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After a new round of testing, we now recommend the Fitbit Inspire 3. Fitbit’s Charge 5 is our runner-up pick. And we still think the Apple Watch SE’s activity tracking is the best among smartwatches.
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.
Since 2015, we’ve been running, walking, swimming, cycling, sleeping, and, in short, living with 45 different fitness trackers day and night to assess their accuracy, ease of use, and comfort. Although no tracker perfectly recorded every metric we tested, we found that the simply designed, yet feature-packed Fitbit Inspire 3 is the best option for most people who want to monitor their activities with metrics like distance traveled, step count, heart rate, and estimated calories burned.
We paid close attention to battery life, comfort, ease of menu navigation, and customizability.
We wore each device for two days straight, comparing step-count data to that of a pedometer we know to be precise.
We walked, jogged, and ran with each fitness tracker to see how well it documented workout data.
We performed two tests with each device using a chest-strap heart-rate monitor as a comparative control.
This easy-to-use tracker is comfortable to wear all day and provides accurate measurements, without too much clutter on the homescreen.
The Fitbit Inspire 3 was the most accurate fitness tracker for step count and near the top of the rankings for every other test we performed. The touchscreen display is only 1.5 inches tall but is simple to navigate, thanks to its sharp colors and easily readable text and icons. The thin, half-inch band doesn’t feel clunky during workouts or everyday use, and the Inspire 3 weighs just 0.32 ounce—lighter than a typical USB flash drive.
Fitbit has a free app where you can connect with other Fitbit users, log information to learn about stress management, and dig deeper into data such as heart-rate history (a premium version of the app costs $10 per month or $80 per year) and offers access to apps like Calm for sleep and meditation). The Inspire 3’s battery is advertised as lasting 10 days before charging, although we found it to come in a fair bit short of that mark.
Battery life: up to 10 days
Water resistance: yes, for up to 50 meters
GPS: when connected to a phone
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This upgraded model provides accurate measurements and has more features than our top pick, but had some functional hiccups the longer we used it.
*At the time of publishing, the price was $108.
The Fitbit Charge 5 shows the full capability of what a fitness tracker can offer these days. From its built-in GPS to its ECG app to monitor heart health, the Charge 5 goes beyond tracking step count (which it’s pretty accurate at). We’ve noticed some flaws in the Charge 5 over the past year, though, most notably syncing issues with the Fitbit app.
Battery life: up to seven days in watch mode, or up to five hours in continuous GPS mode
Water resistance: yes, up to 50 meters
GPS: built in
The Apple Watch SE delivers some of the most precise readouts and—with a mobile plan—can be used for calls and messaging. But its battery life is much shorter than that of our Fitbit picks.
The second-generation Apple Watch SE has a vibrant, clear display and the best intuitive touchscreen of the devices we tested. Even if you’re not connected to an iPhone, you can take advantage of a large library of apps. Performance-wise, the Apple Watch SE—also our budget pick smartwatch for iPhone users—accurately measured heart rate, steps, and distance. But for people who want to go on a run and just track, say, their pace and distance, the Apple Watch SE might be overkill, especially given its higher price and limited battery life.
Battery life: up to 18 hours
Water resistance: yes, up to 50 meters
GPS: built in
This easy-to-use tracker is comfortable to wear all day and provides accurate measurements, without too much clutter on the homescreen.
This upgraded model provides accurate measurements and has more features than our top pick, but had some functional hiccups the longer we used it.
*At the time of publishing, the price was $108.
The Apple Watch SE delivers some of the most precise readouts and—with a mobile plan—can be used for calls and messaging. But its battery life is much shorter than that of our Fitbit picks.
To understand the various components and accuracy of fitness trackers, we consulted cardiologists, professors who study the accuracy of the devices, as well as running coaches and physicians who regularly use wearables in testing.
