It’s 2021. If your watch isn’t at the very least tracking your steps, it belongs in a museum. The era of the smart watch is well and truly upon us, and there’s a plethora of options out there to fit every wrist and need.
Of course, any good smart watch will do far more than step tracking: notifications, music control, sleep tracking – there’s heaps on offer. Here are the best smart watches you can buy right now.
TL;DR – These are the Best Smart Watches:
- Apple Watch Series 7
- Ticwatch E3
- Amazfit Bip U Pro
- Samsung Galaxy Watch 4
- Garmin Enduro
- Fitbit Versa 3
- Skagen Falster 3
- Casio G-Shock GBD-H1000
- Polar Ignite
1. Apple Watch Series 7
Best Smart Watch
The Apple Watch has received a major update with the introduction of the Series 7. You’ll still find a host of handy features from 24/7 heart rate tracking, step count, and fitness tracking to more advanced features like the ECG and fall detection. Where the Apple Watch Series 7 pushes things further forward is in the design.
The new watch expands the screen by shrinking the bezels, giving you almost 20% more screen than what was on the Series 6. You can keep that display going all day with an 18-hour battery life and always-on-display function. The brightness level is also improved in indoor environments, making it easier for you to take a quick peek at your watch. When the battery is low, the watch can recharge 33% faster than its predecessor. If you’re a fan of sleep data, you’ll also enjoy the watch’s ability to provide eight hours worth of sleep tracking after just eight minutes of charging, letting you get enough juice for the job just by charging while you get ready for bed.
2. Ticwatch E3
Best Budget Smart Watch
Ticwatch has made a name for itself with compelling smartwatches that keep the price down. The Ticwatch E3 is the latest in the economic series of wearables, and it features plenty to get excited about at a $200 price point. To start, you’re getting a smartwatch powered by Wear OS, so you’ll have access to a wide app ecosystem, Google Assistant, and handy integration of notifications from an Android phone. The watch is also running on the newer Snapdragon Wear 4100 chip for wearables.
The Ticwatch E3 can track a bunch of different activities from runs and cycling to swimming and yoga. All the while, the Ticwatch E3 can keep track of your heart rate for more insight into your fitness. It can also monitor blood oxygen saturation. You can even keep the monitoring going overnight with sleep tracking. When you’re on the go, you can use the built-in GPS, and you can even make NFC payments with Google Pay.
3. Amazfit Bip U Pro
Best Ultra Cheap Smart Watch
If you think you can't get much of a smart watch for $60, Amazfit has some news for you. The Amazfit Bip U Pro offers a staggering number of capabilities for a watch at this price point. For one, you're getting plenty of fitness tracking potential. The Bip U Pro can monitor your heart rate 24/7, check your blood oxygen levels, and track your movement. These sensors can also help you gauge your sleep quality. The watch is also loaded with sports modes for over 60 activities from running and cycling to Tai Chi and curling. You can also track your swimming, as this watch is ready to go for a dip thanks to water resistance down to fifty meters.Amazfit packs all this capability into a compact watch that's just 11.4mm thick and 31 grams. And yet there's still a 1.43-inch display. That display is of the transflective variety that lets you see it in broad daylight without needing to use a power-draining backlight, which helps the Bip U Pro offer up to 9 days of battery life. Really driving the smarts of this watch home, Amazfit has integrated Amazon's Alexa, so your $60 gets you all that tracking capability plus a smart assistant on your wrist.
4. Samsung Galaxy Watch 4
Best Smart Watch for Android
Samsung has just pushed Wear OS and its own Galaxy Watch brand forward with the introduction of the Galaxy Watch 4. Samsung managed to shrink down the dimensions of this watch and boosted the display size and resolution at the same time, giving you a device that’s more elegant and less bulky without trading out functionality.
The Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 is really going all in on functionality, too. You’ll get serious health tracking capabilities with not only heart rate and step tracking but even blood oxygen saturation, ECG, and a special Biological Impedance Analysis tool to measure body composition for body fat and muscle percentages. With a 40-hour battery life, you can get through two days and tack some sleep tracking onto the capabilities of the watch, and you’ll be able to charge it up simply on a wireless charging pad or even on the back of a Samsung phone with Wireless PowerShare.
5. Garmin Enduro
Best Smart Watch for Runners
The Garmin Enduro is the smart watch you’ll want when you’re planning to really go the distance. Garmin loads the watch up with features to help you keep track of your exercise and even help you complete that exercise. With tracking for heart rate, movement, altitude, skin temperature, blood oxygen saturation, and your GPS location, the watch can provide valuable data for your activities. And, you can plan out specific runs on the watch ahead of time and get useful information on what’s ahead of you.
Where the Garmin Enduro really steps ahead is in battery life – the hint is in the name. Without any special considerations, this watch can run for 50 days with smart watch features enabled, and it can even go for 70 hours with GPS added into the mix. But, it also has built-in solar panels that can stretch that battery life considerably, so you can keep running without needing to worry about when your next recharge will be.
