On 1 August 2019 I gave a summary of my 'smartwatch'/'tracker' gadgets - here. The latest addition was a Fitbit Ionic, bought in July 2019. That gadget is shown on the left above. On Sunday it 'died'; all the resuscitation procedures that I could find - "press all three buttons", "press … (a selection of buttons for differing lengths of time)", etc produced just an intermittent Fitbit logo, as shown.
A root around in a drawer found its predecessor, a Fitbit Surge, pictured right - the broken strap reminding me as to why it had been superseded. Anyway, I charged it up and it has worked fine in my pocket for the last few days.
Not pictured, is the Garmin 35, on which I reported in that earlier posting. I've used that as my GPS/running watch since the 310XTs both failed, and it currently still looks and behaves as new. My only niggle with it is that it has a very limited pause time of about 5 minutes before automatically ending the activity, so if you pause it you risk having to start a new activity when you get going again. That's fine for an activity like running, but for a walk with a lunch stop in a pub you have to accept that you have to add together two separate activities to get your stats and .gpx files. I've come to accept that, and overall the 35, linked with Garmin Connect, is a perfectly adequate piece of kit for a reasonable price.
I haven't needed to use the Ionic as a gps gadget, as the Garmin 35 has done that and has better battery life than the Ionic, so it was a bit of a surprise when the Ionic failed after less than 14 months' use. A call on Tuesday morning to Fitbit support (08000698505) resulted in a ten minute wait, then a twenty minute session with an American operative, going through all the resuscitation techniques I had already tried, and more. At the end of that she simply said "I've sent you an email with your options."
The email duly arrived and gave me the (usual - I've been through this before with Fitbit products)option of a new Ionic watch (just the watch, no straps or charger etc), or 50% off a different product. I chose the former, and it arrived this morning, just 48 hours after I'd reported the failure of its predecessor. I can live with that - the new watch is shown in the centre of the above picture, up and running after being charged up and downloading the latest software.
Hard to spot in the picture is the fact that the removable straps ('bands') are on their last legs, so I should have mentioned that when on the phone to Fitbit. Never mind, I've just thrown them a little petty cash for a new strap to go with the new watch. The cheaper non-Fitbit options all seem to get a thumbs down from their reviewers.
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