Screenless fitness trackers are trending, and Fitbit is jumping on board. For its first new tracker in years, Google-owned Fitbit is taking a page from Whoop's playbook and ditching the display, a staple of its earlier models like the Charge 6 and Inspire 3. Priced at $99, the Fitbit Air nails the screen-free fitness tracker experience while significantly undercutting its inspiration, the Whoop 5.0 ($239 per year), in price. It's comfortable to wear day and night, and it accurately tracks exercise and sleep based on my testing. An optional $99.99-per-year subscription adds a lot to the experience, with far superior AI-powered health and fitness guidance than any competitive offering. Fitbit is playing it safe to a degree, leveraging its existing sensor expertise and opting for a wristband design instead of a smart ring like the Oura 4. Still, if you’re looking for a wrist-based fitness tracker without a distracting screen, the Fitbit Air is the one to get, and it earns our Editors’ Choice award.

Price: A Low Entry Cost That Undercuts the Competition (Even With a Subscription)

Whether or not you sign up for a subscription, the Fitbit Air costs significantly less than the popular Whoop tracker. The tracker itself has a reasonable $99 price and comes with a lightweight fabric band called the Performance Loop Band in Berry (red), Fog (silver), Lavender (purple), or Obsidian (black).

Additional bands start at $34.99 for the Performance Loop or the rugged, plastic Active Band (available in sizes small or large, in the same colors as the Performance Loop). The stylish Elevated Modern Band (available in black, silver, or gray) costs more at $49.99.

(Credit: Andrew Gebhart)

Without a subscription, the Google Health app (which replaces the Fitbit app) tracks activity, exercise, sleep, and stress and shows scores for each. The free version also includes your Daily Readiness Score, indicating how hard to push yourself each day, and your Cardio Load to help you plan your week of cardiovascular activity. You can also log your nutrition and check all tracked vitals.

The Fitbit Air comes with three months of the premium subscription, which costs $9.99 per month or $99.99 per year after the free trial. The paid version adds a Gemini AI-powered assistant, called Google Health Coach, which creates fitness plans and offers exercise and sleep guidance through an interactive chat interface. You also get access to Fitbit’s workouts and mindfulness sessions in the premium app. I’ll detail my experiences with the Health Coach below, but it's an impressive AI wellness tool that’s both proactive and reactive.

Unlike the Air, you can’t buy a Whoop tracker outright; it's part of a subscription plan. The cheapest plan, priced at $149 annually, includes the Whoop 4.0, while the most expensive comes with the premium Whoop MG ($359 annually). With Whoop, you get the best bang for your buck with the middle tier ($239 annually) that includes the 5.0 tracker.

The $199.99 Polar Loop is another screenless wristband tracker. Like the Fitbit Air, the Loop provides all your basic data for free, but offers sport-specific training guidance for $8.99 per month.

The $349 Oura Ring 4 is my favorite smart ring and another top pick for screenless health tracking, but it also requires a $69.99 premium subscription for access to most of your health data.

Design: So Light and Comfortable It Disappears on Your Wrist

For this review, Google sent me the Air with a Performance Loop in Obsidian, an extra Performance Loop in Berry, and an Active Band in Fog (size large).

(Credit: Andrew Gebhart)

The Performance Loop only comes in one size, but it fits well. It securely holds the sensor against your wrist and features a buckle with a Velcro closure, making it easy to adjust.

Encased in a sturdy plastic, the sensor measures 1.4 by 0.7 by 0.3 inches (LWH) and is water resistant to a depth of 164 feet. It features an indicator light on the side to let you quickly check the battery level. When you double-tap the top, the light will glow white if the sensor has more than 20% charge, blink red if it has less than 20%, or shine solid red at 0%.

You can easily pop the sensor out by removing the band from your wrist and then pressing down to push it out. Inserting it into another band is just as simple: Make sure the indicator light on the sensor is aligned with the slot in the case, then snap the sensor into place.

(Credit: Andrew Gebhart)

While I enjoyed switching styles on occasion, I mostly wore the Obsidian Performance Loop Band during my two weeks of testing. I prefer neutral colors, and love the feel of the recycled polyester and elastane yarn band. It's so lightweight that I often didn’t even notice it. When going about my day, I’d regularly forget I was even wearing the Fitbit Air, and it didn’t bother me at all during sleep.

