#refinedversion

The Fitbit Luxe is just a more refined version of the Fitbit Inspire 2 with a few useful new features (plus more to come soon). Its small display has several drawbacks, yet it is bright, sharp, and appealing.

Since this is a fitness tracker rather than a full-fledged smartwatch like the Fitbit Versa 3 or Fitbit Sense, we did not really expect it to have functions like making calls from your wrist or allowing you to make contactless transactions using Fitbit Pay. The Luxe, on the other hand, is all about keeping track of your health and encouraging better habits (both physical and mental), which it accomplishes admirably.

Fitbit Luxe price and release date

The Fitbit Luxe was first unveiled in April 2021, and it will be available for purchase on July 1, 2021. The ordinary variant with a silicone band costs $149.95, while the special edition with the gold-colored Gorjana link bracelet costs $1999.95.

This places it between the Fitbit Inspire 2 (which launched at $99.95) and the Versa 3 smartwatch (which retails for $329). The Luxe also includes a free one-year Fitbit Premium trial, which you can start as soon as you sync the gadget with your phone.

Design

The Luxe is one of Fitbit’s smallest fitness trackers, featuring a thin design that pays homage to the original Fitbit Flex from 2013. It uses the same ‘Biologic Industrial Design Language’ as the Fitbit Inspire 2, Versa 3, and Sense, with ergonomic lines that follow the human body’s curves. In fact, it has a design that is extremely similar to the Inspire 2 — but there are a few key differences.

To begin with, the Luxe uses stainless steel in black, gold, and silver, whereas the Inspire 2 has a plastic shell. This is complemented by a stainless steel buckle, giving the Luxe a more refined appearance.

The Fitbit Luxe’s screen, on the other hand, is its most remarkable feature. The Luxe’s display is a full-color AMOLED with a 206 x 124-pixel resolution, which looks excellent. Most of Fitbit’s smaller fitness trackers (including the Inspire 2 and Charge 4) use a monochrome OLED display. It’s also responsive, which is crucial for a gadget that lacks physical buttons.

The accompanying app allows you to personalize the watch faces, which include a variety of appealing alternatives (including analog and digital designs) that make the most of the watch’s brilliant, vibrant display. All of these provide a quick peek at the time, but some also include other metrics, such as your current heart rate, step count, and calories burned, which you can check without swiping. Fitbit may well introduce additional faces in the coming months, as the range is already outstanding.

The small size of the face has certain drawbacks (you can only see a small amount of info at a time, and graphs aren’t possible), but it’s vibrant and sharp, with smooth transitions and scrolling.

Performance

If you’ve ever used a Fitbit, you’ll be familiar with the general experience; the Fitbit Luxe is easy to use, with an interface that makes tracking your activity and wellbeing as simple as possible. It’s worth taking a few minutes to modify a few parameters before you use it for your first workout.

On the Luxe, there are just six workout options (by default, walk, run, swim, cycle, general workout, and treadmill), and none of them can be changed from the device itself. Instead, via the Fitbit app, you may tailor the available options to your tastes. Swipe left to remove a workout you don’t utilize, then hit the + icon in the top right to add something you do.

Luxe can recognize specific exercise types and start tracking them automatically with SmartTrack, which is especially beneficial for picking up unplanned exercises that you might not think to measure manually.

The ‘noise’ from general movement, especially gripping motions, can always alter heart rate measurements obtained from the wrist, and optical heart rate monitors will never be as accurate or responsive as a chest strap that records electrical signals as your heart contracts.

Apart from those issues, the Luxe performed admirably, producing numbers that were substantially equal to those of a Garmin Vivoactive 4S. There were no unexpected peaks or troughs, and the two devices’ average and maximum heart rates were within 2bpm of each other.

Because of the color screen, the Luxe has a little worse battery life than its Inspire 2 relative. Fitbit claims that it will last five days in normal use before requiring a charge, which we found to be rather true. Thankfully, charging is simple; the Luxe comes with a USB charger that is magnetically attached to the back of the gadget and does not readily shift or disconnect.

After three nights of wearing the Luxe to bed to calibrate it, you’ll start receiving a sleep score each morning based on the time and quality of your sleep.

When the Fitbit Luxe receives its first major upgrade, battery life is expected to suffer even more. The Luxe features a sensor for blood oxygen saturation (SpO2), which the Inspire 2 does not, therefore we expect the Luxe to use more power overnight. This sensor isn’t enabled right now, however, it will be enabled in the future via a firmware upgrade. In the following months, it’s also possible that Luxe will get additional functions. Fitbit has a history of adding new faces and tools to its devices after they’ve been released — and that’s before we consider the app’s frequent updates.

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