The Best Smartwatches for 2022

The infamous calculator watch(Opens in a new window) has been around since the 1970s, but smartwatches have finally reached the point that they’re, well, smart. From running apps, to displaying smartphone notifications, to monitoring your heart rate, the latest crop of smartwatches do a lot more than just tell time. But which one should you buy? We’ve rounded up our top-rated options to help you decide. It’s also important to know what to look for, so keep the following advice in mind when shopping around.

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More About Our Picks

Best Overall

Bottom Line:

With new features such as body temperature sensing and car crash detection, the Apple Watch Series 8 is the right choice for most smartwatch buyers.

Pros

• Overnight temperature sensing
• Car crash detection
• Improved battery life
• More accurate period predictions

Cons

• Same design as previous model
• Limited usefulness for retrospective ovulation estimates

Best Outdoor Visibility

Bottom Line:

Garmin’s excellent Vivoactive 4 fitness tracker offers insights about your breathing, sleep, and stress, motivating training plans, and smartwatch features like contactless payments, downloadable apps, and onboard music storage.

Pros

• Respiration tracking
• Pulse oximeter readings
• On-screen workout animations
• Onboard music storage and support for Bluetooth headphones
• Underwater optical heart rate monitoring
• Pilates support

Cons

• Uses multiple smartphone apps
• Excessive badges

Best Battery Life

Bottom Line:

In addition to ample health and fitness features, the Fitbit Versa 3 smartwatch improves on its predecessor with a larger screen, integrated GPS for pace and distance tracking, a blood oxygen sensor, and fast charging.

Pros

• Attractive design with large, always-on color display
• Integrated GPS
• Battery charges quickly and lasts for days
• Measures blood oxygen level while sleeping
• Supports Amazon Alexa, Fitbit Pay, and Spotify

Cons

• Laggy touch screen
• No stress tracking, skin temperature, or ECG sensors
• Doesn’t provide high and low heart rate notifications

Best for Android Users

Bottom Line:

Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 5 improves on a winning formula with a more durable design and longer battery life than its predecessors, making it the best Android-compatible smartwatch on the market.

Pros

• Competitive price
• Sleek design
• Bright, durable display
• Good app selection
• Slight battery life improvement over previous generation
• Digital bezel for quick scrolling

Cons

• Temperature data unavailable at launch
• Lacks outdoor-specific features of Pro model
• Questionable SpO2 measurements
• No heart rate variability or respiration data

WellCare Today Samsung Galaxy 4 LTE Smartwatch

Best Medical Alert Watch

Bottom Line:

The WellCare Today Samsung Galaxy 4 LTE Smartwatch With HealthAssist is a versatile medical alert device that quickly connects you with an emergency response agent, monitors vital health statistics, and reports real-time data to caregivers and doctors.

Pros

• Attractive design
• Fall detection, GPS tracking, and step counter
• Lots of caregiver tools
• Medicine and appointment reminders
• Remote patient monitoring

Cons

• Lacks mobile companion app

Best for Outdoor Adventures

Bottom Line:

Though bulky and expensive, the rugged Apple Watch Ultra is an excellent adventure-focused wearable with features that encourage exploration and keep you safe in the wild.

Pros

• Highly rugged and water resistant
• Much better battery life than other Apple watches
• Customizable Action button
• Emergency siren
• Cellular connectivity comes standard
• Louder speaker than Series 8
• Tactile buttons work with gloved hands
• Dual-frequency GPS
• Fantastic Depth app

Cons

• Large
• Expensive
• Digital Crown may irritate skin

Best Affordable Apple Watch

Bottom Line:

The Apple Watch SE drops the always-on display and a couple of advanced health sensors from the Series 6, but otherwise delivers the same winning app, fitness, and safety features for $120 less.

Pros

• Same screen size and resolution as the Series 6
• Supports fall detection, heart health notifications, and Emergency SOS
• Always-on altimeter for real-time elevation tracking
• WatchOS 7 adds a handwashing countdown timer and sleep tracking
• Best third-party smartwatch app selection

Cons

• No always-on display mode
• Lacks ECG and SpO2 sensors

Best for Small Wrists

Bottom Line:

Ideal for small wrists, the Garmin Lily smartwatch has a fashionable, jewelry-inspired design and many useful health-tracking features for a reasonable price.

Pros

• Stylish classic watch design
• Measures breathing, energy level, and stress
• SpO2 sensor
• Lots of useful widgets
• Excellent companion app

Cons

• No built-in GPS
• Lacks a color display

Best Fitness-Focused Smartwatch

Bottom Line:

The attractive Garmin Venu 2 smartwatch offers a large collection of advanced health and fitness features, plus useful lifestyle tools including mobile payments, onboard music storage, and Bluetooth headphone support.

