For any person who is conscious about their health, it's hard to imagine working towards health goals without a fitness tracker watch or apps these days. They provide good estimates and data that you can use to better improve yourself and help you stay on track with your health goals.
But since when they first came out, many companies have gone out and released their fitness trackers. Today, we'll be taking a look at some of the most affordable fitness tracker watches from various brands.
Choosing a Fitness Tracker Watch
Before diving into the list of best fitness trackers watches, I'll explain the criteria we took into consideration when picking these 11 fitness trackers. These criteria should help you choose the right fitness tracker watch for you.
- Features – By now, many fitness trackers will count steps, calories, distance, and summarize your activities. However, some will do more like track sleep patterns and have alarm functionality. Others will have less.
- Waterproof – You might not regularly go swimming, but you still want your fitness trackers to be resilient against rain and water in general. Most of them will be waterproof, but you may find some that don't.
- Notifications – Many fitness trackers now can connect to your smartphone and send notifications there. Others may have a large enough screen for you to see notifications on the fitness tracker as well. This can be useful if you're the type of person who gets plenty of messages throughout the day.
- Battery life – Knowing how long these fitness trackers can last is helpful. Furthermore, how long it takes to charge is also worth considering.
- Is it easy to use? – From the ease of icons to the overall navigation, you don't want a fitness tracker to be cumbersome to navigate.
- Reasonable price with these features – Affordability is key, of course. You want to compare the price to the number of things you can do and determine whether it's worth it. It's not worth it if the fitness tracker has few features but is asking for over $100.
1. Fitbit Inspire HR
The first on our list is from the brand that started these gadgets in the first place: Fitbit. Fitbit has a wide variety of fitness bands for you to try out and provide a tonne of value for the price they ask.
Their Inspire HR brand provides your basic functions of measuring heart rate during and after workouts, calories burned, steps, distance, and more. It even tracks sleeping patterns. The battery life is about five days, water-resistant to up to 50 meters down, and can withstand temperatures from 14 to 113 degrees Farenheight.
2. Xiaomi Mi Band 4
If you're looking for a much cheaper option, the Xiaomi brand is another brand to look at. This is a Chinese brand that offers a lot of promise. For a fairly low price, you can get a band with a battery life of up to 20 days, health monitoring (heart rate, sleeping), offers exercise modes, and is water-resistant to upwards of 50 meters.
The rub with this product is again this is from a Chinese company and some customers have had complaints about packaging and the product itself being in Chinese. It all comes down to the version that's bought, but there is a simple guide to changing the language based on what band you purchased.
3. Garmin Forerunner
Out of the fitness tracker watches here, this one is specifically built for runners in mind. Garmin is another strong brand that offers stellar value. Because this band is built for a specific group of people, it's best to get this if you are serious about running regularly and in other events.
In terms of features, this fitness tracker offers GPS and music advanced training features, evaluates your pace to see if you are training too much or too little, running dynamics, and more. It has a battery life of up to 7 days too. If you're a runner, this is a great investment.
4. Fitbit Charge 3
Another classic Fitbit product is the Charge series. The Charge series does offer more functionality than Inspire, but the difference isn't a lot. The Inspire series lacks notifications and has no way of notifying you. The Charge series offers notifications, connectivity with different apps, such as weather apps, and boost functionality.
Charge also offers different exercising modes and helps you train better with those exercises. If you're looking for more guidance in your health at an affordable price, this is a smart one to go for.
5. Garmin Vivosmart
Garmin isn't all about selling fitness trackers to runners. They also have some general use trackers like the Vivosmart series. This slim design of this tracker makes it more fashionable while also offering a bright and easy-to-read display.
It has a battery life of 7 days and offers the same kind of functionalities mentioned including stress tracking, notifications from your phone, and GPS (when connected to your phone).
6. MorePro Smart Watch
MorePro is another brand that offers plenty of potential in their product. The MorePro Smart Watch we found, in particular, offers a lot of value at its pricing point. Right out the door, this fitness tracker watch offers 18 Sports Modes and has excellent sleep tracking functionality. On top of that, it offers 24/7 monitoring, plays music, monitors blood oxygen levels, vibrates when receiving notifications, water resistance (up to 50 meters deep), and more.
The other unique thing to note is that the dial of this fitness tracker is customizable, allowing you to display more important information that you can check from a glance.
7. Honor Band 5
Honor is a unique brand offering different designs and display choices compared to others on this list. That much is clear when you look at the Honor Band 5, which tries to offer more flare to the numbers displayed.
That's part of the company's charm as when you look at the band itself, it offers more uniqueness to make it worth the price. It offers music, step, sleep, and heart monitoring, water intake, and receives and alerts you of any notifications. But where the band starts to be unique is the different display options of the watch face as well as "running group" functionality.
This new feature allows you to create groups that other users can join in on and participate in events, gatherings, and motivate one another. Overall, it's a neat function in theory provided that other people have purchased this brand in your area.
8. Amazfit Smartwatch
If you're looking for a fitness tracker that lasts, the Amazfit brand has you covered. The company boasts a 45-day battery life on a single 2.5-hour charge. Beyond that, you'll find a lot of the same functions on display for this fitness tracker watch. It gives you notifications when receiving calls, texts, or app notifications, and monitors health. It can also track a handful of sports activities, such as running, walking, and cycling.
9. Garmin Vivofit 3
Another series from Garmin to consider is Vivofit. Think of it as a slight downgrade from Vivosmart, but it still has plenty to offer. Some of the key factors to note are auto-activity detection, 24/7 wearability, GCM compatibility, and 1-year battery life with no recharging needed.
The other thing to note with this product is this is part of Amazon's Renewed program, meaning the product is enhanced to be higher quality than the original brand and is tested by Amazon.
10. Fitbit Versa 2
The Fitbit Versa brand is a series that follows the traditional smartwatches that we've brought up. Like all other Fitbit bands, this provides the same monitoring functions and app compatibility.
The biggest difference is the larger display. This allows you to have more customization with your Fitbit product since it saves you from shifting between the tracking displays when you compare it to the ones with smaller displays.
11. Garmin Venu
The final fitness tracker to talk about is another Garmin brand, the Vivomove series. Here we start to see Garmin pulling out the stops to display a fitness tracker watch that doesn't look like one. It goes to show these days companies have been able to make fitness trackers look more like your standard watches.
In terms of functionality, you have 24/7 heart monitoring, wellness monitoring tools (stress tracking, relaxation timer, etc.), fitness monitoring, and determining fitness age, among other functionalities. For those who want a fitness tracker that still looks like a typical watch, this is a good option.
Final Thoughts
Fitness trackers these days have developed a lot. They provide excellent support and provide a lot of information about your health for you to leverage. All the while, they can help support your daily life as well through notifications and help with managing stress, too. For all the things that these fitness tracker watches can do, the prices are quite affordable with these brands.
Featured photo credit: Tim Foster via unsplash.com
Source: lifehack.org
