The Best Fitness Trackers for 2023

Why We Picked It 

The Apple Watch Series 8 offers a broad suite of built-in fitness, health, and safety tools, not to mention the best selection of third-party apps (such as Runkeeper, Strava, and Nike Run Club) for any smartwatch.

Its watchOS 9 software includes a new Multisport tracking option for triathletes, heart rate zone data, and support for Custom Workouts. When tracking a run, it can now even show your real-time power, stride length, ground contact time, and vertical oscillation.

Its Activity, Exercise, and Stand rings can help motivate you to get moving, while its companion Fitness+ workout streaming service ($9.99 per month or $79.99 per year after a three-month trial) offers a variety of studio-style classes with excellent music and instruction for the home or gym. On the health front, it accurately tracks your activity, blood oxygen saturation (SpO2), body temperature deviations, fertility windows, menstrual cycle, overnight respiration, sleep, and more.

The Series 8 can alert you if it detects a high or low heart rate, irregular heart rhythm, and loud sounds that can damage your hearing. It also supports Emergency SOS and international emergency calling, as well as automatically calls for help if it detects a hard fall. We also like the Series 8’s automatic 20-second handwashing timer, which keeps you honest when you scrub up.

Who It’s For

The Apple Watch Series 8 is best for iPhone users in search of a wearable that doubles as a fitness tracker for workouts and a smartwatch for connectivity features. It requires an iPhone 8 or later that runs iOS 16 or higher, so it’s not an option if you use Android. 

It’s a particularly excellent choice for runners, swimmers, and cyclists. Its wrist-based running power measurements help you gauge your effort in real time, a WR50 rating makes it safe for shallow-water activities like swimming in a pool or the ocean, and automatic bike ride detection ensures you never lose credit for an Outdoor Cycle workout. 

Meanwhile, the $799 Apple Watch Ultra, which features a more rugged build and longer battery life, should strongly appeal to outdoor adventurers, endurance athletes, and ocean enthusiasts with deep pockets. With its WR100 water-resistance rating, the Ultra is suitable for high-speed water sports and recreational diving.

Why We Picked It 

The Fitbit Charge 5 offers more bang for your buck than any other fitness tracker we’ve tested.

This generation builds on its excellent predecessors with an attractive AMOLED color touch screen and metal case. It also adds several advanced health-monitoring features, including an electrodermal activity (EDA) sensor that tracks your body’s response to stress, and an electrocardiogram (ECG) app that checks for signs of atrial fibrillation (AFib), an irregular heart rhythm. 

For fitness tracking, the Charge 5 features 20 sport profiles (six of which you can add to the device at a time), a built-in GPS so you don’t need to bring your phone to track your route during outdoor runs, and a 24/7 heart rate monitor. Its SmartTrack feature automatically recognizes and records certain workouts including walking and running, while its Active Zone Minutes metric motivates you to meet the American Heart Association’s recommendation of 150 minutes of moderate to intense activity per week. The Fitbit app offers plenty of post-workout data, including intensity maps showing your pace and heart rate zones throughout your route. On the safety front, the Charge 5 alerts you if your heart rate is unusually high or low.

When you wear it to bed at night, it tracks the duration and quality of your shut-eye, as well as your sleep stages (light, deep, and REM). It also tracks some more advanced overnight metrics, including respiration, heart rate variability (HRV, a measure of your nervous system activity and an indicator of stress levels), skin temperature variation (whether you were hotter or colder compared with your baseline), and SpO2. 

Who It’s For

With top-notch fitness, sleep, and stress-tracking features; an attractive design; and a reasonable price, the Fitbit Charge 5 is the best standalone fitness tracker for most people. It motivates you to meet your workout goals, get to bed earlier, and incorporate mindfulness into your daily routine. 

The Charge 5 works with both iPhone and Android devices, is water-resistant to 164 feet, and offers up to a week of battery life on a charge, which is pretty impressive given its color touch screen and slim design. It supports the following exercise shortcuts: bike, bootcamp, circuit training, elliptical, golf, hike, interval workout, kickboxing, martial arts, outdoor workout, pilates, run, spinning, stairclimber, swim, tennis, treadmill, walk, weights, workout (a general-purpose tracking mode), and yoga. 

One limitation, however, is that the Charge 5 lacks Spotify support. If you need music streaming controls on your wrist, look elsewhere. Moreover, if you’re new to fitness or don’t see yourself tracking outdoor runs, bike rides, or hikes, consider a more affordable wearable without a built-in GPS. 

Why We Picked It 

The Garmin Vivoactive 4 is a GPS-equipped fitness tracker and smartwatch hybrid that stands out because of its stylish design, excellent visibility in bright sunlight, and long battery life. Inside its classy stainless steel bezel is a color touch screen with a durable Corning Gorilla Glass 3 cover and an always-on display option. It comes with a comfortable textured silicone strap and is compatible with standard quick-release bands(Opens in a new window). 