The Performance Loop covers the sensor, so I never felt the need to take any precautions when lifting weights, and the device never got in my way. By contrast, I’d often have to reposition the Oura Ring for comfort, or shift the screen of a smartwatch to protect the display, when lifting weights. The Active Band offers even more protection, but the Performance Loop is durable enough for all everyday activities.

Style-wise, the Air blends in well at the gym, and the simple design even works with my nicer outfits. I wore the Air for a night on the town without any self-consciousness, whereas both the Whoop 5.0 and the Polar Loop vaguely resemble ankle monitors, and I cringed wearing them when dressed up.

Whoop offers myriad alternatives to its default band, including clothing designed to hold the sensor. When comparing just the included bands, though, I much prefer the Fitbit Air's design because the Whoop strap is more difficult to adjust and can pinch your skin when snapping closed.

Sensors and Specs: Packed With Serious Tracking Hardware

The Fitbit Air takes measurements with an optical heart rate monitor, a gyroscope, red and infrared sensors, a temperature sensor, and a three-axis accelerometer, and it features a vibration motor for haptic alarms and charging alerts. It uses Bluetooth to sync your data with the Google Health app, which is compatible with devices running Android 11 or iOS 16.4 or later.

(Credit: Andrew Gebhart)

The tracker captures heart rate data every two seconds and has enough memory to store up to a week of motion details and a day of workout metrics. It collects information on breathing rate, movement, skin temperature variation, and SpO2 (blood oxygen saturation), as well as various heart rate details, including heart rate variability and resting heart rate. Note that it doesn’t directly track skin temperature, but instead looks for variations from your baseline. It can also monitor for atrial fibrillation (AFib, an irregular heartbeat).

Unlike the Fitbit Charge 6 ($159.95), the Air doesn't let you take an ECG, but its sensors and capabilities rival other top screenless trackers. The Whoop MG supports ECG readings, but the Whoop 5.0 and the Oura Ring 4 don't. The Polar Loop lacks ECG and blood-oxygen sensors.

Battery Life: A Full Week—and Then Some

Since it doesn’t have a screen, the Fitbit Air runs for much longer than the Charge 6. Google says the Air should last roughly one week on a charge, but that proved to be a slight underestimate in real-world use. In my testing, the Air lasted just over eight full days on a charge.

That's a respectable result, though the Whoop 5.0 more than doubles the Air’s battery life, lasting 16.5 days in testing. Adding to its battery-life advantage, the Whoop 5.0 also makes recharging easier with a portable power pack that lets you keep wearing the band while it juices up. With the Whoop 5.0, you really never need to take it off if you don’t want to, a differentiator from every other wearable I’ve tested.

For comparison, the Charge 6 lasted three days per charge with the always-on display enabled and 4.5 days with it disabled. Both the Polar Loop and the Oura Ring 4 lasted about a week on a charge in my testing.

The Fitbit Air outlasts most fitness trackers with a screen, though the Fitbit Versa 4 ($199.95) comes close, lasting six days per charge in testing with the always-on display disabled. The pricey Garmin Venu 3 ($449.99) lasted up to eight days on a charge, as did the Garmin Vivoactive 5 ($299.99).

Setup: Quick Pairing and a Smooth First-Time Experience

The Fitbit Air ships with a USB-C charger, but no wall adapter. To get started with the setup, put it on its magnetic charger to let it boot up, then download and open the Google Health app. Log in with your Google account, then tap Add Device if you don’t see a prompt. The app asks for permission to find nearby devices and to track your location using your phone’s GPS. Once I agreed to those permissions, the app paired with the Air within moments.

After the pairing process, the app offers some instructions for using the Air while it downloads updates. It shows you how to pop out the sensor if you want to switch bands, and instructs you to wear the strap just behind your wrist bone. The strap should be snug, but loose enough to fit your pinky finger between the band and your skin. Google also says you should take care to keep the band clean and dry.