Pros

• Attractive classic watch design in two sizes and multiple colors
• Bright, responsive AMOLED touch screen
• Measures blood oxygen saturation (SpO2), respiration, stress, and energy levels
• New HIIT and updated strength training apps
• Preloaded workouts with animations
• Onboard music storage
• Supports Bluetooth accessories and contactless payments

Cons

• Expensive
• Limited third-party app selection
• No voice assistant support

Samsung Galaxy Watch4 Classic

Best for a Rotating Bezel

Bottom Line:

The high-end Galaxy Watch4 Classic features a stainless steel design and a rotating bezel backed by a better software experience and more third-party apps than previous Samsung smartwatches, though you can get a similar experience for $100 less with the standard Watch4 model.

Pros

• Attractive classic watch design
• Rotating physical bezel for easy navigation
• Bright, sharp display
• Fast processor
• Body fat and composition measurements
• Tracks snoring
• More third-party apps than previous Samsung watches

Cons

• Short battery life
• Third-party app selection still trails Apple’s watchOS

Best for Extreme Temperatures

Bottom Line:

The Amazfit T-Rex is a rugged fitness and sleep tracker with a color touch screen and long battery life.

Pros

• Rugged
• Offers rapid heart rate warnings
• Tracks sleep
• Features easy music controls
• Good battery life

Cons

• Glitchy app in testing
• Doesn’t help you understand your metrics

Best COVID-19 Features

Bottom Line:

Fitbit’s premium, pricey Sense smartwatch puts a focus on your well-being with the ability to measure and monitor your stress, heart rhythm, skin temperature variation, and blood oxygen saturation.

Pros

• Attractive design with large, always-on color display
• Excellent battery life
• Measures blood oxygen level
• Features an ECG app
• Robust stress management and sleep tracking features
• Supports Amazon Alexa, Fitbit Pay, Spotify

Cons

• Expensive
• Touch screen responsiveness could be better
• Band release latch can be accidentally triggered
• Small third-party app selection

Pick a Watch That Works With Your Phone

Naturally, the first thing you should consider when buying a smartwatch is compatibility.

All Apple Watch models run watchOS, Apple’s smartwatch operating system, and work only with iOS devices. Apple’s latest wearables—the Series 8, the Ultra, and the Watch SE (2022)—require an iPhone 8 or newer that has iOS 16 or later.

Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 5 smartwatches use One UI Watch 4.5(Opens in a new window), a version of Google’s Wear OS 3.5. They require devices that have at least Android 8.0 and more than 1.5GB RAM. Note that although you can pair the Watch 5 with non-Samsung Android phones, some features, including electrocardiogram (ECG) measurements, work only with Samsung handsets.

Google’s new Pixel Watch, which we’re in the process of reviewing, runs Wear OS 3.5 and works with smartphones on Android 8.0 (or later). It’s not exclusive to Pixel phones and should pair just fine with devices from any other Android phone maker, including Samsung.

Most of the other smartwatches on this list are compatible with both Android and iOS smartphones. But before you buy any smartwatch, double-check its compatibility with your smartphone. We include these details in our reviews of each product.

The Best Smartwatch Apps

What separates a smartwatch from a dumb watch? Lots of things, but as smartphones have taught us, apps might be the most important.

Most of the watches we like feature full-fledged app stores that bring everything from Spotify, Yelp, and—yes, a calculator—to your wrist. Much like smartphones, app availability is a good way to determine which product to get, so make sure to check out the app selection for each watch before you make a final decision.

Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 Pro
(Credit: Angela Moscaritolo)

If you’re looking for apps, Apple is your best bet. The Apple Watch has the largest number of high-quality apps and big-name developers, by far. But Google’s Wear OS platform is catching up.

Samsung’s latest smartwatches feature popular Google-developed apps like Assistant, Maps, and the Play Store, alongside Samsung’s Bixby, Buds Controller, Pay, and more. The Pixel Watch features all the Google standbys, including Assistant, Gmail, Home, Maps, the Play store, and Wallet.

Other popular apps available for download via the Google Play Store on Wear OS smartwatches include Adidas Running, Amazon Alexa, Calm, Hand Wash, iHeart: Music, KakaoTalk, Lifesum, Line, Map My Fitness, Samsung SmartThings, Shazam, Ski Tracks, Spotify, Strava, Swim.com, Todoist, and YouTube Music.

