Fitbit Premium review: Is it worth the cost?
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Table of Contents
What is Fitbit Premium?
Fitbit Premium is Fitbit’s, well, premium subscription service that provides additional data, guidance, and exercise routines to Fitbit users. Think of it like any other freemium service you might use — everyone can download and use the Fitbit app for free, but it’ll cost you a monthly fee if you want everything the Fitbit ecosystem has to offer.
Fitbit devices already collect plenty of fitness and health stats throughout the day. The goal with Fitbit Premium is to help you understand how those stats affect various parts of your daily life. In Fitbit’s own words, Premium “turns stats on your wrist into personalized guidance.”
Fitbit Premium offers four main benefits that aren’t available in the standard Fitbit app: guided programs, workout videos, personalized insights based on your health and fitness level, and an exclusive Health Metrics dashboard. We’ll dive into each one of these later, but for now let’s answer some of the most frequently asked questions.
How much is Fitbit Premium?
Fitbit Premium costs $9.99 per month in the US and £7.99 per month in the UK. If that’s too expensive, you can save by purchasing a yearly subscription for $79.99 or £79.99.
At the time of this review, Fitbit is offering a free 90-day trial to new users for a limited time. You can sign up right here on Fitbit.com or in the Fitbit app.
Fitbit also offers a more expensive Premium tier that includes personalized health coaching. For $54.99 a month, you’ll be able to work one-on-one with a health professional to help establish an action plan for your health and fitness journey. You can chat directly with your coach and receive personalized insights based on your stats, in addition to all the other benefits that come with a standard Fitbit Premium membership.
You can sign up for a seven-day free trial of Fitbit Premium + Health Coaching at the link below.
Fitbit Premium availability
Fitbit Premium availability is dictated by language, not by country. Currently Fitbit Premium is only available in English, so if your device is set to the English language, you likely have access to it.
Fitbit is working to expand the service to other languages like German, Japanese, French, Spanish, Italian, Swedish, and Dutch. We will be sure to update this article as more languages are added.
Which devices work with Fitbit Premium?
Credit: Jimmy Westenberg / Android Authority
Fitbit Premium is device agnostic. It connects to the Fitbit smartphone app — not your wearable — so it works with any and all Fitbit devices you can buy today. That includes smartwatches such as the Versa and Sense line, as well as fitness trackers like the Charge and Inspire lines.
Our Fitbit reviews:
Fitbit Premium features: Are they worth the price?
As mentioned, Fitbit Premium gets you access to guided programs, dynamic workouts, personalized insights, and access to a Health Metrics dashboard.
Guided Programs
Available in the Discover tab of the Fitbit app, Guided Programs are special workout and health plans available exclusively to Premium subscribers. Plans include a variety of topics ranging from beginner to intermediate. I’ll list a few of them below to give you a better idea of what’s offered here:
- Get Active: A two-week plan that encourages you to start becoming more active by offering bonus video workouts, as well as stories and tips
- Push-Up Prep: A three-week plan that will help you strengthen your arms, create core strength, and master the art of the push-up
- Run Training: A three-week plan that will help you increase speed and endurance by offering a structured workout plan, cross-training video workouts, and daily tips
- Beginner Bodyweight: A three-week program that will teach you the basics of fitness while helping you increase strength and mobility
- Intro to HIIT: A three-week program that will teach you the basics of high-intensity interval training (HIIT) and challenge you with cardio and strength workouts
Some of these plans are incredibly useful, especially for beginners. Push-Up Prep, Intro to HIIT, and Run Training would be beneficial to someone who is just starting out on their fitness journey.
You’ll notice the lack of advanced plans. Fitbit Premium’s guided programs don’t offer anything for intermediate athletes who are looking to move to the advanced level. So, if you can already run a fair distance and have a pretty good idea as to which foods to avoid to stay healthy, you may not get much out of these programs.
In stark contrast, Garmin offers training plans in its Connect app… for free! Garmin Coach plans help you set a running goal and achieve them over a months-long period of time. These plans actually helped me run my first half marathon last summer. I understand Fitbit Premium plans might be for a more general audience, but it really surprised me that everything was so basic.
