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Like every piece of gear you wear on your body day in and day out, fitness trackers are incredibly personal. Sure, they have to be comfortable and attractive, but they also must fit your lifestyle, as well as when and how you like to work out. Do you bike, row, or do strength training? Do you run on trails for hours at a time, or do you just want a reminder to stand up every hour? Do you want to wear it on your wrist or on your finger or tuck it into your bra?
No matter what your needs are, there’s never been a better time to find a powerful, sophisticated tool that can help you optimize your workouts or jump-start your routine. We test dozens of fitness trackers every year to bring you these picks. Nothing you like here? Don’t forget to check out our Best Smartwatches, Best Sleep Trackers, or Best Heart Rate Monitors for more.
Updated April 2024: We added the Garmin Forerunner 165 and Lily 2, the Withings ScanWatch 2, added the review of the Amazfit Balance, more information on the Oura Ring, and updated links and pricing.
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Even as Fitbit has faced stiff competition from other manufacturers—most notably, the Apple Watch—its trackers have always won me over. They hit a very specific sweet spot between attractiveness, affordability, accessibility, and ease of use. They're perfect for everyone who isn't an ultra-marathoner or a semipro powerlifter trying to hit a PR.
This year's Charge 6 (7/10, WIRED Recommends) now has many integrations from Google, Fitbit's new parent company. The redesigned app looks much more modern and is much better organized. You can now get directions from Google Maps, pay with Google Wallet, and control your music with a YouTube Music Premium subscription. You can also check your skin temperature and your 24/7 heart rate readings, take ECGs, and track your activities and sleep schedule in the newly Google-fied app. The battery charge lasted well over a week, and the physical button is back, baby! Finally, this all comes in a package that costs $160.
Fitbit does still lock many of its best features behind its $10/month Fitbit Premium subscription, and it doesn’t feel quite as premium or attractive as a pricier Apple or Google Pixel Watch 2 (8/10, WIRED Recommends). But if all you want is a basic fitness tracker that won't break the bank, it's still hard to beat a Charge. Check out our guide to the Best Fitbits for more options.
One of the biggest pain points with fitness trackers is how each has its own proprietary charger. If you're used to the convenience of charging your phone and earbuds on all-purpose Qi wireless charging pads, hunting for a specific charger can be an annoyance. The Vivomove Trend (8/10, WIRED Recommends) is the first Garmin to have wireless charging, and it works!
Garmin Connect is Garmin's proprietary tool for tracking all your fitness stats, and it's one of the most comprehensive and actionable apps I've used. This year, Garmin redesigned it to look, well, a little bit like Fitbit's, with Body Battery (Garmin's metric to gauge your energy throughout the day) at the top, above an easy-to-navigate At a Glance section. The Trend is an easy way to access Garmin's most convenient fitness features, with an analog watch face, connected GPS, incident detection, contactless payments, sleep tracking, and continuous heart rate monitoring. Garmin does, however, have a bunch of similar models that go on sale pretty regularly; 2022’s Vivomove Sport ($180) is much cheaper and looks almost the same. But you will probably make up the difference in six months when you don't have to replace the chargers.
People tend to hold on to their Apple Watch for years, and rightfully so—it is far and away the best fitness tracker if you have an iPhone. The best Apple Watch right now is the Series 9 (7/10, WIRED Recommends). It looks pretty much the same as every other Apple Watch, but it has the new S9 chipset for faster onboard processing of Siri commands, which improves battery life noticeably and theoretically provides more privacy for your sensitive medical data. It also has a new ultra-wideband chip that lets you precision-locate your iPhone quickly and accurately.
The watch also has a new feature called Double Tap, which borrows from Apple's accessibility learnings. The accelerometer, gyroscope, and optical sensor will detect the minute shifts as you tap your index finger and thumb on your watch hand twice to activate the primary button on your watch screen; it's nice for stopping and starting music or timers around the kitchen. It's compatible with WatchOS 10, which has new watch faces, app redesigns, and more health-related features. You can also find most of WatchOS 10's updates on the second-gen Watch SE, but you won't get the more advanced health sensors like wrist-based body temperature sensing.
