Looking for a way to track your health and fitness, but don’t want to be constantly distracted by a screen on your wrist? The Luna Band and Fitbit Air are two interesting options.
Considering we reviewed the Fitbit Air, and gave the screenless tracker a glowing five-star review, how does it stack up against the Luna Band? While we’re yet to get our hands on the upcoming Luna Band, we’ve compared its original specs to Fitbit Air’s own to help you decide which option would suit you best.
Not convinced? Be sure to visit our Fitbit Air vs Oura Ring 4 and Fitbit Air vs Whoop guides, while our roundup of the best fitness trackers reveals our current favorites from the past year.
Price and Availability
At the time of writing, the Luna Band will be available for pre-order from July 4th and will begin shipping from July 31st. The Luna Band also has an RRP of $149, although we don’t yet know how much it will cost elsewhere.
The Fitbit Air, meanwhile, is available to buy now and has an RRP of just £84.99/$99.99.
Both are screen-less wearables
Let’s start with the most obvious similarities between the two: both the Luna Band and Fitbit Air are wearables without a screen. This means that both can be controlled only through their smartphone apps, allowing you to silently track your daily health and performance metrics without the distraction of stats or notifications.
The result of such a design is that it doesn’t work like a regular smart watch, which means you can’t use the Fitbit Air or Luna Band to answer texts, see your stats or use Google or Apple Pay. If you’d like to have those options, you better have one of the best smartwatches out there.
Luna Band does not register
Arguably, choosing a device and seeing many features hidden behind a subscription is one of the most frustrating things. Fortunately, like the Luna Ring, the Luna Band promises to be subscription-free, with all of its features available upfront. However, in a recent Ask Me Anything event on Reddit, Luna confirmed that although “there will be no registration to see your data” [sic]it notes that it “may have to add costs” further.
In comparison, while you can still use the Fitbit Air without it, we’d recommend pairing the wearable with a Google Health Premium subscription. In fact, Google Health Premium unlocks many additional features, including Google Health Coach.
Sure, it’s an extra cost to factor in, but at $9.99/£7.99 a month it’s certainly one of the cheapest options out there – especially when compared to Whoop’s hefty £349 a year price tag.
The Fitbit Air uses the Gemini-powered Google Health Coach
As shown above, when you sign up for Google Health Premium you will activate Google Health Coach. Built with Gemini, Coach provides users with personalized guidance based on their personal metrics and health goals. We found that Coach does a great job of not only providing personalized advice but also breaking things down in easy to understand language as well.
You can communicate with the Health Coach by writing messages, but it can also understand voice and embedded images. This means you can take screenshot data from third-party apps and share it with Health Coach, giving it a comprehensive look at your stats.
The Luna Band also has AI support, which runs on its own LifeOS software. Although we haven’t reviewed the Luna model yet, so we haven’t been able to try LifeOS ourselves, we’ll have to wait and see how it actually performs in everyday use.
However, the software is promised to give you personalized insights into your daily habits, while its Health Coach gives you tailored advice. Also, you are encouraged to log in and upload “everyday” from your workouts, diet, supplements and blood work to get a complete understanding of your body.
The Luna Band promises up to 10 days of battery life
We should note that both Luna Band and Fitbit Air promise excellent battery lives, especially when you compare them to the likes of even the best Apple Watches. Still, the Luna Band leads the way by promising up to 10 days of battery life on a single charge.
The Fitbit Air, on the other hand, says up to seven. That said, in our review we actually found the wearable to last just under 10 days – though that number may vary depending on your usage.
Luna offers “collaborative architecture”
At the time of writing, Luna encourages potential band users to share feature ideas that they think would be a great addition to the wearable. It says ideas submitted by the development team that are “ready to do” will be listed on the website, and users will be able to vote on which feature gets built first.
Preliminary Decision
Since we are yet to review the Luna Band, we will refrain from giving a definitive verdict just yet. However, with the promise of no subscription fees, an affordable RRP and the ability for users to share features they’d like to see on the device, the Luna Band looks like a solid alternative to the Fitbit Air and Whoop.
That said, we should note that we found the Fitbit Air to be hard to fault. Not only is it affordable and comfortable to wear, but it provides detailed information on health and fitness data and is an accurate tracker as well. Of course subscriptions are another cost to factor in, while the Luna Band boasts zero subscription costs at the moment, but we’d argue it’s worth the price.
We’ll be sure to review this versus another Luna Band review.