Best Smartwatches 2023
The best smartwatch for people who live a healthy lifestyle
The best smartwatches are the perfect additions to simplify your life, especially when synced with compatible smartphone brands. You can answer calls, play music, get fitter, more productive, and monitor your fitness with a variety of workout and organization apps.
The best smartwatches can help you easily track your activity and monitor your health. While these wearables aren’t intended to be used as medical tools, they’re a great tool for tracking your overall health and have become an essential, everyday gadget for many.
The best smartwatch for runners
It’s undeniably one of the best all-around smartwatches out there, and it’s especially good for runners. But if you’re new to Apple or on a tight budget, there are other options that can get you there too.
We still recommend the Garmin Forerunner 245 for runners who want a trusty traditional running watch with advanced smartwatch features (notifications, the ability to sync calendars, local weather). Forerunner 245 is customizable, from the running data screens to the dials. Like the Forerunner 255, it uses five buttons, and its interface is easy to navigate. It doesn’t have as much battery life as the Forerunner 255 or the Coros Pace 2. In our heart rate tests, the Forerunner 245 performed slightly better than the Pace 2 (but worse than the Forerunner 255). The 245’s average GPS acquisition time (44 seconds) was sometimes slower than many watches we’ve tested, including our other options. The model’s GPS accuracy is susceptible to the vagaries of the GPS signal, tracking the route accurately on some runs and wobbling on others. But we have experienced several runs where the deviation from the control or measured distance is less than 1%. Like the Forerunner 255, the Forerunner 245 is also available in a version with built-in music functionality (usually around $50 more than the non-music version), which the Pace 2 doesn’t offer. While Garmin will eventually phase out the Forerunner 245 and Forerunner 245 Music, it will still be available (and still a good deal) at launch.
The best smartwatch for athletes
Fitbit is another leading fitness tracker with improved exercise modes and intuitive metrics support. The Ionic is an excellent smartwatch from the brand, combining streamlined smart features with improved fitness support. We especially like the watch’s dynamic personal trainer feature, which provides on-screen guidance that adjusts based on your feedback. However, unlike the other watches in our guide, the Ionic doesn’t support multiple run modes.
Why we like it: This new smartwatch is the closest competitor to the Apple Watch. It’s like Fitbit’s Versa sports watch, with extra sensors including an electrocardiogram, a blood oxygen monitor, and a stress scanner (all features of the Apple Watch Series 6). Like other smartwatches, you can control the Versa with your voice through Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa. It might not sound very exciting, but telling your watch what to do (like play music) is a lot easier than searching for menus on the fly.
