TL;DR
- Workout Logging: Google plans to expand Fitbit Air and Fitbit Edge fitness trackers’ automatic logging from 10 to more than 100 activities later in October.
- Recording Conditions: Logs will require the configured minimum duration, 15 minutes by default, and sustained elevated heart rate.
- Blood Pressure: Eligible Fitbit Air and Fitbit Edge fitness trackers will gain monthly blood pressure trend reports through paid Google Health Premium subscriptions.
- Insulin Resistance: Their reports will also estimate trends in cells’ response to insulin from weeks of wearable data, for wellness rather than diagnosis.
Google plans broader automatic workout logging for its Fitbit Air and Fitbit Edge fitness trackers later in October, letting owners record more activities without manually starting a session. The upgraded detector will use workout routines, past activity and user corrections to identify activities.
The upgrade, announced October 12, covers Fitbit Air, Fitbit Edge and Google’s Pixel Watch 3, 4 and 5 smartwatches. Google also plans to extend Health Guardian, its tools for tracking longer-term health changes, to eligible Fitbit Air and Fitbit Edge subscribers through monthly blood pressure and insulin-resistance reports.
Fitbit Air is a screenless wrist tracker whose owners review their records in the Google Health phone app. The forthcoming Fitbit Edge adds a display and lets owners start workouts on their wrist, while Fitbit Air’s manual starts happen in the app. Google is taking Fitbit Edge preorders and schedules its arrival in stores for October 27.
A Broader Detector That Learns from Corrections
Fitbit Air already records common activities automatically and allows owners to start or log workouts through the app. The planned upgrade expands the detector’s vocabulary from 10 activities to more than 100, including strength training, swimming, racket sports and team sports.
Recognition will draw on workout routines, historical data and manual edits, plus location when the user grants permission. An owner’s confirmation or correction of an activity gives the detector more information about that person’s patterns, helping it refine later predictions.
Automatic records will still depend on a workout meeting the user’s minimum duration threshold, which defaults to 15 minutes, and a sustained elevated heart rate. A summary will reach the mobile app, typically within 30 minutes.
Google says its revised detector produces nearly twice as accurate detections and cuts missed workouts by more than half. Those figures come from its own offline evaluation of the updated and prior models using manually tracked workouts on devices; an absolute detection-accuracy rate is unspecified.
Monthly Health Estimates for More Trackers
Health Guardian’s blood pressure and insulin-resistance trends began rolling out free to Pixel Watch 3, 4 and 5 owners in September. They are available on those watches. The October plan extends the two trends to eligible Fitbit Air and Fitbit Edge users through Google Health Premium, the paid tier that also supplies Google’s AI Health Coach.
Tracking and Trend Access by Device
Google describes its blood pressure tool as estimating trends from pulse and motion patterns gathered over a month, without a cuff or manual calibration. Insulin resistance means cells respond less well to insulin, the hormone that helps the body store energy from food. The corresponding trend tool analyzes several weeks of physiological data rather than taking a blood sample.
The insulin-resistance feature uses SensorFM, a wearable-data model that learns reusable patterns from incomplete recordings. Its training combines genuine recording gaps with deliberately hidden readings in a reconstruction task, allowing fragmented data to contribute to learning.
The reports are intended for general wellness. Google’s guidance excludes use during pregnancy and says the trends should not be used to adjust medication or treatment. They do not provide live clinical readings or screen for diabetes or hypertension.
For subscribers, the new reports will add health patterns for the Coach to interpret. In his same-day assessment, 9to5Google’s Andrew Romero suggests that monthly trends could make the AI Coach more useful to the average Fitbit user.
Earlier app tests reached different conclusions about that style of interpretation. The Tom’s Guide reviewer valued Google Health’s readable summaries compared with Whoop’s more granular recovery, strain and sleep data. TechRadar’s June Fitbit Air review found the Coach flexible and helpful but criticized the way chatbot text could bury metrics.
Google Health Premium is also included in Google AI Pro and AI Ultra subscription plans, with a Fitbit or Pixel Watch device required. The new Fitbit reports will require feature setup and sufficient monthly wear data. Once those conditions are met, Google promises a report at the beginning of each month, with the Coach able to explain changes, adapt a fitness plan and help prepare questions for a doctor.