Fitbit Versa

» see fitbit.com/versa as it lived, on the wayback machine

~ the obituary ~

i missed the versa. by 2018 i was 34 in ankara, in a computer engineer role that kept me at a desk more than i wanted, and my wrist was carrying a plain analog watch out of habit rather than any principled stance on wearables. the versa was the kind of purchase i'd read about on donanimhaber, look at the price in turkish lira after import margin, and quietly close the tab. either way, i was not the person the versa was designed for.

the original versa launched on 16 april 2018 at $199.95, positioned as the affordable-mainstream sibling to the fitbit ionic. square face with rounded corners, oled screen, aluminum casing, silicone strap, wireless payments via fitbit pay on later models. steps, heart rate, sleep stages, calorie burn were the core metrics, same as the rest of the fitbit line but shown on a real smartwatch display instead of a tracker's tiny strip.

fitbit iterated fast in the first two years. a lower-priced versa lite arrived in march 2019 with fewer sensors, then the versa 2 landed that september with alexa built in. versa 3 in september 2020 finally added onboard gps and dropped the physical button for a haptic side pad. google acquired fitbit for $2.1 billion in january 2021 after a long eu antitrust review, and the release cadence started to change.

~ the case file ~

~ the slide ~

under google the versa line got one more generation, the versa 4, in september 2022. reviewers noted that versa 4 had actually lost features compared to versa 3, like the third-party app store and some voice controls, in exchange for a slimmer body and better battery life. the google-flavored ecosystem work went to the pixel watch, which shipped a month later in october 2022 and started drawing the smartwatch attention that versa used to own.

by 2023 the versa position on fitbit.com had shifted from "our mainstream smartwatch" to "the affordable alternative to a pixel watch." same company, two smartwatches, one clearly downstream from the other in feature investment. the versa 4 stopped getting major software updates and the promised feature parity with pixel watch never really arrived.

~ what really happened ~

in august 2024, around the pixel watch 3 launch, google's director of product management for pixel wearables told the press that the pixel watch was the "next iteration of smartwatch for fitbit." the ars technica desk pushed back and got a statement that current sense and versa models would keep selling. everyone read that statement the way it was meant to be read, no future generations, existing sku on clearance. no formal end-of-life notice, no bricking date. just a public admission that the versa 5 was not coming.

the fitbit brand meanwhile got redirected toward the minimal trackers, the charge line and the inspire line, that had actually held their sales while the smartwatch push was going sideways. fitbit.com pages started rolling into google store urls over the following year. the account sunset toward a google account only login had already been forced through in 2023.

~ what carried over ~

the versa is one of those product lines that mattered a lot in its window and then vanished cleanly rather than lingering. it sold in the tens of millions of units across the four numbered generations, was probably the biggest non-apple smartwatch of 2019-2020 by pure volume, and defined the "affordable smartwatch with real fitness credibility" slot that the pixel watch is now trying to occupy at a higher price. the tech survived. the brand did not.

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