Fitness trackers can give you a better idea of how you move your body throughout the day. They’re useful for people who want to set goals to increase daily movement and gain a better picture of their health.
Any device that you wear on your wrist is actually tracking the swinging of your arm, which pretty closely matches what your legs are doing when you’re walking or running. But humans do a lot more than just walk and run, and these devices can and do perceive any movement your arms make (say, while you’re folding laundry or clapping your hands) as “steps.” The often-lauded touchstone of 10,000 daily steps seems to be arbitrary at best, though moving more throughout the day is rarely a negative.
There are also specialized GPS running watches and smartwatches that provide the same health-related information and much more. The lines between fitness tracker, GPS running watch, and smartwatch are blurrier than ever. Generally, fitness trackers are less bulky to wear than GPS running watches or smartwatches and cost less. They can also run for a week or more between charges, while you generally need to charge a smartwatch daily.
Many fitness trackers, GPS running watches, and smartwatches have accompanying apps that also track data related to sleep, hydration, or menstrual cycles. Aric A. Prather, interim director of the University of California San Francisco Center for Health & Community, said that, in general, most wearable devices are capable of accurately estimating total sleep time and sleep fragmentation, but “this is less true when it comes to sleep architecture, like minutes in deep sleep for instance.”
None of the wearables covered in this review are medical devices, and none of the data they collect is regulated or legally protected in the same way that other health data is.
If you have concerns about the appropriateness of a new exercise routine or suspect that you may have a health condition, see a medical professional. And if an abnormal heart rate is a health concern for you, don’t rely on an activity tracker to help manage your condition.
Approach some metrics with caution. Trackers do not replace the need to discuss any cardiovascular symptoms with a medical professional to ensure an appropriate diagnosis and treatment plan, said Meagan Wasfy, a sports cardiologist at Mass General Brigham. The devices can provide a general idea of your health, though. For example, as one gets more fit, resting heart rate tends to decrease because the heart is stronger and more efficient at pumping oxygen-rich blood to the body, said Seth Martin, a professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins who specializes in cardiology. “So fitness trackers can help give us insight into how our heart rate trends over time, and store this information for our review.”
A tracker’s GPS accuracy (whether it has its own onboard GPS or uses your smartphone’s) is okay but not perfect (GPS rarely is). More-advanced metrics—such as breathing rate, blood oxygen saturation, and A-fib (atrial fibrillation) detection—are best viewed as guides, not replacements for medical assessments.
Most fitness trackers provide an estimated tally of calories burned that’s based in part on an estimate of your basal metabolic rate. Andrew Jagim, PhD, director of sports medicine research at Mayo Clinic Health System and the co-author of a study on fitness-tracker accuracy, pointed out that each company uses its own proprietary algorithm to calculate that number. Some rely on heart rate, for instance, while others factor in accelerometer data.
Max Paquette, an associate professor at the University of Memphis who also consults athletes on optimizing performance, warned that trackers often make people less in tune with their bodies. “They’re so reliant on data, and they forget to feel what they’re doing. They like to be told by their watch what they’re doing. To me that is a disadvantage, honestly. You can learn so much from your body while training.” Nicole Hagobian, a sport psychology consultant at California Polytechnic State University, added that for a person who fears failure and tends to engage in negative social comparison, a tracker can add anxiety and unnecessary stress to workouts.
To capture data like heart rate, fitness trackers—and other wrist-worn devices, such as GPS running watches—use photoplethysmography, a technology that uses light (most often green, the most commonly used LED color to measure hemoglobin) to measure changes in blood volume within the wrist. It is, of course, open to foibles. How a tracker is worn—how it’s positioned on the wrist, how tight the band is cinched—can affect readings. Studies have been conducted on other factors too, like skin tone, body hair, and tattoos might affect the accuracy of wrist-based heart-rate readings. Studies into skin tone specifically have had mixed findings.
