If you're looking for a smartwatch with a focus on fitness tracking, Fitbit is probably one of the biggest brands on your radar. From the company's affordable fitness trackers to its more fully fledged smartwatches, it has just about every section of the market covered.
So, if you're looking for a watch that'll just keep track of your steps, you'll find a Fitbit for that. Need to see text message notifications from your phone? Yep, there's a Fitbit that'll do that as well. GPS tracking, 24/7 heart rate monitoring, and swim tracking are also available options. On some of the more premium models, you can even get guided workouts, with each activity displayed on the watch's screen. A handful of the watches will even let you interface with Amazon's Alexa for handy voice commands.
With so many options available, picking a Fitbit can actually be tricky. That's why we've rounded up the company's best options and put all the pertinent details right where they'll be easy for you to find.
TL;DR – These are the Best Fitbits:
- Fitbit Charge 5
- Fitbit Versa 3
- Fitbit Ionic
- Fitbit Sense
- Fitbit Inspire 2
- Fitbit Versa 2
- Fitbit Ace 3
- Fitbit Luxe
- Apple Watch Series 5
1. Fitbit Charge 5
Best Fitbit Fitness Band
Fitbit has expanded its lineup of fitness trackers with many smartwatches that have fitness features at their heart, but the Fitbit Charge 5 is a fitness band first and foremost. And, it’s Fitbit’s most capable fitness band. This new model provides some serious tracking for everything from exercise and your heart rate to your stress, sleep, and even your heart rhythm with its ECG function.
The Fitbit Charge 5 can automatically track a variety of activities, and it’s built-in GPS will let you attach locations and distances to your activities. You won’t have to recharge the band often either, as it can provide up to seven days worth of battery life. If you prefer to always have the time just a glance away, then the always-on display feature may be worth the tradeoff to battery life for you. As it’s a fitness-first device, you won’t get a built-in smart assistant or voice features, but the Fitbit Charge 5 can display notifications from your phone, and it’ll even let you send quick replies through Android devices. It also supports Fitbit Pay, so you can leave your cash and cards at home when you go for a run or bike ride and still stop to buy a calorie booster midway with just your watch.
2. Fitbit Versa 3
Best Fitbit Smartwatch
The Fitbit Versa line has come a long way, and with the Fitbit Versa 3, it gets even better. This new model continues to offer the smartwatch-meets-fitness-tracker role that the Fitbit Versa line has offered so far. It delivers a sizable AMOLED display to let you see all the details on your exercises as well as notifications and plenty more in full color while also helping save on battery life compared to the LCD displays found on some smartwatches – we're talking over six days. The latest update even makes it quick to switch watch faces to suit your style and needs throughout the day.
You'll get plenty of smarts in the Versa 3 both for fitness and everyday use. The Versa 3's combination of sensors and GPS will allow you to readily track a ton of different exercises, and the watch can even guide you through exercises by displaying various workouts. With water resistance down to 50 meters, you can even take it for a swim to track your laps. It’s also got a suite of sensors for collecting health data, including heart rate, blood oxygen saturation, and sleep data. When paired with your phone, you can also get notifications from apps or use Alexa or Google Assistant to perform various actions with just your voice. Google Assistant can even talk back to you over the watch’s integrated speaker.
3. Fitbit Ionic
Best Fitbit Smartwatch for Leaving Your Phone Behind
Looking for a gold-plated smartwatch that looks good when you’re not working out? Then strap on an Ionic, which does virtually everything the Versa 2 can do (with a couple of weird exceptions, like the lack of an always-on display, Alexa, and voice replies to text messages). It has all the usual Fitbit tracking—steps, calories, sleep, exercise, heart rate, and even both floors climbed and swim tracking.
But a few features take center stage. Not only does the Ionic have the biggest and best screen of any tracker in the Fitbit lineup, its built-in GPS means this is the only Fitbit watch you can take out for a jog and leave your phone at home. The Ionic also has an exclusive feature: Adidas-branded on-screen workouts.
4. Fitbit Sense
Best Health Monitoring Fitbit
Many Fitbit devices are great at helping you keep track of your activity, but the Fitbit Sense takes it even further. This smartwatch not only will automatically track various fitness activities and monitor your heart rate, but it will also check your blood oxygen saturation levels and skin temperature, helping you monitor your health and stress, and it can be used with the Fitbit app to track menstrual health. Fitbit’s latest update has made that SpO2 data even more accessible than before.
An ECG app will let you use the Fitbit Sense to analyze your heart for atrial fibrillation, and the watch can give you notifications based on your heart rate, including when you’ve got an especially high or low rate. Combining many of these features with a 6-day battery life, the Fitbit Sense will let you monitor your health day and night. The Fitbit Sense also offers a variety of smartwatch features to make it a great all-in-one device, including the ability to receive and respond to notifications, to use Alexa or Google Assistant, and to make payments with a tap using Fitbit Pay.
5. Fitbit Inspire 2
Best Budget Band
When you're buying a budget fitness tracker, you want to make sure that it's not doing the bare minimum: step counting. While it can be handy to check your baseline activity by monitoring how many steps you're getting in each day, the Fitbit Inspire 2 can go well beyond that while still remaining affordable.
The Fitbit Inspire 2 will count your steps and automatically detect various exercises to track and catalog them for you. All the while, it can monitor your heart rate, so you can see just how hard you were working. With a water-resistant design that can go down to 50 meters below water, you're safe to take this fitness band in the pool and in the shower, so you really don't have to take it off except roughly every 10 days to recharge the battery. Also thanks to a recent partnership with Tile, Fitbit Inspire 2 owners can locate their devices using Tile’s Bluetooth tracking system.
