I combined my Fitbit Air with an analog watch — it's the only way I wear the tracker now

When the Fitbit Air debuted as Google’s screenless fitness tracker, early adopters tried using it as an analog watch strap. As someone who bought the Fitbit Air to be less reliant on smartwatches and enjoy low-profile health monitoring, I became immediately intrigued. I was also skeptical. I wasn’t sure whether I could successfully swap out my watch band without damaging it, if the Fitbit Air would be comfortable as a watch band, or whether the combination would even look stylish.

For the first month or so of owning my Fitbit Air, I kept the fitness tracker on my left wrist and a traditional watch on my right. Then, I added the Fitbit Air to my wristwatch, and I’ve been wearing the combo together for over a month.

Fast forward to today, and I can’t imagine wearing the fitness tracker any other way. Adding an analog watch to my Fitbit Air band made it sleeker and more comfortable, and improved skin contact for better accuracy.

The Fitbit Air makes for an excellent analog watch strap

The Fitbit Air’s calling card is its lack of screens, and by extension, its lack of distractions. The slim tracker passively monitors your health data and automatically records activities. It can serve as an alarm clock programmable through the Google Health companion app, but that’s the extent of its on-device smarts. Coming from advanced smartwatches, the minimal experience quickly became a perk. However, I couldn’t help but miss being able to quickly glance at the time on my wrist.

Double-wristing is certainly an option, and wearing a Fitbit Air with an analog watch looks better than pairing the latter with a smartwatch. That said, I couldn’t get used to wearing a watch or band on each wrist. No matter how long I tried, the extra weight on my dominant wrist didn’t feel right.

There were also problems with wearing a Fitbit Air and my wristwatch separately. The Fitbit Air never felt snug on the top side of my wrist, whereas my traditional watch’s metal clasp kept digging into the underside of my wrist.

These complaints pushed me to finally remove the metal band from my analog watch and attempt to replace it with the Fitbit Air’s performance loop band. When all was said and done, the Fitbit Air and my traditional wristwatch were better together than apart. I feared the Fitbit Air tracker and its sensors would look unusually large on the underside of my wrist, but they’re actually slimmer than the watch’s original metal clasp. It’s more comfortable, too, without the clasp carving into my skin or the links tugging on my hair.

The watch atop my wrist and the Fitbit Air on the underside of my wrist worked together to anchor the strap in place. Neither the watch nor the tracker slid down my wrist during everyday wear when combined on a single band. This solved a minor annoyance with wearing my wristwatch and addressed a real problem with my Fitbit Air. You want the sensors on your fitness tracker or smartwatch to make good contact with your skin for peak accuracy. I guaranteed that by adding an analog watch on the other side of the Fitbit Air band, and my health and fitness data is likely better for it.

This setup isn’t perfect, and your mileage may vary depending on the analog watch you want to use. The Fitbit Air performance loop is 18mm wide, so a traditional watch with 18mm or 19mm lugs will look cleanest. My watch has 20mm lugs, revealing the metal spring bars on either side of the Fitbit Air strap. More importantly, the gap between my analog watch’s case and the spring bars is thin enough that I need to remove them when installing or removing the strap. Every time the fabric band needs a proper wash, I’ll have to take off the watch’s spring bars.

I set up the Fitbit Air as a watch strap in minutes

I’m not much of a watch person, and my lack of expertise and proper tools initially discouraged me from trying out this mod. If you’re also curiously hesitant, consider this your sign to go for it. The entire process was quick and painless. I bought a $4 spring bar removal tool from Amazon to remove my watch’s original metal band. Wristwatch enthusiasts should look away, but I found using a SIM-eject tool to push in the spring bar made it easier to remove than using the proper tool.

Now, my official advice is to use the right tools or visit a jeweler to avoid scratching your analog watch — but you should know it’s possible to make this swap with household items and zero experience. A paperclip might do the job, provided your watch has drilled lugs. Getting your original band off is the hard part. Once you’ve done that, adding the traditional watch to your Fitbit Air strap is incredibly simple.

Push the spring bars through your original watch band, then pop them back into the lugs. Pull the end of the Fitbit Air’s performance band out of the metal ring, so that it is no longer a connected loop. Then slide the underside of the Fitbit Air strap through each spring bar on your watch. If your wristwatch has a slim gap between the case and spring bars, like mine, you may need to remove the bars to install the strap. This is because the pull tab at the end is thicker than the rest of the band.

All you have to do now is adjust the Fitbit Air and the analog watch along the strap. The Fitbit Air tracker should sit under your wrist, and the wristwatch should rest atop your wrist. This might sound like a lengthy process, but it only took me a few minutes to complete on my first try. Now that I’ve done it once, I can make future swaps in about a minute.

The final trick that ties this all together

The Fitbit Air works great as a watch strap, partly because it’s so easy to remove. There are times when I’ll want to wear my Fitbit Air without my analog watch, like while sleeping or working out. So, I bought an official spare strap for $50. I can pop the Fitbit Air puck out of the analog watch strap and insert it into a spare performance loop band in seconds. I don’t need to remove my traditional wristwatch every time I want a lighter, more comfortable Fitbit Air strap.

I expected using the Fitbit Air as a watch strap to look cleaner on my wrist, but I didn’t expect it to improve both my fitness tracker and my watch. The Fitbit Air makes better contact with my skin, and the analog watch no longer relies on an uncomfortable metal strap.

The two proved to be the perfect pair, and now I can track my health data while wearing my traditional watch. It’s the best of both worlds.