Staying in shape or just getting into shape in the first place is hard work. That's why we make new years' resolutions, sign up for gym memberships and healthy meal kit delivery services and then buy smart scales to track our weight loss trajectory. But one of the most powerful tools in your fitness arsenal actually goes on your wrist. Fitness trackers are the coaches, cheerleaders, reminders and scorecards that keep us on trackevery day.
Not all fitness trackers are the same, and choosing the right one is important, since not all are designed to accommodate the kinds of exercise you want to do, and some have extra features, like smartphone notifications and heart rate tracking.
There are a lot of fitness bands on the market many from Fitbit, the company that virtually invented the fitness tracker though there are a lot of other companies which make great health and fitness wearables as well. If youre shopping for a fitness band, the good news is that most devices cover the basics pretty well. With a few exceptions, virtually all of them count steps, calories, distance and other indications of your health and activity level.
But not all activity trackers are the same. When putting this list together, we looked for activity trackers that also had heart rate monitors, since thats a critical feature for accurately monitoring your activity level. Some devices do a better job with sleep tracking than others, and we tried to focus on models that offered richer sleep information. Devices that can sense barometric pressure can also track stairs, while many waterproof models can track swimming. Not everyone needs features like that, but we made sure to include a few models with those abilities.
Is the ability to get notifications from your smartphone important to you? Most fitness trackers have some smartphone features like notifications, but you might want a tracker that actually looks and works like a smartwatch, so we included a couple of those in the list as well.
And last but not least, with one exception the Apple Watch we disregarded fitness trackers that have a battery life under about three days, since no one wants to charge their wearables that often. Like any mobile device, the longer your battery life, the better, and some of the devices on this list can last a week or more.
Here's a guide to the 9 best fitness trackers you should consider.
Not all fitness trackers need to cost a small fortune. While most fitness devices start over $100 and prices can easily climb as high as $300, the Amazfit Bip while not bearing the most professional or reassuring name is a solid, dependable and surprisingly feature-laden budget fitness tracker. Its inexpensive enough that it almost qualifies as an impulse purchase.
Despite the low price, its a smartwatch with a wealth of fitness tracking capabilities. First of all, unlike most trackers and smartwatches, it has an always-on color display (thanks to a very low-power e-ink screen), which means you can actually use it as a watch without undue compromises. And the battery life can be measured in weeks, not days or (in the case of Apple) hours. You can expect to get between three and four weeks out of the watch between every charge even more than a month if you disable some power-hungry features you dont need.
As long as youre not expecting a super polished, premium experience, the Bip has a lot to offer. It does all the basic fitness tracking, such as steps, distance, sleep monitoring, heart rate and more. Unlike most fitness trackers, it includes GPS so it can track outdoor exercises without relying on your phone at all leave it home when you work out.
It also gets notifications from your phone, so you can monitor your texts and calendar appointments from your wrist just like with other trackers. But there are some compromises. When it comes to notifications, theyre not actionable, so to reply to a text, youll need to reach for your phone. And when it comes to fitness, theres a fairly narrow menu of trackable exercises, and swimming is not on it (the Bip is water-resistant, not waterproof, so its best not to submerge it for very long anyway).
Obviously, the Bip is a mixed bag, but its one of the few budget trackers that includes an always-on display, heart rate monitoring, and GPS.
The latest edition of the Apple Watch, called the Series 5, is a fairly incremental update from the Series 4, which many Apple users remain happy with and havent found the need to upgrade from. That said, the Apple Watch Series 5 is the first model from Apple ever to offer an always-on display, which makes it a compelling option. It does this without reducing the battery life you still get 18 hours or more between charges.
The fact that no Apple Watch, not even the new Series 5, can last for more than a full day without a recharge, means that it has no sleep tracking built in. Thats a serious disadvantage. Most other fitness trackers, and virtually all Fitbit models in particular, can sleep track. (If you really want to force your Apple Watch to monitor your sleep habits, there are third-party apps out there you can install.)
But if you can get past the lack of sleep tracking, youll be rewarded with a smartwatch that is very health and fitness conscious. It features female health-tracking, a full-time heart rate monitor, is waterproof for swim tracking and can track stairs (so your trips up and down flights of stairs dont go to waste). The watch can even perform an ECG (electrocardiogram) on demand. The Apple Watch Series 5 also recognizes a slew of exercises and will start tracking them semi-automatically. Unlike Fitbit, which just works, Apple pops a notification on the watch when it senses a workout and asks you to allow it to start tracking. Likewise, its not always good at knowing when your exercise is over, and youll need to end the session manually most of the time. But it does work, after a fashion, and thats something Apple could conceivably improve with software updates.
