At the same time it launched the Fitbit Edge, Google also announced that it was updating the model behind its automatic activity detection. For a device like the Fitbit Air, which as I've already explained is highly dependent on its linked smartphone due to its lack of a screen, passive tracking is extremely important.

After a week with the Fitbit Edge and my months with the Fitbit Air, I can confidently say that the new model is certainly more sensitive and, at least so far, more accurate. I didn't get the chance to tap at the Fitbit Edge to log a bunch of walks and bike rides in the city over the weekend, and while I would previously worry that my activity wasn't being accounted for, I soon learned to trust the device. A few minutes after I finished cycling or strolling, I'd see a notification from Google Health on my phone that some exercise had been detected "with low confidence." The app prompted me to confirm and name my activity to help improve its assessments, which I gladly did.

In time, the Edge did seem to understand and correctly recognize when I had been on my e-scooter for a quick grocery run. I still manually started my morning cross training sessions at the gym, because I've been conditioned by the F45 app to do so. (It's horrible at logging your workout metrics if you don't time it to the second.) But the fact that Google was able to improve its system well enough that I learned to relax and trust in the Edge was not only impressive but satisfying. I'd like to spend more time with this to feel more confident, though, because in my experience AI-powered systems tend to randomly forget things over time, resulting in a lot of long-term frustration.

Outside of the automatic activity tracking, the Fitbit Edge's functions are fairly basic. You can swipe through tiles to look at your progress throughout the day, and depending on how you've set up your selection of cards, you can keep swiping sideways to see things like the weather, sleep score, heart rate, cycle health, media playback and so on. Swiping up from the home screen shows your accumulated notifications, while dragging down from the top brings up a control panel of shortcuts.

I found this section the most helpful, as it contains a toolkit that I've come to consider essential to any smartwatch. You can adjust your screen brightness from here, see battery levels, launch do not disturb or bedtime modes, enable the water lock, broadcast your heart rate to nearby machines or ping your connected phone. You can also activate the flashlight, making the Edge so bright that it can illuminate dark purses or closets in a pinch to help find a missing earring or key, for instance.

Finally, pushing the button on the side opens the app drawer, where you can find functions like ECG readings, a stopwatch, media playback controls and more. There's a very small selection of available apps at the moment, and you'd have to set this up from the Google Health app on your phone to make sure the ones you need are installed on the Edge.

Almost everything here worked as expected. I took an ECG reading, which involved pressing my fingers to either side of the Edge's case. Thirty seconds later, I was told my signs were normal. I played Adéla's "Nicole Kidman" on repeat, and the Edge's media controls helped take me back to the start of the track quickly.

I also had the relatively rare opportunity to compare my data to the readings taken by the equipment in a primary care clinic, as I had to see a doctor during my testing period. According to the oximeter, my pulse rate was 65 beats per minute. Looking back at my data as tracked by the Fitbit Edge, the Google wearable said my heart rate was 75 bpm. Meanwhile, the Apple Watch Series 12 I had on at the same time said my range was between 63 bpm and 77 bpm.

I don't generally expect wearables to be extremely accurate, as I prefer to analyze my readings as trends over time rather than as a snapshot. So I didn't find this one-time comparison to be too concerning.

What I did find a bit odd was the Google Maps integration. After I followed all the instructions on setting this up, which involved going into the Health app and enabling the Maps integration for the Edge, I was disappointed when it didn't seem to work. You're supposed to be able to start a navigation from your phone, and the Edge will show you directions while tracking a running or biking workout in the background. I opened Google Maps on my phone, started navigating to nearby businesses, and the Edge would show that Maps has started. But I kept getting a message saying to make sure the Maps app was running on both devices, and then nothing would happen.

I've reached out to Google to troubleshoot this issue, and will update this review when this gets resolved. For now, though, I'm willing to bet this had a lot to do with fact that I had multiple Fitbit devices connected to multiple iPhones (and a Pixel) on my Google Health app. It's such a niche scenario that I'm not going to consider docking points from the Edge for now, but if I see it happening to more people, we will certainly revisit the score and this review.

Speaking of, during my testing period, I used the Fitbit Edge with both a Pixel 11 Pro and an iPhone 17 Pro Max (yes I'm still stuck on last year's model for now). The experience was largely similar across both pairings, with the main feature difference being that you can't reply to notifications from the Edge when paired with an iPhone. I did encounter some weird connection issues, like the Edge randomly switching to my iPhone 18 Pro instead of the iPhone 17 Pro Max, but again, I'd chalk that up to connectivity issues. And again, it's a pretty uncommon scenario that's mostly exclusive to reviewers like myself.