--- the subscriber area has no ads and those above are not selected or endorsed by this site ---

Versa and the Race Against Time ?4

20:29 28-May-18

Executive Summary: the Versa is likely to sell far more units than the Ionic due to its low price point and improved feature set.  The device shows Fitbit's experience at making cheap products, which is both positive and negative, but also belies the continued immaturity of its software ecosystem.  Even though the Versa does improve the company's prospects significantly, I expect the good fortune to only last until a new wave of competition hits towards the end of the year.

Evaluation Parameters

The Versa was given to an active female professional for evaluation on May 4th.  It's taken us quite a while get an assessment of the Versa out, and the reasons why are significant.  Quick Replies and female health tracking features were announced as available just three days later.  Despite this, the new functionality was not available on our model until May 14th.  This is because Fitbit actually rolled the features out only very gradually in order to test them.  Processes like this have become common, even with end-user devices, but as a programmer, I find them to be sad commentary on the state of both software development and consumer relations these days.

While we waited for the features we most wanted to test, the user quickly came up with the following list of Pros and Cons about the Versa's basic functionality:

Pros:

• Top-notch smart-phone interface to data: Fitbit has been consistently lauded in this area, and our tester added her kudos, particularly appreciating:
• the dashboard of activity for the day (see image to the right) including calories burned, not just steps taken.
  

• the breakdown by hour of when she is active and how far she has traveled.
• automatic sleep tracking which appears accurate at least on overall time, though it is more difficult to verify the REM, Light, and Deep sleep figures.
  
• Improved activity tracking on the device: the Versa's activity tracking appears superior to prior generation devices.  Our tester had previously owned a Sony Talkband, which routinely failed to measure some activities correctly.  The Versa also appropriate differentiates between stairs and steps.  That said, note that actual performance is also in the list of Cons, below.
• Battery Life: I can't stress this one enough.  Like the Ionic, the Versa allows you to go multiple days without recharging, even when active.  In this regard, it clearly bests all competitors but Garmin which, as I've noted before, is on par because it and Fitbit are the only entrants to roll their own hardware rather than relying on outdated Qualcomm SoCs.  More on this below.
  
• Water resistance, so she doesn't have to take it off in the shower, was appreciated.
  
• Aesthetics: the screen is bright and easy to read; some have dinged it for large bezels, but this did not trouble our tester.  More importantly, the Versa is sleeker and lighter than competitors, which is key for many female wrists!
  

• Connection reliability: there was a great deal of difficulty reconnecting the Versa with her Moto E4 after loss of connection.  
  
• Support: initial attempts to troubleshoot this issue got a rather bland response from Fitbit, asking us to try the watch with other phones, and questioning compatibility.  They seemed to miss the point that the watch does connect, just not reliably.  To be fair, the phone is probably at least as much at fault as the Versa.  Our test user was able to pair reliably with her iPhone, though the Versa will not use more than one phone simultaneously.  I've also touched base with other multiple other Ionic users and they have not had problems reconnecting.  Nonetheless, the problems we experienced are the sort of thing that software development teams work through all time, and something that usually improves as the software matures.  It's no surprise that it has a long way to go, but on the support side, if we were to espouse the stance initially offered by Fitbit, then the company should be advertising the Versa as only compatible with two dozen Android phones, which we only got a list of after more cajoling.
  
• Lack of features: The connection issues quickly brought to the fore that there is no alert when the Versa disconnects from the phone.  Similarly, when the two are connected a Find My Phone feature is something that is available elsewhere and much requested by users, but so far pleas have been roundly ignored by Fitbit developers.  Things like this speak to the poor third-party software ecosystem problem that I have highlighted from the beginning.
• Weak Notifications: our test tends to miss messaging notifications when she is on the move because buzzer is simply too weak.  Other have reported this too, and it's shocking (though not literally) to me that Fitbit wouldn't code in some basic optionality into such an important feature.  The prior link is one potential explanation; being forced into cheap device construction is another.
  
• Motion Sensitivity and Lag: the Versa was not sensitive enough to wrist motion to always give the time, particularly when a discreet check was desired.  Even when it does register the wrist turn, there is a pause before it shows me the time.  For discreet checks, this means it's not seamless, and even in other situations the delay quickly becomes a significant annoyance.
  
• Activity Tracking Accuracy: although there has been improvement, this is still far from perfect.  For example, the app registered 26 minutes of outdoor biking, but our tester never bikes!  Similarly, yoga classes were a total loss as far as tracking was concerned.
  

Topics:

• none