You can find out more about the rest of the Fitbit range and how the Ionic compares in our Fitbit buying guide, which includes a detailed feature-comparison table so you can learn which one is best for you.
The Ionic replaced the Surge at the top of the Fitbit wristband range, but includes many more features and a larger, colour touchscreen. There’s also a special Adidas Edition Ionic, with its own athletic training app – more below.
Fitbit has also launched another smartwatch, the Versa (now up to version 2), that is smaller and cheaper but lacks the Ionic’s built-in GPS. Read our Fitbit Versa 2 review and Fitbit Versa Lite review and we do a side-by-side comparison later here in this review.
All Ionics feature on-screen workouts via the Fitbit Coach trainer (and Fitbit Premium if you want to spend £79/$99 on a fuller range of workouts), and these are its most obvious standout feature (also available on the Versa 2), but there are several more, including the built-in GPS, onboard music and contactless payments that together mean you can exercise without worrying about your lugging around your phone or wallet/purse. And you can take it swimming too!
In March 2018 Fitbit released its Fitbit OS 2 update for the Ionic and Versa, revealing new features and clock faces. In May 2018 it added Quick Replies (Android only for the time being) and female-health tracking, more on which later. In December 2018 Fitbit OS 3 arrived, showing you more health and exercise stats – such as sleep, water intake, heart-rate, hourly activity and weight – on your wrist on your Fitbit’s Today screen, freeing you from the mobile app. Fitbit OS 4.1 fixed some bugs.
Fitbit Ionic price & availability
The Fitbit Ionic is the most expensive Fitbit yet (although the price was reduced recently by £50 in the UK and $30 in the US), priced at £249 / $269 / €299. The Adidas Edition costs a little more at £279 / $299 / €329.
It’s a high price tag for a smartwatch that, while fitness-feature-full, doesn’t yet offer many apps as those it’s directly competing with. You can buy the Apple Watch Series 3 for £199/$199, for example – although that (and the much more expensive Series 5 Apple Watch) suffers much weaker battery life. The Fitbit Versa 2 costs from £199 / $199 / €199. The Lite Edition of the Versa costs £149 / $159 / €159.
If you’re after a smartwatch for activity, fitness and health we rate the Fitbits as better equipped than the Apple Watch; for more details read our Fitbit vs Apple Watch comparison.
For those in the market for a fitness-first tracker with some cash to splash, the Ionic is going to be an appealing option with a brand name and excellent eco-system of challenges and health guidance that fitness fans are familiar with.
UK: Buy the Fitbit Ionic now here
US: Buy the Fitbit Ionic now here
Fitbit Ionic: Design and build
The Fitbit Ionic definitely looks and feels sporty, designed to be lightweight (important for sports) and comfortable, although there are additional bands available if you’d like to wear it on an evening out, for example. It’s noticeably slimmer than most smartwatches, yet still boasts battery life 4x greater than the Apple Watch.
It’s available in three colours: Silver Grey body with Classic Blue Grey band; Smoke Grey body with Classic Charcoal band; and Burnt Orange body with Classic Slate Blue band. The Adidas Edition features a sport band in Ink Blue and Ice Grey with a Silver Gray aluminium case.
Previously Fitbit’s most popular colour band was black, so its omission here is a bold move. That said, the Charcoal band isn’t far off black. Fitbit believes these new colours are more modern, and designed to have a “space” feel. The Burnt Orange, for example, is based on the movie The Martian.
Fitbit has used nano-moulding technology to pack sensors and antennae into the body of the watch without causing it to become too bulky, and we found that its curved design helped keep the watch flush to the wrist for comfort and practicality – plus more accurate heart monitoring.
The gorilla glass screen is a 1.42in LCD touchscreen that we found to be bright, crisp and brilliantly colourful, and is designed to work even in bright sunlight. It’s a little too responsive, though, sometimes registering a tap as a swipe and visa versa, but we imagine over time we’d become more familiar with how to interact with the smartwatch to prevent this from happening.
