Google launched the Fitbit Air, a 100 dollar screenless fitness band that rivals Whoop’s hardware design but undercuts its subscription by more than half, paired with a Gemini-powered AI health coach at 10 dollars a month. The device launches alongside a forced migration of Fitbit data to Google accounts by 19 May and a rebranding of Fitbit’s software as Google Health, raising privacy questions about the company’s handling of sensitive health data.TL;DR
Google spent 2.1 billion dollars buying Fitbit in 2021, three years dismantling the brand, and on Thursday launched a 100 dollar device with no screen, no buttons, and no independent functionality to bring it back. The Fitbit Air is a soft fabric band with a five-gram sensor pack underneath that tracks heart rate, steps, sleep, blood oxygen saturation, and heart rate variability.
Google Health App, source: Google
It cannot display a notification, make a call, or tell you the time. What it can do is feed data into a new Google Health app powered by a Gemini-based AI health coach that interprets the metrics, designs workout plans, analyses photographs of meals for macronutrient content, and provides personalised coaching for 10 dollars a month. The device goes on sale on 26 May. Preorders begin Thursday. And the product Google is actually selling is not a fitness band. It is a subscription.
The Fitbit Air weighs 12 grams with the strap and five grams without, making it lighter than most smart rings. Battery life is seven days, and a five-minute fast charge adds a full day of use. The band comes in four colours, obsidian, fog, lavender, and berry, with additional straps available for 35 dollars. Without a screen or physical buttons, the device uses haptic feedback for an alarm clock and a small LED to indicate battery status. It supports voice input for logging activity and meals but cannot audibly respond.
It can detect atrial fibrillation, a feature that has become standard across recent wearables after years of regulatory clearance work. The sensor pack is removable and clips into the fabric band, a design that is unmistakably modelled on Whoop’s hardware architecture.
The resemblance to Whoop is not coincidental. Whoop, which raised 575 million dollars in March at a 10.1 billion dollar valuation, has built a business around the thesis that a screenless wearable focused on recovery, strain, and sleep data can command premium subscription revenue without the distraction of notifications, apps, and display. Whoop does not charge for hardware but requires an annual subscription starting at 200 dollars. Google’s Fitbit has been developing health monitoring capabilities, including FDA-cleared atrial fibrillation detection algorithms, that bring it closer to the clinical-grade data that Whoop and Oura users rely on for training decisions.
The Fitbit Air’s 100 dollar price point and optional 10 dollar monthly subscription undercuts Whoop’s annual cost by more than half and Oura’s 349 dollar ring by more than two-thirds, while offering a comparable sensor suite. The question is whether the AI coach can deliver insights that justify the ongoing cost, or whether most users will rely on the free tier and treat the device as a basic tracker.
The more significant announcement is the rebranding of Fitbit’s software ecosystem as Google Health. The new app, available on both iOS and Android, is structured into four tabs, Today, Fitness, Sleep, and Health, and provides standard metrics including steps, calories, sleep stages, and vital signs. Users can manually log meals and menstrual cycles and share data with contacts or other health platforms. The free tier covers all tracking features.
The 10 dollar monthly subscription adds the Google Health Coach, a Gemini-powered AI assistant that analyses sensor data in the context of a user’s stated goals and provides coaching recommendations. Users can upload photographs of meals for calorie and macronutrient assessment, a feature that leverages the multimodal capabilities of Gemini’s vision models.
Rishi Chandra, who leads Google’s wearables and health division, described the Health Coach as the beginning of a platform strategy. “We want every hardware product we’re building, from the Pixel Watch to the full Fitbit portfolio, to really optimise around this Health Coach,” he said. Google has invested tens of billions of dollars in AI capabilities, from its own Gemini models to a reported 40 billion dollar investment in Anthropic, and the Health Coach represents one of the first consumer applications designed to convert that AI investment into recurring subscription revenue through a mass-market hardware device.
Chandra’s analogy, that the Health Coach aims to give ordinary users the support structure of a professional athlete’s nutritionist, sleep coach, and fitness trainer, articulates the value proposition. The execution depends on whether Gemini can produce health insights that are consistently useful rather than generically encouraging, a distinction that will determine whether users continue paying after the three-month free trial included with the device.
The wristband market that the Fitbit Air enters is dominated by Chinese manufacturers. Xiaomi controls roughly half the global wristband market, according to IDC, followed by Huawei at approximately a quarter and Samsung at 10 per cent. Fitbit holds about six per cent. Whoop, despite its 10 billion dollar valuation, holds only two per cent. The market grew 14.7 per cent in 2025, driven primarily by Xiaomi’s focus on affordability and scale.
The Fitbit Air’s 100 dollar price positions it above the cheapest Xiaomi bands, which start below 30 dollars, but well below the premium segment where Whoop and Oura operate. The strategic positioning is clear: Google is targeting the gap between budget Chinese bands and premium health trackers, offering AI-driven insights at a price point that neither end of the market currently serves.
The European Commission is preparing to force Google to open Android to rival AI assistants, a regulatory action that could affect the degree to which Google Health and its Gemini-powered coach can be bundled as default experiences on Android devices. But the Fitbit Air’s cross-platform strategy, launching simultaneously on iOS and Android, suggests Google is positioning Health as a standalone product rather than an Android exclusive.
Chandra described the Fitbit brand as Google’s primary wearable for a broader audience, with the Pixel Watch reserved for committed Pixel and Android users. The distinction matters: Fitbit’s historical strength was its platform neutrality, and the decision to launch Google Health on iOS signals that Google views the subscription revenue as more valuable than the ecosystem lock-in.
The launch coincides with a deadline that underscores the tensions in Google’s health data strategy. Fitbit users who have not migrated their data to a Google account by 19 May will lose access to the Fitbit platform entirely, with data deletion beginning on 15 July. The deadline, originally set for 2025, was extended to February 2026, then pushed again to May after user pushback.
The forced migration converts Fitbit’s health data, years of sleep records, heart rate trends, activity logs, and weight measurements, from a standalone health platform into a dataset attached to a Google account. Google has committed to keeping health data separate from Google Ads and has said it will not use the data for advertising purposes. Seven EU countries have accused Google of violating GDPR through user tracking, and the migration of sensitive health data into Google’s account infrastructure raises the same category of privacy questions that regulators across Europe have been asking about the company’s data practices for years.
Google’s history of discontinuing products casts a shadow over the Fitbit Air launch that no amount of marketing can dispel. The company has killed more than 290 products and services, from Google Reader to Google Plus to Stadia, and the three-year silence between Fitbit’s last major hardware launch and the Air has already prompted questions about whether the brand was being wound down. Chandra’s statement that the Fitbit Air marks “the beginning of a resurgence” for Fitbit is precisely the kind of commitment Google has made before abandoning products.
The difference this time may be the subscription model. Google Health at 10 dollars a month, attached to a hardware device that costs 100 dollars, creates recurring revenue that Google’s previous consumer products, many of which were free or one-time purchases, did not generate. The Fitbit Air is Google’s cheapest bet on consumer health. The AI coach is its most ambitious. And the question that will determine both products’ survival is whether a company that has never sustained a consumer subscription business outside of YouTube can build one around a device that cannot even tell you the time.
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