The 9 Best Smartwatches In 2021 To Keep You Fit And Connected - Forbes

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It has taken a while, but the latest generation of smartwatches are intelligent, powerful and—most importantly—a solid value. There was a time when it was hard to justify wearing a smartwatch because older models mostly just duplicated some of the features found on your phone. But the best smartwatches today help keep you fit and healthy in ways no other device is able, while still putting important notifications right on your wrist. That makes smartwatches indispensable for many people.

To be sure, not everyone wants a health and fitness watch, and there are watches that lean into other skills, like simply being stylish. But we’re thrilled that even those watches are bristling with sensors that can track your ECG and irregular heart rhythms, blood oxygen levels and detection of trips and falls, which makes them essential for helping manage health risks.

It doesn’t matter whether you are looking for a premium watch like the Apple Watch Series 6 or a stylish model like the Motorola Moto 360. From budget watches, style-forward models, fitness-focused smartwatches and more, here are the nine best smartwatches you can get right now.

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Best Smartwatch for iPhone Overall

Apple Watch Series 6

• Pros: SPO2 and ECG sensors, finally has sleep tracking, brighter screen
• Cons: Pretty expensive, battery life is less than a day

It’s something of a cliché to call the Apple Watch Series 6 the best Apple Watch yet—without exception, each one has been “the best one yet,” only to be topped by the next model. But if price is no object, the Series 6 is a worthy investment. It has all the great features from the Series 5, including the always-on display, plus the all-new SpO2 blood-oxygen sensor.

It also has somewhat faster charging, which comes in handy for the new sleep tracking feature (at long last). Unfortunately, it suffers from the same Achilles’ Heel as all Apple Watches: A battery life that is measured in hours, not days. Few other smartwatches struggle to make it though a single day on a charge.

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Best Smartwatch for Android Overall

Samsung Galaxy Watch 3

• Pros: Excellent rotating bezel, great Tizen OS, beautiful design
• Cons: Weak battery life, ECG not working in US yet

Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 3 has a lot to offer, not the least of which is its superb and innovative rotating bezel, which makes it easy to quickly spin through apps, notifications, music and more. You can get there using the on-screen menus as well, but the bezel brings an immediacy to the Galaxy Watch you don’t get in most other smartwatches. It runs the excellent Tizen operating system and has a wealth of health and fitness features like automatic exercise identification, but the promised ECG isn’t enabled in the US yet (it’s built in, just not accessible). On the other hand, it does have a trip-and-fall detector.

While this watch works best with Android, your investment isn’t lost if you switch ton an iPhone at some point, because it works (in a limited way) with iOS as well. Like the Apple Watch, it has a pretty modest battery life, but it can last for the better part of two full days.

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Best Stylish Smartwatch

Motorola Moto 360 3rd Generation

• Pros: Gorgeous design, fast charging
• Cons: Not waterproof for swimming, Wear OS not as good as Tizen

There are a lot of smartwatches on the market, and a lot of premium design-focused watches at that. But few look as sharp as the Moto 360, and the latest—2020’s third generation—is the one you want if style is your key criteria. The classic round display with a stainless steel bezel, always-on display, tasteful watch faces and optional leather band make this watch look good on any wrist. (You can also opt for a silicone strap that’s well-suited to exercise.)

And if you remember the older version of the Moto 360, fear not: The notch at the bottom of the display is gone. Now it’s a completely round digital display. The display is powered by the familiar Android Wear OS, which gives you access to a huge library of apps, but you only get about a day of runtime on the battery.

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Best Budget Smartwatch for iPhone

Apple Watch Series 3

• Pros: Inexpensive entry to Apple Watch, good audio quality for calls
• Cons: Left behind by Series 5 and 6, short battery life, no always-on display

The Apple Watch Series 3 has been around since 2017, and unlike most Apple Watch models that Apple “sunsets” fairly quickly, this one doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, serving as Apple’s low-cost entry level smartwatch. It’s reasonably affordable—especially when it goes on sale, which it does regularly—and gives you all the essential health and fitness Apple Watch features. It also works with Apple’s new sleep tracking, though the battery isn’t especially robust and you’ll need to take the time to charge it every evening.

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Best Budget Smartwatch for Android

Samsung Galaxy Watch Active 2

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Samsung Galaxy Watch Active 2 (44mm, GPS, Bluetooth)

• Pros: Tizon OS, rotating bezel, good price
• Cons: Short battery life, ECG not available yet

The Samsung Galaxy Watch Active 2 is exciting because it borrows most of the features from the Samsung Galaxy Watch 3 while clocking in at a budget price tag. You get the smart Tizen OS, a great rotating bezel for quick access to the watch’s major features, and even the same ECG, VO2 Max (maximum rate of oxygen consumption while exercising) and fall detection. There’s also menstrual tracking for those in need. This is a superb health and fitness watch for Android owners.

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Best Value Smartwatch for iPhone

Apple Watch SE

• Pros: Good price, powerful performance
• Cons: No always-on display, characteristically terrible battery life

If you’re shopping for an Apple Watch right now, you have more choices than usual, since there’s a new flagship (the Series 6), a budget model (the Series 3) and the Apple Watch SE all available. So where does the SE fit in? It’s the best value and probably the right choice for a lot of smartwatch users.

For a mid-range price tag, you get most of the features found in the iPhone Series 5 and Series 6. What’s missing: the always-on display, ECG and SpO2 sensors. Otherwise, the watch can ID many exercises, has fall detection, detects irregular heartbeats, and it’s compatible with all the usual apps. There are also many watch faces to customize it with, plus sleep detection to help your restfulness.