For this guide, we focused on evaluating the key features that people who might choose a dedicated fitness tracker are looking for: step count, distance, and resting heart-rate readouts. We also considered smaller bands and displays (something that looks more like a traditional fitness tracker than a watch) and price. Some exceptions to this were the Samsung Galaxy Watch 5, Apple Watch SE, and the screen-less Whoop 4.0, new versions of devices that we previously tested as dedicated fitness trackers. Most of all, we wanted a device that was accurate, dependable, and durable.
Throughout our testing, we aimed to answer the following questions:
How easy is the fitness tracker to use and live with? Because these devices are meant to be worn all day, every day, we put a lot of emphasis on comfort, wearability, and user friendliness—of both the device and its companion app. We also paid attention to battery life and syncing capabilities.
How well does it track activities? To gauge how accurately the trackers record all-day step counts, we wore the devices in pairs, one on each wrist, for two days straight (we switched wrists on the second day). We also compared their step-count readings with the results from an Ozo Fitness SC 3D Digital Pedometer we know to be reliable.
How well does it record workouts? For all of the devices, we tested how well they estimated distance traveled by walking a mile on a treadmill.
For any device meant to track active heart rate during a workout, we performed two separate tests on the treadmill: a steady-state run of five minutes at an easy pace, and a six-minute walk-jog-run of two minutes at each pace. We compared heart-rate readings from the device against readings from a Polar H10 heart-rate sensor with a chest strap, and later also compared resting heart rates from each fitness tracker with the Polar H10.
The first column shows how far off each tracker was in measuring the distance (1 mile) we walked during treadmill workouts. The second column is a tabulation of step count error percentage between readouts from a tested fitness tracker and our pedometer. (Many wrist-worn fitness trackers inflate all-day step counts, in part because they register certain arm movements as “steps.”) The percentages in the third column of the table below show the company’s advertised battery life; the last column shows how much of the battery remained after two days of continual use.
The Fitbit Inspire 3 gives precise readings, has a good battery life, and includes plenty of features to appease people with varying health goals. In some ways it’s a throwback, with its simple interface and small size, which we appreciated. A fancy display and dozens of specialized health metrics doesn’t always equate to a product that can handle the basics, such as measuring step count and resting heart rate accurately, which is all some people need from a wearable.
This device is especially easy to use. The display is activated with a swipe across the screen. When the Inspire 3 is synced through the Fitbit app, the home screen can be changed to a variety of backgrounds that show time, heart rate, step count, and other information. A swipe up on the home screen will give you other metrics like distance traveled that day and SpO2 (blood oxygen), while a right swipe on the home screen brings you to timers, exercise programs, and other features.
Swiping down on the home screen gives you access to settings that will allow you to adjust how often you receive notifications and a general settings feature with which you can adjust how long the screen stays on and choose from three brightness levels: dim, normal, and max. Before changing these settings, warnings pop up telling you how switching levels might affect battery life.
Its app is easy to use, too. Fitbit’s basic free app is very easy to navigate, and peppered with tips and information on specific metrics. It connects you to a large and active social network, which may help motivate you to meet your goals.There’s also Fitbit Premium, the upgraded version of the Fitbit app, which costs $10 per month or $80 annually. Guided workouts and audio mindfulness sessions are among the perks with this option.
Through the app you can also track blood glucose and connect to your phone’s GPS. The app also offers the ability to set reminders to move, set fitness goals, and log details like heart rate, sleep, and activity for a stress management score. The app can also aid you in taking note of food and water intake. While not essential, these are nice add-ons that are presented in easy to understand language for someone interested in recording their nutritional health on another level.
See Fitbit’s privacy policy.
It’s the most accurate and has a long-lasting battery. In our tests of step count accuracy, the Fitbit Inspire 3 was off from our pedometer readout by just 0.32% over a two-day period—the best of all the fitness trackers tested. In a one-mile test of how accurately it recorded distance, the Inspire 3 had one of the better tallies, being over by only 0.03 mile.