★ A note: Apple is currently embroiled in a series of lawsuits regarding different technologies in the latest Apple Watches. One lawsuit claims that Apple engaged in patent infringement with its use of the blood oxygen sensor; another lawsuit claims that Apple infringed on the patent on its ECG sensor. Currently on Apple's website, you can buy only the Series 9 with the blood oxygen sensor disabled, but you may still be able to find the banned versions on other retailers.
If all you want is a simple health tracker that will track your steps and your sleep and let you know when someone is calling, the internet's marketplace is awash in knockoffs of this fitness tracker. For $80, you might as well get the original instead. This year, Fitbit released the latest version of its hugely popular Inspire, which thankfully (in my opinion) does not use Wear OS. Instead, it continues to use Fitbit's clear and easy Fitbit app, has a pedometer, tracks SpO2 and sleep, and comes with a wide array of watch faces and accessories.
It wasn't all easy-peasy. I had some connectivity issues and had to restart my phone when the Inspire 3 wouldn't update the time zone for a day or two. The Inspire 3 also regularly overestimated how much sleep I'd gotten, which made me mistrust the new Sleep Profile feature. For two months, I had a chronic nighttime cough; the Inspire 3 regularly logged me at seven hours a night because I was lying still, while switching to a more sensitive fitness tracker put me at a much more accurate five. However, if you have no health issues, it is more reliable and accessible than a knockoff Inspire 3, and Fitbit regularly puts its trackers on sale.
Unlike last year’s Galaxy Watch5, this year’s Watch6 Classic brings back the fabulous, clicky, rotating bezel (7/10, WIRED Recommends). It’s fun and tactile and not a feature that you’ll find on many other smartwatches and fitness trackers. Other than that, it doesn’t look or feel too terribly different from the Watch5, which is a good thing. The Watch6 Classic comes in a 43- or 47-mm case, and the standard Watch6, which doesn't have the mechanical rotating bezel, is available in 40- and 44-mm cases.
The Watch6 runs Wear OS, which means you have access to Google Maps and Google Assistant, and it also has access to Samsung’s fairly robust health features. In addition to the usual suite of SpO2 measurements, auto-workout detection, and sleep tracking, it now has FDA-cleared irregular heart rate notifications and blood pressure monitoring (the latter is not available in the US nor cleared by the FDA). Some features are also restricted to users who pair the watch with Samsung phones, rather than other Android phones, like the ECG. If you prioritize design, you might want to stick with a Pixel Watch; if you don’t have a Samsung phone, you might want to stick to a Garmin. All that said, It’s a fairly capable watch with a fun party trick.
★ Alternative: Stick to a Garmin, you say? Garmin's entry in this category is the Venu 3 ($460), which has a stainless steel bezel, Corning Gorilla Glass for the lens, and two amazing weeks for battery life. It has Garmin's multi-band satellite capabilities for workout tracking, along with Garmin's killer proprietary health software, which now includes a new sleep coach with nap detection, along with Morning Report and Body Battery. However, it is pricey, does not have temperature sensing, and the onboard mic and speakers sound pretty terrible.
For all its faults, the Google Pixel Watch 2 (7/10, WIRED Recommends) is by far the most attractive fitness tracker in this lineup and the hardest to take off my wrist. This year's iteration was everything that reviews editor Julian Chokkattu wanted to see in last year's release. It ships with Wear 4, Google's latest operating system, and has a speedy processor which makes it easy to track health metrics and view them in the lovely updated Fitbit app. Those now include electrocardiogram readings, sleep tracking, heart rate readings, and blood-oxygen measurements, along with a new feature borrowed from Fitbit called Body Response which uses an electrodermal activity sensor (cEDA), along with heart rate and skin temperature, to tell you to take a walk when you're stressed.
It does require daily charging with a new proprietary charger—no, you cannot use last year's charger—and it still requires daily charging. It's just annoying when you can seed every home and office with 3-in-1 Apple chargers.