(Credit: Andrew Gebhart)

I let the Air fully update and charge before putting it on for the first time, and I found a good fit almost immediately. In my testing, the Performance Loop dried quickly after a sweaty workout or a shower, so I wore it 24/7 without any irritation. As expected, the tracker takes roughly a day to start showing data in the app, and a couple of days of wear to fill out all the fields.

If you have a Pixel Watch 4, you can trade off wearing it and the Fitbit Air, using the watch during the day and the band overnight, for instance, and Google Health Coach will collect and combine data from both sources. You can also import data from additional sources, like third-party apps and devices. After getting my permission, the app automatically found and imported my recent weigh-ins from the HumeHealth Body Pod. You can also export your heart rate readings from the Air to compatible gym equipment.

Google Health App and Coach: AI-Powered Guidance That Actually Feels Useful

The Google Health app is organized into four tabs. The Today tab shows your Daily Readiness Score, Cardio Load, current daily step total, and sleep duration and score at the top. You can customize this dashboard and scroll horizontally for more metrics. Further down on this tab, the app offers additional metrics and updates, surfacing the most recent and relevant information.

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The Fitness tab lets you start tracking a workout or check past exercise details. The premium version also houses guided workout routines in the Fitness tab. The Sleep tab shows all of your relevant data, with more in-depth analysis and recommendations in the premium version.

The Health tab holds your tracked vitals and is customizable, so you can put the metrics that you care most about toward the top. Here, you can also log your food intake, set up high and low heart rate and irregular heart rhythm notifications, and even upload medical records if you have access to your doctor’s online medical portal.

If you turn on the Coach in the premium app experience, the tabs offer more robust recommendations, but the big advantage comes from the Gemini-powered chatbot guiding the experience. You can chat with the Coach via voice or text by hitting the Ask Coach button on any page of the app.

Getting started with the Coach requires a short conversation about yourself and your goals via its text interface. The process actually reminded me of my first conversation with my (human) personal trainer. During this initial convo, the Coach got to know me and responded fluidly to my inputs. It remembered some of the details of my schedule from when I last tested it in preview last fall, but you can always start fresh by deleting prior conversations in settings.

After our initial conversation, it created a workout schedule for me, taking into account my personal trainer sessions. I mentioned that I often struggle to find the motivation to work out, so it included a handful of easy walking exercises on days without my trainer, just to keep me moving.

The Coach makes it easy to log exercise and food by text, voice, or with a photo. That last part impressed me the most. I took a pic of a whiteboard listing my workout for the day, and the Coach understood my personal trainer’s handwriting and added each activity to my logged exercise. I had to tell the Coach that the whiteboard photo corresponded to an earlier workout I manually recorded, but it eventually combined all of the data correctly. I also snapped a picture of a handful of pretzels, and the Coach recognized them and logged the calories as a snack.

(Credit: Google/PCMag)

Each morning, it would send me a notification summarizing my sleep and readiness and offering a plan for the day. Because of its personable and detailed nature, I always felt compelled to chat with it, keep it updated about my plans, and take its advice into account. The Coach sometimes responds a little slowly as the AI processes information, but it's still very user-friendly and highly adaptable. One time, it forgot a previously discussed schedule change, but it corrected the error when I pointed it out.

It remembers conversations from day to day and uses that information to form recommendations. The day after I mentioned I was going to a beer fest, it noted my low readiness and suggested lots of water as part of my recovery. On another occasion, I asked if going to a concert would be a suitable replacement for a walk, and it said yes. The next morning, it noted my activity at the concert and suggested that I might need to recover from the late night.

When I first tested the Coach in preview last fall, its sleep guidance was lacking, but it has improved since then. It now offers more thorough explanations around ideal bedtime recommendations, more precise details on sleep duration, and seems more responsive when tracking naps. That said, it still falls short of Samsung’s Sleep Coach, which creates a checklist of activities to help you get more restful shuteye.

Even so, Google’s Health Coach is the best AI I've tested for generating personalized fitness plans, and since the preview period, it's only gotten better at adapting to personal needs and preferences, while also making it easier to import relevant data.

