Fitbit Versa 3 Review

Fitbit has been producing excellent smartwatches for a few years, and the Versa 3 is no different. Priced reasonably, the Versa 3 is well-built, contains most of the bells and whistles you’d expect from a smartwatch – and has stellar battery life.

From being able to track your health and workouts to let you know if you have an irregular heart rhythm, there’s a lot to appreciate about the Versa 3. But, you must consider a few annoying caveats before making your purchase decision.

To address those and learn more, we’ve gone ahead and used a Fitbit Versa 3 for a better part of a month. It’s one of their best Fitbit watches and top-selling. Let us tell you what we learned.

Fitbit Versa 3 Ratings

Activity / Fitness Tracking: 8/10

Fitbit’s known for its amazing health and fitness tracking. And the Versa 3 carries on that stride in spectacular fashion. Besides being able to set fitness goals for yourself throughout the day and track them, you also get blood oxygen monitoring as well.

Just like the Apple Watch, you also gain guided breathing and meditation reminders alongside the Versa 3, letting you know that you’ve sat long enough in one place. Now, it automatically tracks our workouts, and all are good and dandy in terms of stat tracking, providing you with a basic idea of how you are doing throughout the day.

But, if you want to gain a much more inquisitive, detailed description of your health, fitness, or workout goals, like heart rate variability or SpO2 throughout the day, you’ll need to shell out $9.99 a month and subscribe to Fitbit Premium.

I’m personally not a big fan of paying for extra services on a watch that’s already recording the data anyways. But that’s the business model Fitbit has chosen as the Versa 3 is quite inexpensive compared to the feature-set you end up attaining in the process.

For a casual user, though, the non-premium stats are more than enough for a casual user. And I canceled the subscription myself after initially testing it out for review. This is primarily because an average Joe is probably fine without finding out these metrics.      

Navigation: 4/10

Fitbit does not have any navigation applications like Google Maps or Vuze. So, you can’t open an application and look up where you want to go. You can only get a sense of direction if you turn on Google Maps / a navigation application and then have those notifications relay live to your smartwatch. 

So, the watch can’t independently let you see where you want to go or view the directions of the place you want to go to. 

Battery Life: 6/10

The Fitbit Versa 3 has stellar battery life compared to Apple or Samsung. This is because it uses its own proprietary OS rather than leaning on WearOS. From our testing, you can expect 5.5 days of battery life if you don’t wake the watch often, keep GPS off, and don’t use the Always On Display.

However, if you turn on all these options and keep the watch at higher brightness levels, you can expect about 2.5 days of battery life. From our estimates, GPS is the highest battery drainer. Turning it on leads to our watching about 16-20% of battery life every hour.

The Versa 3 also comes with a brand new charger; we could get to half-charge in about 35 minutes. This means that you can plug in your watch before your morning routine and have it last throughout the entire day with no qualms. 

Phone Calls / Texts: 6/10

The Versa 3 lets you make and receive phone calls since it has a built-in microphone and speaker. However, there’s no dedicated Phone application for you to be able to do so. Instead, you’ll need to resort to setting your voice assistant to Google Assistant by default since at the time of writing this, we couldn’t make voice calls through Alexa.

If you receive a call directly on your phone, you’ll be able to directly attend it on the Versa 3 with no issues whatsoever. Regarding call quality, the microphone and speakers work flawlessly in an environment with no ambient noise. However, there wasn’t much sound isolation between the microphone and the speakers if you were stepping into traffic.

The calling experience is great for a few seconds, but for anything more, you should switch the call back to your smartphone instead. 

Emergencies: 1/10

The Fitbit Versa 3 has no emergency features whatsoever. There is no emergency calling, SOS, or fall detection whatsoever. Since the watch does not have cellular, you aren’t able to do much without your phone and a WiFi connection. 

Media Control: 8/10

Controlling music/media on your Fitbit Versa 3 is extremely easy and versatile. We’ve tried using an iPhone and an Android with the watch, which works extremely well. You can use the icons on the screen to play, pause, and skip your songs. 

You can also control and store music right inside the Fitbit Versa 3 alongside the ability to use either the voice assistant or music that’s streaming directly through Spotify. There is a bit of lag between when you actually tap on the button and the actual process.

Time: 8/10

The Fitbit Gallery remains an excellent place for watch faces. They are vivid and informative and contain different animations and complications that keep them unique and exciting. For those avid battery savers out there, there are plenty of dark watch faces that help save battery.

Besides that, since the Versa 3 does have an Always On Display, you’ll not need to raise your wrist to be able to read the time. Just a quick glance will do.

