Fitbit Air

The first follow-up to the Fitbit Air is a new Special Edition that integrates with Pokémon Sleep. Available in the US and Japan, it’s meant to make sleep tracking feel like a “daily adventure,” while celebrating Pokémon’s 30th anniversary this year.

The Fitbit Air is being touted as a fantastic fitness tracker, but I don’t think its worth has quite yet been proven. Google-made and third-party bands do not make for a comfortable experience, and competitive trackers blow it out of the water in terms of fit.

It feels rather inevitable that Google will give in to the whole “Ultra” smartwatch fad, and when something along the lines of a “Pixel Watch Ultra” does arrive, I really hope it pulls influence from Fitbit Air.

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After a few months of daily wear with my Fog colored Fitbit Air, I hit a stage where I wanted some alternate accessories and, so, I took a punt on some cheap bands from Amazon, only to be blown away with how good they actually were.

The Pixel Watch 5 looks mostly familiar in leaks thus far, but a new leak showcases a Stephen Curry edition, a style that first debuted on Fitbit Air.

Following two big Google Health app updates, the Fitbit Air is getting its first post-launch firmware update.

The simplicity of the Fitbit Air encourages some neat ideas for how to use it, including pairing it with a traditional watch. Some Fitbit Air buyers are taking that idea and literally cutting holes in their watch bands to house the tracker, but there’s probably a better way.

I told myself the Fitbit Air would be a nice addition to my EDC. A simple, complementary tracker that I don’t need to worry about charging as often. I also told myself it won’t ever replace a dedicated smartwatch. It turns out I was very wrong.

There’s an inherent bit of joy that comes from using a Pebble smartwatch, but one thing that’s always made me hesitate is that Pebble’s health tracking is very basic, if it’s there at all. When I saw people strapping mechanical watches to the Fitbit Air, I had to do the thing.

So now there’s a Pebble on my Fitbit.

I’ve had a Pixel Watch of some sort on my wrist nearly every day for the past few years, largely because I’ve come to really value the tracking I get out of what is now Google Health. But, now, there’s another option in the Fitbit Air, a screen-less tracker that, for me, has come to serve as a brilliant little companion to my Pixel Watch.

The Fitbit Air doesn’t replace your analog or digital watch, and that’s one of the biggest reasons it works. Naturally, some users are already strapping their automatic watches to Google’s fitness tracker.

Google is leaning into the Fitbit Air’s swappable pebble design to let anyone make their own accessories. This move is rather Google-y and reminiscent of the company’s earlier days.

Welcome to episode 102 of Pixelated, a podcast by 9to5Google. This week, Abner, Damien, and Will catch up on some of their opinions and impressions surrounding Google I/O, before pivoting to discuss Will’s review of the Fitbit Air.

Sponsored by Proton Unlimited: Pixelated listeners can save 30% on an annual subscription to the company’s suite of privacy-friendly services by signing up using our link. Thanks to Proton Unlimited for sponsoring the podcast.

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Google’s reputation would have you thinking it’s incapable of launching a quality first-gen product, but the Fitbit Air proves otherwise. Effectively billed as a Whoop competitor for the masses, the Air is a display-less fitness band that is capable of providing you with baseline health data for just $100. If you’re one of the many, many people feeling overwhelmed by the amount of screens in your life, disconnecting with a band as simple as the Air might be just what the doctor ordered.

What should a modern fitness tracker be in 2026? With smartwatches readily available — and for not much more than your run-of-the-mill Fitbit — it’s a tricky proposition, especially for brands like Google that live in both spaces. The Fitbit Air feels like an admission from Google that Whoop, the obvious competitor for something like this, is on the right path, offering a minimalist band that exists to gather data, not to serve as a miniature wrist-based computer. So far, I’m liking what I’m seeing from my time with the device, but not without some unsurprising concerns surrounding its AI coach.

The hardware design of the Fitbit Air is quite straightforward, but there are two features that aren’t particularly obvious until you start wearing the wearable.

Google’s Fitbit lineup is remaining almost entirely unchanged after launching the screenless Air tracker. That means you can still buy flagship models outside of the Pixel Watch family.

Google’s new Fitbit Air tracker is here and comes in a variety of different styles, but the best option might just be the special Stephen Curry edition.

I/O might still be a couple of weeks away, but it’s a big day for new Google announcements anyway. The company announced a rebranding of its Fitbit app to Google Health today, as 9to5Google initially leaked last month, but that still left the fate of the company’s other fitness tracking app up in the air.