Fitbit Versa 2 vs Apple Watch Series 3 By StateofTech

Hey, what's up it's Jared with State tech today, we're going to be comparing the Fitbit Versa to and the Apple Watch Series 3. Now these are both devices that are priced pretty much the exact same. They have a lot of features that are very similar, and so I wanted to talk about them, because I've done some Fitbit comparison. Videos in the past and also some Apple Watch comparison. Videos and I think that, because of what Apple decided to do this year by continuing to sell the series 3, which they usually do continue to sell a previous model of a device and then with Fitbit announcing a refreshed version of their Versa for 2019 I, think it's a very interesting comparison to talk about and discuss between these two different devices. So, let's jump into some of the things that I think are unique and specific about the devices, and then we'll get into comparing the nitty-gritty, specs and things that might be important when you're making that decision.

So for me, the first and biggest thing between these two devices is that one is cross-platform and the other is not Fitbit works on all devices, Android iPhone, and then it also works standalone. If you connect it to your computer, there's a Fitbit app you can get, and then you don't even need to use it with a smartphone. So the Fitbit is more all-around just able to be used standalone aside from an Apple Watch which has to be connected to an Apple device. But you can't use an Apple Watch just by itself without having it connected to some sort of Apple device, whereas Fitbit allows me to jump back and forth between my devices right now, I'm kind of revisiting the Google Pixel 3 from that's been out for a year, because the Google Pixel 4 is gonna, be announced really soon, and so, when I'm on my Fitbit I can keep my data consistent. Even if I am on Android for a little while, or I'll jump back over to an iPhone for a little while, whereas with my Apple Watch, there ends up being gaps in my data so depending on your use and basically how you are with smartphones, whether you are just diehard Apple all the time, and then this doesn't really matter.

But if you jump around a little or if you've been considering, maybe switching to an Andrew or whatnot, you might actually want to consider Fitbit because it is more cross-platform. So, with that, aside with the know, devices and ways that you can use the device aside, let's talk about some of the specs I've been wearing these devices side by side just to get a good comparison. You know I've worn smartwatches on both wrists, and you just get inconsistent data. Maybe the step counts are off because you're not walking down the road with both your arms going up and down. At the same time, there's there are just inconsistencies, so I found the best thing to do, even though they kind of bang against each other a little.

It's just to wear them next to each other for a couple of days off and on and then even alone for a little while, just to kind of get a feel for them and see how they compare, because you know I've used the Fitbit Versa too, for a while already I did a video about the Versa too, but in comparing it to an Apple Watch Series.3 I have to kind of revisit all that, because the Apple Watch Series 3 I, haven't really used in a few years. So, let's start with the Apple Watch Series 3, so the Apple Watch Series 3 Apple kept around, and it's continually for sale still, and it's a great Smartwatch, especially for the price. It has a lot of the functionality that Apple still puts into their modern devices like their Apple Watch Series 5. It just has a little older hardware in comparison to what's currently released the display on the Apple Watch. Series 3 still looks perfect to me.

Yes, it's not as vibrant and as bright as an Apple Watch Series 5, but it is still a pretty nice looking display. Now it doesn't go all the way to the edges like the newer ones, and there are some things that you could really call into comparison between a few year old version of an Apple Watch in the current Apple Watch, but when comparing the display side by side to the Versa, which also has quite a decent sized bezel all the surrounding way, the Apple Watch Series 3, still pretty much stands on its own. The display on the Versa is also really nice. The display on the verse is very clean. It's easy to see everything.

That's there. You know the Versa doesn't have, and we'll get into this a little more, but the verse it isn't had as much multimedia functionality, and there are an images as many things showing up on your versa, as your Apple Watch would be putting out there. There are games different things that you would do with your. You could do with your Apple Watch and obviously the display is a little lower in technology and quality on the Versa, because the Versa has an amazing battery life, which is something we'll also get into, but I do really like the display on the verse. That's very clean, all the numbers.

Everything that's on the display is very easy to read. Obviously, I really like the Versa and the display on it is really nice. It's one of the best displays that Fitbit has ever put on one of their devices. It's super bright super easy to read, especially out in bright situations where the Apple Watch Series 3 display at times can be a little more challenging to see in really bright situations like midday, Sun and stuff, like that, so the displays on both of these devices are really nice. I think that as far as viewing photos or viewing images or having really dynamic backgrounds on your watch, the Apple Watch is going to win a little there in the display game, just because it's more of a multimedia display, whereas the Fitbit everything looks good on the Fitbit.

It is very clean, but it was obviously designed with a little of limitations and there's that they could trade off for the extended battery life. So after talking about the display I'm mentioning battery life a couple of times, let's talk about the battery life so on the Apple Watch Series 3, the battery has actually been pretty good. I feel that is better than it was when I originally had the series 3. The series 3 was good. You know it had decent battery life, it would last all day, but that was about it.

