5 Things That Bug Me About the Fitbit Air
About five days ago, I shared my unboxing and initial 24-hour experience with the brand-new Fitbit Air. In that first day, my impressions were almost exclusively positive. It felt like a stellar health tracker, especially at its $99 price point. But 24 hours isn't enough time to see the cracks in a daily wearable. Now that I’ve spent nearly a week with it, the honeymoon phase is officially over. Don’t get me wrong—it’s still a solid device, but I’ve run into five specific things that are seriously bugging me.
Here is the good, the bad, and the bizarre from my last five days with the Fitbit Air.
The Coach AI Summaries Are Way Too Aggressive
If you pay for the premium subscription, you get access to the new Coach AI system, which generates neat little health summaries at the bottom of your app dashboard. The problem? They arrive way too early, sometimes before the data is settled.
I have frequent nights where I’m awake for a bit. Maybe I get up at 1:00 AM or 2:00 AM to use the bathroom or just toss and turn for a while. The app immediately assumes, "Well, looks like they're awake for the day!" and slaps down an AI summary: "Wow, that was a really poor night's sleep." Google needs to cool this feature down. Don't trigger a final daily sleep summary until the user has been up, walking around, and logging steps for at least an hour.
The good news is that if you do go back to sleep and wake up later, it will eventually update with a new summary, but you shouldn't be getting scolded by your app in the middle of the night.
Inconsistent Sleep Tracking
Speaking of sleep, the underlying tracking itself needs serious dialing in. This morning, I woke up to a sleep graph that was wildly, woefully inaccurate, claiming I was awake for multiple hours straight. I’m a notoriously poor sleeper, but it isn’t that bad.
On other nights, it swings too far in the opposite direction, showing a perfectly flawless night of sleep. You will never find a night where I don't wake up a single solitary time, and right now, the accuracy feels like a total roll of the dice.
The Bizarre UI Customization Oversight
This one should be an incredibly easy software fix, and it's so strange that I need you guys to tell me if your app does this too.
At the top of the app dashboard, you have these glanceable data tiles for quick metrics, and there’s a pin icon that allows you to add or remove tiles. Standard stuff, right? But you know what you cannot do? You cannot long-press and drag them to rearrange them.
If you want to reorder your tiles, you have to completely delete them using the minus icon, and then re-add them one by one in the exact chronological order you want. It is a laughably silly oversight for a modern fitness app.
The "Uncustomizable" Health Widget
Sticking with the theme of lacking customization, let’s talk about the Google Health widget for your phone's home screen.
When you go to add it, the description promises a quick access widget where you can add your favorite metrics. But once you drop it onto your home screen, it just locks in three static metrics: distance, calories burned, and steps.
There is no edit button on the widget itself, and there's no customization menu hidden in the app settings. It acts like it’s a personalized hub, but it’s entirely rigid, and as a side note for my fellow foldable users, it scales horribly on the Motorola Razr outer screen.
Coach AI is Great... So Why Is It Siloed?
I genuinely enjoy the "Ask Coach" feature. Being able to tap the microphone and say, "I just ate a turkey sandwich," or take a photo of my meal and have it automatically log my macros is incredibly seamless.
But let’s look at the bigger picture: Coach AI is just Gemini in a trench coat, so why is it completely siloed off from the rest of the Google ecosystem? Right now, the user flow is clunky, because you have to unlock your phone, find and open the Fitbit app, tap on the Coach section, trigger the microphone, and then log your food.
Google needs to bridge the gap and give us a system-wide toggle. Imagine being able to just hold down your phone's power button from any screen, trigger Gemini, and say, "Hey, log my lunch to Google Health." Even better, if you're cooking dinner and your hands are messy, you could just speak directly to your Google-powered smart kitchen speaker to log your meal, rather than digging through a specific health app. It would take this feature to an entirely different stratosphere of usefulness.
Bonus: The Dual-Wielding Ergonomic Nightmare
This last one is a bit personal to my current tech setup. I’ve been wearing my trusted Pebble Time 2 on my left wrist, which means the Fitbit Air has been relegated to my right wrist.
Because it's on my dominant right hand, I am constantly catching the device on the desk whenever I move my mouse. It is driving me absolutely crazy, honestly, more than any of the software bugs. If it comes down to a choice between the two, the Pebble wins out for its full smartwatch capabilities, but I'm trying to make the dual-wear lifestyle work a little longer.
What's Your Verdict?
This is exactly why 24-hour reviews don't tell the whole story, and five days in, my perspective has definitely shifted.
Am I missing something here? Is there a secret way to edit the home screen widget or drag those dashboard tiles around that I just haven't stumbled across? Let me know in the comments below if you've found a workaround.
