Investing in Your Fitness A Guide to Selecting the Perfect Fitness Tracker

10 Best Fitness Trackers in 2023, According to Reviewers

Consider your specific needs. Are you a swimmer? A weekend warrior? A 15-minute YouTube workout aficionado? Your tracker should be able to keep up with your desired fitness routine and activity levelotherwise, youll find yourself leaving it at home. If youre into cardio, a slimmer model is less likely to get in the way of your workout than a bulkier one. If you like to leave your phone behind when you go on walks, pick an option with built-in GPS. And if youre a serious athlete, youll appreciate a device that puts a premium on deep-dive data.

Pay attention to battery life. Most fitness trackers can go days or weeks on a single charge, even if you wear them nonstop. Smartwatches usually require more frequent charging than simple trackers. And be aware that battery life decreases in any device when youre using active features like GPS, music, and calling.

Decide between a tracker and a smartwatch. Pure fitness trackers are usually cheaper than smartwatches, but they offer fewer amenities; most have a watch face, heart-rate monitoring, and powerful sensors, but limited abilities to perform non-fitness-related tasks. The most powerful fitness trackers might not even have a screen at alltheyre so data-driven that they save that space for more sensors.

Smartwatches, meanwhile, often include additional bells and whistles like integrated music, contactless payment, texting, calling, and the ability to download apps. Both fitness trackers and smartwatches might require a nearby smartphone to offer full features, so be sure you know what to expect from whichever model you choose.

How-To Geek

A fitness tracker can help you get in shape by providing data about your physical activities, heart health, recovery, and more. But the number of choices can make it confusing to select one. We've handpicked the best fitness trackers to help.

What to Look For in a Fitness Tracker in 2024

While picking a fitness tracker, considering your fitness goals is a good starting point. Are you a beginner trying to be more active, an enthusiast looking to make better sense of your workouts, or someone preparing for a marathon or something similar? The more specific your goal, the more specific features you'll need from your fitness tracker, which helps narrow down your search.

In addition, you may want to look for features such as waterproofing, built-in GPS, and the ability to sync with your favorite fitness app, depending on your needs. If you plan on swimming, for example, you'll want a tracker that can handle being in the water to monitor your workout.

Once you know what you want to monitor and how detailed you want the data to be, you can check for those features in your prospective fitness trackers. When you know what features you want, you can be sure to pick a tracker you'll want to use.

Next, long battery life is vital if you work out frequently, for long durations, or if a lot of your fitness tracking will involve GPS. In addition, charge time is equally important. When you have forgotten to charge your fitness tracker, and you are about to start a workout, can you get a decent charge in a few minutes?

Comfort is another critical aspect that you shouldn't ignore. If your fitness tracker isn't comfortable, it will end up sitting in a drawer somewhere. Also, if you wear it all day, you may want it to go well with your dinner attire or professional look.

Finally, while many fitness trackers have some smartwatch features, you may want to consider a full-fledged smartwatch if you want your fitness tracker to be a companion device to your phone. The best smartwatches generally have a good selection of health and fitness features, though a dedicated fitness tracker will give you more information.

Best Fitness Tracker Overall: Garmin Venu 2

Garmin is a well-known name in the fitness tracker industry, and for good reason. The company's smartwatches have been the main competitor of Fitbit for years now, and the Garmin Venu 2 continues the tradition of being a fantastic, no-frills tracker.

As to be expected from a fitness tracker, the Venu 2 will count your steps, measure your heart rate, and track a large number of workouts. There are even more advanced training modes, where the watch can help you target specific muscle groups and provide high-intensity interval training (HIIT) timers.

But the real star here is the Venu 2's battery life, which can last up to six days if you turn off the always-on screen. When it comes to tracking health and fitness, you generally want to have the watch on and tracking as much as possible, so there's not much of a risk of the watch dying midday or mid-workout.

It's important to note that the Garmin Venu 2 is a fitness tracker through and through, so you can't expect much in the way of smartphone features here. You'll still get notifications and Garmin Pay for easy purchases, but more advanced smartwatch features are absent here.

If you're looking for the best fitness tracker, however, some missing smartwatch features won't be a deal-breaker, and you can buy the Garmin Venu 2 and be assured you'll get all the fitness data you need.

