Google’s Fitbit Air: Another display-less option for tech you wear

Minimal- and no-display device value propositions aren’t unique to wearables. But they’re uniquely optimal for the needs and desires of wearable device users.

My wife is admittedly not as passionate about technology as I am…then again, for that matter, very few people are! Tech is much more of a means to an end for her, versus an end in and of itself (in my case). That said, there have been a few things in particular that I’ve added to our residence tech “stable” over the years which she’s been notably enthused about.

The Pandora music streaming service, for one, more recently supplemented with (but not supplanted by) Sirius XM and Amazon Music Unlimited. Dropbox also comes to mind. A Blink video doorbell I installed a few weeks back shows early potential to be another.

And then there are wearable health and fitness tracking devices, which I’ve been covering for well over a decade at this point (and using myself for much longer than that). A minimal-display band from Microsoft that I tore down in late 2015, for example, followed by a display-less Sketchers band dissection 1.5 years later, both mentioned (along with others) in an October 2018 state-of-the-market summary, augmented by further coverage in subsequent years.

By means of analogy, earlier this year I disassembled a display-less hygrometer from TP-Link, contrasting it to my earlier conceptual coverage of its display-inclusive sibling. The primary motivation for the former’s development and production, I’m assuming, was to offer a lower-priced alternative to the latter for consumers who were content to proactively monitor (and reactively respond to alerts from) the multi-sensor widget using only their wirelessly tethered mobile device. Plus, of course, the absence of a display made the resulting product more compact and power consumption-stingy than would otherwise be the case.

Cost-effectiveness, compactness, and power-stinginess are also motivations for display-less wearable devices, along with the consequent usage model of data logging and display via a paired smartphone or tablet, usually over Bluetooth Low Energy. But in this case, there’s another key consideration that my wife’s repeated embrace of the concept exemplifies.

Last week, I covered my experiences with my own latest wearable, a Google Pixel Watch 3. It’s a full-blown smartwatch, capable of standalone operation in many situations, thanks in no small part to its integrated connectivity over not only Bluetooth and Wi-Fi but also GPS and LTE cellular.

Note, however, that I repeatedly referred to it as my “daily driver”. To be precise, it’s on my wrist near-constantly, replaced by my Garmin fēnix 5 only when the Pixel Watch 3 is on the charger, replenishing its cache of battery-stored electrons.

My wife’s different; she’s a longstanding watch aficionado and regularly rotates between multiple timepieces on her wrist, some of them (heaven forbid…I jest…) even “dumb” analog models. But regardless of what’s keeping time for her at any particular point in time, she still wants her health being monitored.

Smart rings: Not her thing

What about a smart ring, then? Here’s what I wrote in September 2025, regarding the “key motivations behind my recent interest in the rapidly maturing smart ring product category”.

Such devices typically tout ~1 week (or more) of between-charges operating life, and they also recharge rapidly, courtesy of their diminutive integrated cells. A smart ring also affords flexibility regarding what watches (including traditional ones) I can then variously put on my wrist. And, as noted within my 2025 CES coverage:

This wearable health product category is admittedly more intriguing to me because unlike glasses (or watches, for that matter), rings are less obvious to others, therefore it’s less critical (IMHO, at least) for the wearer to perfectly match them with the rest of the ensemble…plus you have 10 options of where to wear one (that said, does anyone put a ring on their thumb?).

Due in no small part to recent health hiccups, I always also have a smart ring on my finger for data capture-and-analysis redundancy purposes. But although she’s a ring fan, she’s not (yet, at least) a smart ring fan. They’re still too bulky, for one thing. And then there’s my observation at the end of last year’s overview.

The lack of multi-ring support is a frequent cause of complaints on Reddit, from folks who want to accessorize multiple smart rings just as they do with normal rings, varying color and style to match outfits and occasions.

Oura has subsequently added the ability to associate two rings with a given account, but not at the same time, and the switching process is cumbersome (and I’m being kind in using that word, versus other adjectives I could have chosen). But, of course, there’s also the qualifier that “none of these devices are particularly inexpensive”, either.

