With the Luxe, Fitbit has introduced a new wearable that looks like a piece of jewelry. The $150 wearable combines health-and-wellness features of traditional Fitbit devices with stylized finishes. Fitbit Luxe comes with a focus on relaxation and stress management and offers a range of bracelet options.
This focus away from purely sporting use towards coping with everyday life is also reflected in the design of the Luxe. The tracker is made of stainless steel and is available in black, silver, and gold. In addition to the usual silicone straps, there are also a number of bracelets that make the device look more like a piece of jewelry than a fitness tracker.
Read more Fitbit Wearables May Soon Start Measuring Your Blood Pressure
In addition to matching metal mesh bracelets, double-wrapped leather bracelets from Horween are also available. There is also a chain bracelet in silver or gold, with which the Luxe actually hardly looks like a conventional fitness tracker.
Through a partnership with the Laguna Beach-based jewelry brand gorjana, users can switch out their Luxe band for a chain-link bracelet inspired by gorjana’s Parker collection.
Unlike other trackers, fitness is not the main purpose of the Luxe. Instead, Fitbit is positioning it more as a holistic wellness tracker than a dedicated fitness band. The two main factors that it's looking at are stress and sleep.
The wearable has an OLED screen. A heart rate monitor and sensors for measuring blood oxygen are installed on the back. This is not yet available for the planned start of the wearable in May 2021 and should be submitted later via an update.
With the purchase of the Luxe, users can start a free six-month trial subscription for Fitbit's premium account. This enables you to carry out more detailed sleep and stress analyses. A number of relaxation exercises are then also available to them.
According to Fitbit, Luxe provides five days of battery life, which includes a sleep record. The heart rate is measured every five seconds by default, and every second for sports recordings. In the Fitbit app, values such as heart and breathing rate, resting heart rate, and skin temperature are combined into a health value.
The Fitbit Luxe with a silicone bracelet costs 150 euros in Germany. With the chain bracelet, the wearable costs 200 euros. The Horween leather bracelet costs an additional 50 euros, the mesh bracelet 90 euros. The fabric bracelet can be ordered for 40 euros. Like the Luxe itself, the accessories are to be delivered from May 2021.
Read more Fitbit to Equip NASA Employees with Wearables to Protect Them from COVID-19
So, why should you wear a fitness tracker that looks like a piece of jewelry?
A study suggests that clothes systematically influence wearers' psychological processes. Researchers of the study coined the term “enclothed cognition” to demonstrate the cognitive influences that fashion has on its wearers, reports MobiHealthNews. Their study examined how wearing a white lab coat influenced the participants’ performance on attention-related tasks – a characteristic that is often associated with lab coats. Those who were outfitted in lab coats demonstrated significantly better results than those wearing plain clothes.