Alarm Clock: 9/10

The process of setting up an alarm on your Fitbit Versa 3 is extremely intuitive. You can either use your voice assistant to set the alarm or the onboard application. Both are separate entities from each other and are configured in different ways.

The Fitbit was quite easy to wake up to. The alarm was crisp and clear, and the haptics was subtle enough not to be disorienting but had enough of a magnitude to not completely drown out. Coupled with sleep tracking, a night’s slumber and the eventual wakeup was quite a blissful experience. 

I’ve also used the Smart Wake alarm feature that wakes you up with light vibrations instead of the usual coarse haptics. It wasn’t all that good for a deep sleeper like me. But, if you are someone who doesn’t like being woken up erratically, it is a good feature.

Home Automation: 7/10

The Fitbit Versa 3 features both the Google Voice Assistant and Amazon Alexa. Both are compatible with almost every home-automation suite out there. But, there aren’t any native applications present on the Fitbit smart devices.

So, while yes, you can turn on your living lights, anything that can’t be configured using Amazon Alexa or Google Voice Assistant will not be operable using the Versa 3. As we mentioned, there’s a bit of a delay when you invoke these voice assistants. So, the process itself isn’t exactly instantaneous. 

What’s In The Box?

• Fitbit Versa 3
• Two classic wristbands (small and large size)
• Charging cable
• User documentation

Pros and Cons:

Pros:

• Great Fitness Tracking: Fitbits are known for their fitness tracking and their accuracy and precision when it comes to their location. And the Versa 3 is no different. At this price point, you’ll be hard stuck on finding a watch that provides you with the accuracy the Versa 3 does.
• Stellar Battery Life: Even when grinding the Versa 3’s gears with an Always On Display and GPS, you can still expect great battery life out of the watch such that charging isn’t something that you immediately worry about as soon as you head out of the house.
• Design Language: The Versa 3 doesn’t try to be an Apple Watch, nor does it turn into a Samsung Galaxy Watch. Instead, it has its own unique rounded-rectangular design that gives it its own flair.

Cons:

• Requires Fitbit Premium: Some of the more advanced health metrics are locked behind a subscription paywall. So, you can’t make the most of your watch without paying a monthly fee. 
• Lack Of Applications: From the lack of more than two streaming music streaming applications to the fact that you can’t really download home automation applications due to Fitbit’s proprietary OS, the versatility of third-party apps is really lacking.
• No Qi Charging: At this price range, we’d have wanted the ability to plug the Versa 3 into any Qi-compatible charger. So, you’ll be bound to carry your charger constantly. 

Fitbit Versa 3 Features

• Voice Assistants: Fitbit features both the Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa. This is one of the only watches in the market that let you use both. So, if you have a smart home system connected to either, you’ll be able to utilize both.
• Great Battery Life: We can’t stress this enough, the Versa 3 has excellent battery life even when you use it heavily. The fact that compared to the market, you end up getting 50% better battery life is a big plus.
• Fitbit Pay: Just like Apple or Samsung Pay, you can use your Versa 3 to make contactless applications at select vendors who support Fitbit Pay / contactless payments. However, this feature is greatly dependent on what region you are in.
• Offline Music: You can use the Fitbit Versa 3’s internal storage to store Deezer and Pandora tracks. While Spotify isn’t supported, you can still get your tunes loaded, given that you download them through any of the two above-mentioned platforms.
• Skin Temperature Measurement: The Versa 3 can measure your baseline skin temperature throughout the night and compare it to your current one in a relative sense. We’ve already talked about how useful skin temperature measurement actually is, as well.
• Sleep Quality Measurement: The Versa 3 can detect whether you snore while you sleep and if there is ambient noise in your room (which affects your sleep quality), alongside your heart rate variability and SpO2. With a premium subscription, you can also view your sleep cycles.
• Swimproof: The Versa 3 is water resistant for up to 50 meters. Plus, its temperature resistance allows it to be taken into a sauna or hot tub with no qualms whatsoever.
• GPS Tracking: The Versa 3 now has built-in GPS. So, you can track workouts in an extremely precise manner using it.
• Heart Monitoring: The watch notifies you when you have an irregular heart rhythm (AFib). Moreover, it also tracks your oxygen saturation and lets you know if you have too low or too high of a heartbeat. 

