Smartwatch Fitness Tracking How Accurate is it
The best fitness trackers 2024: Get active with these ace wellness devices
Best fitness trackers: Quick menu
The best fitness trackers are a simple, accessible fitness tool that can give you plenty of information about your health, track your workouts, and nudge you towards a healthier lifestyle. If you're looking to get fit in 2024, it's one of the best investments you can make in yourself.
These bands track metrics such as sleep, steps, calories expended, and log your workouts. Once your data is measured they can start to give you a better picture of your overall health and fitness, allowing you to tweak your habits to more positive ones.All fitness trackers are different, but there are some basic requirements to look for, including long battery life, on-wrist comfort, built-in GPS, and the ability to track your fitness and monitor your heart rate.
Of course, depending on your budget some fitness trackers may be more advanced than the cheaper versions, so you may find yourself picking which features are the most important to you.Most of the best smartwatches and all of the best running watches contain fitness tracking hardware, but are often more expensive than the simpler band-style trackers. Check our fitness tracker vs smartwatch guide to find out the difference, while you can also check out best smart rings: a newer category becoming more popular.
The quick list
Do you want to quickly find the best fitness tracker for you? Take a look at this at-a-glance overview, which picks out the most important features of each device so you can quickly narrow down your options, then jump down the page for a more detailed look.
Best overall
This lovely-looking fitness tracker ticks all of the boxes for comfort, style, and accuracy with a bright AMOLED display and excellent heart rate tracking.
Read more below
Best budget
If you're on a strict budget, you've got everything you need in this slick tracker from Huawei, including basic tracking and a good-looking color screen and two weeks of battery.
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Best premium
A feature-packed fitness band that's a solid companion for all kinds of activities just stick to the indoors as we weren't impressed by the GPS on offer here.
Read more below
Best for sleep
For incredibly accurate tracking, give the Oura smart ring a try. Sleep monitoring and heart rate tracking are excellent and data is presented in a clear and accessible way.
Read more below
Best Apple Watch
If you want an Apple Watch to track your health and fitness, the Apple Watch SE 2 isn't nearly as cheap as some of the other trackers on the list, but it's the cheapest up-to-date Apple Watch you can get right now.
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Best Garmin fitness tracker
A solid option of when it comes to fitness-focused activity tracking, and offers access to the advanced features from the Garmin Connect app. A bit long in the tooth, but still a very good choice.
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The best fitness trackers of 2024
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The best fitness tracker overall
The best fitness tracker overall
Specifications
Screen: Yes
Heart rate tracker: Yes
Waterproof: Yes
Activity tracking: Yes
GPS: No
Battery life: Up to 7 days
Compatibility: Android/iOS
Reasons to buy
+Bright AMOLED display
+Slim, stylish design
+Excellent heart rate tracking
The Fitbit Luxe is our number one fitness tracker thanks to its excellent health monitoring tools, stylish design, and the strength of the fantastic Fitbit app that works alongside it.
The Luxe tracks everyday activity, sleep, heart rate, respiration and workouts. When we put it to the test, we were particularly impressed by its heart rate monitoring accuracy, which was on par with much more expensive running watches. Your daily data is presented on a super-sharp color AMOLED display, which offers lots of detail in a very small space. That means less scrolling, which is always a win in our books.
The Luxe is also Fitbit's best-looking fitness tracker to date, with a stainless steel case and buckle and a choice of either a soft silicone band or a gold-toned stainless steel bracelet. In our tests, it was comfortable to wear all day and night, allowing us to build a complete picture of our activity and sleeping habits.
Fitness trackers work best when worn every day, so they can build up a full picture of your habits and lifestyle, and the Luxe is one that you'll genuinely want to. There's no onboard GPS; instead, the Luxe needs a connection to your phone, which is its only real drawback. If that's a deal-breaker for you, the slightly pricier Fitbit Charge 5 would be a better choice.
Read our full Fitbit Luxe review
The best budget fitness tracker
The best budget fitness tracker
Specifications
Screen: Yes
Heart rate tracker: Yes
Waterproof: Yes
Activity tracking: Yes
GPS: Yes
Battery life: 14 days standby
Compatibility: Android/iOS
Reasons to buy
+Two-week battery life
+Good looking color screen
Reasons to avoid
-Not available in the US
-No GPS
This is one of the best fitness trackers you can buy if you're on a strict budget, and it has impressive specs considering how much it costs. The Huawei Band 7 comes with no GPS, making it a less-than-stellar choice for outdoor activities, and it also has excellent in-depth sleep-tracking capabilities.
In our tests, we found the color display easily readable even in direct sunlight, allowing you to check your workout stats at a glance, and the heart rate monitor proved accurate, giving results comparable with a much more expensive dedicated sports watch (something that's incredibly helpful for interval training).
