My first smartwatch

It's not so long ago that I bought a Fitbit Inspire HR, my second Fitbit. Well, now I've bought my third.

My first Fitbit, the Alta HR, was purchased in August 2018. I was taken with the idea of tracking my steps and other things, inspired by one of my local friends, Sue, who had invested in one. So had her husband. So this first device had only to gather data for synchronisation to the very impressive Fitbit app on my phone, which analysed it and displayed it beautifully. You could drill down to get whatever level of detail you wanted to see. Strapped to my wrist, the Alta HR looked like a fashion bracelet of some kind, which was rather nice, especially as its strap could be changed to suit one's mood or clothes. 

The Alta HR could also display the time of day, but in small digital numerals that did not show up well in daylight, when they were faint. At night - in bed - they were nice and bright, but without my glasses on the numerals were not at all clear, although I could guess what they might be. Despite these legibility limitations, having an accurate digital clock on my wrist was surprisingly handy. It was especially useful if I'd parked Fiona and needed to move her before the paid-for time had expired - a frequent situation. It saved getting the phone out for a proper look at the time. 

Although the Alta HR had been easy to use and live with, I found my next Fitbit, the Inspire HR, bought in January 2020, in every way nicer. It was much more like a 'wristwatch' in styling - slim and neat, and to my eyes actually more elegant, even though it wasn't a 'fashion bracelet'. 

The data it gathered was the same, and the app on my phone looked no different. But the display on my wrist was much clearer, although still on the small side. The numerals in the time display were however larger and brighter, and legible in all circumstances except very bright sunshine. So I now had a proper timepiece on my wrist. It was still a monochrome display, but I wasn't complaining. 

Roll forward to yesterday. The Inspire HR was still doing well, still looking good. There was no urgent reason at all to upgrade to something better, except that I hankered after the full watch experience. I wanted to see the time more easily and that meant a larger display. And I wanted it to be a colour display. For that I'd need a smartwatch. 

Which to buy? Smartwatches could do many things, and consequently needed large batteries to power them, which in turn meant a certain bulk and weight. I'd pondered the latest Samsung Galaxy smartwatch, and whether it would be overwhelmingly large on my wrist. I thought it would. Perhaps that wouldn't be an issue if I wanted to make a fashion statement. Such a watch would look good in the right situation, on the right person. Less than a week before, I'd seen a Galaxy smartwatch on the slender wrist of the girl who served me at Lakeland in Chichester, when I was buying those melamine plates for the caravan. She was young and pretty. An oversized watch looked great on her. But on me? 

I wasn't at all convinced that a wearable device like that would suit my personality, or my fashion sense. Maybe in the future Samsung (or whoever) would find a way to make their smartwatches decisively smaller, slimmer and lighter. I might be seriously interested then. But not now, in 2021. 

Besides, even if the health and fitness aspects were well catered for on the current Galaxy smartwatch, I'd be paying for a boatload of other stuff that I wouldn't want. I was more than content to leave voice calls, texts, emails, music-playing and self-organisation to my phone. Ditto a host of other features. It was pointless duplicating them on a smartwatch. In any case, all those things hammered the battery life. I wanted a smartwatch that would go for several days on one charge. Even with a colour display.

Its prime job would still be to gather in health and fitness information, synced daily to my phone and considered there. That was the functional focus of whatever I'd buy. So the natural choice was going to be Fitbit again. In any case, I didn't want to lose access to Fitbit's amazing app. So my choice had to be one of the latest Fitbit smartwatches - the Versa 3 or the Sense. The Sense offered a range of wellbeing and stress-relieving facilities absent from the Versa 3, but it cost more. How was my well-being? Excellent. Was I stressed? Not at all. So the less-expensive Versa 3 was the one to look at and possibly buy.

I drove over to Horsham, to John Lewis at Home, where they had a collection of current Fitbit devices. I wanted to check the Versa 3 for size and appearance before committing myself. On the last occasion I'd done this, back in 2018, I'd decided that the first Versa (lately launched by Fitbit) was too big on my wrist. It's possible that Fitbit had refined the styling since then, and subtly shaved off some of the original girth, because it now seemed to me that the Versa 3 was wearable without looking odd. I bought the all-black version - black bezel, black silicone strap - intending to buy a white strap for it separately. Although I'd noticed that there were a variety of different colours available on the Internet - so the final strap might not be white. I've yet to decide.

