Fitbit Inspire 3 Review

The Fitbit Inspire 3 joins the league of tastefully designed Fitbit fitness trackers for a fairly large number of users in search of something simple, affordable, and featuring key aspects related to health tracking. Fitbit Inspire 3 is here to give users what they need in terms of staying on the right track: activities and situations about health and well-being. The design, features, performance, and how it compares with competition, all about the Fitbit Inspire 3, covered below.

Design and Comfort

More or less, the Fitbit Inspire 3 is designed like its predecessor, with that signature minimalism and slimness typical of a Fitbit Inspire series. Weighing about 20 grams, it becomes lightweight. This design would work best for that person who is always on the move and likes to have their fitness tracker on 24/7.

The design of the Inspire 3 is sleek, low-key, and slim, with an OLED screen that is small but clear. This is quite comfortable to wear all-day-long at work, while hitting the gym or going for a run, where applicable. The device feels like a solid bit of kit with a plastic make that downplays the modest price point. What other materials should bands made of in order to enable one to wear them for workouts and all day, being of soft, flexible, sweat-, and water-repelling materials? Not to mention that the bands were indeed so comfortable and appropriate for any kind of activities, they could easily be changed out so that styles would vary with colors and materials.

Perhaps one of the most prominent selling points of this new design of the Inspire 3 would be that it’s 50 meters water-resistant, meaning you can wear it even while swimming in a pool or taking a shower. This opens many use possibilities as an activity tracker in water-related activities or not having to remove the watch during daily activity.

Now, the screen is OLED and therefore monochrome, but it is still bright and sharp to view well under all but the most testing of light conditions. The touchscreen is very responsive, and there is absolutely no sense of any complaints about the ease of the scroll through the menu system. Core Features
Some information has been compressed because of the screen size, which has led the user to the need to go through more screens to get detailed data. All in all this is actually very intuitive friendly user interface.

Features Inlaid in Fitbit Inspire 3
The facilities within the Fitbit Inspire 3 include a mix of some basic fitness and health tracking features, while some are rather advanced, making this device nowhere close to a mere step counter. Housed in the Inspire 3, the key features are reviewed:

Activity Tracking

Basically, the Fitbit Inspire 3 is a simple fitness tracker. It is going to be tracking activities. It can track your steps taken, distance covered, active time, and calories burned. The presence of all these counters will indeed go a long way in motivating a person to keep improving his or her level of bodily feats. Besides, the hourly activity reminder will always push you to keep moving throughout the day instead of sitting for a long time.

Among the main features that are present within the Inspire 3 are advanced smart track technologies through the device, which will automatically detect and record exercise activities such as walking, running, cycling and even swimming. For the activities above, there is no need to start a workout session; this is actually a nice touch that adds some real convenience to make sure exercise is always tracked.

Now with moving up to the Inspire 3, this is a huge step up from any of the old models in the Inspire series. The next feature it has continuously on it is heart rate monitoring. Do an all-day and all-night HR tracking. So data points that will show you your resting heart rate and your heart rate zones throughout your workout. These data points are both indicative of your overall cardiovascular health. This would, therefore, be so resourceful in a person who either just wants to monitor his heart or maybe do some heart-rate-based training.

The rate data from this very basic device seems to be quite good, similar to all the other wrist-based heart rate monitors. They may not stand quite next to the chest-strap monitors, though, especially during intense workouts or at times when rapid changes in the rate might occur and are hence quite a bit harder to track accurately.

Sleep Tracking

The company is first and foremost famous for its accurate sleep tracking. The Inspire 3 will bring forth much deeper, detailed metadata applicable to the variable scenes of light, deep, and REM sleep, especially in this case of sleep tracking. On top of that, Inspire 3 includes a sleep score, actually number ranking the quality of sleep based on duration, restlessness, and time spent in every stage of sleep.

The automatic sleep tracking feature should not be stopped by any manual means. Hence, you will find this to be one exercise without any hassles. This means that you can also get deep into the insights of your sleep from the Fitbit app. It helps you set sleep goals and how you can go about achieving the same over time. That feature alone is significantly impactful in enhancing sleep hygiene and health overall for users.

Stress Management

This is a more advanced feature, in alignment with increasing awareness about mental well-being. It is one feature Fitbit recently added as an update to the Inspire 3. As you look through the watch, these are the guided breathing sessions that will be taken from your heart rate variability to help you relax and blow away the stress at any time of the day. Although this feature may seem a bit archaic compared with many dedicated mindfulness apps available at present, this really is one of those features that holds some value for those truly striving to bring in some mindfulness practices to daily life.

