9 Best Fitness Watches and Trackers

Updated Oct 8, 2024 8:06 am ET


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Fitness watches and trackers are great tools for fitness enthusiasts of all levels. Whether you’re advanced, a newbie, or anything in between, you can track your steps, heart rate, sleep quality, and much more with the right device.

Not sure which one is right for you? No problem! We’ve researched nine of the best fitness watches and trackers to help you decide.

Apple Watch Ultra 2

The Apple Watch Ultra 2 is a carbon-neutral fitness watch and tracker that represents Apple’s commitment to supporting the environment and making all products carbon-neutral by 2030.

This watch is designed to meet the needs of outdoor adventurers, endurance athletes, and water sports enthusiasts, and it comes with a specialized band for each user. It also features the new 29 SiP, a four-core neural engine that processes machine learning tasks up to twice as fast as previous models and enables a variety of innovations, including the new double tap gesture.

The S9 SiP also allows for an ultra-bright display and allows users to quickly interact with their watch without touching the display. It has up to 36 hours of battery life (and 72 hours when it’s in Low Power Mode).

Designed for the outdoors, the Apple Watch Ultra 2 comes with a 49mm corrosion-resistant titanium case and is water-resistant up to 100 meters. Cellular is built in, too, so you can call or text without a phone, even if you’re overseas.

For athletes, this tracker monitors advanced metrics, including heart rate zones, distance, pace, and more. Outdoor adventurers can also take advantage of the helpful Compass app and precision dual-frequency GPS.

Apple Watch Series 9

The Apple Watch Series 9 is the ultimate fitness watch for health enthusiasts. Equipped with the S9 chip, it enables a bright display and allows users to interact with the watch without even touching the screen.

Like the Apple Watch Ultra 2, the Apple Watch Series 9 is carbon neutral when paired with the newest Sport Loop. It boasts cellular connectivity without an iPhone nearby and allows you to text, call, stream music, and more.

For fitness fanatics, the watch offers a variety of advanced health features, from monitoring your blood oxygen levels to taking an ECG without setting foot inside a hospital. You can also track your sleep to see how much time you spend in each sleep stage.

Not sure what kind of workout you want to do? The Workout app features tons of options, as well as advanced metrics, to help you track your performance.

Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 Pro

The Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 Pro boasts superior LTE connectivity, enabling phone-like capabilities even when your phone is nowhere nearby. You can make and take calls, send texts, stream music, and more without a phone or Wi-Fi.

This fitness watch offers a wide range of health and fitness features, including advanced sleep coaching. It monitors your sleep quality and analyzes sleep stages while you’re at rest and includes Advanced Sleep Coaching to evaluate your patterns and help you develop better habits.

Curious about your body composition? The Galaxy Watch 5 can provide extensive body composition data straight from your wrist, including your body fat, muscle mass, water weight, basal metabolic rate, and BMI.

Need to focus on your workout and block out the world for a bit? This watch can help you do just that with its Active Noise Cancellation feature, which blocks unwanted sounds and lets you get in the zone.

PlayBetter Garmin Venu 3S

The PlayBetter Garmin Venu 3S is more than just a smartwatch. It touts itself as a “dedicated on-wrist coach” that will help you achieve your unique health and fitness goals.

This fitness watch comes with a built-in sleep coach that monitors sleep quality and analyzes critical metrics, including sleep duration, disturbances, and sleep stages. It also features an all-new Workout benefit and Recovery feature that assesses your exertion level during workouts and offers helpful insights into your recovery.

If you need help striking a balance between pushing yourself to the next level and staying safe while working out, the Garmin Venu 3S has got you covered. It tracks your Rate of Perceived Exertion and ensures you remain within a healthy zone.

The Venu 3S also provides access to an array of sports apps, from tennis to swimming to golf. No matter how you like to break a sweat, you can monitor your metrics and enhance your performance with this watch.

