As more and more tech-savvy wrists are occupied bysmartwatchesevery year, the dedicated fitness tracker category has started to seem pretty stagnant. But for people who just want something that tracks steps and tells time, fitness trackers still make a lot of sense — and the Fitbit Charge 6 does both perfectly well. The Charge 6 is only a few months old now, but it’s already $60 off forBlack Friday, bringing it down to an extremely tempting $100 price point. This might just be one of the best deals we’ll see this holiday season.
Fitbit Charge 6
The Fitbit Charge 6 does nearly everything you’d want a full-fledged smartwatch to do, making it one of the more feature-rich fitness trackers on the market. At a sale price of $100, the Charge 6 is an absolute steal for Black Friday.
The Fitbit Charge 6 is the latest fitness band out of Google-owned Fitbit. Ireviewed the Charge 6a couple of weeks ago and came away pretty impressed: at an MSRP of $160, the Charge does the vast majority of what I typically need a smartwatch to do, including telling the time, delivering notifications, and tracking my activity and sleep. It also has Google Wallet, meaning you don’t have to add your cards to yet another payment platform to make contactless payments (though bank compatibility on Fitbit isn’t the same as it is on other devices — ensure to checkFitbit’s documentationbefore diving in).
For $100, the Charge 6 is an absolutely fantastic deal. I use a lot of different wearables for my job here at AP, and the Charge 6 was the first one in a long time that made me feel like I could comfortably make do without a Wear OS watch. You can’t install additional apps on the Charge 6, and compared to a smartwatch, the media experience is lacking: you can’t save media to the Charge 6 for offline playback, and you can’t control any media app on your phone other than YouTube Music.
But that’s a relatively minor quirk for me, even at full price. At $100, the Fitbit Charge 6 is a quality fitness tracker (Fitbit says it has the most accurate heart rate sensor ever used in a Fitbit tracker — which puts it second only to the Pixel Watch 2’s multi-path sensor) that can last up to a week on a charge, all while letting you make contactless payments and view Google Maps navigation directions without taking your phone out of your pocket. It’s extremely comfortable, too, which is important in a device you’re meant to wear to bed every night.
The worst thing about the Charge 6 is its tiny display — it can make reading workout metrics or notification content a little tricky. But the tracker really is very small, meaning it couldn’t possibly fit a much larger display than the one it’s got. Right now, if you’re looking to spend about $100 on a wearable, I don’t think there’s a better one to get than the Fitbit Charge 6.
