Finally, Fitbit has an activity tracking wristband of its own, the Fitbit Flex.

While Fitbit pioneered the fitness gadget industry with its tiny fitness tracking device, it has recently been overshadowed by the arrival of fitness wristbands from Nike and Jawbone. With the Flex, Fitbit has a wearable option that can track your steps, distance traveled, and sleep patterns, just like its past gadgets. (Unfortunately, it can’t track steps you’ve climbed, unlike some of the company’s latest devices.)

For Fitbit fans, the wait may have been worth it. Fitbit claims the Flex is the first health wristband to fully take advantage of Bluetooth 4.0, allowing it to synchronize wirelessly with your smartphone and computer while maintaining strong battery life. Nike’s FuelBand was touted as a Bluetooth 4.0 device, but in a teardown by Fitbit, the company found only Bluetooth 2.1 hardware (though there’s a chance that hardware could also be Bluetooth 4.0 compatible).  The Jawbone Up doesn’t offer any wireless syncing.

The Flex is also cheaper than the competition. At $99, it’s a better value than Jawbone’s $130 Up, and Nike’s $150 Fuelband. It’s the same price as the Fitbit One, the company’s latest flagship fitness tracker that clips onto your clothing.  Fitbit also offers a cheaper $60 device, the Fitbit Zip, for those who just want the basics of step counting.

When I reviewed the Jawbone Up and Fitbit One in December,  I ultimately favored the Up. Even though the One offered a superior online interface for tracking your health data, I found it easier to wear a futuristic wristband than to keep track of a tiny pedometer. (Also, I liked the Up’s geek chic.) With the Flex, Fitbit has a compelling alternative that may have me switching fitness camps.

I haven’t had a chance to see the Fitbit Flex in person yet, but I’m hoping to get some time with it later this week at CES. The Flex is available for pre-order starting today and will ship in the spring.

San Francisco-based Fitbit has raised a total of $23.4 million from Foundry Group, True Ventures, and others.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Bluetooth 4.0 is getting a big fitness push today.

The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG)  has agreed on a new set of Bluetooth fitness standards that will fuel the next generation of Bluetooth-enabled fitness devices.

Bluetooth is seen as a great fit for devices like the Nike+ FuelBand (above), as it offers a wide range of compatibility with minimal power consumption.

The new profiles, which focus on cycling and running, enable the devices to transmit data on variables like stride length, running speed, and pedal cadence. Previously, these profiles were largely locked to specific companies, but the new standards change that, making it far easier for any company to quickly develop and release a compatible device.

This is good news for consumers, as it ensures near-universal cross-compatibility between fitness devices and the increasing number of devices that interact with them. The movie will also open up the market for far more innovation.

And it’s good as well for companies like Broadcom, CSR, and Intel, which are heavily invested in making sure their chips get into as many devices as possible.

“As [a manufacturer], if you want your product to connect with billions of products your customers likely already use on a daily basis, then Bluetooth technology is the obvious choice,”Bluetooth SIG marketing officer Suke Jawanda said in a statement.

Private social network Path and lifestyle brand Nike have teamed up to make the road to a better you a tad more rewarding. The Nike FuelBand, a gadget you wear on your wrist to track your daily activity, now connects to the Path app to keep you accountable and motivated each day.

Path is the San Francisco-based startup that makes an iPhone and Android app for sharing private moments in the form of photos, thoughts, music, locations, and so forth with close friends. The experience, a foil for what’s become of Facebook and other social networks, encourages a type of intimacy that might feel extreme anywhere else.

The FuelBand integration is a perfect example of this. FuelBand users can connect their activity-monitoring devices to Path to automatically share a graph of their progress against their daily activity goal. The shared graph even highlights Path moments that contributed to the person’s progress. The idea is to channel the friend-love on Path to help FuelBand users stay encouraged.

To a non-Path user, this may sound like over-sharing. It’s too much information, you say. I too have no desire whatsoever to be exposed to the daily activity counters and goals of most of the people I know through social media. But on Path, the mini FuelBand progress reports seem natural and, dare I say, exciting to behold.

A Path friend, for instance, made the FuelBand connection yesterday, and when his first progress report appeared in my stream, I couldn’t help but smile and offer my congratulations — in the form of an emoticon, because that is the Path way — for the small feat of reaching his daily goal. It’s a little gesture on his part to share that moment with me, and a tiny gesture on my part to acknowledge the activity, but the end result is that I feel like I know him a little better. And with real friends, the accumulation of these little moments can be quite profound.

Keep in mind that you’re listening to a Path convert. After feeling overexposed on Facebook and Twitter, I was craving a social experience more personal, private, and genuine. I revisited the Path app about two months ago and haven’t looked back. With just 34 friends, I feel like I can be me, uncensored and real.

With more than 3 million users, Path is small potatoes as far as social applications go. The company has raised an exorbitant amount of funding relative to its size, so you’d be right to be skeptical about its future success.

But, anecdotally speaking, I can sense that Path is having a little moment of its own. For starters, I’ve introduced the app to my best friends (who don’t care about or follow tech news the way I do), and it’s become one of the primary ways we keep up with each other. And, strangely enough, a friend’s high school-aged son told me last night that he had downloaded Path.

Now with more fuel to create intimacy between real friends, Path seems headed in the right direction.

Photo credit: Shutterstock

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