Once upon a time, you could buy a fitness tracker like a Fitbit, strap it to your wrist, and go about your life. There will be a companion app that will sync with your tracker, giving you an in-depth look at your daily activity, health stats, and even sleep tracking. All this data was available for free; You just have to buy the tracker itself. Another one is done.
But now things are not so easy. Sure, you have smartwatches like the Apple Watch that can also keep track of your daily activity and health metrics, but there’s also a whole world of dedicated fitness and health trackers. These can usually provide even more in-depth data about your health and wellness, but unfortunately, many of them have moved to a subscription-based model. Although they may have free tiers available, they are almost worthless due to the amount of information you get without paying.
The days of getting a simple device to keep track of your health are becoming a thing of the past, whether you like it or not.
Current status of fitness tracker subscription
When we think of health wearables, we probably first think of the Apple Watch or the Samsung Galaxy Watch. These are smartwatches that also serve as health and activity trackers and surprisingly, they have no additional hidden fees for health benefits.
Personally, I’ve been wearing an Apple Watch for years, and it’s my main wearable (currently the first-generation Apple Watch Ultra). But I also have a few other devices I use daily: an Ora Ring, a Withings Body+ scale, and a Withings ScanWatch (the Ultra is too heavy to wear to bed).
But what I have is just a small sample of what’s available on the market today. There’s the Whoop Band, a variety of Fitbits, the Google Pixel Watch 2, plenty of watches from Garmin, and more. But one thing most of these wearable devices have in common is that it is strongly recommended to have a premium subscription to get the most out of any of these devices (and in the case of Whoop, the hardware is free with the required subscription). .
Prices for these subscriptions range from $6 (Oora) to $30 (Hoop) per month. When you add that subscription price to the cost of the hardware, it can definitely become a chump. For example, the Oura Ring starts at $300 and goes up to $549 depending on your design and finish. Add 11 months (you get a free month with purchase), and the total can get up to $615.
In a world where everything is moving towards a subscription model (streaming services, apps, etc.), adding a health/fitness subscription requires even more thought and consideration.
It’s not as simple as ‘just don’t subscribe’
Although none of these wearable devices require a subscription at all (the only exception is Whoop), it’s often the case that the information they provide for free is so limited and basic that it’s essentially useless. Is.
I’ve been wearing the Ora ring for about three years total, from the second generation. I got the third generation Oura when it launched and I’ve been using it for the last two years. Previously, with the second generation, Ora did not have a subscription model, and you could access all the data without paying anything besides the ring cost.
But with the Oura Ring 3, the company switched to a subscription model, and if you don’t have a subscription, you only get to see your three daily Oura scores (alertness, sleep, and activity), the Ring battery level, and the basic ring battery level. Profile Information. You can also access the app settings and view the Explore section. You miss out on all the real data like heart rate, stress level, body temperature, blood oxygen level, HRV, and more. Basically, any meaningful data is locked behind an Ora subscription; If you don’t subscribe, Ora Ring is essentially useless. I subscribe to Ora because I find the insights it provides valuable, especially when it comes to seeing my nighttime body temperature and stress levels.
On the other hand, Withings is still quite functional even without subscribing to its premium subscription, Withings+. With Withings+, it’s all about targeted guidance and motivational goals based on your health and activity data. So, it is good if you are determined to achieve your goals, but it is by no means necessary to use your current Withings equipment.
The recent Google Pixel Watch 2, which is better than its predecessor, uses the Fitbit app for all its health and fitness tracking. While you can get basic information like your daily steps/activity and sleep score for free, there are even more features locked behind Fitbit Premium ($10 per month) – like the new stress management feature, in-depth sleep analysis, your daily readiness score, even more.
Even though the Pixel Watch is Google’s counterpart to the Apple Watch and Samsung Galaxy Watch, most of the health features are only available with a premium subscription. It’s a bit odd, and even though Google gives you six months free when you buy a Pixel Watch 2, the whole setup doesn’t sound particularly good.
It’s getting out of control
It seems like everything requires a subscription these days. I have multiple streaming video services with my husband, cloud storage with Apple One, Dropbox and Google, a few essential app subscriptions, and Oura.
However, unlike other subscriptions, health and fitness subscriptions usually also require some associated hardware, which is an additional cost. Factor in that it becomes complicated to decide which health and fitness platform to go with – especially considering the fact that you need to wear these devices 24/7 to get the most benefit from them.
Fitness subscriptions aren’t entirely new, but it definitely feels like more and more brands are going the subscription route. For example, until recently I didn’t even realize Withings had a Withings+, although I’m grateful I don’t need it to get the data I need from my Body+ scale and ScanWatch.
Since I have the Ora Ring and like the data I get from it (plus it’s very easy to wear), I will keep my Ora subscription. But it’s also absolutely ridiculous how useless Ring becomes if you don’t have a subscription because you can’t really get any meaningful data without paying extra.
I miss the days when you could buy one of these fitness trackers and that was it – no extra fees, no subscriptions, no paywalls. Just buy the tracker, wear it and get that data. This is another reason why it feels like subscription fatigue isn’t going away any time soon, and I’m tired of it.
