Fitbit Surge Review: GPS Fitness Tracker w/ HR Monitor

Our Verdict

The $249 Fitbit Surge is an all-24-hour interval, everyday activity tracker that packs a continuous heart-rate monitor and a GPS sensor into its comfy frame.

For

Continuous eye-rate monitor
GPS for tracking and mapping runs
Comprehensive list of exercises to track

Against

Limited to text and telephone call notifications

Tom's Guide Verdict

The $249 Fitbit Surge is an all-day, everyday action tracker that packs a continuous eye-charge per unit monitor and a GPS sensor into its comfy frame.

Pros

+
Continuous heart-rate monitor
+
GPS for tracking and mapping runs
+
Comprehensive listing of exercises to track

Cons

-
Limited to text and phone call notifications

Fitbit has an army of activeness trackers, but the Surge is the company'due south most ambitious device nevertheless. This $249 performance-focused device tracks steps, calories and distance, simply it truly shines when it's continuously monitoring your centre rate and using its GPS sensor to runway your runs. Add those features to multisport tracking and basic smartphone notifications, and you have an elite wristband with enough power to assist you through any type of workout.

Design

The Fitbit Surge is the company'due south near comfortable wristband and its largest. Information technology'south bigger than the $99 Flex and the $129 Accuse, but the width of the band (i.34 inches, compared to the Accuse'due south 0.84 inches), its textile and its pattern equally a traditional watch strap brand it lightweight (2.seven ounces) and easy to secure on your wrist.

Credit: Jeremy Lips / Tom's Guide — (Image credit: Jeremy Lips / Tom'due south Guide)

The elastomer band feels similar supersoft, stretchy silicone, and is textured on the top and smooth on the bottom. The comfortable strap is thickest on the peak, which holds the LCD touch screen. Information technology also comes in three colors: blackness, bright blue and tangerine orange. Information technology's much easier to wearable than the $200 Microsoft Band, which suffers from a superrigid, awkward display and a strap that'south difficult to secure.

At 0.96 x 0.82 inches, the Surge's LCD is only slightly smaller than the $269 TomTom Runner Cardio's i ten 0.85-inch screen, merely information technology is clear, well-baked and piece of cake to read. Also, the Surge's overall design is more than demure than that of the garishly sporty Runner Cardio.

The Surge is water-resistant upwardly to 5 ATM, pregnant it tin can be submerged in up to 165 feet of water — the same equally the Runner Cardio. However, Fitbit says the Surge tin't withstand the force associated with swimming strokes, and so the company doesn't recommend swimming with the tracker.

Setup

As with whatsoever Fitbit device, y'all'll need to download Fitbit Connect to your PC or download the app for Android or iOS to get-go setting up the Surge. If you're doing it from your PC, plug the wireless dongle that came with the device into your PC's USB port, and follow the instructions on Fitbit Connect. Y'all'll be asked to either log in to your business relationship (if you are an existing user), or to create a new one.

MORE: Best Fitness Trackers

If you cull the app method, y'all'll be asked to go through the aforementioned setup procedure of making an account and then pairing a Fitbit device with your smartphone via Bluetooth.

Interface

Yous command the Fitbit Surge with a mix of touch-screen gestures and push commands. Surrounding the display are three buttons: the one on the left side acts equally a back push and switches between the clock dwelling house screen and the exercise home screen, and there are two action buttons on the right. In the Fitbit app, you lot can customize the Surge's watch-confront dwelling house screen, and if you swipe left or right from the clock, information technology volition testify you stats such as steps taken, current heart rate, distance traveled, calories burned and floors climbed.

Pressing the left button gives yous a few more options. The well-nigh important of these is Run and Exercise, which allows y'all to track your conditioning. Tap the Run screen to choose the blazon of run: Free Run, Treadmill Run or Lap Run. Each of these options has preloaded settings that will help you monitor the virtually important information.

Complimentary Run and Lap Run volition automatically employ GPS to rail your location and will record your heart rate, only Treadmill Run forgoes GPS tracking, every bit y'all don't need it within on a stationary machine. Having dedicated settings for different runs lets you waste matter less fourth dimension lilliputian with sensors and spend more fourth dimension running.

The same affair goes for nonrunning workouts. In the Exercise screen, y'all can choose from activities such as weights, elliptical, Pilates and yoga. Via the app, you can customize which exercises appear on this screen, and choose up to seven to hold on the Surge. I appreciated the generic "workout" exercise because it let me monitor my barre workout even though information technology didn't have a dedicated barre practise option.

During a workout, the Surge's display shows the time elapsed, and you can swipe to meet different stats at the bottom, including calories burned, steps taken and real-fourth dimension heart-rate measurements. It's a small feature, only it allows you to put the data that's well-nigh important to y'all forepart and center.

The Surge also lets yous control music from your smartphone, just that characteristic requires a special Bluetooth pairing process. On the Surge, go to the Settings page and and then to Bluetooth Archetype, and select Pair. And then, from your smartphone'due south Bluetooth Settings page, select "Pair with the Surge Classic."

