Fitbit Ionic smartwatch officially launched in Malaysia
While they were quietly available in the market since last year, Fitbit has decided to kick things off in style for the new year with an official launch for their titular smartwatch, the Fitbit Ionic.
Befitting its status as Fitbit’s premier flagship wearable, the Ionic smartwatch comes with the works. Crammed into a casing hewn of aerospace grade aluminium is a squarish, crisp 1.42-inch, 348 x 250 pixel touchscreen along with NFC and improved GPS tracking. On the fitness front, the Ionic is loaded for bear with a beefed up heart rate monitor and a new Sp02 blood oxygen sensor which, according to their boffins, helps to track oxygen saturation levels which in turn apparently helps to offer better sleep tracking.
From left: Louis Lye; Fitbit’s Country Manager of SEA, HK and TW, Dr. Shazril Shaharuddin medical officer (MO) and personal trainer, Joanna Soh; personal trainer, and Alexander Healy; Fitbit’s APAC Director of Product Marketing, showcasing the new Fitbit Ionic.
The whole affair is also water resistant to 50 metres, which lets you take it to the shower and tracks laps when you swim and also has swappable straps.
Like other Fitbit wearables like their Alta HR, the Ionic tracks your pulse, your movement and your sleep quality as well as tracking across a host of sports including the aforementioned laps in the pool. It also has integrated fitness coaching and step-by-step onscreen instructions to guide users through a variety of workouts. Where it takes things to smartwatch territory is that it is the first of their devices to run Fitbit OS which lets you take calls on top of receiving all the usual alerts, download new watchfaces and also install and run a smattering of third-party apps. Even with all the new tech, the FItbit Ionic is rated for five days of battery life on a single charge.
Of note is that it has the ability to make payments via an NFC chip and their Fitbit Pay service. The Fitbit Pay service should roll out this year once they’ve sorted the paperwork out with local financial institutions. It also has about 2.5GB of storage onboard to let you play tunes without need for pairing with a smartphone though you’ll need to pipe it via Bluetooth to a pair of earbuds, which is where their next piece of kit comes into play.
Fitbit also rolled out their Flyer wireless headphones that come with IP67 water resistance, dual mikes, Bluetooth 4.2 for that allows for you to pair with up to two devices and a six-hour run time. Also officially launched is their Aria 2 weighing scales that need less juice to run and can, how shall we put it, weigh more robustly sized individuals. The earlier Aria maxed out at 159kg but the new Aria 2 can weigh individuals up to 181kg and needs just two AA batteries to run. Like the earlier Aria, the Aria 2 measures and tracks weight, BMI, body fat percentage and lean mass and syncs it with the Fitbit app.
The three new Fitbit offerings are available in the market via Harvey Norman, All IT Hypermarket, AONE Plus, Best Denki, Timekeeper and Thunder Match Technology. The Fitbit Ionic retails for RM1,399 while the Fitbit Flyer earphones retails for RM590 and the Fitbit Aria 2 smart scale retails for RM620.