Has some limitations, but offers a lot more style

The Fitbit Luxe does stand out in some ways from the rest of the Fitbit lineup, but it’s also tied down by a lot of the same issues that come with being part of the same group of products, with the same limitations and additional microtransactions/subscriptions. Its biggest advantage is aesthetic, so if you’re not immediately sold on the look of the product, you should probably just look elsewhere right away.

To be very blunt, the Fitbit Luxe is just your basic Fitbit device with no added functionality (in fact it lacks some of the functionality that other models have) in order to make it look slim, trendy and fashionable. There are only three colour options here, but they have some collaborations with jewellery brands, so there are Luxe devices being sold with things like gold and silver chain to make them look even more stylish. They are meant to look good on your wrist while at the office, or even at a dinner party, without looking like a garish piece of fitness technology for nerds. And to be fair, that’s something that definitely makes sense for some customers. If you work in a high-class office and wear a suit to work, you don’t want a huge, clunky, black-plastic fitness watch on your wrist standing out from the rest of your outfit. You want it to blend in with the rest of your look, and the Luxe will do that for most adults in an office job, or for seniors who want a nice-looking fitness tracker. But if you’re all about the gym and don’t care about your watch standing out, there’s not much to love here.

Having such a slim design also means having a tiny screen, which is where the drawbacks start. The screen on the Luxe is so narrow that reading any notifications at all is a huge pain, as almost every other word has to be moved down to a new line. This means even a short e-mail subject line becomes two pages of scrolling to read, and the screen on the Luxe is not the most responsive at the best of time. You also lose out on all the basic functions that are becoming standard with the more versatile fitness trackers: no touch payments, no counting stairs climbed, no GPS, etc. On top of that, when you tell the Luxe that you’re starting some kind of physical activity, for some reason it refuses to enter any kind of “lock-screen” mode, so I found myself constantly activating the screen while playing sports of exercising, and often would finish what I was doing only to find that the Luxe had misread my movements and stopped tracking the activity ages ago.

On top of all this, you have the usual Fitbit issues that I really do find annoying. Half the functionality of this device, as with most Fitbit devices, is locked behind a subscription service that you must pay for. So not only do you pay a premium for your Fitbit Luxe, a stylish product with little functionality, but if you want access to basic information about your own activity you have to pay them every month. No thank you.

Overall, the Luxe is a product that looks nice but doesn’t do much to justify the cost. Basic functions that it does provide like counting steps or measuring your heartbeat can be done for a fraction of the price elsewhere, in some cases even on your own phone. I would not recommend it. However, if you love Fitbit already and want a prettier one, this should at least be a consideration for you. If you need a band to match every outfit and wear your Fitbit daily, this is clearly aimed at fashionable people who do so.