The Fitbit Sense line is cooked because it was too good for Google

Google couldn't make the Pixel Watch series better, so it had to bring the Sense line to a lower level to win.

May 6, 2025 - 13:48

The Fitbit Sense line is cooked because it was too good for Google

Fitbit Sense 2

Credit: Kris Carlon / Android Authority

In 2020, Fitbit launched the Sense, its first fitness tracker that came close to being a bona fide smartwatch. Although it was a souped-up tracker on launch day, Fitbit slowly upgraded it over time, adding features like Google Assistant support and a small but effective list of third-party apps. By 2021, it was a smartwatch, through and through.

I adopted the Fitbit Sense as my daily driver at launch and had it on my wrist every day for over three years. I absolutely loved it. Depending on my choices for watch settings, I could get as much as a week of battery life out of it. It tracked all my health metrics accurately, delivered all my smartphone notifications silently to my wrist, heard all my “OK Google” commands, and even had a Starbucks app for me to earn rewards when buying a cup of tea. I knew it wasn’t as powerful and versatile as a “real” smartwatch, but it did everything I wanted in a discreet and light form factor and only needed to be charged for a few minutes a day to last basically forever.