Exercise Modes and Connected GPS

There is no onboard GPS; instead, your connected GPS from your smartphone can be used. The device can track a host of outdoor activities, such as running, cycling, or hiking, and gives a very accurate guideline to the user for the outdoor activity. The Inspire 3, with a connected GPS, plots the route precisely and gives the user precise data on the distance, pace, and elevation useful for guiding outdoor exercise activities.

With over 20 activity modules, including yoga and Pilates, Inspire 3 can be an activity tracker far beyond cardio.

Smart Features

In addition to tracking health and activity with the Fitbit Inspire 3, other smart features are packed right in. On your wrist display, you will get incoming call, text, and app notifications without having to fish into your pocket every time your phone pings. Even better, smart replies seem to be on the way, though only for Android by the time of writing, so you might well be able to peck back messages from your wrist using preset messages.

While this might not permit the setting of third-party apps, or of music playback, it’s otherwise a device that comes equipped with all the very basic smartwatch functions that will likely suit the majority. More utility is offered by silent alarms, timers, and a stopwatch.

The Fitbit Inspire 3 comes with the Fitbit app, your one home base for all your health and fitness information. This one looks good, with a mass of data offered up, in an interface that thankfully doesn’t feel overwhelming by the data. You’re shown how you’re doing on activities, heartbeat, sleeping patterns, among others, and the user just taps on a selected area of interest to gain more insight.

On the other hand, this resonates with one of the best real benefits of being part of the Fitbit gadget family in whole: It ties really well to Fitbit community and social features—challenges, groups, and friends. It gives insights and recommendations that are tailored in accordance with your data so that you know when it’s time to make changes for health and fitness.

Worth mentioning, the advanced features—detailed health insights and guided programs—fall under the category of Fitbit Premium first and foremost. All the core features that came with the Inspire 3 could be used for free; only customers looking for a little more depth of analysis and coaching found added value in Fitbit Premium.

Performance and Accuracy

Performance probably forms one of the central features in any given fitness tracker; most of those features do pretty well on the Fitbit Inspire 3. Learn more about how it measures up in the more important areas of accuracy and reliability.

Step Counting and Activity Tracking

Step and general activity tracking functioned rather well with this Fitbit Inspire 3. It keeps a very accurate step count, even across activities such as walks with uneven ground or runs. This is quite impressive as it uses a combination of acceleration sensor data and algorithms to help in differentiating between the types of movements, hence avoiding false positives, such as activity from even hands, to be counted as steps.

From there, it would guesstimate the number of calories that have been burned and the distance that has been traveled based on the activity level one picked. Again, this may not be something taken as an idea of precision, which may come in the kind of order one gets using devices with superior sensors. The data will be good enough for most users of the Inspire 3 to monitor physical activities, hopefully nudging one to improve on them.

Heart Rate Monitoring

This makes continuous heart rate monitoring a very useful feature of the Inspire 3 for people who are concerned with heart disease or who take good care of their cardiovascular well-being. The heart rate sensor performs relatively well during most daily activities and in moderate exercises. This is something that’s generally complained about on most wrist-based heart rate trackers but is very much less accurate when in higher dimensions of high-intensity exercise where fast heart rate changes are hard things to follow up on—though still delivers decent data for most people, just not professional athletes or requiring clinical-level accuracy.

Sleep Tracking

Although there might be another couple of features that set it apart from others, sleep tracking could turn out to be one of its stand-out features. It captures most of the stages that one passes through while sleeping and, therefore, offers very granular, rich insight into a person’s sleeping pattern. Much more importantly is its Sleep Score feature that puts into perspective a person’s quality of sleep each night in very simple and clear terms.

The Inspire 3 can tell automatically when you’ve gone to bed—you simply don’t have to remember to hit bedtime mode each night. All of these additional conveniences, combined with the detailed insight available directly inside the Fitbit app, make the Inspire 3 a truly unique tool for any kind of purpose of trying to sleep better and to live healthy.

Battery Life

One of the primary strong points about the Fitbit Inspire 3 has to do with its battery life. The battery life may last for up to ten days on a single charge, depending, of course, on use. That is well above most of its class and price category; therefore, this one could be ideal for those who detest recharging frequently.

Combine that with how often it pings you, uses the connected GPS, and has continuous heart rate tracking: For use in the middle to high range, it is not a problem to get a week or more between charges with the Inspire 3. This is comfortably going to be one of the greatest draws for people who want ease and reliability.

You are introduced to the world of activity trackers with the Fitbit Inspire 3. You get a well-guided setup using the details in the Fitbit app, step by step. Meanwhile, very straightforward to use with its very responsive touchscreen display and easily navigable menus.

It uses a very user-friendly interface—sleekly minimalistic, with clear icons and text that allow easy browsing of devices. Using a touchscreen, as in the case of the real proponents of tactile control, may lead to an unresponsive and shaky interface, but in general, it is smooth.