On the fitness front, it boasts more than 20 preloaded sports apps, guided workouts with form animations, and personalized training plans. It tracks advanced metrics such as your respiration and SpO2, plus can even monitor your heart rate underwater. 

The Vivoactive 4 gets about eight days of battery life per charge, a major advantage compared to the Apple Watch Series 8 and Samsung Galaxy Watch 5, both of which you typically need to recharge daily with normal use. Though fitness is its main focus, the Vivoactive 4 supports several useful lifestyle features including downloadable apps, onboard music storage for 500 songs, Bluetooth headphones, and contactless payments. 

Who It’s For

If you’re looking for a high-end fitness tracker and smartwatch hybrid that balances form and function, the Garmin Vivoactive 4 should be at the top of your list.

With a sunlight-visible, transflective display and a built-in GPS, the Vivoactive 4 is a top choice for outdoor athletes, including trail runners and hikers. The display, combined with its 5ATM water resistance and underwater optical heart rate monitoring abilities, make it a suitable choice for swimmers, in particular.

It’s an excellent wearable for any fitness-focused, yet style-minded, iOS or Android user. And,now that it’s been around for more than two years, you can often find it on sale.  

Why We Picked It 

The Polar Grit X stands out for its rugged build and useful outdoor-specific features. It offers all the capabilities you expect from a multisport GPS watch—continuous heart rate tracking, overnight recovery measurements, and personal workout recommendations—plus important extras for outdoor athletes, like refueling advice for long training sessions and events, route-planning tools, and uphill and downhill stats. 

It’s waterproof to 328 feet and has passed several US military-grade tests, thus ensuring it can withstand extreme temperatures, drops, and humidity. Because of its suite of power-saving features, the Grit X can last up to 100 hours (just over four days) on a charge. With the GPS running, it offers an impressive 40 hours of battery life. Though it’s a bit bulky for small wrists, it has a stylish design with a 1.2-inch color touch screen that offers ample real estate to view your metrics, as well as five physical buttons that allow you to easily navigate the interface.

Who It’s For

The Polar Grit X is best for adventurers who prefer to train off the beaten path. It’s a niche product for serious outdoor athletes but, if you fall into that camp, it can really help you level up your training. If you’re a serious downhill skier, hiker, mountain biker, swimmer, or trail runner, the Polar Grit X is strongly worth considering. 

Given its price, in-depth metrics, and outdoor features, the Grit X isn’t for the average person who wants to track casual runs and workout sessions. Plenty of more affordable wearables record your exercise activity and monitor your health, like the Charge 5, which also features GPS and a heart rate monitor, plus NFC for contactless payments.

Why We Picked It 

Two words: Battery life. The Coros Apex multisport GPS watch lasts up to 24 days with normal use—it offers the longest battery life of any model on this list, by far. Even with the GPS on, it runs for a full 24 hours. You can bump that to 80 hours by enabling a battery-saving mode called UltraMax, which switches on the GPS for 30 seconds every two minutes while using motion sensors and machine learning algorithms to track you the rest of the time. 

The Apex is designed for outdoor sports like biking, hiking, running, skiing, snowboarding, swimming, and triathlons. It tracks distance, elevation, heart rate, heart rate zone, pace, stride, time, and training effort. Its app displays beautiful graphs and offers a wealth of information to help you interpret the data. 

Who It’s For

If you’re a triathlete, runner, or endurance athlete in the market for a sensor-packed sports watch that can go the distance, the Apex is a solid training companion. It has a 10ATM rating (meaning it can withstand depths of 328 feet) and is suitable for swimming and open-water activities, but not for deep-water sports like scuba diving. It offers similar functionality to the Garmin Forerunner 735XT, but with better battery life and a more stylish design. 

Though it lacks some lifestyle perks of some other models on this list, such as support for contactless payments and onboard music storage, the Apex delivers loads of data about your performance and actionable insights to help you improve your outdoor sports training. 

Why We Picked It 

The Fitbit Versa 3 is one of the best budget-friendly smartwatches you can buy.

The third-generation model offers all the excellent fitness and health features that made the Versa line a favorite of ours for years, including 24/7 heart rate monitoring, guided breathing exercises, and automatic exercise recognition. It also adds a GPS for pace, distance, and route-tracking without your phone, plus features an SpO2 sensor to measure the amount of oxygen in your blood while you sleep. 

And now, with support for Amazon Alexa, Deezer, and Pandora music and podcast storage, downloadable apps, on-wrist payments, smartphone notifications, and Spotify music controls, the Versa 3 is the most feature-rich Android-compatible smartwatch in this price range. It features a bright, colorful 1.58-inch AMOLED display, an aluminum case, and a workout-friendly silicone strap. It’s water-resistant to 164 feet and lasts more than six days on a charge.