The later Fitbit Versa 2, however, features a better screen than the Ionic.
What’s in the box? The tracker is available in just the one body size, but it comes with two sizes of strap so smaller wrists are catered for. You also get the neat charger, which attaches magnetically.
The detachable tracker body, like many other smartwatches, felt too big for the daintiest wrists. However, for most it should fit comfortably. If you have small wrists we’d recommend popping into a store when the Ionic is released and trying it on. You’ll be able to do so in stores such as Currys PC World.
If it feels too big then consider the slimmer Fitbit Versa 2 or Fitbit Charge 4 – the latter also including a built-in GPS.
Ionic wristband options: Left: the Classic wristband (included) features a watch-like buckle and secondary clasp, which feels very secure. Middle: leather band. Right: Sport band.
For the ultimate secure fitting the Sport Band in three colour options (£24.99 / $29.95) features the buckle but with two “tangs”. A tang is the prong that fits through the hole in the strap depending on how tight you like it on your wrist. Two tangs are more secure than one, and this is important when you’re being energetically mobile in the gym or on the road. The aerated Sport strap is available in Cobalt & Lime, Coral & Blue Grey, and Black & Charcoal, plus the special Adidas Edition.
The Perforated Leather strap in Midnight Blue or Brown Cognac (£49.99 / $59.95) features the same one-tang buckle as the Classic, but (like the Sport) with a loop instead of a clasp at the end. It’s made of premium Horween leather.
Straps are super easy to swap – in the past and on some other smartwatches switching bands was a little fiddly.
You can swipe through screens or use the buttons as well as tapping the screen. On the clock, you can single-tap to flip through your daily activity stats. The left button navigates back, and the right side top and bottom buttons trigger the on-screen actions.
Fitbit Ionic: Fitness and Health Features
You’ll get everything you’d expect from a Fitbit, including tracking of Steps, Distance, Calories burned, Floors Climbed and Active Minutes, as well as automatic Sleep and Activity Tracking. Reminders to Move help get you off your bottom at least once an hour (in the daytime!) for 250 steps.
Heart-rate monitor: More than that, though, there’s an improved PurePulse heart-rate monitor and a new relative SpO2 sensor that can measure blood oxygen levels. The latter is a future-proofing sensor more than anything, as it could lead to the ability to offer a deeper insight into the user’s health and even detect sleep apnoea and arterial fibrillation.
Fitbit claims that the heart-rate monitor is more accurate, partly because of the more stable point of contact as the sensor lights are flush at the back. This is especially important during exercise when the tracker is in more energetic motion.
SpO2 sensor: This estimates the amount of oxygen in the blood. The sensor works by emitting and then absorbing a light wave passing through blood vessels in the fingertip. Good blood oxygenation supplies the energy your muscles need in order to function, which increases during a sports activity. If your SpO2 value is below 95 percent, it could be a sign of poor blood oxygenation (hypoxia).
Fitbit hopes this will also help identify signs of apnoea, a sleep disorder characterised by pauses in breathing or periods of shallow breathing during sleep. People with sleep apnoea have problems with excessive daytime sleepiness and impaired alertness, and can be at greater risk of diabetes. This lack of oxygen to the body can also be fatal. It’s estimated that up to 10 percent of people may suffer from apnoea, but most are unaware of the condition.
Like the Charge 4, Inspire HR, Versa Lite and Versa 2, the Fitbit Ionic is excellent at tracking your Sleep Stages. Using your heart rate and its other sensors it tracks when you are in the Light, Deep or REM stages of sleep. The Ionic is comfortable to wear in bed. I hardly noticed it was on. And you’ll get addicted to seeing your sleep data and new Sleep Score.
Sleep is increasingly being seen as a key long-term health indicator, so this is important. And some smartwatches – such as the Apple Watch – don’t have the battery life to allow users to wear it through the night, so the Ionic is a winner here.