Huawei's TruSeen 4.0 algorithms means SpO2 is always running, a rarity for trackers this cheap, but its biggest downside is its lack of availability in the US thanks to sanctions on Huawei devices. Nevertheless, if you can get it, if you're looking for an affordable entry-level device for your first foray into the world of fitness tracking, the Band 7 should be on your shortlist.
Read our full Huawei Band 7 review
The best premium fitness tracker
The best premium fitness tracker
Specifications
Screen: Yes
Heart rate tracker: Yes
Waterproof: Yes, 5ATM
Activity tracking: Yes
GPS: Yes
Battery life: Up to 7 days
Compatibility: Android/iOS
Reasons to buy
+Feature-packed for a fitness band
+Decent battery life
+Can relay your HR to gym equipment
Reasons to avoid
-Severely flaky GPS
-No altimeter
-Heart rate accuracy not the best
TheFitbitCharge 6 is the most advanced band-style fitness tracker you can buy from Fitbit these days, and it's packed with more features than you'll find from the Fitbit Luxe at the top of this list. This is why it's our top pick if you're looking for a tracker to suit a lot of different needs and workout types.
The Fitbit Charge 6 looks a bit like a smaller, and slightly simplified, Fitbit Sense 2. It has some impressive high-end features, including ECG heart health readings and the an EDA stress sensor.
It's an impressive tracker, but it's not the best Fitbitoverall because we found the GPS tracking to be significantly lacking. If you run with a phone, that's no big deal. But this tracker certainly won't compete with the best running watches out there.
But if youre just after a casual wearable tracker for a bunch of different purposes, the Fitbit Charge 6 is still great and, as ever, we find that Fitbit's sleep tracking reliability here to be well above average.
Read our full Fitbit Charge 6 review
The best sleep tracker
The best sleep tracker and best smart ring
Specifications
Screen: No
Heart rate tracker: Yes
Waterproof: Yes
Activity tracking: Yes
GPS: No
Battery life: 4-7 days
Compatibility: Android/iOS
Reasons to buy
+Accurate 24/7 heart rate tracking
+Impressive sleep monitoring
+Stats clearly presented
Reasons to avoid
-More expensive than a watch
-Not all features released
The Oura smart ring is a unique fitness tracker that slips onto your finger, where it's able to take much more accurate measurements of heart rate and blood oxygen saturation than a device worn on your wrist. It's very good for sleep, sitting at the top of our best sleep tracker and best smart ring lists. The newest version, released in late 2021, has an upgraded optical heart rate sensor that tracks your pulse 24/7, allowing you to see exactly how it varies throughout the day.
There are seven sensors to track skin temperature and tell you whether it's within normal limits, plus an improved sleep-tracking algorithm without compromising weight or battery life.In our tests, we found it an intuitive device that presented data in neat ways, such as restorative time. It's great for a holistic overview of your health: however, it's not the sort of tracker you want to monitor dedicated workouts such as runs and gym sessions.
The main downside of the Oura smart ring is its price; plus, Oura introduced a subscription service, which gives access to extra tools and insights for a monthly fee. Only the upside, you get six months free when you buy the ring, and anyone upgrading from the second-gen version gets a lifetime membership for free.
Read our full Oura (Generation 3) review
The best Apple Watch
5. Apple Watch SE 2
The best Apple Watch for most people
Specifications
Screen: Yes
Heart rate tracker: Yes
Waterproof: Yes, 5ATM
Activity tracking: Yes
GPS: Yes
Battery life: 18 hours
Compatibility: iOS
Reasons to buy
+Impressive built-in GPS
+Affordable
+Light and comfortable
Reasons to avoid
-iOS only
-18 hours battery life
The Apple Watch SE 2 is the best Apple Watch for most people. While the Apple Watch Ultra 2 is the overall best from a technical standpoint, we believe most people browsing this guide are unlikely to want to spend $799 / 799 / AU$1,399 on a premium adventure watch.
The SE 2 is Apple's cheapest up-to-date offering, and unlike most of the entries on this list, it's a true smartwatch. That means it pairs seamlessly with your iPhone to deliver a more complete communications experience, not just stripped-down notifications.
It's not cheap compared to some of the fitness bands on this list, but it's a powerful fitness tool with a smorgasbord of excellent third-party apps, such as AllTrails and Smartgym. Its own native Workout app is great, especially for running and cycling since the watchOS 10 update.
In our Apple Watch SE 2 review we did write " width="50"Apples cheaper smartwatch is all most people will need". It's also got neat safety features like Car Crash Detection, making it perhaps the best fitness tracker choice for iOS users.
