The Fitbit Ace 2 is the company’s second fitness tracker that’s made for kids. It is an excellent educational tool and a fun accessory for kids to use to express themselves, understand their bodies, and lead healthier lives! This post will give you a detailed Fitbit Ace 2 review to consider its outstanding features.
Contents
Fitbit Ace 2 Review
1. Price
The Fitbit Ace 2 costs $69.95 / £69.99 / AU$129.95, making it slightly cheaper than the original Fitbit Ace or most other Fitbits, but pricier than many basic fitness trackers from other brands.
2. Design
While Fitbit decided to ape the now-retired Alta for its first kids’ fitness tracker, it’s taken a slightly different approach for the Ace 2. There’s definitely a more playful feel about the Ace 2, with some design changes that make it better suited for smaller wrists.
The new colours proved a hit too. You have your pick of a watermelon band with a teal clasp (pictured) or a night sky (blue) with a neon yellow clasp. Fitbit does also offer a bunch of other colours with its additional Classic band range, and two more with its slightly more expensive Print band. These new looks certainly help to make the Ace 2 feel more designed with kids’ wrists in mind.
While Fitbit has moved away from mirroring the look of its grown-up trackers, the touchscreen is the same greyscale OLED one you’ll find on the new Inspire and Inspire HR wearables. That means you get bigger, bolder icons with the same gestures to navigate data screens. There’s also just a solitary physical button, which is a design change that Fitbit says helps simplify the process of interacting with its devices, and it’s definitely something my niece appreciated having.
There is another reason Fitbit has adopted the same screen as its adult wearables, and that’s because that core module is able to slip into bands designed for Inspire trackers. The idea is that as that Ace 2 owner grows up, they might not want that cartoony band anymore. Even the more playful UI can be adjusted in the companion app to make things feel more like the adult trackers.
Another big plus is the clasp that keeps the tracker around the wrist feels better suited to small hands. While my niece had no problems putting on the first Ace, it proved a bit more tricky to take off. That wasn’t the case with the Ace 2.
3. Features and fitness tracking
While the hardware has had a facelift, the actual process of setting up the Fitbit Ace 2 has remained largely the same – and once again, getting things configured correctly can be a bit of a nightmare for newcomers.
If you’re a parent who wants to set the Ace 2 up for your child, then you’ll need to register your own Fitbit account. From here, you can add child accounts and then pair the Ace 2 with your phone, so it can sync and you’re kept aware of their progress.
The Ace 2 automatically sets fitness goals for your child, and you’ll get notifications when they beat their goal for the day, as long as the unit is within range of your phone so it can sync the data.
It can track both steps and active minutes and seem accurate in our tests, but with no heart rate monitor or GPS, it is certainly at the basic end of the scale. Still, those features are probably overkilled for most young children.
You can even set alarms for them from the app and monitor their sleeping patterns, which sounds a little bit Orwellian to us; besides, your child can easily remove the Ace 2 – which lacks a heart rate monitor, so it can’t check for a pulse – when they go to bed, robbing you of the ability to snoop on their slumbering activities.
The app is a great way of ensuring your children are getting enough activity into their day, but it’s also built with safety in mind. Your child can’t add friends to the app without parental approval, which obviously protects them from being contacted by strangers.
The Fitbit Ace 2 does an excellent job of offering visual rewards when your child smashes their daily goal. The improved screen is surprisingly appealing despite its black-and-white nature, and the built-in motor vibrates when a notification comes in, instantly grabbing your child’s attention.
4. Battery life
Fitbit claims the Ace 2 is good for five days of battery life, the same as the first Ace. That’s a couple of days off what the Inspire and Inspire HR trackers can offer in comparison.
Long term, battery life became an issue for my niece with the first Ace, and charging became a problem as she kept forgetting to put the tracker back on. The Ace 2 manages to achieve about the same amount of battery life. While core features remain largely the same, the animated watch faces will prompt more regular charging.
When it does run out of power, you’re looking at around two hours to get it from 0-100%. Some adults might just have the patience to wait that long, but it might be slightly different for a child who just wants to get out and start tracking again.
We hope that you find this Fitbit Ace 2 review useful for your decision.
