With the Fitbit Alta HR now out, Fitbit is turning its attention to the Blaze for some much-needed love. The watch has just got an update that brings aboard some familiar features, and a couple of new ones.
Cardio Fitness Level and Guided Breathing, which both debuted on the Charge 2, are now available on the watch through the latest update, which you should see live soon, if not already. Cardio Fitness Levels is a way to see your cardio fitness improving over time and compared to people the same age/gender, based on your VO2 Max.
Guided Breathing meanwhile takes your heart rhythm and then guides you through personalised two- and five-minute breather sessions - the idea being that you're calmer at the end of each one.
Read this: Fitbit Alta HR review
Finally, as we mentioned in our Alta HR review, Sleep Stages is now available for Blaze users too. This uses a combination of motion and heart rate to infer your levels of sleep - light, deep, REM - through the night. Combined with Sleep Insights, also available in the app for all Fitbits that track sleep, you'll get actionable observations of your sleep, guiding you to get better rest.
In our short time spent with the new sleep features, we've found the insights have encouraged us to keep a closer eye on our rest hours by putting the data in a little more context. This is something that Fitbit promises will get better over time, as it learns your patterns and how your activity and sleep levels intertwine.
The Blaze is starting to feel a bit old in the tooth, as we await the arrival of the much-anticipated Fitbit smartwatch. For those of you still enjoying the Charge 2, Fitbit has also released some new perforated straps that you can find on its store.
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By Hugh Langley
Now at Business Insider, Hugh originally joined Wareable from TechRadar where he’d been writing news, features, reviews and just about everything else you can think of for three years.
Hugh is now a correspondent at Business Insider.
Prior to Wareable, Hugh freelanced while studying, writing about bad indie bands and slightly better movies. He found his way into tech journalism at the beginning of the wearables boom, when everyone was talking about Google Glass and the Oculus Rift was merely a Kickstarter campaign - and has been fascinated ever since.
He’s particularly interested in VR and any fitness tech that will help him (eventually) get back into shape. Hugh has also written for T3, Wired, Total Film, Little White Lies and China Daily.