A New Era for The Smart Experience

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The new Versa 4 is one of the most powerful Smartwatches on the market, offering high-end features such as Built-in GPS, Heart rate tracking, Daily Readiness Score, Active Zone Minutes, 40+ exercise modes, menstrual health tracking, stress management, and blood oxygen levels. 

With a sleeker and lighter body, the Versa 4 is a smartwatch that comes with fitness first approach featuring more sports activity profiles to choose from than ever before. Besides the regular calories, steps, sleep, and heart rate tracking the Versa 4 comes with Active Zone Minutes, Built-in GPS Daily Readiness Score, and 40+ exercise modes that will help you to take your fitness tight to the next level.

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Some google goodies are also included in this new model such as Google Wallet and Google Maps, for NFC payment and on-the-go mapping so you can wander around without any problem.

Quick Overview

  • What is it? A fitness-focused GPS smartwatch
  • When is it out? Already Out from September 23, 2022
  • How much does it cost? $229.95 / £199.99 / AU$379.95 

Fitbit Versa 4: Design

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When it comes to design the Versa 4 looks really similar to the previous model, although there’s some differences, the new model is more comfortable to wear, Fitbit says the Versa 4 is the lightest and thinnest iteration of the Versa line, with a slimmed-down device, and a new, raised band attachment to help the tracker fit better on the wrist. 

The watch itself has a bright OLED display and another upgrade from the Versa 3 is that instead of the capacitive button we have the return of the physical button to its side making it more convenient to access your stats. 

The standard silicone band has a similar peg-and-loop design to Apple’s silicone strap that makes it really comfortable to wear all day. Like most Fitbits, you will have plenty of different options to customize the watch with different straps. You can choose from 4 different colors: graphite aluminum with a black strap, platinum aluminum with a blue strap, and copper rose aluminum with either a pink sand band or a beet juice strap.

The interface of the Versa 4 was also upgraded with a new Tiles option that allows you to customize the screen, so you can move certain apps and widgets around and personalize your menu. There’s a built-in speaker and microphone, allowing you to take phone calls over Bluetooth, including from WhatsApp and other apps. They can also be used for Alexa. 

Fitbit Versa 4: Features

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As you can expect the Versa 4 comes with high-end features that set the smartwatch apart from the rest, besides the built-in GPS, real-time tracking, and run/walk detection the watch can detect skin temperature and can perform electrocardiogram scans. 

It can also track your blood glucose levels in-app, provide menstrual health tracking, stress management, and blood oxygen levels plus a library of exercises and mindfulness exercises for you to follow right from your wrist. 

When it comes to smart features the Versa 4 can take calls on-wrist, use Google Wallet and Fitbit Pay for NFC payments, and one of the most interesting new features is the Google Maps app, so now you can get on-wrist turn-by-turn directions, which is very useful if you’re cycling, running, or just exploring the outdoors. 

You will also have access to six months of Fitbit Premium, which will give you access to the more advanced fitness and sleep tracking features, as well as Fitbit’s Daily Readiness Score. After the six-month trial, the Premium membership will cost you $9.99 per month, or $80 per year. 

The Daily Readiness score will scan your sleep and determine how well you slept, and your last workout, and show how ready you are for your next exercise. The higher your readiness score, the better prepared you’ll be. 

Sleep Profiles, on the other hand, is a great way to take all the sleep data that your tracker collects and turn it into actionable sleep tips. After a few weeks of use, you are given an animal that represents your sleeping habits. This animal might change over time if you’re experiencing regular disruptions or changes to your sleep, and the Fitbit app will provide suggestions on how to adjust your sleep back to optimum levels. 

Fitbit Versa 4: Price, release date

The Sense is available since September 23, 2022, so you can easily get it from Fitbit’s official website or from retailers such as Amazon. 

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You can buy a Versa 4 from Fitbit for $229.99, making a great choice for those that want a reliable smartwatch, for less than $300, which is a standard price point for most high-end smartwatches.

Battery life & performance

  • 6+ Days (but <3 days with always-on display)
  • Using GPS will also drain the Battery 

When it comes to battery life Fitbit is always one of the most reliable brands, for both their smartwatches and fitness trackers the battery juice is most powerful than most of their competitors, but when it comes to high-end smartwatches we can only name a few brands, and most of them will offer a 48 hours battery juice that you need to be charging constantly. 

This is when a 6+ days battery juice comes in handy, with a battery that will take around 2 hours to be fully charged and can be ready for a full day of use from just 12 minutes of charging. 

Now you should have in mind a few details that can drop your battery life drastically, the main one being GPS use, the cool thing about having a Built-in GPS is that you can go for runs or outdoors without the need of having your phone with you and be able to have all your locations and fitness stats right on your wrist. 

It’s all fine and dandy until you realize that the battery life went from 6+ days to 2 days, just by using a few days the GPS On, the same will happened with the cool Always on Display (AOD), that will give you all your stats at a glance without the need of you performing any other action that just to look at your watch. But when you use it for a few exercises a week then the battery will go from 6 to 3 days of juice. 

Now, have in mind, that this is the reality for every smartwatch in the market, when using GPS or AOD the battery will drop significantly, so imagine a regular smartwatch will go from 48 hours to 8 hours just for you using the GPS function. So the Fitbit Battery life that comes along with the Versa 4, for us, is “pretty, pretty good”, as Larry David would say :).

Conclusion

The Versa 4 is a streamlined version of the Fitbit Sense 2, featuring almost the same features and design, it will give you a ton of power for a good price, for those that do not care about the ECG and body response sensors the Versa 4 can be the best choice as an affordable smartwatch. 

Having said that, Fitbit has removed some useful features from the Versa 4 such as music playback control, and Google Assistant support, plus there’s no third-party apps, so there are still some improvements to be made, that made turn you off from buying it.

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