While all smartwatches tout themselves as unbeatable health trackers, these days you need more than just a heart-rate tracker and a pedometer to call yourself a fitness watch. But without the apps and services that you actually use on the watch, it's not a smartwatch, just an extra-large fitness tracker.
AI assistants and robust support for third-party and first-party apps make Wear OS watches from Google, Samsung, and Mobvoi "smarter," but at the cost of battery life. Meanwhile, brands like Garmin, Fitbit, and COROS eschew this advanced integration to keep those week-long — or month-long — battery lives and more concentrated focus on the fitness experience.
Starting with the fitness-focused Garmin Venu 3 and more mainstream Pixel Watch 3, these are the best fitness watches available today. Both are a bit expensive, but you could get them at fabulous discounts during sales. It's good to keep a track on all the discounts so you don't miss a great deal on your favorite fitness watch.
Michael Hicks is Android Central's resident smartwatch geek, having reviewed or tested dozens of wearables from Samsung, Google, Apple, Garmin, Fitbit, Coros, Polar, Withings, Amazfit, and others. He spends his free time running or hiking while wearing several watches at once, testing which is most accurate.
At a glance
Best fitness watch
The Garmin Venu 3 packs a mic and speaker for calls and smart assistant support, robust sleep tracking with nap detection, and fitness coaching beyond what any other company offers.
Best fitness smartwatch
Love or hate Fitbit Premium, the Pixel Watch 3 is unique in that it's a proper Wear OS smartwatch with health and fitness tech well beyond the competition.
Best budget fitness watch
Most of the best fitness watches cost a lot for quality. The COROS PACE 3 offers some of the best value we've ever seen for fitness training on a budget, especially for runners.
Best for smarts and battery
Don't trade off battery life in exchange for performance. The Galaxy Watch Ultra gives you consistent two to three days of battery life, while boasting of a rugged casing and more accurate health tracking.
Best for health
Another fitness-focused model, the Sense 2 has more than the best health sensor suite: thanks to Google's acquisition, it offers Google Maps and Wallet to go with its Fitbit software.
Best all-around alternative
With the biggest battery and fastest Snapdragon chip on this list, the TicWatch Pro 5 lasts 2–3 days per charge (or even longer with Essential Mode), challenging the Watch 5 Pro. It even recommends recovery times.
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Best for runners
While barely offering any traditional smarts, this AMOLED fitness watch gives you all the training data for running, swimming, and cycling you could want with no subscription.
Best for beginners
Most of the best fitness smartwatches cost $300 and up. If you're hoping to find something closer to $100, Amazfit packed a lot of essentials into this attractive budget package.
Best for iPhone users
Maybe the best fitness watch on this list, the Apple Watch Ultra 2 has the downside of its iOS exclusivity and absurd price tag, but Apple users should seriously consider buying one.
Best overall
Many of the best Garmin watches could fit here; they all offer variants on the same core training recommendations and health data that help athletes improve. We chose the Venu 3 because it's the closest Garmin offers to a "mainstream" smartwatch. Sleeker and lighter than most bulky Garmins, the Venu 3 has a built-in mic and speaker for Bluetooth calls and voice assistant commands, plus Spotify playlists and NFC tap-to-pay.
For health tracking, you have continuous heart rate, blood oxygen (SpO2), and HRV stress data, plus nighttime skin temperature data and spot ECG readings for AFib. The Venu 3 uses this data for an enhanced Body Battery chart that'll point out how alcohol is slowing your recovery or meditating is giving you energy. Its Sleep Coach guides you in improving your sleep quality.
On the fitness side, your Venu 3 will tell you how many hours you need to recover post-workout based on its intensity and your abilities. Plus, your post-run "Workout benefit" screen explains whether you're actually improving your VO2 Max fitness or if you're doing too little (or too much). You can even make custom indoor workouts from a list of thousands of exercise types, with animations on your wrist showing you the proper form.
Our Venu 3 review called the watch a "tightrope walk between casual smarts and serious fitness," and for good reason. It doesn't have the app ecosystem of an Apple or Galaxy Watch, but the two-week battery life, better GPS satellite accuracy, more reliable heart rate data, and Garmin Coach tools will help you where a mainstream smartwatch would fall short.