Android 11.0 Smartwatch

The Android 11.0 smartwatch features a 1.6-inch touchscreen and 400×400-pixel resolution. It also allows you to make and answer calls directly from your watch and supports video calls, text messages, and more.

As for its fitness features, the watch supports several different sports modes and can generate trajectory maps to help you manage your activities and keep track of your location. It also has a built-in professional heart rate detector to help you make sure you’re not overexerting yourself during your workouts.

You’ll never have to worry about your watch losing power while you train. It has a built-in 900mAh capacity battery and comes with a magnetic charging cable. It only takes one hour to charge fully, too, so you can get back to your favorite activities in no time!

Amazfit GTS 2 Mini

The Amazfit GTS 2 Mini comes with built-in Alexa functionalities, so you can ask questions, check the weather, translate information, and more. The watch also provides real-time notifications of incoming calls, texts, and other apps to help you stay in the loop.

This smartwatch offers a wide range of health and fitness features, including heart rate monitoring, sleep monitoring, stress level monitoring, blood-oxygen saturation measuring, and cycle tracking. Its PAI health assessment system can also process complex health data to deliver your current physical condition in a simple, single-value score.

The Amazfit GTS 2 Mini features over 68 sports modes and is great for indoor and outdoor sports enthusiasts. It is water-resistant up to 50 meters, too, so you can wear it without fear while you swim, kayak, surf, or participate in any other water sport.

Fitbit Versa 4

The Fitbit Versa 4 keeps you accountable with real-time stats during your workouts and all-day activity tracking. It also provides you with a daily readiness score so you know when to push yourself and when to scale back your training.

Other helpful fitness features include a built-in GPS and workout intensity map, as well as Active Zone Minutes, automatic exercise tracking, and over 40 exercise modes. It’s water-resistant up to 50 meters, too.

This watch can measure and help you improve your sleep quality, too, with a personalized sleep profile and daily sleep score. You can easily switch it to “do not disturb” mode as well to prevent notifications from interfering with your sleep quality.

Are you worried about how your stress is affecting your health and fitness? The Fitbit Versa 4 can help with a daily Stress Management Score, guided breathing sessions, reflection logging, and mindfulness content to help you slow down and get centered.

Fitbit Sense 2

The Fitbit Sense 2 is another excellent option for Fitbit lovers looking for the best fitness watches and trackers.

This watch is considered the brand’s most advanced health and fitness smartwatch and is designed to help you manage stress and live healthily. It offers all-day stress detection features and provides you with a daily Stress Management Score. It has a built-in ECG app as well and alerts you to irregular heart rhythms.

Sleep is vital to your overall health, and the Fitbit Sense 2 helps you track your sleep to ensure you’re getting the quantity and quality that you need to thrive.

As for exercise, the Fitbit Sense 2 includes a built-in GPS and a helpful workout intensity map. It also provides you with a Daily Readiness Score, tracks activity automatically throughout the day, and automatically detects when you’ve started exercising. It has 40-plus exercise modes and is water-resistant up to 50 meters as well.

WHOOP 4.0

The WHOOP 4.0 continuously monitors a wide range of physiological data, from heart and respiratory rate to skin temperature, blood oxygen level, and sleep quality. All this information provides you with a more holistic picture of your health and well-being and lets you know where you need to improve.

WHOOP devices are insight-driven. They take the latest data they’ve collected and use it to provide precise and personalized next steps that bring you closer to your goals and help you optimize your performance.

WHOOP also creates accountability by helping you track daily behaviors, including diet, activity, alcohol intake, stress, caffeine intake, and more. Your watch will then determine which behaviors helped or hurt your sleep and recovery, encouraging you to establish healthier habits in the future.

The WHOOP 4 offers on-the-go charging with a built-in waterproof battery pack that lets you charge it wherever you go while you’re wearing it. You never have to worry about plugging in your watch again!

Chase Clements

Chase Clements

Author McClatchy Commerce

Based in Kansas City, Chase Clements is the Commerce Content Operations Manager. He has many years of experience as a Commerce Writer and Editor for McClatchy.