Review of the Fitbit Sense 2 & Straps

The Fitbit Sense 2 is a multi-functioning fitness monitor with a big screen and vivid colours.

With a new found zest for getting back into shape, the Fitbit Sense 2 can be a fun addition to monitoring your health. The sleep monitor provides interesting data and calories burned can provide a good overall picture of the energy your body needs.

The Fitbit Sense 2 came with a high price tag when first released - a whopping £300, the price has dropped to around £200 at the time of writing this post. 

If you are a bit new to the fitness monitor party, on paper the functionality is superb, lots of useful tools to monitor your health and activity levels. 

Replacement Straps for the Fitbit Sense 2

The one Fitbit Sense 2 strap that comes with your new fitness watch is a plain silicone strap. You might be a bit taken aback when you scroll through the Fitbit website to choose some new styles, you will find Fitstrap prices to be a lot more palatable! Taking advantage of the Fitstraps excellent offers, will soon have your Sense 2 wardrobe stocked with a great choice of colours and styles. 

Here are some of our favourite watchstraps to match up and coordinate with your daily outfits. 

Sense 2 Leather Strap

In first place, we have the leather strap. Available in a fantastic range of colours - from classic brown to pink, we know you you will love the high quality of the Sense 2 strap.

Why a leather watchstrap? 

Silicone style Sense 2 straps

We have a lovely selection of designs to adorn your Fitbit Sense 2. Patterned straps and plain silicone in such a wide range of colours, perfect for matching up with your gym outfits, office wear and nights on the town! 

Cross device strap compatibility

The Sense 2 is very easy to change straps, and is compatible with the Fitbit Versas and Sense 1, so if you are upgrading from a Sense 1 to 2 or changing to a Versa, you will be able to continue using your watchstraps.  

Most styles we stock for all fitness monitor and smart watches, if you are moving from another make or model of fitness watch, you can get your favourite style or colour in the Sense 2 range!  

Functionality of the Fitbit Sense 2

We have great styles and ranges of new straps for all fitness monitors and smart watches, so what else does the Sense 2 have that might help you in your quest to take better care of your heath? 

Size of screen

It's great, for someone who struggles with small print, the screen size is perfectly sized for quick viewing of stats - many functions displayed on the one screen, without the need to enlarge or swipe onto other screens. The colours are bright, vivid and totally customisable. 

Battery life

Very good, goes for many days without needing to be charged. There was a slight drop in battery life when switching on a couple of the extra functions, but there is still a good 5 days of wearing the Fitbit Sense 2 without needing to charge. 

Functions

From the standard mesasurements, such as heat rate, steps, calorie burn to sleep quality analysis, and oxygen saturation in the blood - there are lots of other extras, monitoring health such as heart rate anomolies. 

Ease of use

Very easy to use, the app comes free for 6 months and does offer some fab extras. It might be a little daunting to set up, just because there was so much to go through. Even if you are new to using, or not a regular user of fitness monitors - this is easy enough, step by step guides to make sure you get the most out of the Fitbit App. The device itself is intuitive and easy to use. 

As with any electronic device, sometimes equipment needs restarting. One sign that this is the case is your Sense 2 not syncing with the Fitbit app. No need to be worried, at least not until you have turned it off and on again. This could be turning the Fitbit Sense 2 off and on, or your phone.

Any issues with syncing can be avoided by syncing regularly, we find that if you lapse in syncing your Sense 2 with your phone, there is a greater likelihood of it failing to complete the sync.

Exercise detector

Really good, quick to detect exercise was happening, and which kind when walking and biking were the main ones. Although sometimes remembering to start the activity on occasions, it did acurately work it out for biking and walking. Weight lifting and other stationary activities weren't picked up of course, but it was easy enough to add that after the event.

Changeable faces

Matching the style and colour of the clock face, the functionality that is displayed on the main screen is a fantastic feature. Coordinating the colours with the change of straps is such a wonderful way of self expression and being able to change the face to match a new found favourite colour. 

Fitbit App

Not a bad price, and the extra features that come with the app are quite handy. Although I have been using a different food diary type app, before getting the Sense 2, it was too much effort to put the information in to two apps and found the other to be much easier to find foods and to add them. 

Sleep analysis

There were several disagreements with the analyses - telling you that you had a great night's sleep, when you quite frankly have not. It certainly needs improvement, the sleep score doesn't even seem to tally up with the information that is shown for the night. 

For example, one night where the wearer woke up once every two hours, due to external factors, noises from outside. The sleep analysis showed this, with a very patchy night of sleep at best yet still it gave a high score and a rating of good. Even a night of under 6 hours was given a rating of rating of good, when the wearer felt like crap. 

Conclusion - is the Sense 2 a good buy?

The ifs and buts! 

If you haven't used a fitness monitor since the 90s you are going to love this!

Being able to monitor your heart rate without having to wear a chest band is great - that and measuring resting heart beat without even giving it a thought is superb. The device does need to be snug, but not overly tight . It might seem obvious but with very skinny wrists this is not always that easy. The device can slip towards your hand, stop measuring your pulse, which can then result in a disappointingly low calorie count when the day had been spent engaging in lots of physical activity and you were excited to see how well you'd done. 

If you have recently owned a fitness monitor, then you may not be so impressed. The functionality compared to the Versa and original Sense is lacking, with 

if you have an iPhone, you might prefer to look at the Apple Watch. If Apple Watches are out of your budget, please click here for a comparison with an Apple Watch Series 3.

If you are really serious about your training and need more accuracy and reliable data, then Garmin would be a much better option for you. 

BUT! That said, the Sense 2 is a fun, functionality filled fitness watch that can help you gain more insights into your health statistics. The screen is great, the pairing with your watch is good, you can read messages and take calls. We didn't find the calorie counter, step counter and heart rate monitor to be that inaccurate and enjoyed wearing it. 

Do you own a Sense 2, have you upgraded or are you new to the party? What do you think of it? Let us know in the comments.