Google Fitbit Sense 2 review: good stress tracking and nice UI but no Google Assistant or third-party apps, pricey at $300, and can't be called a smartwatch
The fitness tracker has industry-leading stress tracking, but pour one out for the future of Fitbit smartwatches … Its successor, the Sense 2?
Context & Ripple Effects
Two years after Fitbit launched the $330 Sense with an ECG and a dedicated stress sensor as its most ambitious health watch, the $300 Sense 2 arrives with better stress tracking and a cleaner UI — but strips out Google Assistant and third-party apps entirely. The original Sense's review already flagged software rough edges bugs, a fiddly button, weak always-on battery, so the sequel doubling down on hardware polish while cutting platform features is a deliberate direction, not an accident.
It fits the August refresh where Fitbit shipped the Inspire 3, Versa 4, and Sense 2 together and none of them run Google's Wear OS 3. The Verge's verdict — a $300 device that 'can't be called a smartwatch' — makes the strategic question explicit: what Google intends the Fitbit brand to be now that it owns it.
First-order effects
- Buyers paying $300 for the Sense 2 get a premium fitness tracker, not a smartwatch: no Assistant, no third-party apps, and a physical button replacing the original Sense's solid-state one.
- Fitbit's own Versa 3, which shipped with Google Assistant back in 2020, now offers more smartwatch functionality than the pricier Sense 2 — an awkward feature regression across its own lineup.
Second-order effects
- Wear OS 3 devices become the only route to a Google-Assistant wrist in this portfolio, pushing assistant-hungry Fitbit customers toward Google's other wearable track and leaving Fitbit positioned purely on health sensing.
- At $300 against full smartwatches, the Sense 2 competes on stress tracking and battery-friendly health metrics rather than apps — forcing the comparison onto sensor quality, where Fitbit claims industry-leading stress data.
Third-order effects
- If the no-Wear-OS, no-apps pattern holds across the 2022 lineup, Google is running a two-track wearable strategy: Fitbit as a closed health-sensor platform and Wear OS as the open app platform — effectively ending Fitbit's smartwatch ambitions rather than merging them.
- A closed, first-party-apps-only Fitbit also concentrates health-data gravity inside Google's ecosystem, since the device's value depends on Fitbit's own subscription-style services rather than third-party integrations.
The trend: Post-acquisition, Google is repositioning Fitbit from a smartwatch maker into a focused health-tracking hardware brand, with Wear OS left to carry the app-and-assistant side of its wearables strategy.