GPS: A key feature that fitness fanatics will love is the Ionic’s built-in GPS, which means you can track a run or bike ride in detail without requiring your phone while you’re out and about. You’ll be able to take advantage of the GPS for tracking your pace and distance as you run or ride, as well as elevation, split times and a map of your route.
To remove the chance of interrupted GPS signal Fitbit utilises not just standard GPS satellites but also the Russian Glonass (Global Orbiting Navigation Satellite System) satellites. Glonass offers better accuracy at high latitudes.
All other Fitbits – except the latest Charge 4 – have to connect with your smartphone to use GPS, but the Ionic can work phone free.
Water resistance: For swimmers, the Ionic is water resistant up to 50 metres, and swim tracking includes the ability to count laps and how many calories you’ve burned. The screen is visible in most clear water, but remember to use the buttons as the touchscreen won’t work underwater. It’s also great that you can leave your tracker on your wrist when taking a shower or a bath – although this feels odd at first.
Exercise and sports: The Ionic can track lots of other activities including gym-based workouts such as running on a treadmill or weight training. Activities include Run, Bike, Swim, Treadmill, Weights, Interval Timer, and Workout. It recognises when you’re running and automatically enters Run Mode – starting the GPS so you can see key run stats on screen. It even automatically pauses when you do, so your pace and duration are more accurate and take into consideration that annoying wait for the lights as you cross the road safely.
How to set up Auto Run Mode on the Fitbit Ionic: Open the Exercise app on the watch; Open the Run module; Open the gear icon; Turn on Run Detection; Turn on GPS; now you can go back to the Ionic’s Home screen. You’re all set up, and GPS won’t drain your battery when you’re not running. It recognises a run after five minutes so it won’t confuse your dash for the bus – hey, and why are you running for the bus, you should be getting more steps in!
In the Exercise section of the Fitbit app, you also can personalise your weekly goal to the number of times you want to exercise per week.
Given that this is a fitness watch, it’s a shame that you can’t set the screen to stay on permanently – a feature common in many rival products. The raising of the wrist to glance at the stats doesn’t always trigger the screen, so running, cycling and swimming can be frustrating with the Ionic as you’ll find yourself occasionally glancing at a blank screen.
Wellness and relaxation: Healthiness isn’t just about keeping fit. Like other Fitbit trackers the Ionic can help you find moments of calm through the day by following personalised Guided Breathing sessions based on your heart rate. You can choose between-two-minute and five-minute breathing exercises.
Guided workouts: The Ionic comes the Fitbit Coach app, a rebrand of the Fitstar Personal Trainer App. It offers more than 40 on-board workouts that you can complete without needing to dust off an old fitness DVD or look for a video on YouTube. Follow the on-screen instructions to complete workouts such as a 7-minute workout perfect for starting your day, or audio-based coaching such as power intervals for runners.
With Coach you can select from 7-to-60 minute workout sessions, including audio coaching and seven Fitbit Radio stations. You can choose from multiple trainers and activity levels. Your next session will evolve based on your ability and goals.
The Ionic comes pre-loaded with: 10-minute abs; 7-minute workout; and a 20-minute Treasure Chest (including jumping jacks, pushups, shadow boxing, shoulder tap pushups, one-legged spidermans, high knees, jumping jacks, superman planks, bicycle kicks and more).
Access to all the workouts and auto coaching in the Fitbit Premium app costa £7.99 per month – on top of the £249 you’re already paying for the watch itself – but we think Coach/Premium will be the killer app for many people, offering personal training from the wrist.
Female health tracking: Like its smaller sibling, the Versa, the Ionic allows on-wrist viewing of Fitbit’s latest health feature of tracking the menstrual cycle. Female health tracking will be a default tile for all adult users who identify themselves as female in the Fitbit app.
You log data about your menstrual cycle and record details of symptoms such as cramps or acne. Fitbit uses this information to make cycle predictions that will get more accurate the longer you use it. All Fitbit users can track this information on the Fitbit app, but only Ionic and Versa users can see the data on their device.
