Jacob Little

The best fitness trackers: from FitBits to Garmin running watches

  • From Spectator Life
Garmin running watch

With the spring almost upon us, now’s a great time to up your fitness game. Whether you’re in training for a race or sticking to a new year fitness drive, it makes sense to track your progress and keep reminding yourself of how well you’re doing. Mentally, it can be hard to keep at it, so why not employ a bit of tech to help you along the way? Along with their generally more featured and app led cousins smartwatches, these pieces of technology have come a long way in recent years, and with ever evolving health technology, they’re only likely to get more sophisticated and better tuned to your needs.

What kind of fitness tracker is for me?

Larger, and perhaps more cumbersome smartwatches boast many of the features of fitness trackers, but they’re often not designed with exercise in mind. Think about the activities you do on a regular basis – swimming will obviously need a waterproof tracker and many activity bands are waterproof up to 50m. If you run a lot, trackers such as the Garmin options have built-in Spotify music, which comes in really handy if you don’t want to take your phone around. All should have good heart rate monitors, but some have better GPS functions than others. Pay attention to how much you’d like to pay and compare trackers features carefully, as some of the more affordable options offer the same features as the more expensive alternatives.

FitBit Charge 3 – best all-round fitness tracker (from £129.99)

One of the best fitness trackers out there on the market at the moment, we really liked the Charge 3 for its ability to last nearly a week on one charge and be completely waterproof – perfect for those soggy runs in the rain. Like the Versa featured on the smartwatch list, it has Fitbit’s excellent sleep app in-built and it comes with an excellent large screen which gives the information presented clarity and a slick design.

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