Fitbit have announced a new fitness tracker, from iMore:

Fitbit has announced its latest fitness tracker, the Alta, which is one of the nicest-looking offerings from the company. Pre-orders are now open for the tracker, with shipments beginning in March 2016. […]

Here are the Alta‘s features:

• All-Day Activity
• Auto Sleep Tracking
• Reminders to Move
• SmartTrack™
• Auto Exercise Recognition
• Tap Display
• Call, Text & Calendar Alerts

And some pricing information from MacRumors:

Fitbit’s new wearable also has a few band accessories to choose from, including a $29.95 Classic Band, $59.95 Leather Band, and $99.95 Metal Bracelet.

Given that it’s launching in March, is a wearable, and has bands, it’s easy to see that this is FitBit’s response to the Apple Watch. Their smartwatch did not fare so well, but their other bands aren’t so fashionable, so I see this as the compromise positions of “stylish fitness band.”

It looks like a great product, and the auto-fitness and auto-sleep recognition are excellent features that, as an Apple Watch owner, I envy. However, there’s one critical feature that’s missing which would make this an impulse buy for me: HealthKit integration.

The reason is that Health is a non-networked, shared silo for health information. When or if Fitbit bite the dust and their apps and hardware aren’t supported, I want that data somewhere other than their servers. In fact, I’d prefer my data wasn’t on their servers at all.