It also showed signs of a decent battery life; some testers found it middle of the road, while others had excellent results. After wearing the Inspire 3 for two days and two nights, which included several recorded workouts and auto-detected activity, our testing had the Inspire 3 lasting about seven days before needing a charge—it’s advertised as lasting 10 days.
However, one tester, who has both an Inspire 3 and a Fitbit Charge 5, reported having to charge the latter much more frequently, while “I cannot remember the last time I plugged in my Inspire 3.” In a test measuring resting heart rate, the Inspire 3 was off by 1 bpm, one of the best readouts we saw.
The Inspire 3, like all Fitbit products, has a one-year warranty. Additional bands in various colors and materials like stainless steel (as well as a clip-on option) are available for an additional cost.
The Inspire 3 has a flexible silicone band that closes with a plastic buckle and tang (think of how you fasten a belt buckle). While this is not uncommon for fitness trackers, it sometimes took a few tries to close—this is one instance where the slim design of the Inspire 3 may be a drawback. The band doesn’t lay flat like, say, that of a thicker Apple Watch SE, and the tang is a bit flimsy, causing it to not stay in place when adjusting on the wrist.
Sometimes when flicking through the touchscreen, we pressed too hard, causing the Inspire 3 to activate a mode we didn’t want or bring up another screen that we had to swipe out of. Again, this may be a slight drawback to the tracker’s relatively minimalist design and smaller-than-most screen.
In one of our tests, the battery fell about three days short of the advertised 10 days of life, not great but not terrible.
This upgraded model provides accurate measurements and has more features than our top pick, but had some functional hiccups the longer we used it.
*At the time of publishing, the price was $108.
The Fitbit Charge 5 is easy to use, comfortable, and consistently accurate. Its step-count accuracy ranked near the top of all the trackers we’ve tested (although behind the Inspire 3), and it fared well when measuring distances and heart rates. The Charge 5 is bigger than the Inspire 3, but has a shorter battery life, and we noticed some problems syncing it to the app.
It has solid accuracy and battery life. The Fitbit Charge 5 had just over a 2% error in our step count test—not terrible, but behind both the Inspire 3 and Apple Watch SE. However, the Charge 5 performed the best in our distance testing, coming in just -0.01 mile off. Fitbit says this tracker’s battery lasts up to seven days on a charge. After our two-day battery test, 70% remained, performing on a par with the company estimate.
Its display is superior to the Inspire 3’s. The color display is vivid and clear, more so than that of the Inspire 3, even in glaring sunlight. Like the Inspire 3, the Charge 5 has an optional always-on display, which can be toggled on or off within various workout modes and in the settings. It will drain the battery life, though.
A firm double tap at the top of the Charge 5 screen returns you to the home screen from other areas. This took us a beat to figure out (though the initial setup in the app does mention it), and we occasionally set off a timer or inadvertently started a workout.
The band adjusts more easily. The Charge 5 has a flexible silicone band with a peg-and-loop closure that’s easier to adjust than the Inspire 3’s clasp. Both wearables have a variety of watch faces in the app that let you customize the look of the home screen.
But it has some connection glitches. In long-term testing, we’ve sometimes encountered syncing issues with the Charge 5 and various phones. A Charge 5 user told us they had issues with the device’s screen not always turning on with a turn of the wrist (as it should). They also wished for Apple Health integration, which Fitbit does not currently offer, although there are workarounds.
One tester who purchased a Charge 5 last year to train for a marathon noted that it seems “pretty indestructible” but after coming from an Apple Watch, felt the screen wasn’t as touch sensitive, adding that it “feels like using a grocery store self-checkout in 2010.”
It has built-in GPS (which can also be glitchy). While the Charge 5 has built-in GPS and the Inspire 3 doesn’t, we found the GPS on this device to be inconsistent. Blogger Ray Maker of DC Rainmaker discovered an odd quirk: The GPS loses connection if the Charge 5 band is worn too tightly, but the tracker’s heart-rate accuracy remains okay. If the band is worn too loosely, the GPS stays connected but heart-rate monitoring suffers.