6. Fitbit Versa 2
Best Budget Smartwatch
If you like the sound of the experience available on the Fitbit Versa 3 but don’t want to pay that steep price, you’ll love the Fitbit Versa 2. The two smartwatches actually shared a ton of features with pretty much the biggest difference coming down to the lack of on-board GPS for the Fitbit Versa 2. In contrast, the Fitbit Versa 2 does have some features the Versa 3 omitted, like a small pool of user-accessible storage to load music onto for direct playback on Bluetooth headphones – something that’s locked behind specific apps on the Versa 3.
The Fitbit Versa 2 still offers a ton of automatic exercise tracking, and it can keep an eye on your pulse and blood-oxygen saturation. It’s got the same water resistance as well, making it a useful tool for keeping track of your swims. And, best of all, you can get it for right around $150.
7. Fitbit Ace 3
Best Band for Kids
Fitbits for kids? Giving your kids a fitness tracker might seem extra, but you might be surprised at how it'll challenge and excite them about getting up and around. For tracking, this fitness band includes the basics with a pedometer for step tracking, fitness activity monitoring, and sleep tracking. Since this model was made for kids it lacks some of the more premium features like a heart rate sensor and other advanced sensors, but that also keeps the list price down to $79.
This fitness band was built for kids from the ground up from the colorful bands to the cutesy animated clock faces featuring bunny, a cat, a Martian, and spaceship designs. Aside from being a fashion item, kids can also use it as a practical starting smart band by turning on message and call noticiations. It's has also been ruggardized for the school life with a swim-proof design and battery life stretches on to eight days.
8. Fitbit Luxe
Best Stylish Fitbit
If you’re trying to keep track of your steps and your health in style, you can do it with the Fitbit Luxe. This takes Fitbit’s tracking tech and packs it into a classy little number that can fly under the radar with its bracelet-like design. You’ll get your choice of stainless steel frames in soft gold, black, or platinum. That frame blends smoothly to the rounded glass display of the tracker.
The small footprint of the Fitbit Luxe keeps it subtle on your wrist. But, it can still deliver capable tracking. It offers a 5-day battery life to keep up with you throughout the week, and it can monitor your heart rate nonstop. If you want to see how you’re sleeping, it’s ready for that as well. You can set it up to track 20 different exercises, and you won’t need to take it off when you shower after (or go for a swim) thanks to its water resistance down to 50 meters.
9. Apple Watch Series 5
Best Fitbit that’s Not a Fitbit
Fitbit has cornered the market on fitness trackers, but Apple really wants in on the health and fitness biz as well. The Apple Watch Series 5 is the first model worthy of being recommended in place of a Fitbit, though. The always-on display can be configured with a wealth of health and fitness complications, and like most Fitbits, the watch automatically senses a variety of exercises.
It can’t compete with the multi-day battery life of most Fitbits, nor does it do sleep tracking (at least, not without a third-party app and some serious compromises). But by syncing the watch to Strava or myFitnessSync, the Fitbit app can draw on Apple Watch tracking data, which is just short of magic and lets you continue using the Fitbit app even after switching to Apple.
What to Look for in a Fitness Tracker
If you’re in the market for a fitness tracker, the good news is that most Fitbits share the same set of core features. Most fitness trackers track steps, exercise, and activity level, as well as provide at least a rudimentary sort of sleep tracking—and trackers approximate a calorie count as well. (The only fitness tracker that purports to measure your actual calorie count is the very contentious Healbe Gobe, which claims to sense your glucose level.) From that basic set of features, though, trackers can vary quite a bit, with simpler models clocking in under $100 and advanced smartwatch models costing $200 or more.
These days, virtually all fitness bands can conveniently detect when you’re starting certain common kinds of exercise, but not all trackers are equipped to measure every kind of exercise. If you’re a swimmer or want to track stairs, your options will narrow significantly. And if you want to leave your phone at home when you go for a jog, look for models with integrated GPS (and perhaps even the ability to store music).
The key takeaway is that you don’t need a tracker bristling with sensors that can do everything—it depends upon what you want to track. If you never swim, you obviously don’t need swim tracking. And if you’re mainly trying to get your 10,000 steps in and don’t do intense workouts, you probably don’t need a heart rate monitor.
Since most fitness trackers go on your wrist, some try to replicate some smartwatch functionality. Many bands can display phone call and text notifications, for example, but the best smartwatch experience comes from a fitness tracker that’s actually shaped like a watch, with a large screen, support for apps, and perhaps even the option to show on-screen workout while you exercise.
Finally, keep an eye on battery life. While most Fitbits can run for at least four days on a charge, some can go as long as a week. And that’s not necessarily true of non-Fitbit trackers. The Apple Watch, for example, needs to be charged daily, which is one reason it has no built-in sleep tracking.
While the Fitbit device itself is a big part of the equation, don't forget that Fitbit also has a large community of active users. Getting a Fitbit will let you join the community, sharing exercise tips, troubleshooting issues with devices, and plenty more. There's also Fitbit Premum, which can offer guided workouts to help you reach your fitness goals.
Dave Johnson has been writing about gaming and tech since the days of the Palm Pilot. See him shout into the Twitter void @davejoh.
Mark Knapp is a regular contributor to IGN and an irregular Tweeter on Twitter @Techn0Mark