On its part, the Fitbit app is okay when it is synchronizing and holds its own as one of the best out there for health and fitness tracking. It lets all your data be seen right in one place with some view-kind-of-thing, using explicit graphs and drill-downs with the details on the crucial areas for you. It also harbors some motivational achievements, such as badges and challenges, with social interaction—not that it will help you if you’re someone who’s deeply concerned with the social aspects of fitness tracking.

Whereas, its reliance on Fitbit Premium for advanced features is apt to point out a relatively poor user experience. Inspire 3 has more than enough basic functionalities for most users—the rest, who want to look more in-depth into Health Insights or using guided Health and Fitness programs—that is at fault with these features, that lie buried behind a subscription paywall.

Compared to Competitors

I’ll have to pitch it against some of the others available at this price point without even starting the review of the Fitbit Inspire 3, so that one gets an idea about what the value proposition is—first and foremost, among these immediate competitors from the Xiaomi Mi Band 7 and Garmin Vivosmart 5.

Xiaomi Mi Band 7

Without a doubt, one of the most competitive models against the Fitbit Inspire 3 is the Xiaomi Mi Band 7. It is also sort of a sibling device to the Fitbit Inspire 3, with continuous heart rate and sleep tracking, but it has quite significantly longer battery life for the user. Probably the largest differentiation feature would be that it has built-in GPS. This provides much more accurate activity results than are possible just using a smartphone.

Not such a great app experience, although much better build quality and social features. The Mi Band 7’s app really is quite well put together, very usable, but doesn’t hold a candle to the sort of depth and ways to engage that the Fitbit ecosystem does.

Garmin Vivosport 5

The relatively slightly costlier Garmin Vivosport 5 comes further upgraded with onboard GPS and some more detailed health features in tracking. It is a product that really needs to be on the wall—most serious users of fitness get quite informative performance metrics.

The Vivosmart 5 is a lot more serious-looking and not really as user-friendly as the Inspire 3. The Garmin app is a bit dense with the details and may not be so accessible for the casual user who needs something a little easier to slide into.

Although the Inspire 3 works for anyone who is currently using a Fitbit or wants style with comfort, combined with the core health and fitness features, for anyone else looking at things like advanced features or native GPS, there may be better value elsewhere in options like the Xiaomi Mi Band 7 or a Garmin Vivosport 5.

Pros:

• Priced but Feature-Rich: Inspire 3 is quite an affordable device for purchase by the common man who wants to spend his money on enough features.
• Light and Slim: Being slim and light, this device can be worn during the day or even for sleeping.
• Activity tracking with detailed sleep analysis**: Detailed sleep analysis and a Sleep Score let you see detailed information on the quality of your sleep.
• All-Day Continuous Heart Rate Tracking**: Get familiar with more accurate health metrics and fitness tracking.
• Long Battery Life**: A battery life of about 10 days reduces frequent charging.
• Water Resistance**: Resistant up to 50 meters of water, which is quite decent for swimming and showering purposes.
• Easy to Use Interface**: An easy-to-use interface combined with flawless syncing on the Fitbit app enhances user experience.

Cons:

• No Inbuilt GPS: Well, without inbuilt GPS, it actually makes it to a great extent useless in any tracking device.
• Few Smart Features:** Yes, they are offering a couple of basics via notifications, but it simply doesn’t support third-party apps, and music control is a feature that is absent.
• Subscription Model for Advanced Features:** Some features are put behind a Fitbit Premium paywall that likely won’t impress many.
• The exercise metrics are limited. It lacks some advanced metrics such as those related to VO2 max, which may not be so important to a casual user but is definitely to a serious athlete.
• Small Screen Size: The display window looks pretty small to show all details of the data in one screen without scrolling.

Final Verdict

The Fitbit Inspire 3 is a great budget activity band that does something basic but does it solidly. Lightweight, very comfortable for a whole day’s wear—all but like a wristwatch. It offers a wide range of health and fitness tracking features that may appeal not only to beginners but also to those who take part in casual activities.

Continuous monitoring of sleep and heart beat presents the features, to which a user could also relate in terms of ease of use. On top of it, its everyday use is very convenient, making it bloat-free, having significant battery life, and water resistance. Those hard-core athletes, who want a large amount of trackable data, might find themselves interested in something with built-in GPS or advanced metrics.

My value for money opinion is on the Fitbit Inspire 3; it is very good and probably one of the best activity trackers for newbies in health and fitness tracking, or just for any person looking for a straight-to-the-point way to keep abreast of basic health and activity. This atomic grace will get through features like sleep, daily activity, or heart rate truly within this price segment.