Who It’s For

If you’re in the market for a budget-friendly fitness tracker and smartwatch hybrid, the Versa 3 is a strong contender, especially for Android users. With an always-on color touch screen, long battery life, ample fitness and sleep tracking tools, and key lifestyle features, it offers tremendous value for the price. 

That said, if you’re an iPhone user, you should also consider the Apple Watch SE, which boasts a wider selection of downloadable apps; better integration with the iPhone for calls and texts; plus some nice health and safety features you don’t get on the Versa 3, including an automatic handwashing countdown timer and fall detection (but no SpO2 readings).

Why We Picked It 

Samsung’s smartwatches offer some of the most innovative health-tracking features we’ve seen, including wrist-based body composition measurements and overnight snore tracking, tools that are not available on the Apple Watch. 

In addition to its ability to read your heart rate and take an electrocardiogram (ECG), the Watch Series 5 can also assess your body composition using a process called bioelectric impedance analysis (BIA, the same technology found in smart scales). After a 15-second scan, the watch displays your skeletal muscle mass, fat mass, body fat percentage, body mass index (BMI, a measure of body size based on your weight and height), body water mass, and basal metabolic rate (BMR, or the minimum necessary energy needed in an inactive state). It also shows whether your results for each metric fall within the low, normal, or high range.

When you wear the watch to bed and place a compatible smartphone on your nightstand, they can work together to listen for snoring and even record it. The watch also tracks your sleep duration, stages (awake, light, deep, and REM), and overnight SpO2. For fitness tracking, the Watch5 series supports more than 90 different workouts (everything from walking and running to archery and flying disc), and can automatically detect certain activities. 

Who It’s For

The Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 series is best for Android users in the market for a feature-rich smartwatch with cutting-edge fitness- and health-tracking tools. Similar to how the Apple Watch only works with iOS devices, the Galaxy Watch 5 series is exclusive to Android. Samsung’s latest smartwatches work with smartphones running Android 8.0 (or newer) that have more than 1.5GB of RAM.

The Pro version doubles the battery life of the standard model and adds exclusive outdoor adventuring features, including turn-by-turn cycling and hiking directions, for $170 more. It’s a nice choice for mountain bikers, runners, hikers, and those who work outdoors, as well as anyone who wants a fully-featured Android-compatible smartwatch that lasts more than a single day on a charge. 

Why We Picked It

The Watch SE is the smallest and least expensive smartwatch in Apple’s lineup. Except for an always-on display and a few health sensors (ECG, SpO2, and temperature), it includes almost all the same connectivity, safety, and fitness features of the Series 8 for $150 less. 

The second-generation SE, which launched in the fall of 2022, looks just like its predecessor, but costs $30 less and packs some nice under-the-hood upgrades, including a faster processor, a new motion sensor for Crash Detection, and significantly more battery life. It offered excellent performance overall in testing, with a responsive touch screen and 37 hours of battery life per charge.

Who It’s For

The Apple Watch SE is a solid option for its target audience of first-time smartwatch users, children, teens, and older adults. The Series 8 is our top pick for most Apple Watch buyers, but the second-gen SE is a worthy alternative for staying active, connected, and safe on a budget. 

It notably works with Apple’s Family Setup feature, which lets you set up and manage an Apple Watch for a family member who doesn’t have an iPhone. During the setup process, the iPhone-based Watch app asks if you’re setting it up for yourself or a family member, then guides you through the process.

Why We Picked It 

Designed specifically for women, the Garmin Lily fitness tracker and smartwatch hybrid stands out for its classic, jewelry-like design. It features a beautiful, patterned face, an aluminum or stainless steel bezel, and a 14mm band that’s much slimmer than most smartwatch straps, so you can wear it alongside other bracelets. More than just attractive, the Lily can track health stats such as your calories burned, energy level, heart rate, respiration, sleep, SpO2, steps, stress, and workouts. It also offers smartwatch features such as phone notifications, music playback controls, and useful calendar and weather widgets. It’s water-resistant to 164 feet and can last up to five days on a charge. 

Who It’s For

If you want a fitness tracker that doesn’t look like one, the Garmin Lily might be perfect. Its attractive, female-focused design is its biggest selling point, but the Garmin Lily also offers an impressive feature set for its small size. 

It lacks a color, always-on display and several other features you get with the Vivoactive 4 and 4S, but it also costs significantly less. And while it isn’t quite as value-rich as the similarly priced Versa 3, the Lily is a top choice if you’re looking for a fitness-focused tracker and smartwatch hybrid that prioritizes style.