6. Fitbit Versa 3
Best Fitness Smart Watch
Fitbit has continued to push forward with its Versa line-up of smart watches, and the latest model can compete with the Apple Watch. The Fitbit Versa 3 offers up a renewed smart watch-meets-fitness-tracker with even further improved battery life. Now, you can keep track of your exercises, enjoying automatic activity tracking, for almost a full week without needing to recharge. Heart rate, blood oxygen, and sleep tracking can further help you monitor your health. And, while a week-long battery life with that kind of tracking might not be too impressive for a fitness tracker, the Fitbit Versa 3 also functions as a smart watch.You can get app notifications on the watch and respond to them with quick replies or through dictation using the built-in microphone. You can stream audio on Pandora or Deezer or control audio playback for your phone. You've also got a virtual assistant on your wrist with support for Alexa and Google Assistant. Now that's smart.
7. Skagen Falster 3
Best Looking Smart Watch
Fossil and its licensed brands have been churning out gorgeous smart watches for quite some time, and it offers the most variety of any brand. But for our money, the Skagen Falster is the best of the bunch.You get the full-blown display, but the design of the watch is quite minimal. It’s a unisex 42mm case size with a choice of leather, silicone or metal mesh strap.
There are features like a heart rate monitor and NFC for Google Pay, but sadly Google’s health tracking isn’t as good as Apple’s or Fitbit’s. Thankfully, the Play Store gives you access to third-party apps like Strava that go some way to scratching that itch. If you want a Wear OS smart watch that looks the part, the Falster 3 delivers.
8. Casio G-Shock GBD-H1000
Best Rugged Smart Watch
The Casio G-Shock GBD-H1000 is designed to run and run and run wherever you go. It may be one of the chunkiest smart watches on this list, but it's packed full of features. It has a suite of sensors to track your fitness activities, including your steps, heart rate, location, VO2Max, and even the altitude and temperature. With a water resistance rating for up to 200 meters underwater, or 20 ATM of pressure, you can get truly adventurous with this smart watch.It may have a simple display, but the Casio G-Shock GBD-H1000 offers easy button navigation so you won't be fussing around with a tiny touchscreen. You also can still get plenty of information on that display, including notifications from your phone while connected over Bluetooth. The story just gets more exciting with the battery life. When the watch is just tracking the time, your steps, and delivering notifications, it can run for up to a year. What's more, you can actually keep it topped up in that mode because it's capable of drawing some solar power to recharge the battery. Of course, if you want to use more of the sensors and tracking, you'll want to use the USB charging, which can give you 14 hours of continuous tracking power in just 2.5 hours of charging.
9. Polar Ignite
Best Smart Sports Watch
Maybe you want a smart watch that's ready for all of your fitness activities without looking like it was made for them. That's where the Polar Ignite can come in. This smart watch isn't so overt about its sportiness compared to some of the other fitness smart watches that have massive frames with all sorts of chamfered edges. It's not just low-key but also low-profile in comparison. At just 8.5mm thick, the Polar Ignite is thinner than all the other smart watches on this list, making it a great partner for exercise since it won't bulk up your wrist.And, when it comes to sports, the Polar Ignite is ready for serious tracking with an advanced heart rate sensor and built-in GPS that can keep track of many activities, including swimming, and give you detailed summaries of your exercises. The watch can even give you training tips and track your sleep. Despite its compact size, the Polar Ignite offers up to five days of battery life with continuous heart-rate tracking or up to 17 hours with GPS enabled in Training Mode.
What to look for in a smart watch
Smartphone compatibility
This is the big one. Your choice of smartphone will determine your list of possible smart watch options. The good news is that that list has grown massively for both iOS and Android camps, but there are still some notable absentees, the biggest of which is the Apple Watch still being an iPhone-exclusive.
Google has made big headway in equalizing the Wear OS for Android and iPhone users, but it’s not a totally level playing field. And among all the smart watches that work with both platforms, there tend to be a few differences, often in the messaging experience. So pay special attention to those.
Battery life
We’re all accustomed to plugging in our smartphones at night, but watches? Are you serious? Sadly in most cases, it’s something you need to think about. But battery life is almost always a trade-off.
The Apple Watch and many of the Wear OS smart watches have rich screens and deep features but require daily (or nightly) charging in return. Fitbit’s watches will run for several days and unlocks sleep tracking, but the watches have a less premium design.
Also think not just about the features you want, but how much you’ll be using them. Weekend warriors will need to be much more conscientious about running the GPS in an Apple Watch than a Garmin Forerunner 945, for example.
To LTE or not to LTE
For a long time all smart watches required a Bluetooth connection with your phone in order to receive texts, make calls and play music, but slowly we’re seeing more watches cut the tether and offer a standalone data connection.
This can be handy if you want to workout without a phone in your pocket. On the other hand, it will hammer that battery life a little more, particularly under intense use.
A data connection will also come with a monthly cost, usually around $10 a month tied to your phone contract, assuming you want to use the same number.
Hugh Langley is a tech journalist who’s fascinated by wearables, health tech, the smart home, and more. You can find him tweeting (often nonsense) over at @hughlangley.
Mark Knapp is a regular contributor to IGN and an irregular Tweeter on Twitter @Techn0Mark
