I tried the Fitbit Luxe health and wellness smart watch. Image supplied.
Back in May 2021, Fitbit released the latest innovation in their smart watch collection – The Fitbit Luxe and I was lucky enough to be sent the product to trial.
The Fitbit Luxe is a fashion-forward fitness and wellness tracker designed to help you take a more holistic approach to your health and wellness. Luxe offers you the motivation and support you need to take on the challenges and stresses of day to day life. Luxe gives you the insights into your wellbeing in the Fitbit app with the Health Metrics dashboard, which is synced to your phone. This tracks your breathing rate, heart rate variability (HRV), resting heart rate (RHR), skin temperature and oxygen saturation. By looking at your weekly HRV and RHR, you may be able to see whether there is a sudden change, which could indicate sudden change, which could be a cause of stress, fatigue or a cold.
The Fitbit also offers a Premium six month membership option which lets you track your monthly trends and personal ranges, highlighting which one of your metrics is out of range. It also delves deeper into your health data.
The Fitbit Luxe is designed for maximum comfort, making it easy to wear nightly to manage your sleep. Your Sleep Score helps you better understand your sleep quality, and bedtime reminders can help you establish a more consistent sleep routine. Premium members can view deeper sleep analytics, and some will see feature tests as Fitbit works to expand its future offerings to give even more personalized guidance based on your sleep patterns.
The additional Fitbit Luxe features include food, hydration and weight logging, and menstrual health tracking. Premium members have access to more than 60 new pieces of nutrition content including curated healthy recipes from Fitbit and Eating Well magazine. As well as call and text notifications and a waterproof feature, which allows users to shower or swim for up to 50 metres in depth.
I have been trialing the Fitbit Luxe for the past five months and the features I have been using the most are the fitness tracking feature and the sleep tracking feature – here are some of my thoughts.
Fitness Tracking
For a busy working mum, finding the time to exercise in the current climate while my son is home with me full time can be a struggle. But the Fitbit Luxe has encouraged me to exercise more regularly with it’s super helpful fitness tracking. I am an avid walker and our daily walk/bike rides are one of the only things keeping me sane at the moment, so I love that the Luxe tracks my steps when I activate a walking session with just a couple swipes on the watch face. This feature also allows me to pause my walk if we make any pitstops along the way and track how far we have walked by enabling the GPS, as well as tracking my heart rate.
The Luxe also tracks my workouts automatically by sensing when my heart rate rises and activates the feature where it tracks my “Zone Minutes,” these minutes tell you how long your body has been in fat burn, cardio and your peak.
At the end of the day I can check the app on my phone to see how many “Zone Minutes” I have accumulated through the day, it takes into account how many steps I have done throughout the day as well as if I have done any workouts. Each day it will give you a score and your overall score will contribute to your weekly exercise goal. Your app will also tell you how many kilometres you have walked via your step count and also how many calories you have burned throughout the day.
I would have to say that these features have actually encouraged me to exercise every day and gives me the motivation I need to do so. I find it very appealing being able to track exactly how much work I am putting in to every day and what the benefits for my body are. I also love the premium feature as it allow me to access pages of different exercise videos for all different types of exercise, such as, no-equipment, pilates, yoga or hiit – guided workouts are just a few clicks away on my phone app.
Sleep Tracking
The other feature that I use the most is the Sleep Tracking feature. I am a terrible sleeper – I suffer from insomnia and I very rarely sleep through the night without waking a handful of times, so I have found the Sleep Tracking feature very insightful into my sleep patterns.
After tracking your sleep patterns for a few weeks, you are able to see what your triggers may be for an un-restful sleep, such as drinking alcohol, stress or not exercising that day. The sleep feature is automatic, again, it activates when your heart rate drops and stabilises. If you wear it sitting higher on your wrist and not too loose or tight, the sensors will be able to track your sleep patterns such as – the time you spend asleep, the time you spend awake, time you are in both deep sleep and REM sleep, restoration, heart rate and oxygen variation – the sleep tracker then takes all of these factors into account and will give you an overall sleep score in the morning based on your metrics.
For people who may suffer from sleep issues such as chronic snoring or sleep apnea – the oxygen variation feature will be an indication of that. You blood oxygen saturation normally fluctuates, but if you are noticing high variations throughout the night, this could indicate a sleeping issue, which may need to be investigated further by your GP.
Overall, I would highly recommend the Fitbit Luxe for those who are wanting to make more of an effort with their health and wellness. Another wonderful feature to help manage stress is the “Relax” feature, which offers quick 2 minute guided breathing technique on the face of your watch – a good feature for a quick fix in times of high stress. The app also features mindfulness sessions, featuring guided meditations, jaw tension releasing techniques or sleep meditations.
At an affordable price point of $229.95 NZD, this watch really is worth every dollar. The only negative I have to point out for a well rounded review is that Fitbit states the battery life is up-to 5 days, but I usually have to charge my watch every 24 hours, if I wear it for the full 24 hours, or every second day if I take it off at night. But other than that, I have no complaints, I wear my Fitbit Luxe most days and it has encouraged me to make more of an effort with my health and wellness and that to me is invaluable.