Is the Fitbit Ionic really a smartwatch?
Fitbit calls the Ionic a “smartwatch with a purpose”, which is health and fitness. This in itself is quite smart as other smartwatches try to be everything to everyone, and therefore lack a significant purpose. It’s clear that the Apple Watch, for example, is trying to catch Fitbit up on the fitness front, but can’t offer some benefits such as sleep monitoring because of its lousy battery life. For more on this shoot-out read our Apple Watch vs Fitbit feature.
On top of all of the health and fitness features, the Fitbit Ionic also offers a plethora of smartwatch features. There’s 2.5GB of storage that allows you to store 300 songs or a bunch of podcasts and audiobooks (whatever helps you on your run or down the gym) right onto the watch to accompany you on your workouts. To complement the new on-board music feature, Fitbit has also launched new Fitbit Flyer Bluetooth headphones, priced at £109.99 / $129.95. You load music onto the tracker using the Fitbit Connect desktop app, and it’s compatible with iTunes and the major digital music players – although not Spotify.
For Spotify, you’ll need to look at the newer Fitbit Versa 2, which also offers an on-wrist Alexa voice assistant as it also boasts a microphone.
You can also get notifications from your phone straight on your wrist, such as incoming text messages, emails and phone calls. The same is true of most other recent Fitbits such as the Charge 4 and Versa Lite and 2. The Ionic also gets push notifications from third-party apps like Facebook and Snapchat.
Android users can use Fitbit’s Quick Replies – iOs and Windows Phone users will have to wait for the feature, unfortunately. You can choose to respond with a default or custom message (five options: Yes; No; Sounds good!; Can’t talk now, will reply later; What’s up?), or from a choice of 10 emoji (including: Lovestruck face; Smiley face; Crying with laughter face; Winky face; Heart icon; Sad face; Crying face; Thinking face; Face with rolling eyes; Running emoji).
You can set a silent alarm that buzzes on your wrist. If you don’t press the button to dismiss it, it will snooze once for nine minutes.
It’s easy to make contactless payments using the Fitbit Ionic, too. Register your card, and then press and hold the left button on the Ionic until an outline of that card appears on screen. You can then touch it to a compatible card terminal to may a speedy payment without needing to find your purse or wallet in your bag. The Ionic, therefore, requires a passcode, just like your smartphone.
Fitbit is working with all the major banks to make Fitbit Pay compatible with their systems, but the UK list of compatible banks is minor to say the least – Santander being the largest bank that’s compatible in the UK.
With music and GPS onboard, on-screen notifications, and contactless payments the Ionic really does mean you can leave your bulky smartphone and wallet or purse at home when you go for a run, or safe in the locker at the gym.
You can personalise the Ionic with various optional clock faces (there are 17 to choose from), and you can even design your own see image further down.
Fitbit has opened up the Ionic to developers, which can create their own apps for the new Fitbit App Gallery. There are already apps for Starbucks and music services like Pandora, but we expect to see lots more apps available over time. There are over 500 apps and clockfaces in there now.
The AccuWeather Weather app lets you see the current status and 5-day forecasts over multiple locations, and works well.
The Ionic works with Android, iOS and Windows, so developers will like that their apps will be accessible to the masses.
There’s a lot going on with this watch, which is both fantastic and a little bit daunting at first. It’s not completely intuitive so will take a bit of getting used to, and some time spent playing around within its menus and settings to become familiar with where everything is and how everything works.
Because of the current lack of apps the Ionic isn’t one of the best smartwatches – take a bow the Apple Watch Series 3 or Samsung Gear 3. But none of these is as great at fitness and general health tracking as the Ionic.
Battery life
When it comes to battery life, the Ionic should last for four days on one charge, which is more than some of its rivals. However, when you start using GPS you’re looking at a dramatic loss in battery life, down to 10 hours if the GPS is on all the time, which is something to keep in mind. If you also have your screen set to always on during a run, Ionic will last just five hours – that said, if you’ve been running for five hours you too deserve a rest!
