Fitbit Versa 3 vs Fitbit Sense: Which fitness smartwatch is best?

Battery life: Six days+

Assistant: Alexa, with Google Assistant most likely incoming

Useful features: ECG sensor, SpO2 tracker, guided mindfulness and breathing sessions, sleep tracker, menstrual health tracking, music capability, Bluetooth call and message/app notifications.

Originally marketed as the “mass appeal smartwatch”, the third edition of Fitbit’s wildly successful Versa model still offers more than enough to hold the title. A built-in GPS is the biggest and long-awaited improvement over the Versa 2’s “connected GPS” that ultimately resulted in an imperfect link to your phone’s GPS. No issue with the Versa 3.

While the watch might be more geared to the fitness market, it still has an ECG sensor, and now offers a feature that seems acutely apt for our current situation: an app that measures blood oxygen saturation levels while you sleep gives any user worried about this a history of their average SpO2 levels through the night.

Fitbit’s own sleep tracker will make a note of light, deep and REM sleep to give you a “sleep score”, and offers a smart awake alarm, waiting for the optimum time in your sleep cycle to rouse you from slumber. On top of this, a skin temperature sensor will track variation each night to give you a running average, picking up on any anomalies that could indicate stress.

The new design is slightly softened around the edges, and the screen is a good size for details and physical interaction. Its design is, along with the Sense, among the best on the market, and the wide array of clock face options has something for everyone – there’s space on the watch to save five faces, but the Fitbit app’s library is easy to use. However, there is one downside to the design upgrade: by taking away the side button, Fitbit has forfeited some ease of use for the sake of aesthetics. We found the now-indented side button slightly unreliable, especially during more strenuous activity.  

The Versa 3, like its predecessors, is definitely more of a fitness tracker than a wide-ranging smartwatch. However, while its features are more limited than the Sense, it still does a great job of upholding its “mass appeal” moniker. The battery life is phenomenal – almost a week off one charge, and a full day of use from 12 minutes of charge. For purely fitness-focussed folks, the Versa 3 is a winner, with an affordable price point in comparison to rivals, and a still-impressive array of features continuing the Versa series’s praiseworthy lineage.

Battery life: Six days+

Assistant: Alexa, with Google Assistant most likely incoming

Useful features: ECG sensor, EDA scanner, SpO2 tracker, skin temperature sensor, guided mindfulness and breathing sessions, sleep tracker, menstrual health tracking, music capability, Bluetooth call and message/app notifications.

The Fitbit Sense is the smartwatch for the 2020s. Many aspects of the Sense are available in the Versa 3, but its extras are important for anyone looking for a more health-focussed wearable, and justify the higher price.

A focus on mental and physical health in equal measure gives the Sense a holistic feel. Like the Versa 3 and many recent products from competitors, the Sense comes with an ECG sensor. However, its more sophisticated heart monitoring capabilities make it possible to pick up on atrial fibrillation, notify you of low and high heart rate readings, and to train using heart rate zones, providing real-time stats on your session.

On top of this, and along with the reassuring SpO2 tracker and other features also seen in the Versa 3, it’s another tracking app that takes the Sense’s usefulness up a level. The EDA scanning app tracks your electrodermal activity: that is, a way of noting stress through small electrical changes in the sweat level of your skin. We don’t quite understand the science behind it, but tracking stress levels certainly helped us remain aware of the dangers of daily stress.

Stress-management is a primary concern for the Sense, with guided mindfulness and breathing sessions working in tandem with a dedicated app to encourage moments of calm in a turbulent world. More detail into your health is provided with a paid subscription to Fitbit Premium, but each Sense (and Versa 3, for that matter) comes with six months free.

Away from its in-built features, the Sense’s design sticks to the same lines as the Versa 3, with an added stainless steel edge to the screen (a gold option is available for both products), which elevates the aesthetic and gives the Sense a lighter and sleeker air than the Versa 3 despite being the same size. The screen’s Gorilla Glass offers a super clear face, perfect for Fitbit’s huge range of clock faces, and the side button seems to work more reliably than the Versa 3’s.

The Sense is sleek, subtle and chock-full of useful features to help anyone improve their approach to health. Its base fitness tracker capabilities have been improved by layers and layers of features until the result is a premium smartwatch.