Why We Picked It 

The Amazon Halo View is the most affordable option on this list but it offers a lot of value for its sub-$100 price. It can measure your activity, heart rate, sleep, skin temperature, and SpO2, plus offers up to a week of battery life on a charge. 

Its companion Halo app membership (which is free for a year with the purchase of the tracker, and $3.99 per month thereafter) offers tons of features to help you improve your results, including a library of original exercise videos and personalized movement health programs. The app membership also gives you access to more than 600 healthy recipes, which you can filter by eating style (classic, clean eating, ketogenic-friendly, Mediterranean, Nordic, Paleo-friendly, vegan, or vegetarian). 

If you don’t want to pay for the membership after the free 12-month trial, the Halo View still functions as a basic activity and sleep tracker. Without a membership, it automatically tracks walks and other activities that elevate your heart rate, as well as the duration of your slumber and your sleeping temperature each night. 

Who It’s For

If you need some motivation to get active, but don’t want to spend big bucks on a fitness tracker you’re not sure you will stick with, the Amazon Halo View is worth a look. It lacks GPS functionality, but still presents a holistic view of your wellness. Its excellent companion app (available on Android and iOS) offers useful guidance and tools to help improve your health and fitness. 

The Halo View is better than its predecessor, the Halo, in almost every way: It has a display, costs less, and comes with a free year of premium Halo Membership (up from six months). The Charge 5 remains a better bet for gym rats in search of more accurate, granular metrics. But the Halo View is a viable alternative, particularly for those on a tight budget or beginners who are just starting their path toward better health.

Why We Picked It 

The Oura Generation 3 is like a mood ring on steroids: It looks like a basic metal band, but it houses small sensors to keep tabs on your activity, physical and mental health, and sleep. It can even monitor your heart rate and body temperature around the clock, as well as predict your next period. This finger-based fitness tracker also keeps tabs on your HRV, overnight SpO2, and respiration rate. 

The previous-generation Oura was terrific for monitoring your sleep and recovery but fell short as an activity tracker. That’s still largely the case, but the latest model is a bit better on this front with a new Workout Heart Rate feature that can help you understand how exercise impacts your health.

It’s about as thick as the average wedding band, super lightweight, and can last about a week on a charge. The ring is water-resistant up to 328 feet, so you can wear it while swimming, showering, diving, or just doing the dishes. 

Who It’s For

If you’re not into watches or wristbands but still need some motivation to improve your health and fitness, check out the Oura Ring Generation 3. Offering more sensors than its predecessor, an excellent companion app, and long battery life, the third-generation Oura is the best fitness-tracking ring we’ve tested. 

Like the Garmin Lily, the Oura’s biggest differentiator is its stylish design. Fashionistas should especially like the Gucci version. 

Keep in mind that, similar to the Halo View, the Oura Generation 3 requires a membership (free for six months when you purchase the ring and $5.99 per month thereafter) to access all your health metrics. The Oura membership also offers a library of about 50 guided meditations and breathing exercises, and daily personalized guidance to help you tailor your workouts. Without a membership, you can see only your daily Activity, Readiness, and Sleep scores. 

If you don’t mind something less discreet, the Charge 5 is the better pure fitness tracker, however. 

Why We Picked It 

Polar’s products are popular for their accuracy, if not necessarily their style. With the latest version of its Ignite fitness tracker, Polar is appealing to fitness fans who also value aesthetics. 

It tracks your activities, heart rate, sleep, and recovery, plus offers personalized daily workout guidance to help you train smarter as well as guided breathing exercises to help you de-stress. On the design front, the Ignite 2 features stylish engravings on its metal bezel, a bright color touch screen, and accessory bands with Swarovski crystals (sold separately) for those who like a bit of bling. 

For fitness tracking, it supports up to 20 sport profiles on the device at a time and offers more than 100 options to choose from—everything from baseball to roller skating. It offers more variety than the Charge 5, which, as mentioned, supports up to six sport profiles on the device at a time, out of a list of 20 options. 

The Ignite 2 lasts up to five days on a charge, or up to 20 hours if you turn on the GPS and heart rate tracking features. It’s water-resistant to around 98 feet, which makes it safe to wear in the shower or when you swim. Though it’s primarily a fitness-focused wearable, the Ignite 2 offers smartwatch features like music controls and weather forecasts, too.

Who It’s For

The Ignite 2 is meant for fitness enthusiasts who prioritize style. If you’re looking for a capable GPS fitness watch that transitions well from the gym to a night out, the Polar Ignite 2 is an excellent choice. 

With a longer list of supported sports and activities than many competing devices, it’s a top choice for those who often mix up their fitness routine. Although the Ignite 2 lacks an always-on display, mobile payment support, and an SpO2 sensor— features that are all available on the similarly-priced Versa 3—it’s still a strong alternative that deftly balances form and function.