The Sleep-Tracking Feature on the Fitbit Versa 2 Has Literally Made Me a Less Grumpy Person
I am—and I cannot stress this enough—the laziest person I know. Sometimes I trick myself into working out by leaving half of my skincare routine in my gym locker so I have to go in the morning before work. Other times, I carry my groceries up my front steps and immediately check to see if my biceps look bigger. Needless to say, I’ve never once felt the need to blow money on a fitness tracker.
Still, I’ve always wanted to give a smart watch a spin, which is why I jumped on the chance to test out the Fitbit Versa 2. I know you’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover, but the cute lil pink copper hardware and matching clock face options made a really great first impression…so I had a feeling we’d get along well.
As soon as I strapped on my new Fitbit, I envisioned myself working out more, drinking twice as much water (there’s a feature for that too), and passing up escalators for regular ol’ stairs. Those things…did not really happen (did you think I was kidding about my sloth lifestyle?).
However, the Versa 2 has almost totally eliminated morning grogginess, greatly improved my commute, and made me a little less dependent on my iPhone. All massive wins, right? Here’s the deal:
The basic tracking features
If you’ve never used a Fitbit before, you’re probably at least familiar with the fact that people wear these things to see if they can hit 10,000 steps in a day. I was actually pretty shocked to learn that I hardly ever crack 10K, even with a significant walk during my commute.
To try to log more movement, I set my Fitbit to vibrate at the 50th minute of every hour to remind me how many steps I have left to hit my hourly goal of 250. If I’m not in the middle of something at work, I try to do a lap around the office to hit it, but that doesn’t always happen, so I usually round out around 7,000. Alas.
Each week, I get a progress report email that tells me how many steps I took total, my average step count, the number of miles I’ve walked, how many floors I’ve gone up, and how many times I got my 250 steps in when my hourly alarm went off.
But the Fitbit Versa 2 doesn’t just track steps: My weekly email also includes my average resting heart rate, how many calories I burned daily, how many minutes I spent active, how many days I exercised, and how many hours I slept restfully. There’s also a weight-tracking option (you can manually add your weight, track food, and watch calories), but I haven’t used this yet.
I’ve never tracked my heart rate before (like, in any way), so it was pretty wild to watch my heart rate spike during my everyday life. (Like, um…after sending a passive-aggressive professional email. LOL.) Luckily, there’s a breathing exercise feature on the watch that helps you take deep breaths until you’ve calmed down a bit, and you can bet I use it at least twice a week.
The sleep situation
Sleeping is my absolute favorite pastime, so I was super pumped to see that this thing has not only a sleep tracker but also the most genius alarm system I’ve ever used.
To use it, I opened up the Fitbit app while I was in bed and tapped Begin Sleep Now in the Today tab. The device monitors your heart rate while you snooze. When you wake up, you can see how much time you spent in each stage of sleep (awake, REM, light, and deep). If you pay for Fitbit’s premium subscription ($9.99 monthly, or $79.99 for the entire year), you’ll also see your sleeping heart rate and how much time you spent tossing and turning throughout the night. Overall, Fitbit assigns you a Sleep Score. And I have literally never felt more accomplished than I did after a week of getting “good” scores every night.
The magical anti-grogginess tool
Without exaggeration, I am convinced that the feature that makes the Fitbit Versa 2 worth every penny of that $178 is Smart Wake. It’s an alarm that picks the best time to wake you up in a 30-minute window based on your sleep cycle. So if you set an alarm for 7 a.m., your watch will vibrate at some point between 6:30 and 7. If there’s no ideal time to wake you up, it’ll automatically go off at the time you originally set.
I was pretty skeptical of this tool, but after using it for a week, I genuinely felt better waking up every morning. In fact, I accidentally took my watch off before going to sleep one night and was late to work because I could not drag myself out of bed with my regular old iPhone alarm. I’m also so down for the fact that the Fitbit simply vibrates to wake me up instead of blasting some unbearable Marimba tone in my ear. It just gets me.
More fun apps!
This little watch does WAY more than I thought it could. It has the ability to receive texts, phone calls, and calendar notifications from your smartphone. But you can only respond to texts if you have an Android. Still, I’ve found that I’m more likely to leave my phone down at my desk when I’m heading into a meeting or walking around the office, and being even just a little less dependent on it feels like a step in the right direction.
The last Fitbit Versa model did not have the option to store music, but the new one gives you access to apps like Spotify and Pandora, which is a major upgrade. (You just have to be connected to your iPhone through Bluetooth.) This is obviously super helpful for exercising, but I also love to use it during my morning commute. It’s way easier to skip a song on a watch when you’re running to catch a train.
There’s also the addition of Amazon Alexa…but to be totally honest, I don’t trust her. (I don’t use Siri either. TBH, voice-activated virtual assistants are my nightmare.) From the reviews I’ve seen on Amazon, Alexa’s followers are super into this feature.
Overall, there are a bunch of other apps you can download, like Starbucks, Uber, an NYC subway tracker, and a news app. You can even use your Fitbit to pay for things, in a functionality similar to Apple Pay. Unfortunately, my bank is not compatible with this feature, so I hope it gets added soon. However, there IS Flappy Bird, so consider me occupied for now. (Yup, the OG game we were all obsessed with in 2019 is fully available on your Fitbit. What a time to be alive.)
You can browse and download any of the apps you’d like from your phone. Personally, I hope that Fitbit works on streamlining this process because it’s not the most intuitive smartphone app I’ve ever used.
The bottom line
TBH, I love this thing! It has made the laziest girl alive even a little bit more health-conscious. There are tons of little features on here that I’ve underestimated until they really came in handy. For example, I was packing for a trip recently when I realized that the Today tab had given me a heads-up that my period was in two days. Helpful little reminders like this actually make a huge difference. Even if I weren’t using the Fitbit Versa 2 as a smart watch, I’d be happy to just wear it every night as a fancy alarm clock.
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