Update: Our Fitbit Luxe review is now live. Read this before you choose your perfect fitness tracker.
Fitbit has unveiled its new Fitbit Luxe – a stylish fitness tracker aimed at women (predominantly), which brings an AMOLED screen to the band format for the first time.
Fitbit’s more recent band-style wearables have been focused on delivering value (Fitbit Inspire 2) or offering more tech (Fitbit Charge 4) – but the Luxe is certainly designed to deliver a better looking, more wearable device.
While we’ve been big fans of those two devices, the screen tech has been a cause of criticism. When the likes of the Amazfit Band 5 and Xiaomi Mi Band 6 can deliver a week of battery life with glorious AMOLED displays, they have seriously put the monochrome Fitbit screens in the shade.
But this is an aggressive comeback by Fitbit, offering most of its top features and premium materials and specs for .
Fitbit Luxe: new features and design
Fitbit Luxe in orchid
The Luxe boasts the same AMOLED display as the Versa 3 and Sense. And it still manages to deliver the same 5 days of battery life as the rest of its line up.
However, it's much smaller than you'll find on the Xiaomi Mi Band 6. It's a 124x206 pixel display with a 326 PPI density – and measures 0.76-inch. The Mi Band 6 upped to a 1.56" display, so the Luxe is comparatively quite small. That's good for wearability, but we will be interested to see how touchscreen control works, as there are no physical buttons.
And it's not just the screen getting the luxe treatment. The Fitbit Luxe case is made from stainless steel, so it’s a big visual and quality step up from the rest of the Fitbit tracker line up.
The Luxe comes in white, black and orchid (pink) and there's a special edition Fitbit Luxe Gorjana with gold link bracelet available for
And under the hood are many of the best features of the Fitbit Sense.
Special Edition Fitbit Luxe Gorjana with gold link bracelet
There’s skin temperature, HRV and SpO2 (used for breathing rate and oxygen saturation), which are all reported in the Fitbit Health Metrics – although skin temperature is coming after launch.
It's water resistant to 50m, and will track swimming in the pool. You can calibrate your Fitbit to the size of the pool for accurate tracking of lengths.
And stress detection is coming over from the Fitbit Sense, and the stress score will be part of the mix. However, there’s no EDA sensor on the Fitbit Luxe, which allows users to check stress response using electrodermal activity.
There’s also no GPS on board (although you can use connected GPS from a paired smartphone) and it also supports the new Active Zone Minutes metric, that rewards you for time spent at higher heart rates.
There are 20 built in exercise modes, and it will auto track workouts too.
The Fitbit Luxe is shipping with six months of Fitbit Premium, and that means the Luxe can access all the joys of the Fitbit app – from advanced sleep monitoring, guided workouts and mindfulness including the Deepak Chopra content and manual blood glucose tracking.
Fitbit Luxe release date
The Luxe does come with a top-end price tag: it’s set to cost putting it alongside the Charge 4. It's scheduled to launch in "Spring 2021". For those interested in style over GPS, it’s a no brainer.
How we test
James is the co-founder of Wareable, and he has been a technology journalist for 15 years.
He started his career at Future Publishing, James became the features editor of T3 Magazine and T3.com and was a regular contributor to TechRadar – before leaving Future Publishing to found Wareable in 2014.
James has been at the helm of Wareable since 2014 and has become one of the leading experts in wearable technologies globally. He has reviewed, tested, and covered pretty much every wearable on the market, and is passionate about the evolving industry, and wearables helping people achieve healthier and happier lives.