Is 2026 the year we finally break free from our screens? Google certainly hopes so with the release of the Fitbit Air, a screenless wristband that dares to take on Whoop at half the price. At $100, this thing is lightweight, unobtrusive, and lasts about a week on a charge - which is more than can be said for most of our relationships with our smartphones.

I've been wearing the Fitbit Air for a week, putting it through its paces with running, weightlifting, yoga, and elliptical sessions. I also asked Google's new AI Health Coach for help planning workouts, understanding recovery, and even translating 16kg into pounds (because who can do metric conversions in their head mid-squat?). Spoiler alert: it's a worthy buy, assuming you don't mind occasionally having your nonexistent workouts hallucinated into existence.

The Fitbit Air comes in four colorways - lavender, berry, obsidian, and fog - and packs an optical heart rate monitor, three-axis accelerometer, gyroscope, SpO2 sensor, temperature sensor, and a vibration motor for wake-up alarms. It lacks GPS, so it borrows your phone's location tracking, meaning phone-free runs require a Pixel Watch instead. But the screenless design fosters a healthier relationship with activity tracking: no constant step-counting reminders means you're less likely to obsess over every stride.

Battery life clocks in at around a week, and the Google Health app (formerly Fitbit) displays weekly cardio load, sleep, steps, and recovery scores. The AI Health Coach is where things get interesting - and occasionally weird. It can log your yogurt brand by name, upload screenshots of weight-training data from other apps, and even answer questions mid-workout. But it can also hallucinate, like the time it claimed I'd done a 52-minute elliptical session on a day I'd only walked to the coffee machine. A Google spokesperson explained that the Coach is trained to spot patterns but sometimes connects dots that aren't there - and every flagged error becomes a strict new test question for future updates.

At $100 without a subscription, or $200 annually with Google Health Premium, the Fitbit Air undercuts Whoop's $200 - $360 annual fees. It's designed for the mainstream fitness audience, not the biohacking elite, and it's the platonic ideal for anyone who wants health tracking without a flashy screen. Just be prepared to occasionally ask the AI, "Are you sure?" when it invents a workout you never did.