What you need to know about Fitbit Premium, the enhanced app
Launching in September, Fitbit Premium is an upgraded version of the Fitbit app designed to give users more tools to manage their health and fitness.
Essential reading: Top fitness trackers and health gadgets
The service is part of the company’s effort to move away from a revenue stream based solely on hardware. As evidenced by its poor Q2 earnings, it’s probably a good idea the San Francisco outfit does more to diversify its income stream.
The Premium service launches in September at $9.99 per month or $79.99 per year. It will initially be available in English in 17 countries, with more languages and countries to be added in 2020.
All Fitbit users get a 7 day free trial to make up their mind on whether they are interested, while Special Edition Versa 2 owners benefit from a 90 day free trial. Those that already pay for the monthly $7.99 Fitbit Coach subscription will have the option to be migrated over to the Premium service.
So what do you get for the $10 monthly subscription?
There are a number of different layers here so lets list them briefly.
Guided health and fitness programmes: There will be 9 in total at the outset including: Intro to Healthy Habits, Get More Zzz’s, Habits for Restful Sleep, Get Active, Beginner Running, Run Training, Understand Calories, Kick Your Sugar Habit and Kick Your Salt Habit. These are designed to help you move more, sleep better and live healthier.
Other programmes will be launched later in the year and personal one-to-one coaching is set to debut in 2020. This last service will be particularly useful for those looking for help in losing weight or managing conditions such as diabetes.
Advanced sleep features: All Fitbit users with a heart-rate enabled tracker get the new daily Sleep Score feature, but premium members benefit from deeper insights. This includes a Sleep Score breakdown and graphs showing how the value was calculated based on the time it took you to fall asleep, sleep stage information and restoration. There are also a number of guided programs and audio relaxation tools to help you get the perfect night’s rest.
Motivation to move more: Fitbit has slapped on thousands of video and audio workouts from experts. These will be personalised to help users achieve their specific goals.
Premium members will also gain access to new types of challenges. The company calls them “adaptive challenges and games”. Not much has been revealed on how this would work. What can be gathered from the press release is that the challenges will allow subscribers to work towards common shared fitness goals, be it family, friends or others in the Fitbit community. It has been shown time and time again, we work out more in social settings.
New health tools: New Premium Wellness Reports will be made available. These compile a summary of all your Fitbit data allowing you to better understand trends. The reports can also be shared with your doctor, nutritionist or personal trainer.
“At Fitbit, we’re focused on making health accessible and more achievable. With Fitbit Premium, we’re excited to deliver our most personalized experience yet. It will evolve with you and get smarter over time, delivering the support and guidance you need to help you achieve your health goals,” said James Park, co-founder and CEO of Fitbit.
“The launch of Premium also marks an important milestone as we expand our business beyond devices and deliver new and innovative ways to engage our more than 27 million active users, while also attracting new users to the Fitbit platform.”
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