With so many wearables available today, choosing the right smartwatch or tracker can be tough. Do you go for the style of an Apple Watch or the functionality of a Garmin? The right one for you will be based on your individual needs; whether it’s step counting, sleep tracking or 24/7 heart rate tracking, there’s something for everyone.

Smartwatches

Fitbit Versa

Fitbit has become the go-to brand for fitness tracking and 2018 saw the company releasing its most successful device to date. The Fitbit Versa is a stylish and comfortable fitness tracker that doubles as a reliable smartwatch. Featuring a 1.34-inch LCD screen, the Versa fits comfortably on any wrist, and its lightweight design means that it will never interfere with your workout of choice. The Versa actively amasses daily activity data such as the number of steps taken, calories burned, and stairs climbed, while also actively monitoring heart rate and many other metrics. Fitbit not only excels at offering solid performance metrics but also provides a clean, easy-to-read way to digest that information, thanks to the easy-to-use smartphone app. 

In addition to its impressive fitness-tracking capabilities, the Versa is also a stylish smartwatch which offers wearers text and app notifications and a variety of different watch faces. Though iPhone users can’t respond to texts, it's a feature available for those who use Android. All in all, the Versa is a very impressive fitness tracker and the fact it doubles as a powerful smartwatch makes it that much better.

Apple Watch Series 4

The Apple Watch is packed with advanced tech, and each iteration gets better at tracking your fitness, too. The only downside is that, as with all Apple products, you need to be connected to the ecosystem to enjoy the full benefits of the device. 

When it comes to fitness, the Apple Watch features a next-generation accelerometer and gyroscope which can sample motion data eight times faster than its competitors. In addition to dishing out more accurate fitness tracking stats, this allows the watch to identify and send out alerts if you fall or trip. The previous generation introduced a number of heart rate sensing functions such as high heart rate alerts. This has been expanded now to detect low heart rates. Series 4 also intermittently analyzes heart rhythms and sends alerts if it detects abnormal patterns. The most exciting of all is the new FDA-approved ECG sensor. This provides a full report that lets you know if your heart rhythm is normal or if there are issues.

Fitness Trackers 

Samsung Gear Fit 2 Pro

Samsung’s Gear Fit2 Pro is a sleek and lightweight fitness tracker and features a healthy dose of smartwatch capability, such as the option to store and stream music, built-in GPS, and water resistance. 

Featuring a 1.2-inch Super AMOLED screen with 320 x 320 resolution, wearers are treated to a stunning, crystal-clear display. The Gear is especially useful when scrolling through the wearable’s daily metrics of steps counted, calories burned, flights of stairs climbed, and the host of typical fitness data. It even offers up a Google Maps-type map after logging a run or bike ride via its built-in GPS, displaying the exact route taken. When listening to music either stored directly on the watch or via Spotify, the interface is easy to navigate, even while on the move. In addition to its subtle nudging feature, the Gear Fit2 Pro also offers accurate auto-tracking of a wide range of activities. 

Garmin Vivosport

The Vivosport is an upgrade to Garmin's popular Vivosmart series and at 21mm in width and 10.9mm in thickness, you’ll hardly notice you're wearing it. 

Despite the slim form-factor, Vivosport has all the specs you would expect from a serious fitness tracker. You’ll get everything you could possibly hope for 24/7 activity tracking, including detailed info on steps, calories, distance, heart rate, activity, floors and sleep. The GPS makes for more precise distance, time and pace tracking, along with route mapping for your runs. It will track your swims in the pool too.

Find out more

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