Severe burns from Fitbit Ionic smartwatches result in $12M fine for Google

Between 2018 and 2020, Google (which owns the Fitbit brand) learnt of at least 115 cases of battery overheating in its Fitbit Ionic smartwatch. Of these, 78 were reports of actual burn injuries, including two instances of third-degree burns and four of second-degree burns. The company finally recalled the hazardous wearable in March, 2022, but it was too late.

In such cases, where it is deemed that a product “contained a defect that created an unreasonable risk of serious injury or death to consumers”, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) requires that the issue be reported to it immediately, which Google failed to do. As a result, the company is required (and has agreed) to pay a fine of $12.25 million to the CPSC.

The settlement agreement also includes a condition that Fitbit conduct an internal audit of the effectiveness of compliance policies, procedures, systems and training and submit a report annually regarding the same.

Interestingly, this comes only a day after Google posted a consumer notice about a possible (though supposedly unlikely) risk of injuries from overheating batteries in the Fitbit Sense and Fitbit Versa 3 smartwatches. Both models have been succeeded by their respective newer versions, namely the Fitbit Sense 2 (currently discounted by 21% on Amazon) and Fitbit Versa 4 (currently discounted by 17% on Amazon).