Best fitness smartwatch
The Google Pixel Watch 3 is our second favorite Android smartwatch, and it's a big improvement over the Watch 2 even though the specs and design might say otherwise.
Just like the Pixel Watch 2, the new Watch 3 is essentially a Fitbit with greater smarts. It has the same health sensors as the Fitbit Sense 2, like continuous body response (cEDA) for stress, skin temp and SpO2 at night, and passive AFib readings for heart health. You get six months of Fitbit Premium for in-depth health reports, but you can still see day-by-day data once the trial expires.
The Pixel Watch 3 offers similar reliable fitness tracking as the previous model, and it finally comes in two sizes, which includes a larger 45mm model. The displays are also larger with slimmer bezels, making it feel like an A-tier device. Our battery life woes with the Pixel Watch 2 have been satisfactorily addressed with the Watch 3 as it lasted for more than the rated 24-hours when we reviewed it.
As a fitness watch in general, Google claims the Pixel Watch 3 has the "most accurate heart rate for running." When we took it for normal 10K run, it managed to stay within 1 bpm of dedicated fitness trackers like the COROS arm band. It had similar responsiveness during a 10-mile ruck with lots of hills and valleys. Overall, the Pixel Watch 3 offers dependable health and sleep tracking, plenty of workout modes, and improved battery life and displays.
Best budget fitness watch
We called the PACE 3 the "best affordable running watch of the year" in our review and we doubt any fitness watch will supplant it. COROS may not be as well known as Garmin, but it's a brand that manages to pack some incredible training tools into watches that aren't quite as rugged but cost half as much.
For outdoor athletes, you get some of the most accurate GPS tracking on the market, giving you trustworthy data that the PACE 3 uses to judge your post-workout training load, effect, and recovery time. There's even a running test that helps determine your current VO2 Max level if you're fairly new to training and need help.
One of the coolest things about COROS in general is how it pushes out new software across all of its watches, not just the expensive ones. In just the last few months, COROS has added HRV-based stress tracking, a wellness check feature, custom workouts, personalized marathon training plans, turn-by-turn map navigation, and a running form analysis tool to the PACE 3. We can expect even more tools to come in the ensuing months.
Best of all, it weighs less with a band than most smartwatches weigh without a band. The band itself can be a little uncomfortable to fit and hard to swap out, but on the whole, this is a fitness watch you'll barely notice while running.
If you're looking for a cheap fitness tracker that's perhaps better balanced, you can look to brands like Amazfit that put more emphasis on traditional smarts like voice assistants. But for serious, frugal athletes, the COROS PACE 3 is where we recommend you start and end your search.
Best fitness smartwatch for battery
A common theme with most of our favorite fitness smartwatches is that they don't have the best battery life. Some do better than others, but the fact is that most will need daily charging if you regularly use GPS tracking. The exception is the Galaxy Watch Ultra. Just like its spiritual predecessor, the Watch 5 Pro, the Ultra has the same battery size but the more power-efficient processor and latest OS gives it a noticeable boost in battery life.
The good news is that the device lives up to Samsung's estimates in our Galaxy Watch Ultra review. It'll last up to three days with continuous heart rate and blood oxygen monitoring as well as sleep tracking, even taking some dual-band GPS tracking into account.
The Galaxy Watch Ultra also sports a brand new design, which you might either love or hate. We just wish Samsung had given it a proper crown to complete the Watch experience. It's expensive, but if you can find a good deal on it, then we highly recommed you buy it. The fitness and health monitoring features come close to what Garmin watches can achieve, you get four generations of Wear OS upgrades, and excellent build quality that can withstand the elements.
Best for health tracking
Compared to the original Sense, which struck a delicate balance between fitness and smartwatch tools, the Fitbit Sense 2 leans more onto the fitness side of the smartwatch spectrum. That's why we have the Pixel Watch 2 listed above it. But the Sense 2 is lighter and more affordable, works for iOS and Android users, and will last more reliably for days instead of hours.
