Fitbit has activated the Pulse Ox feature for a small number of users. The company says it is hoping to provide more news about Estimated Oxygen Variability soon.
What is it?
Those that have a Versa, Ionic or Charge 3 strapped to their wrist, may notice a red light shining on the underside of their tracker at times. This is the SpO2 sensor doing its thing.
For those not in the know, the sensor has the potential to measure oxygen levels in the blood, providing information on how well the body distributes the gas from the lungs to all of its cells.
These levels fluctuate throughout the day. Healthy individuals typically register readings above 97%. Measurements should never fall below 95%, although levels above 92% are generally considered safe.
However, despite some Fitbit’s SpO2-packing devices being a number of years old (Ionic was released back in 2017), the San Francisco outfit is yet to release the feature to everyone. It is, however, actively testing it and has rolled out the functionality to a small number of users.
Improving your sleep
The closest the rest of us can come to accessing the readings is by subscribing to the company’s Sleep Score Beta programme. It was launched about a year ago for users in the US, UK and Australia.
Essential reading: Top fitness trackers and health gadgets
Fitness trackers and smartwatches with a built-in SpO2 sensor are few and far between. Garmin has perhaps taken the lead in this area. The Vivosmart 4, Forerunner 245/245 Music, Forerunner 945 and some watches in the Fenix range all come with this feature baked in. The sensors monitors oxygen levels during the night at regular intervals, but also allows users to manually take readings throughout the day. And it works pretty well.
Fitbit has taken this route, as well. As shown in the app screen shot, for those with the feature activated there’s now a graph called Estimated Oxygen Variation that appears in the morning amongst the sleep statistics. If the line is green your blood oxygen is fine, orange indicates there may be a problem. There are also two horizontal lines which show the healthy range. Users are not able to see the raw values. The company has also stopped short of diagnosing any conditions such as sleep apnea.
Release date in sight?
It is worth pointing out, the SpO2 sensor is not advertised as a feature for Charge 3, Ionic and Versa. But it is in the complete specs listings. So anyone purchasing one of these would expect the functionality to be available at some point.
A few months ago a Fitbit Support person said:
“SpO2 is not yet enabled. We don’t have an official release date yet, but we’ll be sure to make an announcement when we do. Thank you for your understanding.”
Actually it is enabled if users are spotting the red light from time to time and Fitbit is using the value for the Sleep Score programme. But the Fitbit Support person probably means “not yet enabled” in the sense that the readings are not accessible to the entire public.
A more recent post (late December) by one of the moderators of the Fitbit Community forum gives hope this will all change in the near future.
“As you may have gathered, this feature has been rolled out to a small percentage of users and we are hoping to provide more news about Estimated Oxygen Variability soon. So stay tuned!”
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