So, £177 lighter - that's £179, less the refund of £2 parking in John Lewis' car park - I got my new smartwatch home an began to unpack it. Let's have a look. 

There was the smartwatch itself, a longer strap to swap in if needed, and a USB-A charging cable to plug into one's laptop, with a magnetic end-piece with four pins that fitted onto corresponding points on the back of the watch:

The first task was to charge it up to 100%. It had a 60% charge already, so this didn't take long. Then it had to be paired with my phone using a four-digit number displayed on the watch. Then upgraded to the latest Fitbit firmware. I was offered the choice of doing this using home WiFi, or by low-powered Bluetooth via the phone. Of course, I have no home WiFi, so it had to be Bluetooth. 

Gosh, it took a long time! But eventually the latest firmware was downloaded and installed, and the default clock-face appeared. The watch was ready to use!   

Strapped to my wrist, my new Versa 3 looked big, but not too big. Here it is next to the Inspire HR, after being charged up to 100%, but before going on to install the latest firmware.

OK, it wasn't as dainty as the Inspire HR. But I can at least say that the new watch was lightweight and very comfortable. It was as easy to wear as the smaller Inspire HR had been. I had to change to the larger strap, but only to get extra holes for the securing peg to go into, in case I wanted to slacken the strap a little with use. It meant having a longish length of unused strap to tuck away. But I could probably trim some length off it.

The default clock-face was OK. But as this was a smartwatch, an amazing number of alternative clock-faces were available, installed via the phone. Some were designed by Fitbit, and some by third parties but approved for use with the Versa 3. Most were free. I spent a couple of hours trying out several. I totally ignored the very many tasteless or impractical designs involving unicorns and mermaids and bizarre cartoon characters, or those crowded with numbers, graphs and other display gimmicks. I wanted simplicity. I was quite attracted to the 'aviator' type of watch, as illustrated in a book I'd bought last year. For instance:

Yes, they're a bit mannish, but they have the important virtue of at-a-glance clarity, especially the watches without little dials. My ideal was to have something that would tell me the time when I wasn't wearing my glasses, and might be half-asleep. Unfortunately there weren't many 'aviator' clock-faces available for the Versa 3 - at least not currently - but I did discover two very simple clock-faces that had the right kind of appeal. This was the one I eventually settled on. When I first put it on my shortlist, the hands were white, but they turned green as the evening light started to fade.

Next morning - this morning - the hands were white again.

I don't yet know whether the colour of the hands changes according to the ambient light level, or according to what time of the day it is. It's a way of telling am from pm, of course, if you can't see the outside world.

I wore my Versa 3 overnight - it was so comfortable, my wrist forgot that it was dealing with a new and unfamiliar smartwatch - and synced it with my phone as usual next morning at breakfast-time. Now was it my imagination, or did the synchronisation with the app on the phone seem to go particularly readily and smoothly - a slight improvement on the Inspire HR? All the usual information was there, plus a couple of new features that could tell me things about my wellbeing in general, if I turned them on. But I was really only interested in three things about the previous day: the number of steps taken, my heart rate, and how well I had slept overnight. 

Verdict: a most worthwhile upgrade. I still have all the insights the Fitbit app can provide for the things that matter to me personally. And I now have a proper analogue wristwatch to tell the time with. 

As regards battery life, 92% is left as I finish this post off. So it's lost 8% since recharging it to 100% after I finally selected my preferred clock-face yesterday evening - let's say thirteen hours ago. That's the same as losing 15% in twenty-four hours. So after five days I'd lose 75% of the charge, and would be thinking about topping the watch up again to 100%. I'm hoping that once I stop looking at the watch so often, I might squeeze six days out of it before recharging, the same as the Inspire HR. But five days is fine.

Sequel

I've found out that the hands on my chosen clock-face are automatically green from 8.00pm to 7.00am, when they revert to white. I can change this behaviour, and many other things about the display. But actually I like it as it is.

I've now sent off for some different wristbands, initially in white and red, from both Fitbit itself and FitBitStraps.com. The latter has a good range of subtler colours I might go on to try. For I dare say I'll be keeping my new Versa 3 for quite some time, if it proves durable.