The 7 Most Important Criteria for Selecting the Best Sports Watch

Sports watches and fitness trackers are not cheap, so how can you make sure you spend money on the right device? It all comes down to features, specifications and your needs. This article lists and describes 7 elements you need to consider before buying.

What is a Fitness Tracker?

A fitness tracker is a sports-related wearable used to monitor your physical activity and assess your level of fitness. Any good fitness tracker band or watch out there will enable you to improve your workouts by collecting user-specific data through the device’s sensors and by presenting it back to you in a meaningful way. The main goal of a sports watch, whether it be a Fitbit or a Garmin, is to help you keep fit and healthy.

The popularity of fitness tracker watches has risen in recent times because they’ve become both more affordable and more versatile. As technology became more advanced, wearables have become vital tools in tracking our performance and keeping our health in check.

What is the Best Workout Watch?

It’s unfortunately not that simple. The best workout watch is a device equipped with the features and technology to support your activity regime. For a runner, an inbuilt GPS is a must. For a triathlete, water resistance, GPS and good battery life are all necessary. A keen golfer will want to be able to easily download a map of the course he or she plays.

To help our readers find the best match for them, we have written articles on the best sports watch by sport type. Read more in our Best of section.

7 Criteria to Pick the Best Sports Watch or Fitness Tracker

Nowadays, there are dozens of brands to choose from and unless you’re in the industry of sports and fitness, it’s hard to keep up with the different models on offer. The choice of a fitness tracker watch should be looked into keenly before you decide what model and brand you want to invest in. Keep reading our buyer’s guide below to learn how to choose the best sports watch and fitness tracker for you.

Your Sports Watch Needs to Pair with your Mobile Phone

Do you have an iPhone or an Android mobile phone? Before buying a watch, always check its compatibility specifications. As an example, Samsung Galaxy Watch and Watch 3 are not fully compatible with iPhones and other Samsung watches are not compatible at all. Inversely, buying an Apple watch would be a rookie mistake if you have an Android.

 

Battery Life is Not One Size Fits All

Are you training for a marathon or an ironman and need your watch to operate with the GPS on for a few continuous hours? How often do you want to recharge your watch? You must look at the battery life specifications and make sure it suits your needs. The battery life of your fitness tracker needs to be long enough to sustain your activities regimen.

Keep in mind battery life tends to wear off over time, and you may come to regret paying too little for a watch that keeps turning off halfway through the day or in the middle of a workout. The Fitbit Sense and Fitbit Versa 3 are good examples of affordable watches with decent battery life. They’re both equipped with fast charging: you can get up to an extra day worth of battery life in just 12 minutes.

If you’re after the sports watch with the best battery life, the Garmin Fenix 7 series won’t disappoint with a battery life of up to 18 days on smartwatch mode and up to 10 hours when music and all satellite systems are on. The Garmin Fenix 7 Solar will last even longer!

Sports Watch For Your Budget

The price of a fitness tracker and watch goes hand in hand with the quality of its features. Prices range from $70 to upwards of $1,500. Some high-end brands like Whoop require a membership so have recurring costs. The more specialized you get, the more you’ll need to pay.

While budgeting for a watch to track your workouts, choose the one whose features will be most useful for you. If you get too little out of your watch, you may not feel like using it and it’ll be wasted money. But if it doesn’t have enough to offer, you’ll lose interest and it’ll stay in the drawer… also a waste of money. Go for a quality product within your budget, that you are sure will fulfill all your needs.

Size of Your SmartWatch

Most fitness trackers are gender-neutral in terms of display size. The gadget itself is designed to suit both men and women, and there’s a variety of bands on offer to personalize your look.

Where various build sizes exist, sports watches for men tend to be bulkier and have wider bands than sports watches for women. Garmin watches tend to be a bit bulkier than Apple and Fitbit watches, but several of the Garmin watch series have a smaller watch version designated with the letter “S” (eg. Garmin Fenix 7 vs. Garmin Fenix 7S, where the 7S has a smaller display and fits smaller wrists).

If you think you have smaller or wider wrists than the average person, make sure you measure the circumference of your wrist and compare it to the vendor’s official wrist circumference range before buying a watch.

 

Your Most Frequent Activity & Sport

The choice of a cardio watch depends on what you want to track and where your activity will take place. For example, you will need a water-resistant fitness watch when going swimming or if you’re into triathlons. The activities you intend to engage in also determine the models of fitness watches suitable for you. For example, a basic activity like walking can be tracked using almost any model out there. Divers need a more specialized watch that can calculate depth, bottom time and when it’s time to ascend.

The fitness watch or tracker should be able to serve its main purpose, monitoring your physical activities. Your gadget should show a record of your activities and interpret this data into meaningful information that will assure you that your fitness and health activities are being done the correct way.

If you’re a cyclist, a hiker, a runner or a triathlete, chances are you will want your watch to have a heart rate monitor, have an in-built GPS so that you can leave your phone at home when working out, and music storage on the watch itself. If you’re a keen golfer, you’ll want a GPS golf watch. Those watches work a treat on the course in addition to being suitable for everyday use and for tracking other types of exercise.

The key is to select a watch that is suitable for the 3 main types of physical activities you regularly engage in.

Some Watch Models Have Better Sensors

An effective health and fitness watch should monitor fitness and health indicators through in-built sensors:

  • heart rate (average and maximum) during a workout
  • resting heart rate
  • fitness level
  • body temperature
  • etc.

Some watches nowadays have very advanced features. Some Fitbits for instance act as an electrocardiogram watch.

The other important point is the ability to have all these data analyzed and reported in a meaningful way. This is done through an app you can download on your phone or tablet, generally free of use.

Some Watch Models Have Better Smart Features

If you want a watch for day-to-day use and are interested in smart functions like receiving and sending texts, or making calls from your watch, narrow down your research to smart wearables with good fitness features. There is plenty on offer by Apple, Samsung, Garmin, etc. This saves you the annoyance of having to swap between two watches.

 

Conclusion

The type of tracking device you will settle on will fully depend on various factors such as your go-to sports and your budget. The best fitness tracker watch is a very personal choice, so you’ll need to ask yourself a few questions on your ongoing needs and expectations and buy a product that aligns with your specific needs.

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