The Fitbit Sense 2 may not have Google Assistant, music storage, or limited third-party apps anymore. But thanks to the Google acquisition of Fitbit, it does have Google Wallet and Google Maps; the latter is especially exciting to help guide you during runs or bike rides towards your destination. It also has a mic and speaker for taking Bluetooth calls or speaking to a smart assistant like Alexa or Siri.
Our Fitbit Sense 2 reviewer noted that despite the "baffling" cutbacks in smart features, he appreciated the new and improved interface that's a light version of Wear OS, with a new physical button for selecting widgets that's so much more reliable than last gen's capacitive touch button. The AMOLED display remains bright and readable, too.
It lasts across six days of battery life with regular use, though it's only rated to last 5 hours with GPS tracking. That makes it hard to recommend for "serious" athletes compared to a Garmin watch, but should be plenty for casual fitness tracking and beats the Pixel Watch 2 easily.
Best all-around alternative
The Mobvoi TicWatch Pro 5 doesn't necessarily "win" in any fitness category, but it does very well in all of the various categories where Google, Samsung, and Garmin excel. We decided it's worth including here, especially if you're intrigued by the Galaxy Watch 5 Pro but want something a bit newer, faster, and more affordable.
Similar to the excellent TicWatch Pro 3 Ultra GPS, the TicWatch Pro 5 has a massive battery, MIL-STD-810G rating, and a dual-layer display that enables a low-powered "Essential Mode." But it added a top-tier Snapdragon Wear chip with twice the RAM, quadruple the storage, and a new temperature sensor.
Generally speaking, this is the same massive watch with a three-day battery life as its predecessor, only with far-superior Wear OS 3.5 software — though still no Google Assistant. It's currently running the Wear OS 4 beta, and perhaps we can expect a full update soon with even more improvements.
Our TicWatch Pro 5 review praises the watch's "incredible performance" and "better than expected" health tracking across heart rate, blood oxygen, and skin temperature. Its fitness app calculates your VO2 Max and tells you how long to recover after a workout, something most smartwatches either lack or charge you for. Otherwise, you can pick other Wear OS fitness apps like Strava to rely upon.
The TicWatch Pro 5 Enduro is electronically identical to the Pro 5, with just a Sapphire Crystal Glass screen and a redesigned rotating crown. That's not enough of an upgrade to warrant paying $350 for the Enduro when the Pro 5 is usually on sale for $75-$125 off. When both are at list price, grab the Enduro, but save your money, buy the Pro 5, and then use the savings to buy some swankier bands.
Best for runners
Despite being the best running watch we've tested, the Garmin Forerunner 265 isn't what you'd call a smartwatch in the traditional sense. It has the same beautiful display and music storage apps as our top pick, the Venu 3; but it doesn't have a mic or speaker and has a less stylish plastic case instead of aluminum for the same price.
Despite that, we're squeezing in a second Garmin watch on our best fitness watch list, simply because no other pick on this list gives runners, cyclists, or swimmers the detailed coaching and post-workout body analysis that the Forerunner 265 offers. And compared to the other great Garmin Forerunner models available, it's the rare model with an AMOLED that's actually readable for notifications, instead of the low-res, non-touch MIP displays most Garmin watches use.
Our Garmin Forerunner 265 review goes in-depth on the laundry list of features you get to help you before, during, and after a run. Where most lifestyle watches tell you to hit your daily targets without any context, the Forerunner 265 tracks your current fatigue and training load during the last week to tell you your current training readiness and adjust your automated daily suggested workout — or tell you not to work out at all — based on that capacity. After your run ends, you'll see how your aerobic and anaerobic fitness has improved, with a recommendation of how long to wait before your next run.
If that sounds like a lot, believe it or not, I'm just scratching the surface! Unless you want to upgrade to the Forerunner 965 for full-color maps and real-time stamina tracking, the Forerunner 265 gives you the best fitness watch experience on the market today. It's much more specialized than the Venu 3, in exchange for losing the mic and speaker.
You can also try the much cheaper Forerunner 165, which has the same GPS/HR accuracy as the 265 for $200 less, but lacks some key data points like training load and status that we love.
