Fitbit Charge 2: The Best Got Even Better

On Dec 20, Fitbit released a power-packed firmware upgrade making the fitness wearable Fitbit Charge 2 just so much better. The upgrade adds five major new features and improvements and some minor tweaks including workout pause function, guided vibration breathing cues, do-not-disturb mode and a battery indicator.

First in the list of Fitbit Charge 2 upgrades is the much-needed pause function. Now you can pause the exercise tracking for that important phone call by just tapping the Charge 2 button on the side of the tracker. When you are ready to restart, tap it again. But it works only for "multi-sport exercise mode", the activities you manually start or stop.

Fitbit Charge 2 introduced "Relax" which offers guided breathing breaks to re-energise you all throughout the day, a two to five minutes meditation. But the problem was you could not close your eyes during the sessions. You had to keep following visual breathing cues on your Fitbit. The upgrade tackles this problem as well. Vibrations will now accompany the visual cues. The device will vibrate once when it's time to breathe in and once again when it's time to breathe out. The cycle continues throughout the session.

Another add-on to make your life stress-free is the "Do-not-Disturb" option. With Fitbit Charge 2, you can call, send a text or set up calendar notification all through your Fitbit tracker but without an option to turn off notifications. This has been fixed. Press and hold the side but when the main watch face is shown and all your notifications will be turned off.

The upgrade improves the heart-rate visualization calling it a "tachometer-style" visual. Three separate, partial circles help you know which heart-rate zone you are in and how far you are from reaching the next level. The three zones are the fat burn zone, the cardio zone, and your peak zone.

It was surprising that Fitbit Charge 2 did not come with a battery life indicator and you had to check the app to know the battery status. The firmware update has added this essential feature on the display.

So the upgrades are pretty powerful given that usually, the Fitbit upgrades are minor bug fixes. So if you already own a Fitbit, hurry and install the latest update.