness wearable lineup from past years, offering a beautiful design that borrows a little from the Blaze, with an improved interface and advanced software to give users the best experience possible. It has everything that you would expect from a top-tier fitness smartwatch with integrated GPS, storage for music, heart rate sensor, and a screen that is plenty bright, capable of reaching up to 1,000 nits. While this is all expected from a fitness wearable, Fitbit takes it a step further by introducing Fitbit Pay, a new service that will allow users to make payments using the device on contact-less terminals.
Since this is a smartwatch, it will also have the ability to receive smartphone notifications, calls, texts, calendar alerts, and more. The firm is promising four or more days of battery life on a single charge with ten hours of continuous use of the GPS. The device runs a custom OS but is expandable thanks to the firm"s own App Gallery that features popular apps like Pandora, Strava, Accuweather, and more. Fitbit will bring support for more apps over the coming months and will also release an SDK for developers in September.
Pre-orders for the Ionic are available through the Fitbit website and will have a retail price of $299.95 when it makes its way to retailers globally in October.