There are a few other programs available in the app that, to be frank, are only a Google search away for anyone curious about health foods or how calories work. “Understand Calories” is a prime example: For two weeks, Fitbit will send you recipes and lessons on how people lose weight. It also encourages you to log your food for two weeks and weigh in every week to see your progress (two things already available for non-Premium users).
Another program called “Kick Your Salt Habit” will tell you which foods have the most sodium, how to spot sodium, how to make meals without salt, and how to crave less salt. All good advice, sure, but is that really something that should be touted as a Guided Program? I would rather find that info on a website instead of paying Fitbit to tell me those things.
Also read: The best Fitbit alternatives: Garmin, Apple, Xiaomi, and more
Plans are customizable, though, which helps tailor them to your specific needs. Once you select one, it’ll show up in the main Today page of the Fitbit app. For instance, the “Get More Sleep” program will ask you some questions about your sleeping habits, how often you fall asleep while watching TV, and more. After that, you can choose to have the program either help you add more sleep or keep up with your same amount of sleep. This is a nice touch, as it ensures you’re taking part in the program that’s right for your habits and lifestyle.
Ultimately, I think Premium’s Guided Programs are a good start, but there’s just not enough there at the moment. Luckily, it’ll be easy for Fitbit to add more programs down the line to make it appealing to more users.
Dynamic workouts and relaxing audio tracks
Also available in the Discover tab are step-by-step workouts covering a variety of styles. There are workouts you can complete in under 15 minutes, easier cardio workouts, dance and kickboxing workouts, yoga videos, abs and core workouts, and more. Many of these videos are from popular fitness companies like Barre3, Down Dog, Physique 57, PopSugar, and more.
There are also videos mixed in here from Fitbit Coach. Coach was the company’s subscription service that launched in 2017 and provided Fitbit-made workout videos on the web and in a separate app. Now, if you pay for Fitbit Premium, you get access to all the Fitbit Coach videos, too.
There are dozens of workout videos available in all, and there’s such a variety that there’s bound to be something here for everyone. You can also do most of these at home, which means they’re perfect for when you’re social distancing. All of the workouts are dynamic too, so they’ll automatically adjust based on your feedback after each workout.
If you’d rather relax instead of work out, navigate to the Mindfulness tab. Here, you’ll find dozens of audio tracks to help you meditate for relaxation, meditate before bed, meditate to relieve stress, and more. There are also relaxing sound audio tracks — some lasting 45 minutes — if you need to listen to something while you fall asleep.
Personalized Insights
If you’ve used the Fitbit app in the past, you’ve probably seen little “insights” crop up from time to time. Insights are bits of analysis found around the Fitbit app that tell you how you’re doing and what you could be doing better. Fitbit Premium users will see more of these insights show up, and they’ll be more personalized based on your health and fitness data.
These personalized insights are generally pretty helpful. Whenever I’m not using Fitbit Premium, I tend to dismiss insights more often than not. A simple “Try getting more sleep” message from Fitbit is hardly helpful, but putting my actual sleep data into context makes a world of difference. “On days that you get more than your average 22 minutes of exercise, you also get an extra 7 minutes of deep sleep,” one insight read. That’s useful!
Speaking of sleep, Fitbit Premium users also get access to a more detailed sleep score breakdown. Sleep data available in a free account is already quite useful, but a Premium plan, again, helps make more sense of the data.
If you’re constantly struggling to fall asleep at the right time or struggling to stay asleep, the Fitbit app will suggest you enroll in a Guided Program to improve. Premium users also get a useful sleep restoration graph that shows your sleeping heart rate and a percentage for how much you’re tossing and turning each night.
While these features are useful, non-Premium users really aren’t missing out on a whole lot in terms of sleep data. Non-Premium users can already use Fitbit’s Sleep Score feature, as well as a breakdown of their sleep stages (REM, light, and deep) throughout the night. However, the more advanced sleep data coupled with handful of Guided Programs for getting more sleep could be quite handy.
Wellness Reports
One feature tucked away in the Discover tab is a wellness report that you can print off and give to your doctor. Your Fitbit wellness report will give you a sharable overview of your health data, including your sleep, daily activity, heart health data, and (coming soon) blood glucose levels. The report is generated in a PDF, so you can easily email it to your doctor’s office or print it out and bring it in during your next visit.