The best running watch will probably always be a Garmin Forerunner. The line is one of Garmin's oldest and goes all the way from the bare-bones Forerunner 55 ($200) to the spendy Forerunner 965 ($600). They all have different graduated specs and features; for example, the less expensive ones have cheaper displays and no blood oxygen sensors. However, all have access to multiple satellite systems for accurate positioning, as well as access to Garmin's proprietary training algorithms. Garmin's suggested workouts are flexible.
The Forerunners also age pretty well, which means you're getting a bargain if you can find last year's watch on sale (see the Forerunner 255). However, I think the Forerunner 165 (8/10, WIRED Recommends) is a good compromise for most people. It's on the more affordable end of the spectrum, but it has everything you need, including a bright AMOLED display, an altimeter for more accurate mileage, and a blood oxygen sensor. I found the sleep and workout tracking to be pretty accurate, the battery life is decent, and I really like Garmin's Morning Report, which wakes you up with a summary of last night's stats—how well you slept, the weather, and how ready you are to take on the day. The Music version costs an extra $50 and may be more trouble than it's worth, but other than that it's a pretty solid option for even more advanced runners.
★ Alternative: If only Garmin's Forerunner line weren't so good! Otherwise, the Coros Pace 3 ($229) would be a shoo-in for this spot. Because Coros uses a less-battery-intensive screen, the Pace watches are incredibly light, durable, and comfortable, with very long battery life; I wore it for two weeks last fall without having to charge it once. It has dual-frequency GPS that tracked my interval runs seamlessly. (I was trying to see how long I could maintain Eliud Kipchoge's pace, since he's one of their partners—the answer is “not very long”.) It does everything much more expensive trackers do, like breadcrumb navigation. However, its 1980s looks and dimmer screen may be off-putting to some.
Do you want a tracker that doesn’t look like a tracker at all? Then you want the Withings ScanWatch 2 (7/10, WIRED Recommends). We loved the original ScanWatch (and the Withings Steel before that). This version includes everything we loved, including comfort, good looks, long battery life, and a comprehensive suite of health features. It also includes temperature tracking, a new charger, and an unfortunate and unpalatable price hike.
My colleague Simon Hill found the health features to be comprehensive and generally accurate, including the new temperature tracker; I tested it as well and found that it wasn't quite sensitive enough to predict my menstrual cycle with the accuracy of the Oura Ring (see below). It also doesn't have onboard GPS and many features are locked behind a $10/month subscription. If this is a bit too pricey for you, you may want to consider the ScanWatch Light ($250), which doesn't have the ECG, irregular heart rate warnings, blood oxygen, or temperature tracking but costs $100 less.
★ Alternative: I recently tested and liked the Garmin Lily 2, which is the first update to the Lily line that we've seen in a few years. It's one of the smallest Garmins and has a comparatively short battery life; I got three to four days of wear out of it. But it also has a Pulse Ox sensor, a pretty beautiful Corning Gorilla Glass lens, a metal bezel, and standard Garmin features like Body Battery and fall detection.
Last year, Garmin again released updates to its two high-end sports watches, the Epix Pro ($900) and the Fenix 7 Pro ($900). Last year, the limited battery life and huge case on the Epix were off-putting, but now it comes in three sizes and with a whopping two weeks of battery life. It's now one of my favorite sports watches (8/10, WIRED Review).
The main difference is the screen. The Epix still has the bright AMOLED display, while the Fenix 7 Pro has a less bright memory-in-pixel display. The Fenix also has the option for solar charging, which extends the battery life quite a bit, but I have found that the Epix lasts long enough for a week of camping. The AMOLED is noticeably clearer and brighter, which makes a difference when you're running and climbing outside, and it has useful features like a flashlight and redshift mode for training outside at night. For runners, there's also a new Up Ahead feature that lets you see the closest points of interest and a new endurance score to … well, check out your endurance if the zillions of other Garmin proprietary metrics aren't doing a good enough job of assessing what great shape you’re in.
top affordable smart watches ★ Alternative: I have steadily grown to appreciate Coros' sports watches, which often eschew bright screens for more affordable price points and thoughtful features like locking mechanisms that prevent me from stopping or starting tracking when I'm snowboarding and falling down while scream-singing to Jon Secada. I also tested the Coros Apex 2 Pro, which offers much of the same functionality as a Garmin at half the price. I liked it!