The Apple Watch SE delivers some of the most precise readouts and—with a mobile plan—can be used for calls and messaging. But its battery life is much shorter than that of our Fitbit picks.
If you’re already immersed in the Apple ecosystem, the second-generation Apple Watch SE, our budget smartwatch pick for iPhone users, is a reliable choice for tracking step counts, distance traveled, and heart rate. (Technically, you can use workarounds to use an Apple Watch with an Android phone, but it’s not a straightforward pairing.)
The display and design are top notch. The Apple Watch SE has a vibrant screen that is customizable in the Watch app, where you can add shortcuts like weather reports or connect to the Nike Run Club app. The rubber band is comfortable and the easiest to put on among the trackers we tested; after choosing which peg fits your wrist size, you tuck the remainder of the band underneath a slit. (Dr. Mary Delahoussaye, director of Split Second Cares, a reintegration program for people who have suffered from a neurological disorder, suggested an elastic or Velcro band should be a standard accessory with Apple Watches, for people who may have difficulty with the multistep process. She noted that while Apple has the most options for universally designed bands, some of the more inclusive designs are more expensive or not available for the SE.)
It tracks several unique metrics, some more useful than others. All Apple Watches, including the SE, measure activity by encouraging you to close a trio of rings—red for “Move,” green for “Exercise,” blue for “Stand”—each day, but they’re not necessarily meaningful in gauging your personal health feedback, instead serving more as a daily competition. Unique among trackers we’ve tested, the Apple Watch has a wheelchair option, which tracks pushes instead of steps.
See Apple’s privacy policy.
It has lots of add-on modes but does the simple stuff well, too. There are dozens of workout modes to choose from—more than Fitbits offer, including activities like Tai Chi and pickleball—so you can really get specific. We found that the watch trailed the Fitbit Inspire 3 only when it came to measuring step counts accurately. The SE also performed solidly in our distance testing.
The battery life is very short. The SE doesn’t have an always-on display, and it has a mere 18 hours of projected battery life, falling far below that of most designated fitness trackers. In a test, we found that the battery had dropped to 9% after 18 hours of use, so if you’re traveling overnight, be sure to bring a charger.
The Apple Watch SE is covered by a one-year warranty.
This reliable and accurate device for counting steps can be clipped to a waistband, slipped into a pocket, or even carried inside a bag.
If you’d prefer to not share personal data or aren’t interested in the connected features of a fitness tracker, you may prefer a basic pedometer for counting steps. Many models can be clipped to your waistband, slipped into your pocket, or carried in your bag.
We’ve found that the Ozo Fitness SC 3D Digital Pedometer does a good job of measuring daily steps, distance traveled, estimated calories burned, and minutes of movement. The device resets automatically at midnight each day. It saves 30 days of activity, including steps, calories burned, and miles logged. Its replaceable battery should last about a year, according to the manual.
If you’re a serious athlete who doesn’t care about tracking steps: You may like the Whoop 4.0, a niche tracker that uses a subscription model ($30 a month/$239 annually). It's a good tracker for people seeking specialized health feedback or data on every workout, movement, and resting period they complete. The band, made of poly Lycra and pima cotton, is comfortable to wear, and the tracker sends information to an app where your workouts and recorded health information lives. A coaching feature suggests how much recovery is needed after a workout and provides insight on how hard certain muscles work during training. You can track recovery trends, and monitor respiratory rate, SpO2 (blood-oxygen levels) and temperature.
