Google’s $99 Fitbit Air Is the Smartest Activity Tracker Yet

Google’s $99 Fitbit Air is here, and it has one major new feature: an AI health coach called Gemini that will review your stats every day and recommend actions. It’s the most advanced AI fitness tracker available, but it requires patience.

The Fitbit Air is the best example of Fitbit’s strengths: it’s so lightweight you forget you’re wearing it, it lasted a whole month between charges with three charges, and it only took 45 minutes to go from 20 percent to 85 percent. The device measures steps, resting heart rate, sleep tracking, blood oxygen saturation, heart rate variability, and cardio load (which measures how much cardiovascular strain your body has experienced that week). All of these features are available without a subscription. The Google Health Premium service ($99 per year, free for three months with the Fitbit Air) includes a workout database, customizable fitness programs, and access to the AI health coach.

1What the AI health coach actually does

Each day, the health coach will gather information from the previous night (sleep quality, heart rate variability, readiness score) and suggest activities based on your stats (drink water, don’t do strength training today, halve your step count, focus on recovery). You can ask questions, and it will provide answers along with sources and modify your program based on your current situation. If The Verge reviewer was away and dealing with medication side effects, the health coach created a low-impact workout routine that worked for travel without being prompted.

Before the Fitbit Air came out, nearly 500,000 users tried out the Health Coach in beta testing. That’s more than a million data points for Google to analyze. As a result, the AI health coach is much better than average. It doesn’t ramble on, and it references scientific studies when needed. It even tells you to go to the hospital if something seems wrong with your stats. A participant’s coworker became extremely sick, and the coach noticed something was off in their stats and recommended seeking medical attention.

2The honest limitation: it learns from what you give it

For The Verge reviewer, it took several hours (five to six) to set up the AI coach with all the relevant information so it could provide helpful recommendations. They had to enter their goals, medical background, medications and doses, type in three different sets of recent blood test results, upload medical documents using the CLEAR identity platform. Once all that was done, the suggestions were tailored and spot-on. Other reporters who only put in five minutes received obvious advice they could find through an internet search.

There are also some frustrating limitations to the AI coach. Sometimes it gets confused and starts using outdated info. You have to manually enter screenshots of lab results; there’s no way to scan them. Even after multiple software updates, The Verge reviewer saw their old daily step goal displayed in certain areas of the app. Google Health is still being developed, and that’s a significant caveat when considering a device that wants you to rely on its recommendations for your wellbeing.

Despite these drawbacks, the Fitbit Air stands out because it provides two distinct user experiences within the same device. You can pay $99 and use it like any other fitness tracker without ever touching the AI coach, and it will still perform better than most devices at this price point thanks to the free data access. Alternatively, you can put in some effort to make the most of the AI coach and receive customized recommendations. That kind of versatility is refreshing in a world where “AI” often means little more than buzzwords.