Fitbit Versa 3 Vs. Fitbit Sense

Key Differences

• Steel Ring: The Fitbit Sense has a stainless steel rim which the Versa 3 does not. The same applies to the back. The Sense has a stainless steel reflective surface, while the Versa 3 feels like plastic. The reason why the Sense uses steel more often is due to the sensors present only on the Sense, which require it for electrical conductivity.
• ECG: Only the Fitbit Sense has an ECG application. On the Sense, you can rest your fingers on the electrodes and wait 30 seconds for a detailed reading of your heart. 
• EDA Scan App: Only the Sense has an EDA scan application. An EDA has tiny electrodes that sense temperature variations in your skin which may be indicative of stress. 
• Stress Management Score: The Fitbit Sense provides you with a daily stress score from 1-100. The score takes into account your sleep, and heart rate to provide you with a reading of your stress which the Versa 3 can’t.
• Skin Temperature Sensor: While the Sense and Versa 3 can give you skin temperature variation data when you sleep, only the Sense has an actual sensor to be able to view your skin temperature. At the same time, the Versa 3 uses various other sensors to estimate it. Another major difference is that you can view your complete temperature variation for up to 7 days on the Sense without premium and for 30 days with it.
• Price: With a few more advanced health features, the Fitbit Sense is often $50-70 more expensive than the Versa 3. However, you can almost always catch the Sense on a discount.

In my opinion, unless and until you are really into advanced health metrics, the Fitbit Versa 3 remains a better purchase option. Besides the options we’ve listed above, the battery remains the same, the performance is identical, and you can even swap watch bands and watch faces interchangeably between the two.

But, if you find the Sense at a discount, then it remains the better watch because it has more features than the Versa. 

Fitbit Versa 3 vs. Garmin Venu SQ vs. Apple Watch Series 3

So, we’ll compare the Garmin Venu SQ, Apple Watch Series 3, with the Versa 3. The reason why we picked these two watches is that they belong to the same budget segment. 

Fitbit Versa 3 vs. Garmin Venu SQ 

• Display: The Garmin has a 240×240 LED screen that isn’t of the highest quality. On the other hand, the Fitbit Versa 3 has a much better display with better contrast ratios and saturation levels.
• Battery Life: The Venu SQ will last 4 days with GPS as compared to the Fitbit Versa 3. 
• Charging: The SQ comes with a pin-charger that isn’t wireless. Moreover, it, too does not support fast charging, unlike the Versa 3.
• Always On Display: The Garmin Venu SQ does not have an Always On Display since it has an LED screen. However, the Fitbit Versa 3 does have one.
• Fitness Tracking: The Venu SQ comes in with a sensor that allows you to connect to ANT+ sensors such as heart rate sensors, pedometers, and other fitness-related devices. 

In my opinion, the Garmin Venu SQ is meant for fitness enthusiasts who really want to make the most out of their active life and get as much tracking done as possible. Besides, the key differences we’ve mentioned are only the tip of the iceberg regarding the amount of customization Garmin provides.

Besides that, the Versa 3 provides a better aesthetic, has a better display and feels much more modern compared to the Versa 3. 

Fitbit Versa 3 vs. Apple Watch Series 3

• Display: The Apple Watch Series 3 has an AMOLED screen with an adequately high resolution of 312×390. While reasonable, the Versa 3 still takes the cake as compared to the Apple Watch Series 3.
• Battery Life: The Apple Watch Series 3 has a much worse battery life coming in at only 3 days compared to Versa’s 6.
• Charging: The Apple Watch Series 3 comes with a proprietary magnetic charger. But, the charging speed is quite slow compared to the Versa 3. 
• Always On Display: The Apple Watch Series 3 does not have an Always On Display, while the Versa 3 does not. 

If you have an iPhone, there’s no doubt that you should opt for the Apple Watch Series 3. While the Versa 3 is great, it simply doesn’t compete with Apple’s prowess and integration over its own ecosystem. Needless to say, since the Watch Series 3 isn’t compatible with an iPhone, the Versa 3 is the clear winner in that department. 

Fitbit vs. Apple Watch: Which is better?

Who Is The Fitbit Versa 3 For?

The Fitbit Versa 3 is for someone who’s looking for a smartwatch that has all the bells and whistles, provides great battery life, looks good on the wrist – and gets the job done. Yes, it isn’t the fanciest, but neither is it the best for athletes. But, for the casual user who’s getting a smartwatch for their day-to-day use, the Versa 3 is excellent.

For athletes, we recommend you look at the Garmin Venu SQ at this price range or opt for the Fitbit Sense. This is because the Fitbit Versa 3 lacks some of the more advanced fitness tracking features you might need. 

We also ranked it as #2 in best smartwatches under $200

FAQ