Fitbit Charge 2 Review
Fitbit is an American company founded in 2007. The company is best known for its production of wearable devices such as smartwatches and activity trackers. In 2019 they sold more than 100 million devices across the globe. Fitbit is considered one of the largest wearable companies in the world. How good are the Fitbit products tell you the fact that Google announced in 2019 that they are considering buying Fitbit for around 2 billion $? The Fitbit company motto is that you can achieve your health and fitness goals if you are encouraged to have fun and smile along the way. And we at MySmartWatch support this idea.
In this Fitbit Charge 2 review, we are going to represent to you one of the most popular products from Fitbit family..
Fitbit Charge 2
Fitbit Charge 2 is the smart fitness band that will help you to improve your health and fitness goals in style. It is the number one selling fitness wristband from Fitbit. Charge 2 is built with the PurePulse heart rate, multisport models, guided breathing sessions, and interchangeable bands. This band allows you to track all your daily activities and to improve your goals daily. And when we say all daily activities we mean it. This band tracks your steps, distance, calories burned, floors climbed, as well as active minutes.
Using this tracker you will get a better understanding of your fitness level and you will see how you can improve it over time. By default, your goal is to make 10 000 steps per day. But, you can adjust your steps to goals on how they best suit you. Also, you can change the goal to the distance walked, calories burned, active minutes or floor climbed. One of the cool features is the goal progress bar. This will help you to stay motivated. Another interesting feature is a walking reminder. This one is going to remind you to walk every hour at least 250 steps. On the other hand, this one can be a little annoying sometimes. The cool part is that it can be turned off. At the end of the day is you reach your daily goal Fitbit Charge 2 will celebrate with you.
Dimensions
Charge 2 is available in two dimensions: 9.9×0.9×0.5 and 8.6×0.9×0.5 inches and the band emphasize a large OLED display. The screen will display your calls, texts and calendar notifications. You can cycle through different menus to see different information. The following menus are available: Heart rate, Exercise, Relax, Stopwatch, Alarm, Notifications, and Battery.
The Fitbit app
For the best experience, we recommend using the Fitbit app for IO’s, Android or Windows. While installing the app you are going to enter your age, height, weight, and sex. All information is private by default. The app syncs wirelessly and automatically to Apple, Android, and Windows devices. On the Fitbit dashboard, you can find information such as your sleep history, the active vs. stationary ratio, your exercise history, and the progress.
PurePulse heart rate
PurePulse is a continuous and automatic wrist-based heart rate tracking that is going to better measure the calories you burn throughout the day.
It has three options that are default, on and off. The default or auto option is going to track your heart rate when you’re wearing your band. You will be able to maximize your workouts using simplified heart rate zones. While exercising the heart icon will show in which heart rate zone you are in. This means that you are going to burn fat and do your cardio more efficiently. There are four heart rate zones ( In Peak zone, In Cardio zone, In Fat Burn Zone and Out of zone).
Sleep tracking
Sleep tracking technology is expending in the last couple of years. Every major brand is incorporating sleep tracking devices into their smartwatches and fitness trackers. Fitbit Charge 2 will automatically track your sleep if you wear it to bed. Using heart rate technology it will track how long and how good you had slept. This means you can now track your time in light, deep & REM sleep, plus time awake. A silent vibration alarm will help you to wake up in the morning. Make use of the Fitbit app where you can manually adjust your sleep or set sleep reminders. To learn more about the benefits of sleep tracking click here.
Battery life
Charge 2 has a dissent battery life that can last up to 5 days. Of course, this will vary depending on how much you are using your band, settings and some other factors. It can last up to 2 hours to fully charge your band. And if you see a battery indicator on the display that usually means that you have about a day of a battery left.
Exercise more
The benefits of exercising are enormous. Fitbit Coach will provide personalized video workouts that you can follow from your device. Charge 2 will automatically detect certain exercises and record them using our SmartTrack feature which automatically recognizes continuous movement. You can view the automatically detected exercise in your Fitbit app and adjust the duration for each exercise type. Use the Exercise menu to start a workout. You can tap to cycle through the different exercise types and press and hold the button to start. During your workout, tap to view different stats. To pause and resume your workout, press the button. When you’re done, press and hold the button to end your workout and see your stats.