You can read more about Fitbit wellness reports here.
Fitbit Health Metrics dashboard
Credit: Jimmy Westenberg / Android Authority
You might have noticed a new section in your Fitbit app’s home screen called the Health Metrics dashboard. This is where Fitbit displays historical health data for you to keep track of over time. The dashboard includes five metrics, which can be viewed in weekly or monthly graphs:
- Breathing rate: Shows your nightly average breathing rate in breaths per minute
- Compatible devices: Fitbit Alta HR, Blaze, Charge 2, Charge 3, Charge 4, Inspire 2, Inspire HR, Ionic, Versa family, Sense
- Heart rate variability (HRV): Shows your nightly average heart rate variability in milliseconds
- Compatible devices: Fitbit Alta HR, Blaze, Charge 2, Charge 3, Charge 4, Inspire 2, Inspire HR, Ionic, Versa family, Sense
- Skin temperature: Shows variation in your nightly skin temperature from your baseline
- Compatible devices: Fitbit Ionic, Versa family, Sense
- Oxygen saturation (SpO2): Shows your nightly average SpO2
- Compatible devices: Fitbit Ionic, Versa family, Sense
- Resting heart rate (RHR): Shows your average resting heart rate in beats per minute
- Compatible devices: Fitbit Alta HR, Blaze, Charge 2, Charge 3, Charge 4, Inspire 2, Inspire HR, Ionic, Versa family, Sense
There are a few compatibility points to discuss. The Health Metrics dashboard is available for free to Fitbit Sense, Versa 3, Versa 2, Inspire 2, and Charge 4 devices without a Fitbit Premium membership. The Health Metrics dashboard is also compatible with Fitbit Charge 2, Charge 3, Inspire HR, Alta HR, and Ionic devices, but those users will need a Fitbit Premium membership to see that data in their Fitbit app. It’s confusing, I know. Fitbit just wants to make sure everyone who has purchased a recent Fitbit device gets access to these graphs.
The Health Metrics dashboard is available in the following countries: Canada, United States, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam.
Fitbit plans to include personal ranges within the Health Metrics dashboard, which will allow users to see how their health metrics fluctuate based on their normal ranges. There’s no timeframe for the release, other than Fitbit saying it’s “coming soon.”
Related: The best GPS running watches you can buy
All of the information in the Health Metrics dashboard is useful, but I think Fitbit could take it a step further. It’s easy to see how these metrics affect your body by looking at the weekly and monthly trends. But while those weekly and monthly trends are helpful, the Fitbit app doesn’t point out problem areas or give you any actionable data points. Did your HRV skyrocket for an entire day then drop down to normal levels? You’ll see that in the graph, but you might not know what to do with that information. You can go digging in the “learn more” section of each graph to try to pin down what might be causing your issue.
This dashboard is also where some people take issue with the idea of Fitbit Premium. Why do some users need to pay a monthly fee to get access to resting heart rate trends? Something as basic as that is offered by other fitness products for free. You buy the device and it tracks things over time; that’s how it’s supposed to work. This was a bigger issue when the company first launched this dashboard, as it limited the feature to only the new Fitbit Sense and Versa 3. Now it’s available for more devices, but the restriction is still there.
Fitbit Premium review: The verdict
Is Fitbit Premium worth it? After all, $10 a month is no small fee — that’s more expensive than Netflix!
Fitbit Premium has the beginnings of a powerful health platform, and it’s hard not to see the potential here. Having access to guided health programs and workout videos from top-tier companies will be invaluable for some.
However, Fitbit Premium feels like a young product. The list of guided programs is small, and there’s not much here for intermediate or advanced users. Combine that with the fact that you can find a lot of these things — workout videos, health tips, food recommendations — online for free, and Fitbit is driving a hard bargain.
Luckily the cost of entry is incredibly low right now. Fitbit is offering a 90-day free trial of the service, so you really don’t have anything to lose. Sign up at the link below and give the Premium features a shot. And hey, if you don’t get much out of it, cancel after those 90 days are up.
Have you used Fitbit Premium? What are your thoughts on the service? Do you think it’s worth the $10 a month? I’d love to hear from you in the comments.
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