A display-less device history

A slim, economically priced and wrist-based (either the same one her watch is also on, or the other) wearable with long battery life is more her “cup of tea”. And a half-decade-plus ago, we’d found the seemingly perfect device for her, actually…at least for a while. In August 2020, Amazon had rolled out its Halo Health ecosystem, including the display-less Halo Band device, followed a year-plus-later with a minimalistic OLED display sibling, the Halo View.

She loved the Halo Band, in spite of the fact that among other things it embedded two microphones to monitor for snoring during sleep (apnea symptoms, don’cha know) and other relevant ambient audio information. Audio capture could be disabled via an integrated button, at least supposedly…the value to Amazon of a user’s full suite of health data was obvious to both of us from the beginning, but she decided to roll the dice and take a chance anyway.

With the mics muted, battery life was up to a week between recharges, which took only 90 minutes. And the Halo Band cost only $64.99, bundled with six months’ worth of the Halo Health subscription service, with the Halo View only $79.99. Both devices were presumably subsidized by forecast recurring subscriptions for many years to come. But they didn’t apparently manifest, at least as fast as Amazon management demanded. By the end of July 2023, Halo was no more.

Fitbit’s concept resurrection

Imagine her happy surprise, therefore, when earlier this year I caught wind of (and passed on to her) news of Fitbit’s pending release of a display-less wearable, coined a month later with the “Air” moniker.

She’d long been a Fitbit user through multiple product form factors and generations, as I’d also noted back in October 2018. To that point, by the way, I feel compelled to point out at least one other key differentiator between her various Fitbit devices and my multiple Pixel Watch generations. My Pixel-branded wearables are Android-only, while her Fitbit ones have all been multi-platform compatible, a convenient capability given that she’s a longtime iPhone user.

Also, by the way, I was reminded of at least one other wearable teardown I’d done while searching just now through my past-published-content archive. Prior to its acquisition by Google, Fitbit had released a display-less band (this one sensors-integrated) called the Fitbit Flex, which I’d disassembled in March 2020. What’s old is new again, eh?

That said, one key advantage of the Fitbit Air is that it’s detachable (and re-attachable) for use with a variety of different bands in different colors and styles (and not just from Google, either). Enterprising folks have even figured out how to mount the Fitbit Air to the strap of a conventional watch.

It costs $99.99 baseline, including a three-month Health Premium subscription, which (unlike Whoop’s competitive offerings) is not necessary for ongoing use (speaking of smart ring—Oura, specifically—analogies). And since I bought it for her as soon as it was announced, we also got $35 in promo Google Store credit which…no surprise…she used on another band. A week’s use between full charges, which take 90 minutes. A day’s worth of use after only 5 minutes of charge time.

And for those of you who really want an integrated display, there’s also the more recently (like mid-October recently) unveiled Fitbit Edge, the seeming successor to the longstanding Fitbit Charge line, albeit this time (and first-time) with a user-replaceable battery.

No obsolescence by design here; nice! Although the $179.99-and-up price tag is admittedly a bit salty. And no NFC support this time; limited past Google Wallet usage apparently didn’t justify an ongoing bill-of-materials cost impact caused by the feature’s inclusion.

Engineering = tradeoffs + optimizations

As with many product categories I cover, the wearables segment is an always-interesting case study in how manufacturers strive to develop, productize, price (including both initial upgrades and ongoing services and other revenue sources), and promote the fewest possible device options that service the varying needs of the largest possible potential customer base, hopefully stacking up successfully against competitors’ offerings in the process.

If you’re employed by a wearables supplier, I’d welcome any insights you’d be able to share (anonymously, if necessary) as to how your company strives to achieve those objectives. And even if you’re “only” an end user, I welcome your thoughts into what features are most important to you, versus being irrelevant, and what ecosystem and device(s) within it you’re currently going with. Let me know your feedback in the comments, please!

—Brian Dipert is the associate editor, as well as a contributing editor, at EDN.

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