Google's new Fitbit Air is a small device with a pointed business target. At $99.99, without a mandatory subscription and without a screen, it is positioned less as a smartwatch and more as a direct challenge to WHOOP's paid-membership hardware model.
Google announced Fitbit Air on May 7, opened preorders the same day, and set shipments for May 26. At the same time, the Fitbit app is being renamed Google Health, a signal that the product story is no longer only about a fitness tracker. The more important change is the Gemini-powered health coach built into the service layer around the device.
A 12-gram tracker aimed at subscriptions
The hardware is deliberately simple. Fitbit Air weighs 12 grams with the band, or 5.2 grams without it. It is 25% smaller than Fitbit Luxe and 50% smaller than Inspire 3, has no screen, is rated for 50 meters of water resistance, offers seven days of battery life, and supports a five-minute quick charge.
The sensor set covers familiar Fitbit territory: heart rate, SpO2, atrial-fibrillation detection, sleep staging and activity tracking. The striking part is the pricing. Google is combining a low hardware price with no forced subscription, which puts pressure on WHOOP's model of free hardware tied to annual plans.
- WHOOP Peak costs $239 per year.
- WHOOP Life costs $359 per year.
- Without a subscription, the hardware has little value.
Fitbit Air reverses that logic. The device costs $99.99 upfront, while Google Health Premium is optional at $9.99 per month or $99 per year. Buyers also get three months of Premium included. Over three years, WHOOP costs at least $717. Fitbit Air plus three years of Premium comes to about $396, and users can still choose to stay with the basic features.
What Gemini changes inside the product
A cheaper WHOOP alternative would be interesting, but Google is trying to make the health coach the center of the product. Gemini in Google Health Coach is expected to work with a richer set of inputs than a conventional fitness app summary.
- Physiological signals from Fitbit Air, including heart rate, HRV, sleep stages and training load.
- User-supplied context such as an injury, stress at work or a fitness goal.
- Environmental data, including weather and climate.
- Uploaded PDFs, such as medical reports or prescriptions.
Google says Gemini can consider lifestyle changes, injuries, nutrition and even weather. With readiness scores, sleep data and recent training load in view, the coach can suggest whether to run, how hard to train, or which muscle groups should rest.
If a user says they want to run a half marathon next month, the coach is meant to produce an adaptive training plan based on that person's current fitness data. The promise is not encyclopedia-style answers, but responses grounded in the user's own health record.
This is Google's first deep binding of consumer Gemini capability to a hardware subscription. It is not the general assistant on a phone. It is a small agent focused on personal health data.
Fitbit becomes Google Health
The renaming of the Fitbit app to Google Health matters. Fitbit Premium, the subscription brand that has existed for years, is also being folded into Google Health Premium.
Since Google acquired Fitbit in 2021, the brand has lived in a semi-independent state: Fitbit on the hardware, Fitbit App in software, Fitbit Premium for subscriptions, and Google's AI stack increasingly underneath. Moving the health brand name from Fitbit to Google suggests that Fitbit is becoming a hardware line inside Google Health.
The timing points to a broader bet. Consumer AI is looking for everyday use cases that produce durable habits and valuable data. Health has both. WHOOP does not own a large model, Apple Watch still depends on Siri's weaker health interpretation, and Garmin has rich data but no comparable conversational AI layer.
Why this fight matters
In the short term, Fitbit Air can take share from price-sensitive users who like WHOOP's screenless format but dislike the annual subscription commitment. A $99 device with optional Premium removes much of that psychological barrier.
The bigger question is what happens after Gemini Health Coach starts collecting feedback across enough users. It may learn not just whether someone should run today, but how a training plan performs for people with similar sleep patterns, HRV ranges and stress levels.
That kind of cross-user, cross-scenario health knowledge base is difficult to build. WHOOP has years of data but no model platform of Google's scale. Garmin has data scale but lacks the same conversational layer.
Fitbit Air looks like a 12-gram fitness band. Underneath, Google is testing where consumer Gemini goes next. Six months from launch, repeat monthly activity for Fitbit Air and retention for Google Health Premium will say more than any hardware review.
Sources: Google unveils Whoop-like screenless Fitbit Air (TechCrunch); Google's Screenless Fitbit Air Relies on Gemini to Be Your Personal Health Coach (Gizmodo); The $99 Fitbit Air Whoop Competitor: Everything You Need to Know (DC Rainmaker); CocoLoop; Google Fitbit Air: $100 Price, Whoop Comparison, Features, Subscription (Bloomberg)