New Fitbit Sense Watch Will Help Detect Stress

Earlier this week, Fitbit Inc FIT announced three new devices for consumers. The company is launching further into the health care space with its new offerings.

What Happened: The Fitbit Sense highlights the new offerings. This new watch upgrades many offerings already included on Fitbit watches, but the big difference maker is an EDA sensor. This will be the first smartwatch on the market able to show users’ stress level. The Sense will use a built-in electrodermal activity sensor that can tell when a user is sweating even before they realize.

The watch will be available for $329 in September.

Fitbit Premium members will get detailed breakdowns of stress scores. The other two offerings from the company are the Versa 3 ($229) with improved heart tracking, and Inspire 2 ($99), a pure fitness tracker.

Why It’s Important: The Fitbit Sense highlights the company’s push into health care.

“I think one of the important things to take away from our fall launch is that it really underscores our continued evolution of being a pure fitness tracking company to a healthcare company," CEO James Park told Yahoo Finance.

Park also mentioned there has been a greater interest in stress management since the pandemic. Fitbit also is testing its effectiveness in tracking COVID-19 symptoms in users.

The Fitbit Sense offers a differentiating feature from other smartwatches on the market, something that can help the company gain share against Apple AAPL. The watch will also include improved heart rate monitoring and an ECG app. Apple’s watches have seen plenty of positive press thanks to detecting heart conditions for its customers.

The new watch should also boost the average selling price and paid subscribers for Fitbit Premium.

The company announced recently that it hit 500,000 Fitbit Premium members, who pay $9.99 a month or $79.99 per year. Second-quarter revenue declined, but the bright spot was the average sale price rising 16% to $100.