Fitbit whose products off retailer shelves in Australia has added a new product in the form of an activity smartwatch that will retail in Australia for around $300.
The Fitbit Blaze looks and acts more like a smartwatch than the company’s first attempt, the Fitbit Surge.
Users will get all the standard activity tracking features-step counting, sleep tracking, activity monitoring, and heart rate-in addition to new capabilities of answering or declining incoming calls, reading text messages, viewing calendar entries, and controlling music playback on your nearby smartphone.
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“There’s three things we really focused on when designing the Blaze: Making it the smartest product we’ve launched, the most stylish, and from a fitness perspective, the most motivating,” Fitbit CEO James Park recently told Fortune.
Park describes the Blaze as a new product category for the company, labeling it a “smart, fitness-focused watch.” For example, in addition to auto-activity tracking, the Blaze will also remind users to get up and move if he or she has been still for too long. Additionally, users are coached through workouts directly on the watch using FitStar.
The watch will retail for around $300 when it begins shipping in April in Australia.
Additional watch bands are available from Fitbit, ranging from $49 to $195 approx, depending on material and design. Changing bands is done by removing the watch itself from a frame connected to the band, and placing it into another band.
Unlike the Fitbit Surge, which has built-in GPS, Blaze will require a smartphone in order to plot bike rides or runs.
At launch, Blaze won’t support third-party applications outside of what comes pre-installed by Fitbit; a feature commonly found on competing devices such as the Apple Watch APPL 0.00% and Samsung Gear S2.