Garmin Venu 2

Best Fitness Tracker Overall

$312 $400 Save $88

The Garmin Venu 2 may be missing some of the smartwatch features the competition provides, but the top-notch fitness tracking and battery life more than make up for it.

At under $100, the Fitbit Inspire 3 packs too much into its slim frame to be ignored. Whether you're looking to track your heart rate, Active Zone minutes, calories burned, or sleep score, you can find it all on the Inspire 3's full-color Always-On display.

Regarding fitness trackers, few things are worse than having your wearable die on you during your workout or while you're sleeping. Thankfully, the Inspire 3 has a battery life that lasts up to 10 days to make sure that doesn't happen.

And while you're making use of that stalwart battery life during your daily swim, hike, or run, you can enjoy the additional functionality that comes with one free year of Fitbit's premium subscription plan.

The upside: you'll have access to features like advanced sleep and stress insights, a Daily Readiness Score, and an in-depth understanding of what your health metrics mean for you and your workouts. The downside: it's only free for the first year. If you want to keep using the features Fitbit gets you hooked on, you'll have to shell out $10 every month after.

Lastly, if built-in GPS is a must-have to track your bike rides and cross-country travel, you'll want to look for another option like the Fitbit Charge 5. The Inspire 3 only offers connected GPS, meaning you'll need to use your smartphone in conjunction with the wearable for location tracking.

However, if you're searching for a fitness tracker that won't break the bank but will give you everything you need for workout tracking and analysis, you can stop the search at Fitbit's Inspire 3.

Fitbit Inspire 3

Best Budget Fitness Tracker

The Fitbit Inspire 3 is an excellent, affordable workout companion. Track your sleep and activity while keeping your wallet happy.

Best Fitness Tracker for Kids: Fitbit Ace 3

If you are looking for a way to get your kids more active, the Fitbit Ace 3 is a great option. It incentivizes having a healthy lifestyle by making fitness fun with motivational challenges.

The tracker has a rugged design, ensuring it doesn't get damaged during playtime. In addition, it's water-resistant up to 50 meters and swim-proof.

As you can expect, the Ace 3 is quite different from fitness trackers meant for adults. For example, it has animated clock faces and doles out virtual badges to make completing a fitness goal fun. The Ace 3 also allows children to challenge family members to step competitions so that everyone can participate and remain active.

The usual fitness tracker trappings, such as the ability to count steps, track activities, and monitor sleep, are present. But all tracking is done passively, so kids don't need to do anything. The Fitbit Ace 3 also shines on the battery front with around a week on a single charge, making it fuss-free for parents.

You can buy it in two color optionsCosmic Blue with Green accents and Black with Red accentsbut the company also offers a special edition Minions Yellow version.

Fitbit Ace 3

Best Fitness Tracker for Kids

$65 $79 Save $14

The Fitbit Ace 3 makes fitness fun for kids by offering motivational challenges. It's also swim-proof and can last up to a week on a single charge.

Best Fitness Tracker With GPS: Fitbit Charge 5

The Fitbit Charge 5 is an excellent fitness tracker that comes with a built-in GPS. You can track your walks, runs, and bike rides without your phone, which is especially freeing where we constantly need our smartphones on hand.

The tracker supports over 20 workouts, covering everything from runs and swimming to pilates and kickboxing. It can automatically detect the most common workouts, and its top-notch tracking accuracy.

You also get a heart-rate monitor, SpO2 sensor, temperature sensor, and multipurpose electrical sensors to track your sleep, stress responses, and vitals. This fitness tracker pretty much features everything you need for your health. In terms of smartwatch features, the tracker supports contactless payments and app notifications from your phone.

The Charge 5 lasts about seven days on a single charge without an always-on display. But the battery life drops to half if you enable the always-on screen feature.

Unfortunately, Fitbit wants you to spend money on getting a premium subscription for features like Readiness Score and personalized insights. Fitbit has also removed Spotify support in the Charge 5, a feature available in previous Charge-series trackers. Keep this in mind if these are features important to you!

Fitbit Charge 5

Best Fitness Tracker With GPS

$126 $150 Save $24

The Fitbit Charge 5 is an extremely feature-packed activity tracker. It has everything most people want, from a bright AMOLED screen to a wide array of sensors.