Best for beginners
If you're buying a fitness smartwatch for the first time, you might be a tad overwhelmed by how many options you have, not to mention the pro-level price tags. Luckily, several fitness watches cater to beginners and first-time users. You may not need a watch equipped with every fancy feature under the sun. That's where the Amazfit GTR Mini — which costs significantly less than every other pick on our list — comes in.
Even though Zepp OS is fairly limited, it's very easy to use and understand, and its simplicity helps the watch last for two weeks per charge (or one with heavy use). While it has "120 sports modes" that encompass the full range of exercises and sports out there, there are seven core sports modes — running, cycling, walking, indoor walking, treadmill, rowing machine, and elliptical — that the GTR Mini can automatically detect.
Our Amazfit GTR Mini reviewer praised the watch for how much it can accomplish and for its beautiful AMOLED display. Its 326ppi matches a lot of the other picks on this list, and the 36g weight (with strap) makes it so much more comfortable for both daily wear and sleep tracking.
You can upgrade to the Amazfit T-Rex Ultra or Amazfit Cheetah Pro for higher-quality fitness tools, including the Zepp Coach AI that'll guide your fitness routine. Of the two, the Cheetah Pro does have a mic and speaker for Bluetooth calling and the Alexa assistant, making it a decent smartwatch option. But these pricier watches have stiff competition in the $300–$400 range; if you want the essentials in a more affordable package, the GTR Mini stands alone.
Best for iPhone users
As an Android-focused site, we don't typically focus as much on Apple devices that our readers can't use. But we reviewed the Apple Watch Ultra 2 to see how the other side handles health and fitness tech. We came away very impressed — as you'd expect, for such a high price tag!
On the hardware side, it has a titanium case, sapphire glass display with 3,000 nits of brightness, MIL-STD-810H protection, 10ATM water resistance with protection for "high-speed water sports" and diving, a rotating crown and two buttons for tactile feedback during workouts, and a ton of health sensors for an in-depth look at your health. It can last 12 hours with GPS tracking or 36 hours with regular use.
As for software, the last two updates (watchOS 9 and 10) added tons of useful fitness-tracking data and watch faces. You can see your heart rate activity zones, elevation, running power, stride length, vertical oscillation, and more on your wrist during runs, while cyclists can connect to Bluetooth accessories for cadence or power metrics.
In practice, it does very well for heart rate, GPS, and elevation accuracy compared to other brands like Garmin. Apple doesn't offer daily workout recs (beyond what's officially available through Fitness+), a daily readiness score, or recovery recommendations; plus, its SpO2 sensor was disabled due to legal issues. So we've kept it low on this list, but still recommend it over the more generic Series 9.
How to choose
The ultimate fitness smartwatch comes with numerous sporting and workout modes that can be applied to the real world, comprehensive health, and workout tracking functionalities. It provides valuable feedback and analytics that you can benefit from. It is important to get a wearable with a heart rate monitor, along with as many other sensors as you need for health, sleep, and stress tracking.
Bonus features such as Google Wallet and third-party apps are nice, but they aren't entirely essential. You need your smartwatch to be a portable health and fitness trainer for your fitness needs. The best fitness smartwatch will help you on your journey, aid you in your workouts, and track your progress.
We feel confident that the Garmin Venu 3 is the best fitness watch for most athletes. You have a little bit of everything, including an attractive design, solid fitness features, and a few extra smartwatch perks. But it sits closer to the fitness side of things than the "smart" side, even with its mic/speaker and music storage. A Galaxy or Apple Watch will serve you better if you need fitness tools but don't want to make them the focus of your watch.
On the other hand, you'll want to turn to Garmin, Fitbit, Polar, or another fitness-focused brand if that's your number one priority. These watches may not have superfluous battery-draining apps. Still, they'll actively guide your training with recommendations for today's workout and subsequent recovery time. In contrast, a lifestyle watch will simply tell you to close your rings every day with little other guidance.
Your preferences are your own, but whichever way you lean, these picks should guide you toward a healthier body or your next PR.
