Tested: Fitbit Inspire 3 | Between promises and bugs

With its new OLED color screen and its many activity tracking capabilities for a low price, the Fitbit Inspire 3 has a lot of arguments to seduce the public. But, big problem, it proved to be unreliable on the ground.

Karim Benessaieh
The Press

WE love

Originally, just three years ago, the Fitbit Inspire was a small, inexpensive monochromatic touchscreen activity tracker capable of essentially counting steps and deducing statistics about your workouts. Here we are in 2022 with the Inspire 3, still as small and affordable, but now with an OLED color screen that is 1.5 inches high by 0.7 inches wide and loaded with sensors.

There are 21 different screens, displaying the time, date and tracking information. Without playing into the yard of the Apple Watch and Galaxy Watch, the Inspire 3 has a few smart features, like setting an alarm or timer. Combined with a phone, it displays notifications, text messages and caller ID, but does not offer the possibility of response or interaction.

His specialty is still counting steps and letting his owner know when he’s reached his goals or hasn’t moved enough. But it now has sensors to establish heart rate, as well as blood oxygenation and skin temperature. However, these two functions are only available if you wear the Inspire 3 for several consecutive nights, which we have never managed to do.

Navigation from the touch screen is rather simple. Two fingers on the sides of the screen and it lights up, unless you have chosen the screen always on, which however reduces battery life. By sliding to the side, you come across the various timers, notifications from the phone, an application to relax and, above all, the five physical activities for which you have chosen the shortcuts in the application. Fitbit. In total, you have access to 21 activities, from jogging to yoga, through weight training, golf and swimming. The Inspire 3 can go up to 50m deep in water, according to Fitbit.

Before starting a physical activity, it must be selected manually on the screen, which then displays the essential information depending on the sport – time per kilometer, speed in kilometers per hour or heart rate, in particular.

All statistics are compiled in the app fitibit, where we can find a map of our runs, distance, pace and average heart rate, number of calories burned and your sleep profile. With a Fitbit Premium subscription, at $12.99 per month, one has access to advanced analytics and tools.

Finally, we have ten days of autonomy, around seven if we keep the screen on.

We love less

All of these fine abilities were of little use to us during our jogging outings. First, the Inspire 3 kept giving us a grossly misreading of our speed, obviously way too fast, on a circuit we know well. The most curious thing is that the final report on the app seemed more credible.

Cycling and walking, however, the Inspire 3 has regained its reliability.

At first, we couldn’t read the stats on that small, dimly lit screen. The situation improved a little by setting the maximum brightness, but it was insufficient in direct sunlight. And unless you wear your reading glasses while jogging, you’ll have a hard time reading the tiny numbers if you’re presbyopic.

The swimming display, which simply displays the elapsed time, is very difficult to remove. The Inspire 3 tells us to tap twice; it took us a dozen tries and dozens of taps to get it off.

One buys ?

Have we inherited a defective model? Is it a configuration problem? Still, the Inspire 3 did not inspire us at all for jogging, our favorite activity with the bike. In short, it is impossible to recommend its purchase for this sport.

Too bad, because everything else is quite satisfactory. Here we have a small discreet watch that displays phone notifications and challenges us when we are inactive. Without competing with the more complex menus and functions of smart watches, it can do great service. Including the one, which surprises us every time, to push us to move more.