Review of the Fitbit Versa 3 Running Watch

Fitbit Versa 3

I wanted to tell you all about how I've finally entered the modern era of runnng watches. As you may know from my past posts, I absolutely love my Timex Ironman Watch. But this past Christmas, Santa gave me a Fitbit Versa 3 GPS watch. So as a result, I've been running with it for several weeks now and wanted to give you a review in case you too were on the fence about getting one or any GPS watch for that matter.

The Good!

Let's start off with what I like about the Fitbit Versa 3. First of all, I had a Fitbit Charge before but I rarely wore it so I already had a Fitbit account set up. That was very easy to do, and adding a watch to it was just as easy.

Unlike the the Charge, the Fitbit Versa 3 is very easy to see while running. Even in bright sunlight, I can see the screen with no issues. the watch tells me when I'm in the right heart zone which is good info and it displays not only my time, but my pace and distance. Very cool, I must admit.

I also like that I only have to charge it so far about once per week. Keep in mind, I'm only running 3-4 times per week so I'm not always using the GPS feature although to be fair, I honestly don't know if that affects the battery or not, but I would think so.

When you're done with your run and it syncs with your watch, it gives you a map of the route you just ran which I think is super cool. I realize all the watches do this, but again, I'm coming from a Timex Ironman watch.

The Bad...

The one thing I dislike about the Versa 3 is that the touch screen does not work well when it's wet or when I'm sweaty and so I'm wet. What I mean is that the the touch screen doesn't respond. As a result, on many of my early runs with the watch, when I'd get home and try to stop the timer, I couldn't. I'd be standing in my driveway swiping like crazy trying to get to the end button. I did find out that the invisible side button (and yes, you can't see it and I can barely feel it, but it's there) will pause it and give you the option to end the timer, but if you can't find the button fumbling around after a grueling run, it doesn't do you much good.

The next issue I have with it, and this is not a big deal to me, but I could see it would be for some, is that the GPS is not entirely accurate. A course that I know is 2 miles comes up on the watch as 1.9 or 1.92 or 1.91 depending on....I don't know what. When I zoom in on the map to see the route up close, I can tell why it's off but I'm not sure what to do about it. Apparently, my watch thinks I'm running through houses and buildings rather than going around them. This would obviously account for not only the general discrepencies in distance among all my routes, but the change in distance when running the same route. I ran the same route 3 times and had 3 different distances that it calculated.

Overall, I Recommend the Fitbit Versa 3

Besides the running aspect, you can also listen to (some) music, (I still haven't fully figured this out yet), it tracks your sleep which is very cool, and it allows you to pay for things with your watch (super cool to this guy). Compared to other GPS watches with similar features, I think the price is good too. In fact, I have a link to the Versa 3 on Amazon if you'd like to get one for yourself. I do receive a small commission when you buy as I'm in Amazon's affiliate program.