Fitbit Ionic review: This is the first smartwatch from the company and aims to woo customers who want to add a layer of smartness to their fitness regime.

If you're more focused on fitness, Garmin's Vivoactive 3 lasted about three days on a charge during my tests. With a round face, Garmin's new smartwatch is more fashionable than the bulky, square Ionic.

For the past year it looks like Fitbit has been trying to be more active in the fitness tracker space even though they practically own it. There has been buzz from competitors here and there, but they seem to have it on lock.

Fitbit is a company that is successful for its innovations in the wearables sector. It was one of the first firms to impact the fitness tracking space in a major way, inspiring people to record their movement data and improve on it to be more active.

Great design with beautiful colour display; continuous heart-rate monitoring; added waterproofing; built-in GPS; multi-sport tracking; comfortable; decent battery life

Touchscreen could be more responsive; pricey

r It's been a big couple of years for smart fitness trackers with smartwatches now incorporating most of the functions normally included in traditional fitness trackers as standard features in Android Wear, the Apple Watch and others.

Fitbit started out making simple step counters that clipped on your pocket, but over time it added displays, exercise tracking, heart rate monitors, and more. Many of its rivals have changed their focus or simply gone out of business, but Fitbit is fast becoming a household name.

Battery life The Ionic will run for around four days on a charge (Fitbit claims a little longer); Either way, it's much better than other smartwatches, Bands The Fitbit band connector is easy to use and allows quick band swaps, Fitness tracking Logs exercise in the Fitbit app, which is excellent for...

Design It does not look like a smartwatch that costs $300; Fit is a little strange because of the convex bottom, Display again Small and rectangular with low resolution, Bands again Uses a non-standard connector, and the stock band isn't very comfortable.

The "Your Fitbit Ionic is running low on battery" notification arrived on my phone and in my inbox at the same time around one yesterday afternoon, suggesting I take a moment to charge my smartwatch.

Incredible battery life

Ugly design and buggy software

For as long as it could, Fitbit tried to avoid using the word 'smartwatch'. Even when it introduced the Blaze two years ago, which was more or less a smartwatch in terms of its shape and features, Fitbit declined to call it that.

Superb battery life; Built-in GPS works great; Light; Waterproof; can track swims; Fitbit OS is easy to use

Lack of third-party apps; Can't reply to notifications; Proprietary charging cable

A gigantic first step towards the smartwatch market from Fitbit, but is also plagued with some issues and missing features.

Looks; New functions are great; Built-in storage for music

Very finicky step counter; Prevailing Bluetooth issues

It's surprising how long it has taken for Fitbit to launch a smartwatch. Focussing on budget or mid range fitness trackers, we finally got the Blaze in 2016 which had a smartwatch like interface but none of the capabilities.