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Sarah Tew/CNET
The Fitbit Surge sport watch will soon be able to track more than just your runs. Fitbit announced on Monday that an upcoming update will add tracking support for outdoor cycling. With the hel-p of the GPS and other sensors, riders will able to view their distance, duration, average speed, heart rate and calories burned in real-time. A map of the route, along with detailed information on speed and elevation will be available post-workout in the Fitbit app.
“Our users are passionate about fitness and have consistently requested a way to track their outdoor cycling activity. We are delivering this feature on Fitbit Surge for active consumers looking to track and better understand performance during rides, in addition to their other workouts,” said Tim Roberts, Vice President of Interactive at Fitbit, in the company’s press release. “Our goal is to provide users with the tools it takes to track their exercise and reward them for doing the activities they love to do most — like biking and running.”
The Fitbit Surge can steps, distance, calories burned, sleep and continuous heart rate. The watch is also capable tracking runs, hikes, yoga and weight lifting, among other activities, in addition to being able to display text messages and call notifications from your smartphone. In our review of the Surge, we complained that battery life was far less than the 7 days of usage Fitbit originally promised. The company has said that it is “working to deliver even longer GPS battery life” and an update will be coming soon.
Fitbit also announced that users will now be able to pair up to six Fitbit trackers (specifically one of each model) to a single Fitbit account. This is ideal for users that own multiple Fitbit devices. The Fitbit Surge may be a little too bulky for a lot of occasions. You will now be able to swap out the fitness watch for one of the company’s more discrete trackers (such as the Fitbit Zip) without losing your daily activity stats.
The cycling update is slated to hit Fitbit Surge devices in North America by next month. The company plans to roll out the cycling update globally in the future. Multiple device support will arrive this week to all Fitbit users.
