I tried Google’s new health app. It can’t replace a real trainer |
I tried Google’s new health app. It can’t replace a real trainer
June 7, 2026 — 1:46pm
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The Fitbit faithful began expressing concerns almost immediately when Google announced it had acquired the brand in 2021. Many of their fears became a reality last month when the tech giant completely supplanted the Fitbit app with its new Google Health, an AI-focused vitals-tracking suite that removed the final vestiges of Fitbit-ness from the software.
At the same time, Google has been ramping up to take on a new breed of AI fitness products from the likes of Whoop, Oura and Ultrahuman, which appeal to athletes looking for insight into their performance but are also trickling down to regular consumers.
With its new Whoop-like Fitbit Air band (Google is keeping the branding for some hardware products, at least for now) and a revamped $15-per-month fitness-tracking subscription, the tech giant is hoping to stake a claim as the go-to for AI health insights before Apple gets to the market. I’ve been testing it for a few weeks, and it does effectively pull a lot of information into one place. Whether the output is ultimately going to be useful for you is a bit less clear.
Meet your Google Health coach
Anyone with a Google wearable using the Google Health app gets some basic tracking. Depending on your band’s capabilities, you’ll get step, distance, heart rate, sleep, breathing and blood oxygen tracking, and the app will use it all to score your daily readiness so you can adjust workout plans.
But if you pay monthly for the subscription, you get access to the large library of video tutorials previously called Fitbit Premium Workouts, as well as the new AI coach experience. In the app, it’s just........