Read our full Apple Watch SE 2 review
The best Garmin fitness tracker
The best Garmin fitness tracker
Specifications
Screen: Yes, monochrome touchscreen
Heart rate tracker: Yes
Waterproof: Yes
Activity tracking: Yes
GPS: No
Battery life: 7 days
Compatibility: Android/iOS
Reasons to buy
+Accurate sleep tracking
+Cheaper than a Fitbit Charge 6
+Excellent free app
Reasons to avoid
-Showing its age
-Monochrone display
-The Garmin Vivosmart 5 review is Garmin's band-shaped fitness tracker offering. It's showing its age these days, but it's still a good choice if you're looking for a band-based activity tracker and want Garmin's fantastic Garmin Connect app.
It's old and it doesn't have onboard GPS, but the Vivosmart 5 still manages to deliver an impressive set of features to monitor your everyday health and well-being. One of the most useful features is sleep tracking, which not only monitors your sleep stages throughout the night, as many fitness trackers do but also gives you practical advice to maximize your sleep time.
Unlike Fitbit devices, there are no additional paywalls here. The Garmin Connect app contains lots of deep insights, the ability to generate training plans, check out historic data, monitor your recovery and lots more. It's just a shame there's no onboard GPS for monitoring your location during outdoor cardio workouts, generally Garmin's biggest strength.
Read our full Garmin Vivosmart 5 review
How to choose the best fitness tracker
When choosing a fitness tracker, you must consider what type of activity you enjoy most. If you're primarily interested in getting outdoors and walking more, you can get away with picking up a more affordable watch that doesn't offer GPS tracking. If, however, you're getting into cycling or running, a device like the Fitbit Charge 5, with its built-in GPS module, would be a better choice to track your route and speed accurately.
Next, just how much detail do you want? Some fitness trackers (like the Charge 5) give you a vast array of stats with detailed analysis, while others (such as the Xiaomi Mi Smart Band 6) keep things uncomplicated.
Then there's the matter of personal style. As we've already mentioned, a fitness tracker works best when you wear it all day and night, so it's not frivolous to think about how it looks. If you already have a favorite watch that you don't want to stop wearing, the Oura smart ring is a good alternative and is so light and compact you'll forget you're even wearing it.
Screen size and resolution are a consideration too. If you sometimes struggle to make out the text on a small screen, it might be worth investing in a fitness tracker with an AMOLED display, which is clearer and emits more light than the typical memory-in-pixel (MiP) screen used by many cheaper devices.
What is a fitness tracker?
A fitness tracker is a device (typically a wristband, as smartwatches like the Fitbit Sense 2 are generally counted as watches rather than trackers) that monitors statistics such as your heart rate, the number of steps you take each day, and how long you spend working out. Most fitness trackers have several dedicated modes for recording different forms of exercise, and some also have GPS for tracking your location during runs, walks and bike rides. Most fitness trackers also monitor how long you spend sleeping, and in each sleep stage.
All this data is sent to an app on your smartphone, where you can track changes over time. Most apps give you virtual 'awards' for achieving particular goals, such as taking 10,000 steps per day or going to bed on time.
Why do you need a fitness tracker?
It can be tough to break old habits and develop new ones, and a fitness tracker can help give you the encouragement you need. Tracking the number of steps you take each day and aiming for a particular target might be simple, but it can push you to make simple changes (like getting off the bus a stop earlier, or walking short distances rather than driving), which can add up to make a significant difference over time.
Which fitness trackers are most accurate?
Most modern fitness trackers do an excellent job in tracking heart rate, stress and sleep accurately. The latest Fitbit and Garmin fitness trackers, including the Fitbit Inspire 3, Fitbit Charge, Garmin Vivosmart 5 and Garmin Venu 2 Sq, have optical heart rate sensors that can keep up with quick changes in heart rate, and thanks to accompanying apps, they offer a slew of health and fitness features, too, to help you get and stay fit.
What makes a good fitness tracker?
A good fitness tracker is one that you'll wear every day and will help you build up a complete picture of your health. With that knowledge, you can start to make small tweaks that will help you sleep better, lower your resting heart rate, improve your fitness, and generally feel better.
How we test the best fitness trackers
When we test fitness trackers, we wear them all day and night to see how much data they gather, how accurate this data is and how comfortable they are to live with. Do they get in the way while you're writing, feel awkward while trying to sleep, or get itchy at the end of the day?
We also put them to the test with various workouts, including indoor cycling (to test the accuracy and responsiveness of each device's heart rate monitor) and running (to check GPS accuracy, where appropriate). We compare the results to those gathered using a reliable high-end sports watch and sometimes we're pleasantly surprised. Visit TechRadar's How We Test page for more.
Latest updates
25/03/2024: Altered the categories on this page and reduced the number of overall entries.