Later you can do a deeper analysis in your exercise history available in the Fitbit app. By connecting with your family and friends you will be able to achieve badges and motivate yourself as well as them to be more active.
Customize your exercise menu with your favorite exercise like running, biking and hiking.
No GPS
Unfortunately, Fitbit Charge 2 doesn’t have a built-in GPS. On the other hand, the GPS feature works with the GPS sensor on the nearby phone.
Breathing with Charge 2
This is another feature where Fitbit provides personalized guided breathing sessions on your tracker to help you find moments of calm throughout the day. You can choose between two-minute and five-minute-long sessions To get started, press the button until you get to the Relax screen, then tap to select a two-minute or 5-minute session.
Press and hold the button to start. Remain still as you begin breathing slowly and deeply, and when prompted, follow the guide (circle on the screen).
The more closely you’re able to follow the guide, the more sparkles you’ll see throughout the session. Once the session ends, you will see an overall summary of how you did.
All notifications are automatically disabled during the session. If you’ve set a silent alarm, your tracker will vibrate at the time specified.
Fitbit Charge 2
Pros
- Big Screen
- Fitbit App
- Multi-Sprot Training
Cons
- Price
- No GPS
- It Is Not Water-Resistant
Clock Faces
Fitbit Charge 2 comes with several faces available. You can change your clock face using the Fitbit app or the fitbit.com dashboard.
Swimming
You will not be able to take your Charge 2 band swimming because this tracker is not swim-proof. On the other hand, Charge 2 is water-resistant but we don’t recommend showering with Charge 2. If you are looking for some swimming smartwatch options than click here.
Changning Wristband
The wristband has two separate bands that are removed individually.
To remove or swap the band turn over your Charge 2 and find the band latches – there’s one on each end where the band meets the frame.
It’s simple.
Fitbit Charge is a decent fitness wearable. It is available on Amazon for about $130 and it comes in different colors and two sizes.
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My old Fitbit broke about a year ago and I never got around to buying a new one. I’ve been thinking about getting one now because of the quarantine so I have a lot of time to focus on exercise. Thank you for this review, you reminded me to get one.
You are welcome.
I’m so glad that this article inspired you in a good way.
Stay safe and take care.
Hey,
This is a great article. I haven’t heard of the fitbit charge 2, I just have the original fitbit.
This may be worth investing in due to the other features it has. Especially now during lock down, we are going to need all the help we can get when exercising. With only being allowed out once a day when exercising, we need to make the most of that time, and the fitbit charge 2 could be one of the answers to help us.
Thank you for sharing, and I’ll let you know if I do invest in this. I will even give my own review when I have used it for a while.
Keep up the amazing work on your site, and all the best.
Tom
Love the set up of this page ! Good work & very informative.
Thank you!
Thank you you have helped choose the fitbit watch I want, I couldn’t decide until I read this great review , I hope you can cover replacement watch bands one day
You are welcome. I will definitely cover that topic in the near future.
Stay safe!
Hey! Great in depth review. Give answers to a lot of potential questions. I never wanted to wear the fitbit for swimming, but since you mentioned it is not possible, now I think it will be really cool if they make it swim proof in the future 🙂
Thanks for this one..
Hey, You are welcome.
If you are interested in some swimming watches you should check this article.
https://mysmartwatch.org/the-best-smartwatch-for-swimm
All the best
I’m still rocking the Charge 2 myself. I’ve had it for a few years now and the thing is rock solid… I was tempted to upgrade to the Charge 3 and just couldn’t justify the additional features that I would gain moving up to the 3 to offset the cost of another Fitbit… Now I understand that the Charge 4 is hitting the shelves soon adding GPS and Spotify controls… I’ll need to look at that deeper, but sounds like I have the same issue… Not enough of a reason to change until the Charge 2 starts to fail
Really good post. I like the complete breakdown of the watch. From the face, to pros and cons along with dimensions. There are so many fitness watches out there. Your post has made it easier to choose.