Exercise Tracking: Strong Heart Rate Accuracy, Limited Auto Detection

To test its fitness-tracking accuracy, I wore the Air alongside the Apple Watch Ultra 3 ($799) during several walks, a 30-minute run, and two high-intensity interval training sessions (HIIT) with my personal trainer. I manually logged the run and one of the HIIT sessions via the Google Health app, and tested the Fitbit Air’s auto-tracking capabilities for the other activities. It’s obviously harder to check live stats than on a device without a screen, but the Air otherwise collected similar data as the Ultra 3 for the manually tracked workouts.

The Fitbit Air’s heart rate numbers stayed within one to two beats per minute (bpm) of the Ultra 3 throughout my workouts. It even reacted more quickly than the Ultra 3 to heart rate fluctuations when I sprinted at intervals at the end of my run. Afterward, the heart rate chart and average value for the workout matched the Ultra 3’s. It also showed accurate values for time spent in each heart rate zone, calories burned, distance covered, and pace.

(Credit: Google/PCMag)

The Ultra 3 and many other wearables with a screen track more exercise details than the Fitbit Air, including running form metrics like cadence and stride length. The Fitbit Air tracks a similar set of stats as its screenless competitors, and the Whoop 5.0 and Oura Ring 4 were just as accurate in testing, while the Polar Loop showed slightly more deviation in its heart rate numbers.

When it comes to automatically tracking workouts, the Fitbit Air falls short of the Whoop 5.0. Fitbit's tracker only supports automatic detection for the following exercises: running, walking, bike riding, spinning, rowing, elliptical training, or team sports, and you need to do the activity for at least 15 straight minutes. In testing, the Fitbit Air automatically logged all of my walks, but not my HIIT session. The Whoop 5.0 automatically logged my HIIT sessions by detecting my elevated heart rate and asking me to confirm the activity afterward.

Whoop offers an impressive mix of exercises in its database, including a wide range of strength-training moves. You can fill in almost every detail of your routine in the Whoop app, and its holistic health scores do a good job of guiding you on how much to push yourself on a given day.

The Fitbit Air's Health Coach somewhat makes up for its auto-tracking limitations. I simply told the Coach that I worked out earlier, specifying the time, and it went back, retrieved my heart rate, and logged it. And because the Coach can recognize a workout from a picture of a whiteboard, it is incredibly easy to track varied sets without manually entering every part of the routine.

Sleep Tracking: Reliable Data, Light-Touch Insights

During sleep, the Fitbit Air tracks duration, quality, and resting heart rate. It also gives you a Sleep Score and shows contributing factors such as the duration of sound sleep, restlessness, interruptions, and time spent fully awake. It color-codes each contributing factor and shows how your value compares with the typical range on a line graph.

The app's Sleep screen displays your Sleep Score and duration at the top. Scroll down for the AI assessment of your slumber and a chart showing your sleep cycles. Scroll further for metrics like deep and REM sleep, graphed with your values over the past week. You can tap any of these metrics for more details.

(Credit: Google/PCMag)

I tested the Air's sleep tracking while again wearing the Apple Watch Ultra 3 on my other wrist most nights. The Air’s sleep duration and sleep cycle charts matched those from the Ultra 3 and aligned with my anecdotal experience when I wasn’t wearing the Ultra 3.

Its Sleep Score and resulting Readiness Score both always matched my energy levels in the morning. While the Coach’s sleep-specific advice is usually rudimentary, such as going to bed earlier when I’m tired and aiming to wake up at a consistent time, it dynamically adjusted its recommendations based on my schedule and my readiness.

I also used the Air’s smart haptic alarm to wake me on a couple of mornings, and on both occasions, it began buzzing as I started to stir within my set time range. These alarms worked better than the ones on the Whoop 5.0, which didn’t usually start buzzing until after I was already out of bed. With the Fitbit Air, I could reliably turn off the alarm with a double tap, whereas the same controls on the Whoop were frustratingly unreliable.

The Whoop 5.0 tracks similar sleep metrics to the Air and offers accurate assessments of your shut-eye, but its app buries your raw stats in menus that can be hard to find, while prominently surfacing its prescriptive recommendations. The Oura Ring 4 collects similar sleep metrics, and its app makes them all easy to peruse.