The best fitness trackers and watches weve tested for 2025

There’s no onboard GPS; instead, the Luxe needs a connection to your phone, which is its only real drawback. If that’s a deal-breaker for you, the slightly pricier Fitbit Charge 5 would be a better choice. A feature-packed fitness band that’s a solid companion for all kinds of activities – just stick to the indoors as we weren’t impressed by the GPS on offer here.

Activity tracking is accurate and the Body Battery and stress tracking features are a delight to use, giving a good insight into overall wellness. The main selling point for the Smart Band 9 Pro is the large screen, which is a lovely panel that’s easy to read. Fitness trackers don’t tend to have those tall thin screens but they are certainly welcome. If you can live without 24/7 temperature tracking, ECGs, irregular heart rhythm notifications and blood oxygen monitoring, the ScanWatch Light is the Withings watch to get. If you own a Smart Band 8, then it’s the battery gains and the boost in screen brightness that feel like the big wins here and less so the promised heart rate improvements. Plus, with Xiaomi’s Smart Band 10 having hit the market, you can now pick up this wearable for even less, making it more of a bargain.

The best Google Pixel 9a cases

If you want a sleep tracker that also tracks your fitness and activity, choose something like the Oura Ring 3 or Fitbit Inspire. If you are a runner who needs GPS to track your miles, then the Garmin Forerunner 165 is a great option. Before shopping, you should decide what type of sleep tracker is most appealing. There are lots of sleep tracker watches, but some may find them too uncomfortable to sleep with.

Who should buy the Garmin Lily 2?

We also love the watch’s auto-workout detection feature, which automatically detects and tracks our activities in case we forget to start a workout manually. Plus, the watch helped motivate us to move with streaks, encouraging messages, challenges, and rewards. In terms of activity tracking, our tester found the ScanWatch 2 was limited, with no GPS tracking and only seven modes of activities available on the watch at one time. Whoop’s sleep tracking is particularly impressive, with accurate readings on sleep stages, how many times you woke up, sleep trends and sleep schedule planning.

Other Fitness Trackers We Don’t Recommend

The best sleep trackers include watches, rings and those that go over or under your mattress. My favorite overall sleep tracker is the Whoop 4.0 Band, thanks to its in-depth sleep information and personalized recommendations. With no buttons or screens on the band, Whoop looks simple at first glance.

Best Fitness Trackers

{
• The arcade games preloaded with the watch require specific activity benchmarks to unlock.

|}

• A few of our CNET sleep experts have been using Whoop for months and have found it to provide the most reliable and accurate sleep data.
• In 2024, ZDNET tested multiple rings for their functions, convenience, and battery life.
• Tech Advisor Managing Editor Chris got his break as a reporter at infamous site The Inquirer and has been with us for more than 12 years.

{

• Moreover, it can measure Blood oxygen saturation and can track sleep stages accurately.

|}{

• ZDNET ranks this ring as the best Oura Ring alternative and has almost all of the same features for a lower price.

|}

The landscape has also undergone considerable changes over the last few years, making it more important than ever to consider your budget, goals, preferred features, and desired style before making a choice. Finally, if you’re serious about getting fit, check out Stuff’s guide to the best GPS watches. Keep in mind that the Galaxy Watch 8 was released in August and we’re currently in the middle of testing it.

How are fitness trackers different from smartwatches?

The Coros Pace 2 secured a 2022 Fitness Award because at the time it was the lightest fitness tracker ever. One of the coolest features of the Pace 2 is the Muscle Heatmap, which allows users to see which muscles they worked out the most to best adjust their next training session. Oh, and if you’re not exactly sure which workouts to complete this week, the device is loaded with 200 exercises to give you a little inspiration. The Samsung Galaxy Ring is just edging out Oura in the race for best smart ring, and by extension perhaps the best fitness tracker for sleep.

But keeping up with exercise and strength training in our senior years can also become more complex with the onset of common age-related health concerns such as heart conditions and increased risk of injury and falls. In addition, as we creep up in life experience, sleep quality and memory often decline. The truth is many seniors strive to keep up with regular daily activities while also maintaining independence. Once you’ve chosen a tracker that feels right, it becomes an extension of your efforts to stay active, sleep well, and manage stress. This wearable tech nudges you into healthier habits, making small but impactful changes an everyday part of life. Fitbit is known for its versatility, from the compact Inspire series fitting understated elegance to the more advanced models like the Sense, which pack a ton of health tracking features.

{

Helpful Features Make Venu 3 Feel Like A Personal Coach

|}

This is a huge win for consumers as the continuing trend towards subscription models just isn’t practical for those tied to a strict budget who simply want to keep a better eye on their health and fitness. This, plus new HRV and Training Readiness metrics make it great at helping avoid overtraining. The latter is a custom feature that tells you how well-prepared your body is to train. What’s great is that it also tells you why you may not be in an optimal state for a run. Our tester was frequently told to get more sleep ahead of his next training session and race, an insight that helped him change his routine to improve results. The only area where the Apple Watch still lacks is in battery life, now consistently being outdone by flagship Wear OS watches from the likes of TicWatch and OnePlus.

{

Watch Video On Our Channel

|}

Wrist-worn fitness trackers that can monitor your steps and heart rate were once seen as cutting-edge devices. Now these wearables are becoming more high-tech with each release, equipped with features like personalized workout programs and the advertised ability to monitor stress or sleep quality. Amazfit’s Active 2 Smar Watch offers robust capabilities, accurate GPS tracking, and a long-lasting battery–all at a budget-friendly is madmuscles safe price. During testing, it felt light and comfortable for exercise, sleep, and everyday wear. We were blown away by the device’s comprehensive features and the compatible app, including heart rate and sleep monitoring, tracking for over 160 sports, and personalized feedback. Apple’s latest smartwatch offers all the excellent features you would expect from a top fitness tracker.

{

Battery life

|}

To measure how easy each tracker was to use, I started by timing how long the initial unboxing and setup took, taking note of any roadblocks. (For example, the Fitbit Charge 6 was quick to set up but required a hard reset before it would sync with my phone.) But the true test was how easy it was for me to learn to use the app and features of each tracker. If I had gotten the hang of things by the time I was wearing it at the gym—and https://megagrass.com/community/question-and-answer/forums/4133-general-questions/topics/2805151-mad-muscles-for-fat-loss-anyone-tried-it didn’t need to look up how to sift through different activity options and start, stop and pause my workout—I deemed it easy to use.

I don’t have the right equipment to state which wearable is most accurate (a standardized, doctor-given sleep test is the most reliable), but Oura is still a great sleep tracker. A sleep-tracking product that requires being charged daily or nightly can be unmanageable or unrealistic for some people. If you need a sleep tracker with a long battery life, the Withings Scan Watch 2 can go for about 30 days between charges. If you’re looking at a sleep tracker that requires an outlet, such as the Withings Sleep Tracking Mat or the Eight Sleep Pod 3 Cover, that’s something to consider if you don’t have one easily accessible near your bed. As Mashable’s Stan Schroeder said in his review, it takes everything we loved about the Apple Watch Series 10 and adds a new processor and longer battery life. Apple can once again monitor your blood oxygen (after a legal dispute took away the feature), and now offers hypertension notifications as well.