If you’re in the market for a smartwatch, it’s important to make sure you buy one that fits your needs. A watch that’s too big or too small could be unattractive or uncomfortable to wear.
If you’re looking for a good all-rounder that doesn’t stand out in any one area, the Garmin Venu 2 Plus is an excellent choice. It boasts great multi-week workout plans, accurate heart-rate readings and impressive GPS performance.
1. Apple Watch Series 8
The Apple Watch Series 8 may look like a Series 7 in the rear, but it packs a ton of new features. It also has a much longer battery life thanks to the addition of a low power mode.
The Series 8 brings back Apple’s popular activity tracking, centered around your Move, Exercise, and Stand rings. These encourage you to burn calories, work out for a set amount of time, and get up to move throughout the day.
Its health sensors remain strong, too, including blood oxygen monitoring and heart rate monitoring with ECG support. There’s even a new sleep tracking feature that gathers data about how often you go through each stage of sleep, including REM.
2. Garmin Vivoactive 3
Garmin is a reputable brand in fitness and sports, and its new Vivoactive 3 is an excellent wearable. It’s a world away from the Vivoactive HR, with a sleeker design and new features like the company’s contactless payment platform, Garmin Pay.
The Vivoactive 3 has a touchscreen up top and a touch-sensitive panel on the right side, which allows you to quickly navigate through the watch’s different menus and screens. A side button also performs various other functions, such as allowing you to press it when in workout mode for a quick shortcut to that screen.
During exercise the Vivoactive 3 uses Garmin Elevate wrist-tracking to keep track of your heart rate and shows you a range of heart rate stats on the watch’s display, including current, average and zone. It also tracks VO2 max estimations, calories burned and a number of other training metrics.
3. Fitbit Versa 3
The Versa 3 is the latest smartwatch to come out of Fitbit, and it’s a well-rounded device with some nice features. It offers a wide range of fitness tracking capabilities, and is one of the best bang for your buck smartwatches for Android users.
Among the core fitness features are heart rate monitoring, workout tracking, the Fitbit SmartTrack, Active Zone Minutes and onboard GPS. It also has a maximum rate of oxygen consumption (VO2 max) reading, blood oxygen (SpO2) monitoring, sleep tracking and menstrual health tracking.
4. Garmin Vivoactive 3 GPS + Cellular
The Vivoactive 3 is one of the best smartwatches to buy if you’re after fitness tracking. It doesn’t look like a wrist-dominator, lasts longer than any other normal smartwatch and gets you tracking similar to a Fenix 5 at almost half the price.
It also comes with Garmin Pay for contactless payments. It’s compatible with many major banks and cards, and you can use it at retailers that accept contactless payment.
The Vivoactive 3 is waterproof up to 50 meters, so it’s great for swimmers and watersports enthusiasts. It has a 1.2in, round colour display with memory-in-pixel transflective tech that uses very little power to keep the screen on-screen.
5. Garmin Lily Sport
For women who want a wearable that tracks key health and fitness metrics but also looks stylish, the Garmin Lily Sport is a great choice. It’s a 34mm circular watch that’s smaller than most Garmin sports watches and comes in a variety of color options, including rose gold, cream gold, white, and midnight orchid.
The Garmin Lily also includes period and pregnancy tracking, along with sleep monitoring, giving you a better understanding of your body’s cycles throughout the month. The app also collates data from a number of other Garmin devices to create one handy dashboard.
The Sport model is slightly more expensive than the Classic, but it’s still very reasonable for its size and functionality. It comes with either a silicone band or stainless steel hardware, and is available in three color options.