Now that the Apple Watch Series 3 has been upgraded with modern software. The watch OS 6 I'm, getting better battery life out of the Apple Watch, 3 than I used to you know they've optimized their software over the last few years, and even though the hardware is a little older on the Apple Watch Series 3, the battery life is pretty good, and I'm, getting like day-and-a-half battery life. Out of my Apple Watch, then, on days when I'm working out when I'm at the gym, which usually I, would get up and go the gym for a couple of hours in the morning really early, be you know, active doing stuff all day working. You know constantly checking my Apple Watch into the evening. Usually my Apple watches would be like around 10 to 15 percent by the end of the day, just because it's a very long day, 4 a.

m. to like 9 p. m. that's a long day, but the Apple Watch Series 3 is often seeing me into the next day, just a little on even those long used days now. The Fitbit Versa ?, on the other hand, has very good battery life, and you only really have to charge the Fitbit Versa ? every 4 to 5 days, depending on your use.

Now, for me, if I'm not used, if I'm not super active, if I'm not using any of the workout features and the Fitbit Versa ? I easily get 5 days of use out of it, and then I pretty much have to charge it at the end of that, I would put it on the charger Sunday evening. Wear it to bed Sunday night and I, wouldn't have to charge it again until Friday night and then I, of course, from Friday to Sunday. It wouldn't use, but maybe 1/4 of the battery, and then I top it off Sunday, and it would be good to go for another week. So the Fitbit Versa 2 is perfect on those heavy use days with the Fitbit Versa ?, where I'm you know doing multiple workouts, maybe even in the evening I go for a walk or something like that or use some sort of outdoor tracking on the watch. I am definitely seeing a decrease in battery life, but I'm still getting an average of 4 days or so a battery life out of it.

If I am using like it in conjunction with GPS on my phone trying to track like my paths and whatnot, it may get down to like three days, but three days of full use is still pretty stinking fantastic. One of the things that is a bummer is having to charge your device, and especially if it's a device that you have to charge every single night, like the Apple Watch in order to have enough to get you through the next entire day. That means you have to figure out a time in which you charge your device. If you want to wear it to sleep like I like wearing my watches to sleep not both of them, even though I warned both of them to sleep a few times for science, I'll, wear it to sleep because I, like the fitness tracking I, definitely love the fitness tracking of the Fitbit and gosh. It's so hard to talk about these devices without jumping over my next thoughts.

So let's stick on battery for a couple of seconds, and then we'll get into some of those tracking features. So the battery obviously is a lot better on the Fitbit, but the Fitbit is more limited and what it can do because of that, it's not you know, you're, not installing a bunch of apps that are maybe running in the background or doing different things. In the background, like you can on the Apple Watch, the Apple Watch now has its own App. Store Fitbit has very few apps that are available, and they're all apps. That don't do that much in the first place, whereas on the Apple Watch, you have a lot more of that functionality.

So the next thing that I wanted to talk about is the apps and kind of the whole ecosystem within the device itself. So obviously the Apple Watch has a lot of apps available to it. Apps are coming out all the time that have both a phone experience and a watch experience, and there are apps that are even coming out that are watch specific, with watch OS 6 here in 2019 Apple added the ability for the Apple Watch to have its own app store on the watch. So it's getting closer to the point where maybe our Apple watches can work as a standalone device, whether we're on an iPhone or not. We've obviously seen Apple kind of keep things handcuffed for a long time, but then they start to kind of let go like with the iPad being able to connect a hard drive to it.

Now you couldn't do that for so many years, plug a hard drive into your iPad so that you can get more storage, but now you can, I talked about that in another video, but with the Fitbit app experience, it's very lackluster, there's very few apps that are even useful. Some of the apps that you can get on your Apple Watch on the Fitbit are super limiting and almost not even worth installing a lot of the apps that are available in the Fitbit store or whatever you want to call. It is just very basic and aren't really able to do too much, and they really can't because the platform and the ecosystem there is very much lower performance to improve battery life. You know you have a much better processor and display and other things going on sensors and stuff like that, going on inside the Apple Watch than the Fitbit, the Fitbit's main job is to be a fitness tracker and with those sensors it does a great job, and they've got. You know perfect heart rate sensor, a perfect step counter.

Furthermore, you know all those sensors in there, but they don't have all of those additional things that you have in the Apple Watch that are going to make a lot of those other apps work even better. So if apps are a huge thing for you, the Apple Watch is definitely going to be the clear winner. If battery life is important to you, the Fitbit is definitely going to be the clear winner there. So another thing that the Apple Watch has that the Fitbit tracker doesn't is GPS. This particular Fitbit device does not have GPS.