Apple claims the battery life on its new Watch Series 5 is 18 hours, and that’s without GPS use – Apple claims Watch battery life with GPS at 5 hours – so the Ionic comfortably beats it on battery life even with GPS turned on.
The watch has a low-battery indicator, so you shouldn’t be caught unawares, and you’ll also get an email telling you when it’s time to charge.
Fitbit app and ecosystem
However good a fitness tracker might be, a lot depends on how the data is stored and presented on app rather than on wrist. And the Fitbit app is second to none in its clarity and richness of detail. You can customise which health metrics are shown, and then dig down for more detail and historical data. There’s also a great desktop app to show off your data.
There’s a lot more, too – more than you’ll get from Apple health, for instance. There is a great Friends league where you compete against other Fitbit users if you so wish – this is great motivation to keep going for more steps. You can also compete against friends or yourself in interesting daily or weekly challenges and virtual adventures in real-life locations, such as the New York Marathon.
And there are hundreds of milestone badges to reward you along the way.
On top of all this, there is a ton of expert guidance in the app, telling you more about efficient workouts, cardio exercises, how to get better sleep, etc.
Fitbit Ionic Adidas Edition: what’s different?
Fitbit also sells an Adidas Edition of the Ionic, focused especially on running-specific training. It’s a little more expensive than the standard Ionic.
In addition to all the functions of the Fitbit Ionic, the Adidas Edition provides a new coaching experience through the Adidas Train app. This includes six step-by-step on-screen workouts aimed at improving form, power and speed.
The on-watch Train app works with an athlete’s training regimen to help improve cardio, strength and flexibility. It features Dynamic Warm Up, Power Pace, Metabolic, Run Activation, Strong Strides, and Post Run Stretch.
The Adidas Ionic also boasts its own two-toned breathable sport band in Ink Blue and Ice Grey with a Silver Gray aluminium case. And it has a custom Adidas-designed clock face inspired by the iconic race bib; available in four colours.
The Fitbit Ionic Adidas Edition smartwatch is available from Fitbit and from other retailers.
Fitbit Ionic vs Fitbit Versa 2
Fitbit now has three smartwatches: the Ionic reviewed here (£249 / $269 / €299), the Versa 2 (£199 / $199 / €199) and, cheapest, the cut-down Versa Lite Edition (£149 / $159 / €159). Read our Fitbit Versa 2 review and Fitbit Versa Lite review. At just £50/$70 more, the Ionic is pretty close in price to the Versa 2 these days, although the Versa Lite is cheaper still, but drops some features.
Versa screen size: 34mm diagonal, by 24.075mm high, and 24.075mm wide.
Ionic screen size: 35.99mm diagonal by 21mm high, and 29.23mm width.
The Versa 2 is smaller and lighter than the Ionic. While it’s not as large, there is nothing non-masculine about it, and men who want a smaller smart fitness watch shouldn’t be put off. It looks a lot like the Apple Watch.
The Versa 2’s screen is AMOLED that offers amplified brightness up to 1,000 nits, which is an enhancement on the Ionic’s LED screen.
The Versa 2 lacks the built-in GPS but can connect to your smartphone’s GPS. Everything else is pretty much the same as with the Ionic, except the Ionic’s ability to handle everything without needing a connected phone nearby.
The cheaper Versa Lite Edition doesn’t offer Fitbit Coach onscreen workouts or Fitbit Pay. It also lacks the altimeter, so doesn’t count the number of floors you climb each day. And it doesn’t track swimming stats. If these features don’t bother you, then the Lite Edition looks a great deal.
Battery life (4+ days) is just under the Versa 2’s 5+ days. Find out how to get longer Fitbit battery life on the Ionic and other trackers.
Additional Ionic testing by Ashleigh Macro and Henry Burrell.