If you want a budget tracker: The Amazfit Band 7 provides fairly accurate readouts and has a very strong battery life. It’s advertised as lasting 18 days, and after two days of continuous use we found it still had 90% juice. The Amazfit Band 7 is strikingly similar in aesthetics to the Mi Xiaomi Smart Band 7—a representative for Amazfit noted the company shared equipment manufacturing for Xiaomi until late 2022. The Amazfit Band 7 performed better than the Mi Xiaomi Smart Band 7 in our tracking and distance tests, but still below the capabilities of our top pick.
The 45 wearables we've tested over the past eight years have included the discontinued predecessors of many of the devices reviewed here. In early 2023, we tested the Amazon Halo View before the company announced that it will stop supporting the Halo series on July 31, 2023. Afterward, the devices and app will no longer function and unused and prepaid Halo subscription fees will be refunded, according to Amazon, which will also help owners recycle Halos for free.
Along with the Mi Smart Band 7, we also tested the Garmin Venu Sq 2 and Garmin Vívomove Sport in 2023. Both devices underperformed in our step count tests, but they do have perks, such as accurate heart-rate readouts and integration with the easy-to-use Garmin app. Both Garmins could easily qualify as smartwatches—the Vívomove Sport is designed like a fashion piece—if you seek more style over substance.
The Fitbit Luxe has a slim, jewelry-like profile, with optional accessories that feel more like bracelets and less like sporty bands. We had a few hiccups, like when the Luxe blacked out during heart-rate testing and we couldn’t get back to the display.
If you want to keep in-depth records of your workouts, the Garmin Vívoactive 4S is a sporty, advanced fitness tracker with an emphasis on exercise. Its color touchscreen is clear and responsive, albeit more muted than those of a few color-screen competitors. Buttons beside the screen make it easier to toggle between workout modes or to start and stop workouts, and workout-data screens display more than one metric simultaneously.
The best thing the Garmin Vívofit 4, a former pick for basic fitness tracking, has going for it is that you don’t need to charge it, since it runs on a watch battery that’s good for a year. It also looks dated.
Instead of using step counts as the primary stat, the Mio Slice claims to measure all-around activity with a proprietary “personal activity intelligence” based on heart-rate monitoring.
The Polar Unite has the sporty look of a fitness watch, and it can hold up to 20 sport profiles. We had a hard time getting it to connect to our phone for GPS use. It was comfortable—its heart-rate sensor is flat, which is a nice touch.
We’re fans of the minimalist aesthetic of the Withings Pulse HR; a reinforced polycarbonate surface coating over the screen has a cool, matte finish. The company, perhaps best known for its smart scales, has built in a seemingly impossibly long battery life—20 days—which held up in our testing. Step counts were hit or miss, sometimes nearly spot-on and other times far off. And it didn’t perform as well in our active-heart-rate tests as we expected.
Ingrid Sjkong and Amy Roberts contributed reporting. This article was edited by Tracy Vence and Kalee Thompson.
Andrew Jagim, PhD, director of sports medicine research at the Mayo Clinic Health System, phone interview, September 9, 2021
Seth Martin, professor of Medicine in the Division of Cardiology at Johns Hopkins Hospital, email interview, January 17, 2023
Max Paquette, associate professor in the College of Health Sciences at the University of Memphis, phone interview, January 19, 2023
Nicole Hagobian, running coach, sport and exercise scientist at California Polytechnic State University, email interview, January 30, 2023
Meagan Wasfy, sports cardiologist at Mass General Brigham, email interview, February 6, 2023
Dr. Mary Delahoussaye, director of Split Second Cares, email interview, March 3, 2023
Aric A. Prather, PhD, professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and interim director at University of California, San Francisco’s Center for Health & Community, email interview, May 10, 2023
Seth Berkman
Seth Berkman is a staff writer at Wirecutter, covering fitness. He previously covered sports and health for several years as a freelancer for The New York Times. He is passionate about making fitness reporting accessible to people of all levels, whether they’re serious marathoners or first-time gym-goers. He is the author of A Team of Their Own: How an International Sisterhood Made Olympic History.
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