Anyone who buys a Fitbit Air has two straps to choose from today, the Elevated Modern and the Performance Loop, and neither of them changes the device’s appearance much. Google has just opened a third option: a Metal Mesh band in polished silver and champagne gold, designed so that the tracker combines with jewelry you already wear. It is a finish novelty, not hardware: the strap adds no sensors or measures anything new.
A Strap for the Fitbit Air Aimed at a More Polished Look
The Metal Mesh arrives with the declared intention of “elevating” the ensemble, and that is its practical sense. The previous bands suffice for daily use, but the metal mesh is the first option aimed at a more formal plan: the idea is that the tracker goes unnoticed alongside a ring or bracelet, rather than looking like a sports accessory. The two finishes, silver and gold, follow that same logic of imitating the jewelry accompanying it.
According to the announcement picked up by 9to5Google, the strap costs $69.99 and can already be reserved in Google’s store and at Target. Shipments should take place throughout this month. There is also a bundle that combines the Fitbit Air with the Metal Mesh and the Performance Loop for $149.99, although it is only available in gold: it costs $20 more than the brand’s special editions, such as those dedicated to Steph Curry or the Pokémon dream, with the difference being that here two straps come instead of one.
The Improvement That Really Matters: Automatic Tracking
The change with more impact is not in the strap, but in how the Fitbit Air interprets what you do without being asked. Google states that automatic activity tracking becomes “more intelligent, precise and reliable”, specifying it in four fronts:
- Detects More Sports. The number of activities that the tracker or a Pixel Watch recognizes rises from 10 to more than 100, and includes strength training, swimming, and racket and team sports, terrains where automatic tracking used to fail.
- Uses More Context. With contextual reasoning, Google Health takes into account your training routines, history, manual edits, and, with permission, location. The company states that this translates into almost double the correct detections and less than half of workouts without recording.
- Records Solo Sessions. A workout that exceeds the minimum duration threshold —15 minutes by default— with sustained elevated heart rate is recorded automatically, and the summary arrives on the mobile app, normally in less than 30 minutes.
- Learns from Your Corrections. Every time you confirm or edit an activity, you feed a system that learns your patterns and adjusts its predictions accordingly.
The detail that matters for the wrist is that these improvements are in software and do not depend on the strap you wear: they are planned for “end of this month” directly on the tracker, whichever band is chosen. That is to say, anyone who already has a Fitbit Air will receive the change without buying anything new, and anyone who hesitates over the strap can separate both decisions.
Health Guardian and the Rest of the Announcement
The strap does not travel alone. In the same announcement, Google details updates to Health Guardian for Google Health Premium users who have configured blood pressure and insulin resistance trends in the app: from now on they will receive a monthly report to guide lifestyle adjustments. All this adds up to an ecosystem that Google continues pushing, arriving barely one day after presenting the Fitbit Edge, a $179 tracker with a screen that separates itself from the no-display approach of the Fitbit Air.
What Changes for You
If you like the Fitbit Air for its discreet design and wanted a strap for occasions where a sports band doesn’t fit, the Metal Mesh makes sense: for $69.99, or for $149.99 if you prefer to also take the Performance Loop. If the reason for looking at it was the precision of the metrics, the recommendation is another: wait a few days and check in the app how the new automatic tracking behaves, because that is where the real leap lies. And it is worth remembering that the health part dependent on Health Guardian remains tied to the Premium subscription, so it is not free no matter how pretty the strap is.
