Fitbit Air upgrades add Health Guardian and insulin estimates

Google is expanding the Fitbit Air with a slate of health and activity upgrades that place more health data right on your wrist. In addition to the existing features, the updates include Health Guardian in Google Health, along with insulin resistance estimates, blood pressure trend insights and sleep breathing quality tracking. These new capabilities are designed to run in the background, giving users a monthly snapshot of health signals without tying you to lab tests or continuous glucose monitoring.

Health Guardian is described as a proactive health and safety tool that monitors signals in the background, with a monthly summary and timely notifications for anything that needs attention. In the Google Health app, the feature comes with irregular heart rhythm and heart rate alerts. A Premium plan, at $10 per month or $100 per year, unlocks insulin resistance levels, blood pressure trends and sleep breathing quality trends for users with Pixel Watch 3 or newer and Fitbit Air.

Insulin resistance in this context is calculated from sensors on the Pixel Watch 3 and later, and the Fitbit Air. It uses data like heart rhythm, sleep quality and daily activity to estimate how efficiently the body uses insulin, not a real-time glucose measure or diabetes test. Similarly, blood pressure trends are estimated from pulse and movement data and WavesFM, Google’s AI model, over a month. It isn’t meant to replace a cuff-based monitor or diagnose hypertension. Sleep breathing quality tracks overnight breathing and reports how consistently you breathed, based on SpO2 and other sensor data.

On the hardware side, Google is upgrading the Fitbit Air’s auto-activity detection. The feature, which detects workout types automatically, is now claimed to be twice as accurate with 50% fewer missed detections. The improvements use the device’s sensors, training data and on-device models to better recognize activities such as tennis, trail running and HIIT workouts. The idea is simple: you don’t have to start a workout manually for the Fitbit Air to log it, and it should catch more of the sessions you actually do.

And there’s a design update too. The Fitbit Air now offers metal mesh bands in silver and gold, alongside the existing recycled polyester/elastane yarn and polyurethane options. The new bands are meant to dress up the device so it can pass as a piece of jewelry in more settings, not just as a fitness tracker.

What this means for everyday users is clearer health signals without extra hardware. You’ll see monthly health summaries, potential alerts for unusual heart rhythms, and trend lines for blood pressure and sleep breathing, all captured with the existing Air sensors and the Pixel Watch 3 or newer. The premium features expand the data set further, but they aren’t medical diagnoses or substitutes for professional care.

What you should do now: if you have a Fitbit Air or are considering one, you’ll want to decide whether the Premium plan adds enough value for you. If you’re interested in the Health Guardian and insulin resistance trends, you’ll need a compatible Pixel Watch 3 or newer and the latest Fitbit Air firmware. The new metal bands also give you a chance to customize the look for work, workouts or evenings out.

Availability and pricing specifics for the upgrades beyond what’s described here aren’t provided in the report. If you’re curious about when these features land on your device, keep an eye on the Google Health app and the Fitbit Air update notes for dates and compatibility details.