You would have to go up to the Fitbit ionic in order to get GPS built-in, which means that if you want to do any tracking of where you're going on a run or a bike ride or something outdoors and actually be able to see on the map where you went, the only way you're going to be able to do that with a Fitbit is if you're connected to your phone, which is fine. Most of us typically are out with our phones, you know, and with our phone being connected, even with the Apple Watch, you're going to get a better overall experience there. When looking back at your where you went, the map plotting and all that good stuff, your path that was saved is gonna. Look much better if it was connected to your phone, because you're not only getting GPS, but you're, also getting the triangulation from the cell phone towers and everything all of that additional data to kind of help. Make sure that it's getting you plotted correctly on the Fitbit.

It's been good as long as you're connected to a phone, but you have to be connected to a phone. Some of these workout apps on the Fitbit versa ii, don't even really function unless you're connected to a phone. So just know that you're going to need to take your phone with you if you're going to use the Fitbit Versa to do any sort of outdoor tracking. So the Apple Watch comes in a couple of different options, as does the Fitbit. So, let's start with the Fitbit, the Fitbit Versa 2 comes in a standard and a special edition.

The special edition version adds NFC payments which allows you to tap to pay just like you have Apple Pay or Android pay or Samsung pay or all of those different ones. So if you want the feature to be able to make a payment tap to pay, you're going to need the special edition, Fitbit Versa, which I highly recommend I, think it's definitely great to be able to just tap to pay most merchants. These days have a reader that is tapped to pay. I haven't even really been carrying. My wallet anymore, I've just been using tap to pay, because even if I'm on my Fitbit I can do that now, if I'm on the Apple Watch, obviously I could do that as well and a lot of times if one of those things aren't working I have my phone, so I have backup plans they're all over the place, so I can make sure that I can pay for something if I'm out somewhere.

Obviously we don't live in a world yet where you don't have to carry cash or a card or anything like that, but we're getting closer and both of these devices allow for that. So the Apple Watch, Series 3, also comes in a couple of different options. You have two different size options, and then you also have two different options: both a standard and an LTE cellular, so the standard version with GPS is going to require to be connected to a phone, or it's not really going to work. It'll connect to your Wi-Fi, just like the Fitbit Versa does, and it will work around your Wi-Fi. But if you go out with it, and you're not connected to a phone, you leave your phone at home.

Both of these watches here are not going to do anything really other than just do their typical tracking. They need an internet connection, whether it be a Wi-Fi device or it is the Bluetooth connectivity to your smartphone now. Apple Watch also has an LTE version for the series 3 and the LTE version has a cellular modem in it and with a simple plan you can make and receive phone calls from your Apple Watch. You can get all of your notifications and everything like that stream, music to it. Do all those things when you are out and about- and you don't have to have your phone with you now, depending on your carrier and I, know most carriers.

Do this number sync allows you to actually leave your phone at home and any phone calls or text messages will forward to your watch automatic and that's kind of a neat feature. I definitely enjoy that feature when I'm at the gym or when I go out and just even into the front yard and play with my kids go to the park or something like that. I like to just be able to leave my phone behind and know that I can still get my calls and text messages, you're not going to be able to do that on a Fitbit, but that all is also what separates the price a bit between the LTE version of the Apple Watch and the Fitbit Versa to so. Both devices also get notifications. So there are a lot of notifications, so you can set up for the Fitbit Versa.

Basically any app, that's on your phone can be either allowed or not allowed to send notifications to your Fitbit Versa. You can enable all of them or enable them one by one, just like you can on the Apple Watch, so you can kind of set up that whole experience for me. I, like my watches, to interrupt me as little as possible. Typically, the only notifications that I'm getting our specific messages directed to me through text messages phone calls some sort of app that somebody would communicate with me through. Otherwise, everything else I, don't necessarily want to be bothered with if somebody likes a photo on Instagram or whatnot I.

Don't necessarily need to know about that. I can see that when I go to the app specifically, so I try to limit my distractions personally, but that's definitely something that you can configure and customize in both of these devices, so both the Fitbit Versa 2 and the Apple Watch Series 3 have smart assistants. Of course the Apple Watch has Siri and the Fitbit versa.2 has Amazon Alexa. So we're going to take a look at how Amazon Alexa works here, and then we'll do some similar things over with the Apple Watch in Siri, so Amazon Alexa is activated by pressing and holding the button down on the side. Of course, if you have the special edition watch like this one, you also have NFC payments as an option, and you can also configure the side button to press and hold to activate a payment method.

