By WIRED
Another new year, another bombardment of fitness and health resolutions (plus expensive monthly gym subscriptions). Don’t let your commitment to a year of renewed health fizzle like day-old champagne. A fitness tracker or smartwatch certainly can be a helpful tool in monitoring your health, whether it’s for tracking steps, your workouts, or even heart rate zones. Who knows, with your newfound insight, you may keep that resolution yet.
Fitness Tracker and Smartwatch Deals
Be sure to read our Best Fitness Trackers, Best Fitbits, Best Garmin Watches, and Best Smartwatches guides for more recommendations.
This entry-level device packs quite a wallop in value, offering much of Fitbit’s best features at an affordable price. With a stellar battery life of up to 10 days, the Inspire 3 bests any other Fitbit. New for the 3rd iteration is an AMOLED touchscreen that’s noticeably easier to see. An accurate SpO2 sensor tracks your blood oxygen levels, but only during sleep, and you can also view your breathing rate, skin temperature, and “stress management” scores.
You might have seen that Apple Watch Series 9 and Apple Watch Ultra 2 sales were suspended late in December 2023 due to a pending patent dispute. Well, these smartwatches are back on the market now, and the Series 9 is on sale. It dipped as low as $329 during Black Friday and the holidays, but this is likely as good a sale as you’ll come across until the next big sale event. The Series 9 (7/10, WIRED Recommends) is the standard top-of-the-line model that has all the fitness and health-tracking features you’d want, plus the handy-dandy new Double Tap trick.
We reviewed the Galaxy Watch 6 Classic (7/10, WIRED Recommends), which has a mechanical rotating bezel you can use to interact with the operating system, but this isn’t present on the standard Watch 6. Still, this Wear OS 4 smartwatch matches the Apple Watch in its health and fitness features, plus it’s round! It only works with Android phones, though the electrocardiogram and irregular heart rate notifications only work when the watch is paired with a Samsung phone.
WIRED contributor Michael Sawh calls this the best Fitbit smartwatch, thanks largely to its native Google apps and built-in GPS and motion sensors to track outdoor runs, bike rides, and swims. The AMOLED touchscreen is bright and easy to use, measuring a satisfying 1.5 inches. You can even get up to six days of use out of it before it needs a recharge.
Aside from a brief period during this past year’s Black Friday sale, this is the cheapest we’ve seen this watch. For serious health tracking, this is the Fitbit for you. The electrical cEDA sensor that it uses to measure galvanic skin response—a marker of stress—needs some work, but its electrocardiogram, SpO2, and skin temperature sensors deliver excellent sleep tracking results. The built-in GPS and PurePulse heart-rate sensors make tracking sports a breeze as well. Just remember, you’ll need Fitbit Premium ($10 per month) to get the most out of this device.
The GPS connection lags behind other fitness trackers, and the Casio app is slow and clunky to use, but the physical buttons are a plus, the display is easy to read, and you can get up to 10 days of use before the battery runs out. The only color on a big sale right now is fluorescent yellow. This is a watch that already screams “Look at me!” Fluorescent yellow fits right in with that aesthetic.
The Epix Pro (8/10, WIRED Recommends) has become one of WIRED reviews editor Adrienne So’s favorite sports watches. Not only is the AMOLED screen’s clean interface bright and easy to read in challenging lighting, but the flashlight and redshift mode make training at night a cinch too. As you’d expect from a Garmin, satellite support is phenomenal, although you need a phone paired to use all the features, and there’s no solar charging.
Call this one svelte, but don’t call it stripped down. The Instinct 2 Solar (9/10, WIRED Recommends) offers full access to the suite of Garmin satellite systems, navigational features, and a smorgasbord of sport-specific tracking metrics. Without an obnoxiously large screen sucking up power, we were able to get an incredible 21 days of use out of it during testing. Plus you can top it up with sunlight.
If you want a full-featured smartwatch companion for your Android smartphone but don’t want to charge it every day or two, then consider the Ticwatch Pro 5. We achieved three days of battery life thanks to the clever dual-display technology that allows it to sip power. It has a snappy interface, but unfortunately, the company still hasn’t brought Wear OS 4 to the watch just yet, meaning there’s no Google Assistant or a few other nifty features in the latest version.
Photograph: Amazon
The TicWatch GTH Pro didn’t win any ringing recommendations for us during testing, due partly to the screen fizzling out at times, but we gave it an honorable mention because it offers a clean aesthetic and simple user interface, along with a few features that make it a solid budget pick. The dual light sensors, nicknamed Arty, measure heart health but aren’t approved by the FDA yet. On this big of a sale, it’s almost a no-brainer for someone wanting basic features without dropping a wad of cash.
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