Want to try an Apple Watch but dont want to spend over $400 on the Series 5? You can get all of these features except the always-on display with a much less expensive Apple Watch Series 4.
Most fitness trackers are made for adults, and thats exactly what youd expect. But not everyone is a grownup what if you are looking for a simple fitness tracker for your kids? The Fitbit Ace 2 is made with children age six and older in mind. Not only is this a more affordable fitness band, but it disposes of features that kids dont need.
The Ace 2 doesnt have the ability to do cardio, calorie or heart rate tracking for example. Instead, it keeps things simple, with activity tracking that is limited to a step count and log of active minutes. It doesnt track specific exercises, advanced sleep-tracking (though it does monitor the time slept), female health tracking or any sort of advanced insights. Thats because the goal here isnt for a nine-year-old to stick to a fitness or weight loss plan. Its to reward your kids for running around outside.
To that end, the Ace 2 is rugged more so than most adult fitness trackers and has a five-day battery life. And if your kids like the Ace 2, they might develop healthy lifestyle habits early and eventually graduate to a more adult fitness tracker.
Fitbits Charge 3 looks like a lot of other fitness trackers; its a wristband with a rectangular display. The Charge 3 straddles the line between a band and a smartwatch in size, though if youre looking for a tracker with a somewhat oversized display, this might be right for you. The Charge 3 makes good use of the display with a sharp, monochrome screen. It shows time and basic fitness data, as well as getting notifications from your phone. Not only can you accept and reject calls on the Charge 3, but you can see texts and calendar alerts as well. You can also send Quick Replies short, custom and pre-configured messages without touching your phone.
But the Charge 3 is first and foremost a fi
tness tracker. It keeps track of all the basics like steps and distance, and it also recognizes when youre starting to exercise and tracks that for you as well. Its water-resistant and tracks swimming. If youre a runner, youll appreciate a feature that pauses tracking when you briefly stop running. That means stopping at a traffic light doesnt ruin your stats. Theres also a built-in heart rate sensor, which increases the fidelity of your fitness tracking.
If you wear the Charge 3 to bed, youll be rewarded with some fairly in-depth sleep tracking. The tracker also has female health tracking capabilities and does all this for about a full week between charges.
When you think about a fitness tracker, odds are good that you imagine something a lot like the Fitbit Inspire HR. It does all the things most people look for in a fitness tracker it counts steps, distance moved, and has some sleep tracking features as well. In addition, it automatically recognizes when youre doing a lot of common exercises, and can track that as well. (This model is waterproof and can track swimming.) The HR stands for heart rate and has a full-time continuous heart rate monitor built in as well. With a great price, a five-day battery life, and the ability to do most activity-related tasks, this might be the best choice for a lot of people.
The Fitbit Inspire HR has a fairly simple, understated design, which is unlikely to get in the way of your clothing choices. It comes in black and a small handful of more vibrate colors. Itll behave as a watch, after a fashion it doesnt have an always-on display, but the small display can show the time and fitness info, as well as receive notifications from your phone. So not only can you monitor your fitness data on the Inspire, but you can see the time, incoming text messages, and calls, and calendar alerts as well. No, its not a complete smartwatch, but it does most of the most common things youd look for on your wrist.
The Fitbit Ionic is a good choice for a fitness tracker if you would like to frequently leave your phone at home its a full-featured smartwatch and duplicates a lot of things youd ordinarily do with an iPhone or Android device, and it does it with a five-day battery life.
Because this is a Fitbit fitness tracker, you can expect it to do all the usual fitness tracking thats a given. It tracks steps and distance, as well as sleep tracking, automatic exercise detection, and thanks to a waterproof design, swim tracking as well. Thanks to the larger watch-like display, the Ionic can also help you through exercise sessions with on-screen workouts.
The Ionic is Fitbits top-of-the-line fitness tracker and is priced to match that status, but it also has a few features you generally wont find in many other devices. It has built-in GPS, for example. If youre a runner, you can leave your smartphone at home and the Ionic can accurately track your route all by itself. Its missing a few things as well, though. The Fitbit Versa 2, a similar but less-well-equipped smartwatch, has built-in Alexa voice assistance and an always-on display. Weirdly, both of those features are missing from this tracker.