So the way that I have it set up is press and hold here for Amazon Alexa swipe down here, and I get my little widgets and the payment one is the one that's right at the top. So let's give Amazon Alexa command, set an alarm for 5 seconds now, I said alarm, but it's actually going to go ahead and set a timer, and so within five seconds it will give me a notification I little vibrate on my wrist and then notify me that the alarm has gone off there. It is there's lots of different things that you can command Amazon Alexa to do, and obviously the more that you're integrated with Amazon Alexa and your life. The more that this is going to be able to do such as, if you have Amazon Alexa type devices around your home, you can actually tell it to do things like turn your lights on and off and turn on. Music and do different things like that, but if you're only Amazon Alexa device is this particular watch, the only thing that you can do is command it to do things that the Fitbit versa can do so.

You'll definitely want to check out a complete list of that and there's a link down in the description below to show you exactly what you can say and have Amazon Alexa do on the Fitbit Versa. Now, if you followed any of my videos, you know that I'm, not the hugest fan of Siri, but Siri definitely has a lot more to offer with the Apple Watch than Alexa has to offer with the Fitbit Versa, and that just has to do with the fact that the Apple Watch is extremely tied in to your iPhone. So obviously the Apple Watch is not something that's going to be able to work with an Android phone like I've talked about earlier in the video, with the Fitbit versa being cross-platform, but you're going to have a perfect experience with Siri when it does understand what you're wanting to say most of the time with it being connected to an iPhone. So let's go ahead and activate Siri, so there's a couple different ways: you can do that I. Can it recognize me talking to it, and it showed up? I could typically do a race to wake, hey, Siri and activate it like that.

A lot of times Siri will just activate without me even needing to do that. Hey Siri set a timer for five seconds. There we go now. You may have heard in the background. My laptop actually went off as well, but it did set a timer in fact, and there are lots of things that you can ask Siri to do and the more integrated you are with Siri in your home and with your other devices, the more flexible it's going to be, but I could also use Siri to send a text message to my wife or pretty much to anybody in my contacts list, make a phone call and do lots of other things responding.

The text message is extremely easy and so there's a lot more integration and functionality with Siri on the Apple Watch. Then there would be with Amazon Alexa on the Fitbit versa. Customization is also really important to most people being able to interchange, watch bands and straps and stuff like that to kind of give it your own look is super important. Obviously, the Apple Watch has a lot of options here, not only from Apple but even aftermarket. I did a whole video on Apple Watch, straps, and I'll make sure to link to that.

So you can check it out. It was just kind of the top 5 that I found on Amazon based on their Amazon ratings, and so I reviewed them and shared them with everybody. So definitely check out that video Fitbit Versa, on the other hand, uses a standard watch band which you can get pretty much anywhere. There are tons of options there. The only difference is just with the body design of the Fitbit Versa a little.

Some thicker watch bands or bigger watch bands aren't necessarily going to fit into the chassis I guess you could say of the watch so, but there are still tons of options out there, so both of these watches are going to be highly customizable in the style. If you get the special edition version, it comes with two different watch: bands I opted to change the original one out for this more sport type of watch band that more matches what comes standard on the Apple Watch Series, three that I purchased so with that said, it really is a personal preference when it comes to these watches- and it comes down to your use case, if you're primarily getting one of these watches as a fitness tracker, and you don't care about anything else, I would probably opt to go with the Fitbit Versa too because of the battery life because of it being cross-platform, and then it just. You know having all the features that you would need there. Some perfect workout options that are built in the Fitbit Versa has a weights option. So, if you're working out with weights, that will actually try its best to track that and give you a calorie count, whereas on the Apple Watch, if you try to choose some of those difficult to track workouts, it's just going to give you like a baseline amount of calories for the amount of time that you're working out and not really track you too.

Well, so there are some differences there and, of course, there are tons of third-party workout apps for the Apple Watch, which will do tracking for those different types of things. The Fitbit vs, on the other hand, does not have a lot of third-party workout, apps or apps that it connects with. So you know, that's that's one thing to consider. I really just think that it's easy to make the decision. If you look at how you're going to use the device, if you don't care about the extra apps and notifications and connectivity, the Apple Watch probably doesn't matter so much.

If you want something, that's just a solid fitness tracker. That's going to last a long time on the battery. That's going to be accurate. That you're not gonna, have to worry about the Fitbit Versa. To is definitely your option there, so it comes down to that I think is just your use case and what you imagine doing with that device so from there I'm going to hand it off to all of you.

Let me know what you think down in the comments section below. Is there a factor that I missed there is's something that was important. That I should have touched on. I definitely want to hear from you guys down in the comments section below what is the device and the platform that you currently use. You may be thinking about switching or choosing one versus the other, but what do you currently use I'd love to know that as well down in the comments section, let's hang out down there for a little and chat.

So if you found this video useful, give it a thumbs up subscribe to the channel here. If you haven't, and I hope to see you back here soon in another video, take care.

Source : StateofTech