Outside of optimizing health and fitness, the Charge 4 has practical advantages throughout the day, such as delivering smartphone alerts and notifications, playing music via Spotify, or paying for items with Fitbit Pay. So, we have to ask if Fitbit actually made the best product it could, or if it’s coasting because it has little competition. The Charge 4 also adds Fitbit Pay as a standard feature, so users won’t have to shell out more money for NFC tech anymore.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention all the other Fitbit Charge 4 features that can be found on most other Fitbit devices.

The Fitbit Charge 4 looks almost identical to its predecessor, including the grayscale touchscreen, but the addition of built-in GPS makes a huge difference, and helps make it a viable alternative to fully-fledged running watches if you enjoy working out for fun and health, but don't need a torrent of data on splits, cadence and elevation. An optical sensor on the inside of the watch measures your heart rate every second while you're working out, and every five seconds the rest of the time. The Readiness Score tool will only be available to Fitbit Premium subscribers though, so it's worth factoring this extra cost into your decision-making. If you're a Fitbit Premium subscriber, the Fitbit Charge 5 will also give you a daily a Readiness Score.

Previous generations had a physical, silver button, and while the touch-button works well, I miss the silver color accent. The Charge 4 is water resistant to 164 feet; I wore it in the shower several times without incident.Fitbit Charge 4 Full Specifications and Features – Charge 4 is the latest wearable from Fitbit, it succeeds the Charge 3, and comes with inbuilt GPS, NFC, and as well weighs a little less than the Charge 3. If you have headphones hooked up (through your smartphone), the Charge 4 will give you audio cues to this effect. The Fitbit app then helps you understand the factors that affect your stress levels, and take steps to manage it. Note that you must have a Spotify Premium subscription to use the music streaming service on Fitbit. Women can use the Fitbit app to track their periods and fertile windows, and view where they are in their cycle from their wrist.

When you reach fat burn, cardio, or peak zone, it will vibrate and show an encouraging notification on the screen. The Charge 4 has two buttons on the side of the watch that you can press and it gently vibrates to alert you as it flicks between menus. You get one buzz for entering the fat burn zone, two buzzes for entering the cardio zone, and three for your peak zone. This has pretty much all the same features, is cheaper, and in my opinion just a more reliable and function tracker .

Thanks to the addition of GPS connectivity and a SpO2 sensor, the Fitbit Charge 4 is an excellent fitness tracker that will meet any entry-level or semi-serious athletes needs. You must wear the watch continuously for 14 days so the app can build a profile of your overall health, but it factors in activity, sleep patterns and heart rate variability to tell you the type of exercise you should do for that day. There are notably fewer apps available for the Charge 4 than you’d find on the Versa 3 or Sense, but that’s to be expected.

After Fitbit calculates your heart rate threshold for Active Zone Minutes (mine was 116 beats per minute), the app shows a chart of your heart rate, and the time you spent in each zone (Fat Burn, Cardio, and Peak).

We'd hoped that this iteration of the Fitbit might have a color screen, but it's still black and white. It's a shame there's no brief explanation of Active Zone Minutes on this screen – to find out more, you have to tap a link and open a page in your web browser. The Xiaomi Mi Fitness and HUAWEI Health are decent but nowhere near as polished or versatile as the Fitbit app. I also dont understand why Fitbit couldnt provide a color face option so i could see the info more easily. We'd also prefer it if the screen remained at full brightness a little longer after it's woken (either by pressing the side button, or by raising your wrist), as it dims rather quickly.