While many fitness trackers are good all-around health and fitness devices, dedicated runners might want to lean into a device thats optimized for their particular sport of choice. Garmins Forerunner 245 is just such a fitness tracker. Shaped like a traditional round-faced wristwatch, its a GPS watch that has a deep and rich set of fitness tracking features.
First impressions are great. The Forerunner 245 has a bright, sharp and attractive display with a perfectly round face theres no notch or cutout like some smartwatches resort to. And its quite thin and light, making it feel more like a traditional watch than a high-tech device strapped to your wrist.
The Forerunner 245 automatically tracks a wealth of running and running-adjacent activities. Start to run, jump on a treadmill, cycle, row, or use an elliptical or stair stepper, and itll start to track the action. It also tracks yoga, walking, and a handful of other activities. Its also waterproof and can track swimming. Of course, this is a GPS watch, so theres no need to carry your phone with you when exercising.
And since you can leave your phone at home, Garmin added music support as well you can store about 500 songs (thats around 3.5GB of storage) on board, or play streaming audio through services like Spotify, Pandora or Deezer. Just connect a set of Bluetooth earbuds and youre in business.
Youll get about a week of use out of the Forerunner between charges, which means you can wear this tracker to bed. Yes, it has some cursory sleep tracking features, but if that feature is important to you, you might be better off with a Fitbit, which really does sleep tracking well.
You might think that Fitbit has the market sewn up on wrist-worn fitness trackers, and youd be mostly right that company has an extensive line of trackers at virtually every price point, which seems to leave very little air for other companies to breathe. But while Fitbit might be synonymous with fitness tracking in the minds of many people, companies like Garmin offer their own line of trackers, and some are excellent choices for managing your health and fitness.
The Garmin Vivosmart 4 is the latest version of the companys successful wrist-worn tracker, and it tracks everything youd expect it to, including steps and distance, as well as an estimate of your calories burned throughout the day. Theres also a built-in heart rate monitor and sleep tracking.
The display is a little smaller than what youll find on many trackers, but its framed with a stylish aluminum bezel, which adds a chic look to the device that is appealing for both men and women few fitness devices that the effort to look like anything other than a hunk of plastic.
You get about a full week of battery life out of each charge, and the Vivosmart 4 goes above and beyond with the ability to track a large array of exercises not just the ordinary stuff like biking, running, and treadmill, but pretty unusual activities like BMX, motocross, rafting and hang gliding. Thats right hang gliding. Overall, the Vivosmart 4 tracks a greater range of activities and records more in-depth data than most fitness trackers on the market, making this a superb choice for people who are deeply invested in quantifying themselves and their activities.
Some fitness trackers, like Fitbit models, are designed to be completely phone-agnostic. The Apple Watch is designed exclusively for iPhone owners (as you would expect). And then there are models like the Samsung Galaxy Fit, which given the Samsung branding, you might expect to work only with Android. But youd be wrong; this fitness tracker works with both Android and iOS.
In fact, the Galaxy fit doesnt even run the Android operating system. Instead, its powered by Samsungs Real Time OS, though that will hardly matter very much in day-to-day operations. Still, the energy-efficient OS is what helps the Galaxy Fit get a full week of battery life between charges.
The tracker itself is a band-style device that you wear on your wrist like the Inspire HR or Charge 3 from Fitbit. It has a color AMOLED display a little on the small side, but plenty large enough to show fitness stats, and the color display looks nice compared to other trackers that are monochrome.
As youd expect from a fitness tracker, it handles all the basic stats and can recognize and start tracking a number of exercises as well, though its often slow on the uptake, not unlike the Apple Watch 5, which also can take some time to figure out what youre doing. The Galaxy Fit is waterproof and can track swim exercises as well.
If you wear the Galaxy Fit to bed, itll do detailed sleep tracking that includes the time you fell asleep and woke, along with an analysis of your sleep stages. One unique feature: The Fit also tracks your stress. A stress widget displays your stress level throughout the day, which could be helpful
if you are trying to reduce your blood pressure and stop sweating the small stuff.
One weirdly annoying aspect of the Galaxy Fit is that the phone experience is weirdly disjointed. It relies on a pair of apps one to manage the tracker itself, and another fitness app similar to the Fitbit fitness app.
Read more:
9 Of The Best Fitness Trackers For Every Lifestyle And Fitness Need - Forbes
