What you get with Bevel

Cardio load as reported by Google Health (left) and Bevel (right) Credit: Beth Skwarecki Here are a few things I like about using the Bevel app rather than Google Health: You can see a previous day’s metrics by tapping on today’s date, and then choosing any date in the past—this is something Google Health is somehow still missing. You can do strength workouts in the app. Bevel will give you a timer for the whole workout and for each set and rest; it will let you add exercises and log the weights and reps; and it will keep track of which muscles you’ve used recently. Google has none of that. You can change your status to sick, injured, or “taking a break” if you don’t want to be nagged about keeping up your usual activity level.

Cardio load is presented in a way that's much easier to understand, with a graph of your past history and recommended window, rather than Google’s single target. Bevel’s “coaching” is limited to a few lines of text commenting on how your workout went or how you slept, unlike Google’s long and often hallucinatory paragraphs. Bevel does offer a premium tier with AI coaching and an estimate of your “biological age,” which I haven’t tried. But overall, I find the free tier a much better way to view data from the Fitbit Air than either Google’s free or premium tiers. The integration between Bevel and Google Health is new as of this week, and I think it will be my preferred way to use the Fitbit Air going forward.