The Apple Watch line is the best smartwatch line around, so it should come as no surprise that the Apple Watch Series 9, the latest flagship offering, is fantastic. What may be surprising, however, is that this smartwatch also works well as a fitness tracker, giving you all the features you'd want from a smartwatch and tracker in one packageprovided you have an iPhone.

With the Series 9, you'll get a smartwatch that tracks all the vitals you'd expect from a fitness tracker, like steps, sleep, and heart rate. But where the Apple Watch rises above the competition is with its software support. The Health app puts all of the information you get from your Apple Watch and more in one easy-to-read location. You can even upload medical data to get a clearer picture of your physical (and mental) health.

In addition, the Apple Fitness+ app is one of the best fitness apps on the market, offering a large variety of workouts and intense for wherever you're at in your fitness journey. But the experience only gets better with an Apple Watch, where you'll get real-time feedback on your workout. That sort of data is invaluable, especially on the screen right next to your instructorthere is no need to look away from the screen and fiddle with your watch.

Add in all the other features Apple Watch offers, and it's a hard recommendation to beat. Its only negative is a major one, however. The Apple Watch is, of course, part of Apple's 'walled garden' ecosystem, and it's even more restrictive than some of Apple's other products. You need an iPhone to pair the watch with, as you can't do it with an iPad or Android phone. In addition, you can't use the Fitness app at all unless you have an iPhone, even though you can watch the workouts on other devices after signing up.

It's a frustrating problem for those who are Android diehards, but if you already have an iPhone, you can't do any better for a smartwatch than the Series 9.

Apple Watch Series 9

Best Fitness Smartwatch

$272 $399 Save $127

While the Apple Watch Series 9 is a smartwatch first and foremost, the slew of fitness data it provides gives plenty of insight to those looking to get fit.

Best Screenless Fitness Tracker: Whoop 4.0

Whoop is one of the most exciting fitness trackers to arrive on the market over the last few years. It ditches the screen for a distraction-free experience and provides multiple ways to wear it, such as a bicep band or wristband. In addition, the company offers a range of athletic wear called Whoop Body that is fitted with pods to slot the Whoop tracker into.

The latest iteration, Whoop 4.0, targets fitness enthusiasts or athletes who want to optimize their workouts. It takes a data-driven approach to your fitness and gives you the necessary insights into how you can improve it. You can read more about this in our Whoop 4.0 review:

Unlike most mass-market fitness trackers that report activity tracking data in steps taken or calories burnt, Whoop gives you cardio-vascular strain, recovery, and sleep performance scores. In addition, as the Whoop has all the sensors you will find on other trackers, you can get blood oxygen levels, heart-rate information, skin temperature, and respiratory rate data.

Another significant way Whoop 4.0 differs from other fitness trackers on this list is the pricing structure. You buy a subscription worth $30 a month with a minimum of six-month membership to get the device and access to Whoop's app. You can save some money by opting for long-term plans, but there is no other way to get the tracker.

Whoop 4.0

Best Screenless Fitness Tracker

Whoop 4.0 is a high-quality fitness tracker for people looking for a data-driven approach to health, fitness, and recovery.

FAQ

How do I connect my fitness tracker to my Android phone?

Most fitness trackers are connected to Android phones via Bluetooth. To do this, you need to turn on Bluetooth on your phone, search for discoverable devices, and link your fitness tracker to the phone. However, these instructions may vary by tracker, so double-check the instructions before pairing the devices.

How do I connect my fitness tracker to my iPhone?

Like with Android phones, you will connect fitness trackers to your iPhone via Bluetooth. Make sure Bluetooth is turned on, search for discoverable devices, and link your fitness tracker to your iPhone. Apple Watches will start the pairing process automatically.

Does a fitness tracker track blood pressure?

A fitness tracker cannot track blood pressure. You need to use a blood pressure monitor or cuff in order to track it.

How do you charge a fitness tracker?

Most fitness trackers have a proprietary charger that you can plug via a USB-A or USB-C charger. Some smartwatches, like an Apple Watch, however, can be charged wirelessly.

How do fitness trackers track sleep?

Most fitness trackers will measure how long you're asleep, as well as the quality, using small motion detectors. These sensors will recognize when you're sleeping and how often you're moving to measure how well you're sleeping. Fitness trackers with heart rate monitors can also use your heart rate to measure your quality of sleep.