Still, some popular apps available on the Apple Watch are missing from Wear OS, including Amazon Music, Facebook Messenger, Pandora, and Telegram.

Smartwatches vs. Fitness Trackers

Unless you want a gadget on both of your wrists (not the best look), you should pick a smartwatch that also works as a fitness tracker. Most smartwatches are capable of tracking basic activity, like steps, but you need to pay close attention to additional features.

Most of the smartwatches on our list feature GPS so they can track your runs without the help of a companion device (the Garmin Lily is an exception). These days, most smartwatches also feature an optical heart rate sensor, allowing for continuous and on-demand heart rate measurements.

Apple’s and Samsung’s latest smartwatches offer several advanced health-tracking features, including the ability to take an electrocardiogram (ECG) and measure your blood oxygen saturation (SpO2) level. Of course, they’re among the most expensive products on this list.

Fitbit Versa devices are more affordable and track plenty of fitness and sleep metrics, but have less in the way of third-party apps, so there’s some trade-offs. Look closely and choose a watch that tracks the activities and health metrics you want to monitor.

Does Your Smartwatch Need Cellular Connectivity?

A cellular connection allows you to make calls, send texts, stream music, download apps, and do anything else that requires an internet connection, without a connection to your phone. The cellular Apple Watch Series 8 carries a $100 premium over the base model (Bluetooth and Wi-Fi only), and then you also have to pay for a separate data plan—most carriers charge an additional $10 per month per smartwatch.

Whether this convenience is worth it for you depends on how you plan to use your watch. If you want to stream music while you exercise and leave your phone at home or in the locker room, a cellular connection can certainly come in handy. If you always have your phone on you, however, you can probably save the money and skip it.

How Long Do Smartwatches Last?

You don’t want a smartwatch with good battery life, right? Good, because you’re not going to get it. Features like an always-on display and GPS tracking are nice, but they drain battery life quickly. Watches with full-color, smartphone-like displays, like the Apple Watch and Wear OS watches, generally only last about a day on a charge.

The Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 Pro and the Apple Watch Ultra are the exceptions. Featuring a massive 590mAh cell, the Galaxy Watch 5 Pro lasted 79 hours, or more than three full days, with light use and the screen brightness set as low as possible. That makes the Galaxy Watch 5 Pro the longest-lasting, feature-rich smartwatch we have tried, beating the Apple Watch Ultra by a hair.

In general, you get much better battery life with one of the Fitbit watches. They typically last around six days on a single charge.

Fitbit Versa 3
(Credit: Angela Moscaritolo)

How Much Should You Spend on a Smartwatch?

Smartwatches can be very expensive, but that doesn’t mean you need to spend a lot of money to get a good one. Yes, the $1,000+ Apple Watch Hermès is sure to draw a lot of attention, but for that price, you could buy five Fitbits.

If you’re a first-time smartwatch buyer, consider the less-expensive route first in case you wind up not wearing it all that much. The $20 Wyze Watch and the $159 OnePlus Watch are two affordable options, but be sure to read our reviews so you’re aware of their limitations before spending your money on them.

Garmin Lily
(Credit: Angela Moscaritolo)

The Best Android Watch

As mentioned, all of the models on this list work with Android except for the Apple Watch.

The Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 is our current favorite for its streamlined design, excellent health and safety features, and useful calling and texting features. Outdoor adventurers might prefer the Galaxy Watch 5 Pro, which offers a more durable titanium case, an even stronger sapphire crystal glass display, longer battery life, and a few outdoor-specific navigation features.

The Google Pixel Watch looks like a solid choice as well, but stay tuned for our full review to find out whether it’s worth the $70 premium over the Galaxy Watch 5.

The Fitbit Versa 3 is an excellent affordable option. With support for smartphone notifications, Amazon Alexa, Fitbit Pay mobile payments, Deezer and Pandora music and podcast storage, and Spotify music controls, it’s one of the most feature-rich Android-compatible smartwatches in its price range.

Buy It for Looks, Don’t Buy It for Life

Let’s not forget: You’re also going to wear this thing. And unlike your Timex, it’s probably not going to remain in style for years. Smartwatch design is rapidly changing, so hold out until you find something you actually want to wear. And keep in mind that smartwatches are still gadgets. The coming year is sure to bring new iterations of pretty much every watch on this list, not to mention completely new ones.

The battle for wrist real estate is quickly heating up. That’s good news for consumers because this pace of innovation is likely to result in more capable—and more stylish—devices. I wouldn’t be surprised if this list reads completely differently the next time you see it. But if you’re looking for the best smartwatch available today, the options here are the finest we’ve seen so far.