Fitbit had been a bit of a moribund brand lately. Its last fitness tracker—they’re not really jack-of-all-trades smartwatches—was the Fitbit Charge 6 in 2023. Plenty of people, myself included, began to wonder whether Fitbit’s owner, Google, was just going to sunset the entire brand in order to focus on its own Pixel Watch smartwatch lineup.Then Google announced the Fitbit Air, the first all-new Fitbit product, earlier this month: the $100, no-screen Google Fitbit Air. The buzz online has been wild. Google hit on something with the Fitbit Air’s veering away from the smartwatch refrain of “more, more, more!” because there’s an awful lot of pent-up demand for a simple fitness tracker with no screen to distract you or demand your attention during the day.no screen, just fabric(opens in a new window)GoogleFitbit Air(opens in a new window)Available at AmazonBuy Now(opens in a new window)Available at WalmartBuy Now(opens in a new window)Available at GoogleBuy Now(opens in a new window)Every smartwatch seems like it wants to go bigger and bigger, if not always literally in size, then by packing more and more features into it. The Fitbit Air pares that back to being a fitness tracker with no screens, no do-it-all overeagerness. It’s just a $100 strap of fabric that beams your health data to your phone app.Free users of Google Health can use the Fitbit Air to track activity, sleep, and health, but subscribing to Google Health Premium gives you personalized health coaching and workout plans through Google’s Gemini AI, “science-backed” answers to health questions you can pose to it (through your connected smartphone), and “proactive” insights into your fitness, sleep, and health. The Fitbit Air takes all those measurements and provides workout suggestions, methods for improving your sleep, and tips for improving your post-workout recovery days.Google bought Fitbit in 2021 and immediately set up a sort of interfamilial rivalry with Google’s own lineup of Pixel Watches. These are the sort of smartwatches that cost as much as the monthly payment of a BMW. They’ll measure your heartrate and count your daily steps for you, and they’ll also sync to your wallet to let you pay at the cash register, deliver incoming texts and phone calls (and let you respond), stream music to your headphones, control your smart home devices, and do just about everything.But the backlash against always-there devices that constantly demand all our attention is real. Just look at the explosive growth of dumbphones, the lower-tech alternative to smartphones that give people back a semblance of control over their devices, rather than feeling controlled by their devices.Not everyone wants to look like Boba Fett, with an enormous touchscreen strapped to their wrist, either. The Samsung Galaxy Watch 8 Classic does a convincing imitation of an analog watch, but even that shouts “look at my wrist.” The Google Fitbit Air, though, is humble about its smarts. With no screen to call attention to itself or steal your own attention during the day, it’s there when you need it, not when it needs you.The post The New Google Fitbit Air Just Hit the Market, And It’s Here to Judge Your Sleep, Stress, and Steps appeared first on VICE.