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I’ve tested dozens of fitness trackers — here are the best ones for beginners, runners and more
My top picks are accurate, comfortable and easy to use.
Many NBC Select staffers use Fitbit fitness trackers and love them for their lightweight, easy-to-use design. The Charge 6 is just that: a small, beginner-friendly fitness tracker that’s light on weight and light on price.
Despite having rarely used Fitbit products in the past, the Charge 6 felt comfortable after only a few minutes of swiping through the watch and app. The screen and stats are bright, colorful and easy to understand.
The Charge 6 tracks and showcases your heart rate, daily steps, distance traveled, fitness activities, calories burned and nightly sleep. It does not track more advanced running stats like cadence, stride length, ground contact time and vertical oscillation (our picks from Apple and Garmin do). Some data like detailed sleep stages and a daily readiness score are only available with a Fitbit Premium subscription, which costs $10 per month.
New to the Charge 6 is Google Wallet, Google Maps navigation and YouTube Music controls. It also now has a button on the left side that returns you to the home screen or pause workout screen. You can read more in our Fitbit Charge 6 review.
The Garmin Vivoactive 6 hits just the right balance with robust fitness features, smartwatch capabilities, long battery life and a reasonable price all packed within a subtle design. I was constantly surprised by how many and how rich its features were, especially considering this is one of Garmin’s most affordable watches.
It tracks your health, sleep and fitness activity — with in-depth metrics and analysis for all three. Fitness is particularly impressive, with features like body Battery, workout recovery times, Garmin pace pro and Garmin coach (with running and strength training plans).
One standout feature I love is workout animation — the watch will play short videos of a silhouette performing certain exercises. This is mostly when doing Garmin Connect workouts (think HIIT, cardio, strength and yoga), but where I find this the most fun is for Move Alerts — the watch will remind me to move, give me a few movement options to choose from, then play an animation of that movement to follow. It made taking breaks at my desk a lot more fun.
The Garmin Connect app is less intuitive than apps from competitors like Fitbit and Apple — give yourself time to get used to it before dismissing it outright.
The Apple Watch is one fitness tracker that almost always stays on my wrist, and this is the brand’s lowest-priced model. It costs much less than the Apple Watch Series 11 and Apple Watch Ultra 3, but has almost all the same fitness tracking features and metrics.
The Apple Watch SE 3 is easy to use, especially if you have used an iPhone before. The apps are similar or identical, and the square shape of the watch makes it easy to scroll through notifications and texts. It shows detailed workout, health and sleep metrics via Apple Health and Apple Fitness, no subscription required. You can also use the Siri voice assistant to make requests and send voice texts, which is much easier than typing a text mid-run, in my experience.
The watch has up to 18 hours of battery life, according to the brand — that’s less than most competitors. It does charge quickly, though, getting nearly a full charge in just 45 minutes. It also comes in two sizes with many watch band options.
The Pixel Watch has improved each year to the point that it is now one of the best fitness trackers and smartwatches for anyone with an Android phone. It does everything you would expect of all the best smartwatches: notifications, texting, calls, tap-to-pay, media controls, offline maps and more.
For fitness, the watch has built-in Fitbit tracking with more than 50 workout types to choose from, with more in-depth data compared to other Fitbits like the Fitbit Charge 6. You can build custom workouts, including custom runs with stages, intervals and more. The watch can also automatically detect walks, runs, bike rides, and more, and start a workout all on its own. I often forget to log walks, so this feature is one of my favorites.
New to the Pixel Watch 4 is satellite SOS emergency assistance (on the LTE version), multi-band GPS (which should lead to more accurate GPS data), improved battery life and too much else to list here.
The Garmin Vivoactive 6 is more than enough for most fitness activities, but people training for a race, marathon or triathlon will appreciate what the Forerunner 265 has to offer. It’s a running watch with a few key features that set it apart from my other top picks.
The most important are training readiness, training status and HRV (heart rate variability) status, which work in tandem to help optimize your training and recovery.
Training readiness combines multiple metrics to give you a top-level score about how beneficial training is today. In practice, it helped me decide whether the day was a rest day, easy day or day to push myself.
The watch, of course, also has advanced running metrics like power, cadence, stride length and ground contact time, as well as multi-band GPS for the most accurate, consistent outdoor data possible.
Like most Garmin watches, the Forerunner 265 has excellent battery life — I averaged about 10 days between charges. It also connects to GPS quickly, usually within five seconds.
The Forerunner 265 is pricey, though. If price is more important to you than features like dual-band GPS, Training Load and Training Readiness, the aforementioned Garmin Vivoactive 6 or make for great, cheaper alternatives.
If you want to track health, wellness, sleep and basic fitness stats, but hate wearing watches, consider a smart ring like the Oura Ring 4. I tested it for over two months — it’s one of the best smart rings on the market right now, especially for sleep and wellness tracking.
The Oura Ring 4 tracks stats like heart rate, body temperature, blood oxygen, sleep stages, stress levels and exercise metrics and stores them on the Oura app. It automatically tracks walks as well, but it’s best to manually start and stop other exercises like runs, yoga and strength training. It categorizes and gives you broad scores for three main categories: readiness, sleep, and activity.
Because it doesn’t have a screen, it cannot show live stats like pace, distance or heart rate zones, meaning it’s not a great fit for avid runners or cyclists
The Oura Ring comes in six colors and a range of sizes. While you can use the Oura Ring without a subscription, you’ll be limited to the current day’s sleep, readiness and activity scores. An Oura Ring membership costs $6 a month. You can learn more in my Oura Ring 4 review.
When shopping for any fitness tracker, price and compatibility should be top of mind. But beyond that, our experts recommend prioritizing the following:
Both Lewis-Trammell and Athayde say that comfort and wearability are the most important factors of any fitness tracker.
If you don’t ever wear rings, you probably won’t find the Oura Ring comfortable. Similarly, if you don’t like to wear a watch, a smartwatch like the Apple Watch or Google Pixel Watch might be uncomfortable. “Ultimately, you’re looking for a device you’re going to wear long term so that it can provide you with the most accurate data,” says Athayde.
Because trackers come in so many shapes and sizes, I recommend going to a store in person to try a few different options and see which form factor makes sense for you. Having tested over a dozen options, I am surprised by how different each model feels, even ones with similar wristbands.
It’s not just athletes that benefit from fitness trackers, says Athayde. In my experience, everyone can benefit from the data fitness trackers provide if you understand your wants and needs.
Before shopping around, think about what data you care about. If you love outdoor exercise stats like pace and power, a Garmin watch may match your habits best. If you want broad exercise and health data, plus all the latest apps, a smartwatch from Apple or Google is a good fit.
What’s best for you depends on your daily habits and larger goals, according to our experts. Take stock of them before you checkout.
At NBC Select, we work with experts who have specialized knowledge and authority based on relevant training and/or experience. We also take steps to ensure all expert advice and recommendations are made independently and without undisclosed financial conflicts of interest.
I’m a reporter at NBC Select who covers technology and fitness. I’ve written about smartwatches, over-ear headphones and workout headphones, to name a few, and have been testing fitness trackers for years. I try new models constantly, comparing them against previous versions and similar competitors. For this piece, I also interviewed fitness and health experts to get a better understanding of workout data and metrics.
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