One time you lot exercise that, the feature is pretty seamless, and it works with different music apps, including Spotify and Google Play Music. I was able to pause and skip songs by tapping the Surge's screen or pressing the action buttons.

Heart Rate

Knowing your centre rate is important not only for monitoring the intensity of your conditioning, just also for telling you how hard your eye has to work while you're resting. The Fitbit Surge'due south heart-rate monitor is continuous, and so whether y'all're in the middle of a spin course or twiddling your thumbs at your desk-bound, you can bank check your real-time heart charge per unit on the display or through the app.

Most of the exercises the Surge tracks volition automatically monitor center charge per unit, and after a session, you tin get into the app and meet the middle-rate zones you hit during that workout. Fitbit separates centre rate into three zones — fat burn, cardio and peak — just hardcore athletes with a target in mind tin set a custom zone, designating upper and lower middle-rate limits.

I loved how consequent the Surge's heart-charge per unit monitor was. Optical monitors, such every bit the ane on the Adidas miCoach Fit Smart, tin exist a huge pain, as even just a half-inch or so of space in between your skin and the sensor tin cause it to lose its point. I never had this problem with the Surge.

GPS

When you lot're in Free Run mode or Lap Run fashion, the Fitbit Surge automatically searches for a GPS signal to track your route. While it searches, it gives you the pick to get-go running, and information technology'll continue to await while you run. That's a useful feature that prevents you from standing around and waiting for the device to discover your location.

In New York Urban center's Flatiron District, information technology took the Surge well-nigh 2 minutes to learn a GPS signal outside. The Surge didn't drop the GPS point every bit I jogged in and effectually Union Square, or even when I popped into the drugstore.

Notifications

Currently, you lot tin can receive text and telephone call alerts on the Fitbit Surge. When a text comes in, the warning will pop up on the Surge's screen, and the device volition vibrate. So, you lot can press the peak-right action push to view the whole message, but you cannot respond from the Surge.

Telephone calls are more limited; the Surge vibrates until the call is answered. Again, you lot can press the same activeness button to see who is calling you — the display will show the name of your contact, or the number, if the caller is non a contact — but you can't answer the telephone call.

Although the device connects to your phone via Bluetooth, Fitbit says that you'll just receive notifications if your smartphone is within 20 anxiety of the Surge. During a conditioning grade in which I wore the Surge and my iPhone 6 stayed tucked away in a locker exterior the room, I did not receive notifications for the 2 text messages I had waiting for me.

App

Fitbit uses one app for all of its fettle-tracking devices, and the home folio is populated with rectangular widgets with data.

At the pinnacle is a widget for your Surge, and tapping on it will bring you to a page where you can admission device settings like managing alarms, turning on call notifications, irresolute the watch-face up design and managing exercise shortcuts.

The rest of the widgets show you lot typical fitness information, including steps taken, calories burned, distance traveled, floors climbed, exercises recorded, real-time middle-charge per unit readings and slumber time.

You could spend all of your time on the app'due south dwelling page with these at-a-glance stats, but tapping on each one will show you lot in-depth graphs and past stats, and so you can really track your progress over time.

Functioning

The Fitbit Surge tracked my regular activity accurately, counting my steps and calories with precision. While the GPS indicate sometimes took longer than expected to connect, the middle-rate sensor was e'er on point and never finicky.

Since it is the largest of Fitbit's devices, I was wary at beginning about wearing the Surge all day long, much less sleeping with it, merely I ended up just taking it off before showering.

More than: Fitness Tracker Buying Guide

The Surge is a surprisingly comfortable device, which is all the more important considering it tin besides runway your sleep. I wore it without incident through the night, and was able to see my slumber patterns in the app after I synced the Surge in the morning. The device has an alert feature, and vibrates to wake you.

Proceed in mind that the Surge tin can only agree upward to seven days' worth of data, and so you demand to sync it before the week is upward to continue all of your activity logged.

Battery Life

Fitbit promises that the Surge will get up to a calendar week of battery life on a unmarried charge. Afterward using it for 3 days, with at least an hour of working out each twenty-four hour period, the battery was downwardly to nigh 60 percent. That's amend than the iv days of battery life you get on the $200 Basis Peak and the two-mean solar day life of the $200 Microsoft Ring.

Lesser Line

The Fitbit Surge is the most consummate fitness tracker withal. Non only does it have a continuous heart-rate monitor and a GPS sensor, but it can as well deliver notifications from your smartphone. The TomTom Runner Cardio is better for hardcore runners, but I would recommend the Surge for those who similar to switch things up, equally information technology lets you track everything from running to yoga. And thank you to its manner and condolement, you'll probable forget that it'south on your wrist at all. The Microsoft Band is a ameliorate smartwatch considering information technology offers more notification options, but the Surge is a improve fitness-first device— and is much more than comfy, too.

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Valentina is Commerce Editor at Engadget and has covered consumer electronics for a number of publications including Tom's Guide, Wired, Laptop Mag and Ars Technica, with a particular focus on wearables, PCs and other mobile tech.