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Best Fitbit Smartwatch

Fitbit Versa Lite Smartwatch

• Pros: Excellent battery life, good price, superb Fitbit fitness software
• Cons: No Wi-Fi, no on-board music storage

Fitbit more or less pioneered the fitness band category, and its Versa Lite smartwatch is a superb fitness-focused smartwatch at a budget price. It doesn’t do everything, but it more than justifies its cost. Unlike all the Apple Watches and many top-tier Android watches, the Versa Lite lasts for you three or four days at a time, which is a welcome relief from the charge dock.

Fitbit has exercise identification and tracking down to a science, and the Versa Lite benefits from that. You also get the obligatory heart rate tracking and sleep tracking, and with waterproofing, you can take it in the shower or pool. It lacks stair tracking and GPS, however.

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Best Fitness Smartwatch

Garmin Vivoactive 4

• Pros: Exemplary battery life, on-screen workout animations, SpO2 sensor
• Cons: Requires multiple mobile apps, pricey

If you are serious about your fitness routine and you are an Android owner, there may be no better watch than the Garmin Vivoactive 4. It’s hard not to love the on-screen animated exercise demonstrations, including Pilates and yoga routines—handy for checking your form.

You also get built-in storage for playing music while you work out and a large library of workout apps. Integrated sleep and menstrual tracking help you manage other aspects of health. You’re not going to use this for workouts 24/7, so Garmin also includes Garmin Pay (contactless payments like Apple Pay or Android Pay) and one of the best battery life ratings around with up to eight days of usage.

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Best Smartwatch Under $100

AmazFit Bip S Smartwatch

• Pros: Unequalled battery life, unbeatable budget price, excellent health and fitness features
• Cons: Poor app support, challenging interface

There are budget smartwatches, and then there are budget smartwatches. For well under $100, the AmazFit Bip S (don’t judge it by the goofy name) is a stunningly good value. It might not have the same classy industrial design as Samsung, Garmin or Apple, but it has all the most important features. Those include heart rate monitoring, water resistance to 5 atmospheres (meaning it protects against full submersion a bit more effectively), built-in GPS, a slew of exercise tracking modes and more.

It does all this with an impressive 40-day batter life, one of the longest of any smartwatch. In addition, you can choose from more than 40 standard watch faces and edit widgets on several as well, similar to the Apple Watch.

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What's the difference between ECG and optical heart rate sensors?

These days, smartwatches are bristling with ever-more health and fitness sensors. Two of the most common sensors in modern watches are ECG and optical heart rate sensors, and while they both measure your heart, they’re measuring different things.

Virtually all smartwatches today include an optical heart rate sensor — it’s one of the oldest health sensors found in wearable devices. An optical sensor reflects a particular wavelength of light off the blood flowing under the skin beneath your watch, which helps the watch determine how fast your heart is beating. Some watches measure this regularly through the day; others reserve it just for workouts and when you trigger it manually.

An ECG—short for electrocardiogram—is a more recent innovation in smartwatches. It measures electrical signals under your skin generated by your heart’s normal rhythmic beating to generate a very accurate picture of your heart rate. To function, the ECG feature must be triggered manually and requires you to touch a specific part of the watch while the ECG measures the electrical signal generated by the heart’s contraction. The result is a summary that tells you if your heart is behaving normally or if there’s an abnormal rhythm (called atrial fibrillation).

Is an Apple Watch useful without an iPhone?

Unfortunately, in order to set up a new Apple Watch, an iPhone is absolutely required. There’s no way to set it up without one, and you need to use the Apple Watch mobile app on your iPhone to install watch faces and watch apps, as well as to make many kinds of changes to settings.

On the other hand, if you have an iPhone but don’t always carry it with you, you can certainly wear an Apple Watch instead and use many of the watch’s key features on its own. But on its own, an Apple Watch can’t connect to the internet (unless you have a cellular version of the watch) and will not be especially useful.

What does a smartwatch’s IP rating mean?

IP, which is short for Ingress Protection, is an industry-standard method for describing how protected a device is from being damaged by the environment. IP ratings always have two numbers, such as IP65 or IP15. The first digit indicates how well protected the device is from intrusion from solids like dirt, dust and debris. The second digit is for moisture protection—such as rain, drips, sprays or full immersion in water.

Generally, the higher the IP rating you see, the better protection it has. Here is a quick guide to what each number means:

Solids

X: Not tested or unknown—assume it offers no protection.

1: Protection from objects over 50mm in size.

2: Protection from objects over 12.5mm (like fingers).

3: Protection from objects over 2.5mm (like some tools and thick wires).

4: Protection from objects over 1mm (like screws and wires).

5: Protection from some dust.

6: Completely sealed from dust and other solid objects.

Liquids

X: Not tested or unknown—assume it offers no protection.

1: Protection from dripping water.

2: Protection from dripping water even if the enclosure is tilted at an angle.

3: Protection from spraying water.

4: Protection from splashing water.

5: Protection from low-pressure jets of water.

6: Protection from powerful jets of water.

7: Protection from being immersed in water up to one meter deep.

8: Protection from being immersed in deep water specified in by the manufacturer.

The Link Lonk


January 12, 2021 at 10:45PM
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The 9 Best Smartwatches In 2021 To Keep You Fit And Connected - Forbes

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