

READ NEXT: Apple Watch Series 3 review – the ultimate smartwatch Fitbit Ionic review: Price and competition There’s a heart-rate monitor, GPS, proper water-proofing to 50m, music playback support, it has a bright, colourful OLED display and even built-in NFC for making contactless payments. It looks wonderful – much nicer in the metal than in most of the photographs I’ve seen – and it’s packed with all the features you need in a top-end fitness-cum-smartwatch. So, what are its key features? Well, this is essentially a combination of the Surge and the Blaze all in one sleek package.

In many ways, it has achieved this feat with the Ionic, but it's still far from perfect. The Ionic is the smartwatch Fitbit always wanted to make and, given its recent acquisitions of watchmakers Pebble and Vector, one it has also spent big to get right. READ NEXT: Best fitness trackers Fitbit Ionic review: What you need to know It looks great, has GPS and waterproofing and combines that all with smartwatch-style features. Finally, though, it seems as if there's a Fitbit watch that fixes these problems: the Fitbit Ionic. Its next effort, the Fitbit Blaze, wasn’t that much better, upping the ante on the style front, but omitting key features such as waterproofing and GPS. Its first watch was the Surge, which worked well for fitness duties but struggled to compete with smartwatches for style or smart features. Nonetheless, the Ionic – which many owners use to track their sleep overnight – may still be available from third-party sellers, which prospective buyers should avoid.įitbit has led the way in the fitness band market for some time now, but in the smartwatch arena, it has struggled. The device has meanwhile been taken down from Fitbit’s website and is no longer sold via authorised retailers. On the Commission’s instruction, owners should stop using the recalled Ionics immediately and reach out to Fitbit to organise a return and refund. Internationally there are 118 burn injury reports so far, according to the CPSC. Two of the victims reported third-degree burns, and four reported second-degree burns. It has been reported that the lithium-ion batteries used in the Ionic trackers are overheating, with at least 115 reported incidents of overheating and 78 burn reports in the US. The fitness tracker giants, acquired by Google last year, have voluntarily recalled 1.7m of the devices in circulation after the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) announced a ‘burn hazard’. Product recall: Fitbit’s Ionic fitness watches have been recalled amid reports of batteries overheating and causing burns to users.
