If you're looking for a smartwatch or a more affordable fitness tracker, Fitbit is probably one of the most notable brands on your radar. This company has just about every segment of the market covered, so you're bound to find a device that will work for you and help you reach all your fitness goals.
The variety of Fitbits out there is a bit overwhelming, and to help narrow your search, we’ve made a comprehensive list of the best products they offer. Whether you're looking for something that'll just count your steps or a device with a more robust list of health tracking, like 24/7 heart rate monitoring, blood oxygen levels, or GPS, there's a Fitbit for you. Some even offer phone notifications and voice assistants, so you're never disconnected. Check out our favorite Fitbits below.
It’s important to note that Google owns Fitbit, and the company has been making several changes to the fitness tracker brand. To start, every Fitbit account will be required to switch to a Google account by 2025, though this will not affect your health and fitness data. They’ve also cut social features like Challenges, Adventures, and Open Group, which many Fitbit users used to get motivated. Google’s been removing the music functionality and some third-party apps from the devices, too. Most likely to push those that want smartwatch features into buying the Google Pixel Watch.
TL;DR – These are the Best Fitbits:
- Fitbit Charge 5
- Fitbit Versa 4
- Fitbit Sense 2
- Fitbit Inspire 3
- Fitbit Ace 3
- Fitbit Luxe
- Apple Watch Series 8
Fitbit Charge 5
Best Fitbit Fitness Band
The Fitbit Charge 5 gives you the most bang for your buck, as it’s just as capable as the company's more expensive smartwatches while making a few sacrifices like screen space, voice control, and storing music on the device. But since it’s for fitness anyways, the most important features involve tracking. This model offers 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 does more than the basics. It automatically detects activities, while a built-in GPS lets you attach locations and distances to your exercises. Beyond fitness, its bright, colorful AMOLED touchscreen can display notifications from your phone, and you can send quick replies through Android devices. You won’t have to recharge it often, either, with up to seven days worth of juice, but if you utilize the always-on display, there’s a tradeoff to battery life.
Fitbit Versa 4
Best Fitbit Smartwatch
Rocking more smarts and a bigger AMOLED touch display than the Charge 5, the Fitbit Versa 4 is the smartwatch-meets-fitness tracker you've been looking for. Its easy-to-use interface makes finding the details of your exercises, responding to phone notifications, and more a breeze. With a battery life hovering around six days, it also outdoes many other smartwatches—we’re looking at you Apple. Though, advanced tracking and the screen’s always-on mode drop that number.
The Versa 4 offers a combination of sensors, including a heart rate (which isn’t as accurate as we’d like), blood oxygen saturation, and even GPS, allowing you to track over 40 different exercises. It can even guide you through various workouts and keep tabs on your fitness goals. If you’re curious about your sleeping habits, the device’s sleep tracking is also impressive, telling you the different stages of your sleep along with providing a detailed overview every month.
Fitbit Sense 2
Best Health Monitoring Fitbit
If you like everything the Fitbit Versa 4 offers, the Fitbit Sense 2 takes all that and adds a dash of extra health monitoring. This smartwatch not only automatically recognizes various fitness activities, monitors your heart rate, and tracks your blood oxygen saturation levels but also accurately measures skin temperature variation and detects atrial fibrillation. There's even a GPS and altimeter built-in to keep track of distance, pace, and altitude whether you're hiking, biking, or running.
Your mental health is just as crucial as your physical well-being, so Fitbit includes a sensor to track your stress levels throughout the day using continuous electrodermal activity (cEDA) responses. It then prompts you to reflect on your feelings during those stressful times and suggests ways to decompress, ensuring you’re in better shape inside and out. Beyond health, you get a decent six-day battery life with light use and your typical smartwatch features, though there’s no music functionality or third-party app support.
Fitbit Inspire 3
Best Budget Band
Fitness tracking doesn’t need to be expensive, especially if you’re just looking for the basics. Look at Fitbit Inspire 3, it costs under $100, and you really aren’t missing out on too many features. You’ll enjoy scrolling through fitness data and viewing pings from your connected smartphone’s supported apps on a bright, colorful AMOLED touch display with two haptic buttons for easy navigation. Its battery life is also the best you can find on a Fitbit lasting an impressive ten days — though that’s less when taking advantage of the always-on display mode.
As for fitness, the Fitbit Inspire 3 counts your steps, measures sleep quality, and automatically detects various exercises to track and catalog them for you. There’s no GPS on this model, but the device still measures your heart rate and blood oxygen saturation. While a water-resistant design can go down to 50 meters below, so the only time you’ll ever need to take it off is to recharge.
Fitbit Ace 3
Best Band for Kids
Fitbits for kids? Giving your kids a fitness tracker might seem a bit extra, but you'll be surprised at how it'll challenge and excite them about getting up and moving around. For tracking, the Ace 3 includes the basics with a pedometer to keep track of steps, fitness activity monitoring, and sleep tracking. It lacks more premium features like a heart rate monitor, calories burned, and other advanced sensors to keep the price low.
The Fitbit Ace is built for kids from the ground up with colorful bands and cutesy animated clock faces like a bunny, a unicorn, and a spaceship design. Aside from being a fashion item, kids can challenge themselves by setting activity goals and receiving little digital badges for reaching them. It’s also ruggedized for school life with a swim-proof design, sturdy silicone around the screen, and a battery life that stretches eight days.
Fitbit Luxe
Best Stylish Fitbit
The Fitbit Luxe takes Fitbit’s tracking tech, and packs it into a classy little number that flies under the radar. The silicone band comes in several subtle colors, including orchid, black, and white, or you can go for the soft gold link band from jewelry designer Gorjana. There’s also a choice of stainless steel frames in soft gold, black, or platinum that blend smoothly with the rounded glass AMOLED display of the tracker. You can even customize your watch face using an app, making it uniquely yours.
The small footprint of the Fitbit Luxe keeps it subtle on your wrist but still delivers capable tracking that can keep up with you throughout the week, thanks to the 5-day battery life. In total, it tracks 20 different exercises, and you won’t need to take it off when you shower after with water resistance down to 50 meters. It’ll even monitor your heart rate nonstop and let you know your sleeping habits, though you don’t get GPS on this model.
Apple Watch Series 8
Best Fitbit that’s Not a Fitbit
Fitbit has cornered the market on fitness trackers, but Apple runs the smartwatch game, and that’s proven once again with the Apple Watch Series 8. You’ll get a host of handy features, from 24/7 heart rate tracking, step counting, and fitness tracking to more advanced sensors like an ECG and fall detection. This generation also introduces highly accurate skin temperature sensors and crash detection that includes contacting emergency services when you’ve been in a car accident.
The Apple Watch Series 8 still struggles to compete with the multi-day battery life of most Fitbits, even with the new low-power mode that extends its 18-hour battery life to about 36 hours. However, you get a big, bright always-on OLED display with a tiny QWERTY keyboard or microphone to respond to messages, emails, and phone calls. It's even got 32GB of storage, which is handy for downloading music—and music functionality is something many of the latest Fitbits lack.
What to Look for in a Fitness Tracker
Most Fitbits share the same set of core features, tracking steps, exercise, and activity level, as well as provide at least a rudimentary sort of sleep tracking—and approximate a calorie count as well. 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 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 run for at least four days on a charge, some can go iver a week. And that’s not necessarily true of non-Fitbit trackers. The Apple Watch, for example, needs to be charged daily.
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. Though, as we mentioned, Google has cut some of those features. 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.
Danielle Abraham is a freelance writer and unpaid music historian.
