Josh Valcarcel/WIRED
Josh Valcarcel/WIRED
Josh Valcarcel/WIRED
Josh Valcarcel/WIRED
Josh Valcarcel/WIRED
Lo and behold, in late 2014 Fitbit announced a trio of new fitness wearables, including a smartwatch: the Surge. Billed as a “fitness superwatch,” it tracks the usuals like steps, distance, calories, flights climbed, sleep, and active minutes, as well as continuous heart rate monitoring. It has built-in GPS tracking—something Apple’s watch will lack. The Fitbit also displays bits of information from your phone on its LCD screen: caller ID, app notifications, and music player controls.
But, as Fitbit’s product billing and the Surge’s feature set would suggest, it’s not really a smartwatch. There are no third-party apps. Notifications are limited. More than anything, it’s a souped-up version of the Charge HR wrist band, a Fitbit with an always-on watch face.
The Surge has a monochrome touchscreen display that’s easy to read in regular light or sunshine. When interacting with it, the screen lights up blue, making it even easier to read. There’s a power button on the left side. Two additional buttons on the right side are used for navigation, but most onscreen interactions can be handled with swipes and taps. Touch response is generally swift. A green LED-based heart rate monitor sits on the underside of the watch where it pulses light into your skin to constantly take measurements. There’s also a USB charge port on the bottom, and the battery generally lasts more than three days per charge.
While I’ve had issues with other large screen smartwatches, the dimensions and fit of the Surge is quite comfortable. The face is similar in size to a Pebble, and the band wraps around in a loose wrist-conforming shape. It’s made of the same rubbery, textured material as the smaller Fitbit Charge HR. I like this material, except that it gets grabby when you’re wearing a long sleeved shirt or jacket. I wore the watch close to 24 hours a day, usually only taking it off for showers (it’s water resistant, but not waterproof). If your mattress is hard, you may find the Surge pinches and presses your arm while you’re trying to catch some zzz’s. This happened to me one night in a hotel bed, forcing me to take it off, but otherwise sleeping with the Surge just became habit; I didn’t notice it.
I had a terrible time trying to get the watch to pair with my iPhone 6 in order to relay notifications. I would restart the phone, restart the watch, restart the app. No dice. Apparently, I needed to do these in a specific order, as outlined in Fitbit’s Help forums. Once you’ve got this working (other people seemed to have little to no issue with this), incoming text and call notifications are delivered to your wrist, grabbing your attention with a momentary vibration. You access your recent messages by tapping the upper right button on the watch, and then swipe right or left to navigate through them. It does not relay any other app notifications, though. On one hand, that’s kind of bunk—it might be nice to get Facebook or Instagram notifications, too—but on the other, it limits the notifications you do get on your wrist to ones you’re most likely to want to respond to, and that’s refreshing.
The Surge is less of a direct shot across Apple Watch’s bow and more of a souped-up fitness tracker that provides minimal notifications from your smartphone.
This lack of notification noise means that, for the most part, the Surge feels like more of just a watch. I’d glance at it to check the time, or check my heart rate. Continuous heart rate monitoring is an almost gimmicky attraction. “Oh my god I’m so stressed out right now, what’s my heart rate? I bet it’s like 130. Oh, it’s only 70. OK I guess I’m not that stressed out.” But by wearing it all day, you can get an accurate reading of your true resting heart rate—useful for assessing your overall fitness—as well as more accurate calorie-burn estimates for when you hit the gym or the trails.
For runners, the Surge’s larger display is great for checking real time stats like your distance, time, and your pace. The watch also tracks your run using GPS, so you don’t need to have your smartphone on you to track your session. The watch can monitor around a dozen different activities, including yoga, spinning, weights, golf, kickboxing, and tennis.
I compared the calorie burn report from the Surge to a Garmin paired with a heart rate strap. For me, the Fitbit’s estimates erred on the low side for a spin session. However, this could be due to my high maximum heart rate—as I mentioned in my review of Fitbit’s Charge HR, a device that uses the same flashing LEDs to measure heart rate, a high max HR can cause inconsistent readings.
The Surge did a better job than the Charge HR, picking up some high intensity efforts in the 180 BPM range, but otherwise generally topped out around 160 BPM, a good deal below my actual max heart rate. If you know that your max heart rate is below 170 BPM, you should not have issues with the watch’s beat tracking. If it’s higher, you’re probably better off wearing a heart rate strap during workouts.
Some other features I liked: you can set a silent alarm to remind you to get up and walk around, and your watch to vibrate every hour as a prompt. There are four default watch faces to choose from, and you can switch them using the smartphone app. You can also select which exercise shortcuts you want to swipe through on the touchscreen—like if you’re never, ever going to step onto the elliptical machine, one of the watch’s default activities, you can remove it from the menu.
The person who will get the most out of the Surge is someone who wants the constant fitness tracking Fitbit is known for, and also wants to wear a more traditional digital wristwatch. This gives you both in just one device. The notifications helpful too, but are also lightweight enough that the simplicity of the watch’s experience remains intact.
Maybe this says it best. I began testing the Surge close to a month ago. In the weeks spent on my wrist, it hasn’t transformed the way I communicate with friends or interact with my phone. But it hasn’t ended up abandoned in a drawer, either.
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