The Brightest Sign Of Fitbit’s Future Comes From A Surprising Place

A lot of news surrounding Fitbit has been negative in recent months, but there’s one area in which the iconic wearables brand is low-key flourishing.

That area is tech for kids. While the Fitbit brand is gradually being subsumed into Google, including the end of the main Fitbit website and nixing of Fitbit social channels, there’s still some of its classic sense of fun in the Fitbit Ace LTE’s new features.

Fitbit is calling the new features Season 3: Family Matters.

The highlight is that siblings who own a Fitbit Ace LTE can now call and message each other. It also supports family group chats.

Parents will use the Ace app on their phone, the kids their watches. For the non-Fitbit Ace LTE owners out there, this is possible because the watch has its own mobile data connection, for communication versatility similar to that of a smartphone.

Google’s Family grouping assignation is what determines whether people can communicate over the Fitbit platform. Parents, of course, will have control over whether a child’s Ace LTE has access to chat features or not.

The Season 3 update also adds a Family Quest, a challenge where the entire family participates rather than just the one wearer of the watch.

It will be available from Nov. 18, and is a Thanksgiving-themed challenge in which the goal is to reach a cumulative 400,000 steps over the month.

There’s a new game, too, called Solar Sword. “Kids must swing into action to save their village from invading monsters,” reads a blog post by Ben Greenwood, Fitbit director of product.

“With the fabled Solar Sword, they can protect the village and shadowy dungeon from further attacks.”

Fitbit’s rollout of features for the Fitbit Ace LTE is clearly quite different to that of other wearables, with a flavor closer to that of a multiplayer game like Fortnite, rather than a classic watch firmware update.

But is it working? Fitbit has not announced any sales or usage stats for the Fitbit Ace LTE, which was released in June 2024. It does, however, demonstrate a spark of ingenuity not really seen elsewhere in Fitbit’s line-up right now.

A Fitbit Ace LTE costs $229.95, and requires an ongoing $9.99-a-month Ace Pass data plan.

Future features teased by Fitbit include parents’ ability to download voice notes sent from their kids, and to reply to them using voice notes from the Ace app on their phone.