The best 10 smartwatches in comparison

A smartwatch can be a great companion in terms of health and wellness: depending on the model, it may remind you to stay active, give that much-needed push to keep up with the ideal daily water intake, track your sleeping patterns, and even offer relaxation exercises. Moreover, smartwatches are part of your look – and yet, it wouldn’t be financially or environmentally sustainable to have one smartwatch to fit every outfit. However, choosing a smartwatch that goes with your personal style is only part of the challenge!

Before buying any kind of wearable, you must make sure that it’s compatible with your smartphone and that it caters to your individual needs. But don’t feel desperate! We’re here to help you simplify your decision-making process. Here are a few things to consider before moving forward with your purchase.

Design and build

Needless to say, you should look for a smartwatch that resonates with – or perhaps enhances – your style. For the most design versatility, your best bet would be to go for a model with replaceable watch bands – and you can search for exactly that by using our filter functionality. With this same feature, you can narrow down your search to specify your preferred wristband with and screen size – critical information to observe, whether you’re looking for a bulkier smartwatch or if you prefer to wear something smaller.

Still considering the design of your next fitness and wellness buddy, it’s worth it to keep in mind that design goes beyond looks: it has to match the way you use your smartwatch. Do you intend to work out while wearing it? If so, a sweat-resistant wearable is a must. Now, if you want to go a step further and take your smartwatch for a swim (many models have special features for swimmers), you should opt for a product that is water-resistant and, most importantly, that it has the appropriate waterproof depth rating. Another possibility is that the display’s sturdiness is paramount for you (perhaps an outdoorsy person, or just a little clumsy), in which case you may want to consider the added protection of a damage-resistant glass display.

Features

Some might say that functionality matters more than looks, and we wouldn't disagree! When it comes to smartwatches, however, we would say that both should be taken into account together – after all, why invest in a beautiful smartwatch that lacks the features you need, or have a wearable with all your favorite functions, but never wear it? With that, after discussing design and build, let's talk about features.

If you're a swimmer or keen on water sports, a smartwatch that is only resistant to sweat won't cut you: you'll need a wearable that is water-resistant, and which can function at the waterproof depth that you need. However, if you're a runner who may eventually get caught in the rain, waterproof depth won't be so important, and if you're only using your smartwatch for indoor workouts, sweat resistance would be enough.

Smartwatches may include wonderful features such as a heart rate monitor and its own GPS, but don't take it as a given. For instance, unless your wearable has an inbuilt GPS sensor, location tracking would only work while your wearable was paired with your smartphone; this means having your phone with you, which is not ideal for all types of workout.

Some user-favorite smartwatch features are activity and sleep tracking reports, call control, messages, and calendar events, as well as a smart alarm that wakes you up within a timeframe, but when you're at a lighter phase of sleep (so waking up isn't as "traumatic"). Other desirable features for many are the ability to set fitness goals, be notified about achievements, have smart assistant integration, keep track of calorie and water intake, and be able to track specific sports.

Compatibility

Now comes an issue that provokes quite a lot of frustration: not every smartwatch is compatible with all types of smartphones. The reason why compatibility matters is that many of your smartwatch functionalities rely on smartphone pairing (such as receiving notifications or being able to answer calls), so you wouldn’t get much out of your wellness and fitness buddy by using it solo.

The Apple Watch series, for instance, only works with iPhones, so if you’re an Android user, you can already cross that off your list. However, plenty of smartwatches that run on Google’s Wear OS are iPhone-compatible as well (although the scope of available features is not always precisely the same).

There are three operating systems currently available for wearable devices:

watchOS

Apple joined the smartwatch game a bit later than its competitors, releasing the first Apple Watch in April 2015, but it managed to get more than half of the global market share in just a few years. watchOS, the iOS-based operating system for Apple wearables, offers several interesting features, such as Apple Pay and the SOS app, which allows you to quickly contact emergency services by pressing and holding the side button.

Android Wear

Android Wear powers a wide range of smartwatches from various manufacturers: Asus, Huawei, LG, Sony, and many others. A few select Android wearables are also compatible with Apple devices running iOS 8.2 or newer versions, but some features may be unavailable.

Tizen

Tizen is an open-source operating system based on Linux and developed for the connected mobile ecosystem. It powers a wide range of devices, from smartphones and smart TVs to smartwatches. Samsung smartwatches originally used Android but switched to Tizen in 2014, with the release of the Samsung Gear S2. Tizen smartwatches are compatible with Android phones, but they can’t be paired with iOS devices. Another drawback for Tizen, at least for now, is that the number of apps is smaller compared to Android Wear and watchOS.

Pairing and connectivity

As already mentioned, smartwatches become an extension of your smartphone when used to their full potential. They may connect to your phone via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi; whichever the case, once you do the initial setup, you're good to go, and your smartwatch should be able to automatically sync your data with your smartphone if this feature is available. However, an advantage of Wi-Fi connectivity on your smartwatch is that it may stay synced with your smartphone even if the Bluetooth connection is interrupted (both devices need to still be within the same Wi-Fi network range, though, as featuring cellular data is a rare smartwatch feature). Additionally, a growing number of smartwatches feature connectivity protocols such as NFC, turning your smartwatch into a digital wallet and making it an even more useful wearable tech.

Battery life

This is one of the most critical (and often overlooked) aspects of the decision-making process, especially if you intend to track your sleeping patterns with the smartwatch – after all, many of us recharge our smartphones and other devices overnight. It might be useful to take into account that smartwatches with colorful OLED displays may present increased power consumption, especially if the Always-On Display function is turned on; yet, the newer a product is, the more likely it is to have a more powerful battery, as technology keeps evolving.

A smartwatch’s battery life may range from less than a day to weeks; assessing this specification is a challenge both for manufacturers and for consumers, considering that battery expenditure depends on the features available, and on the ones that you use. As an example, if two individuals use the same smartwatch model for the same purposes, but only one of them is using it to track a particular activity – let’s say this person is a runner –, the runner’s battery life will consequently be shorter.