I happen to have a Galaxy Watch FE. The only fitness components of it that I use are the step counter and the heart rate. There are lots of others, but I haven’t tried them. The heart rate seems pretty accurate – I don’t know how often the display re-sets to the actual current heart rate, it’s not live per se, but you can run it live at any time, it takes maybe 10 seconds to take a fresh reading. I’m not impressed with the step counter, it seems to over-count other activities as “steps.”
Oh, and you can use Samsung Wallet to make payments using the watch, but I found that not worth the effort, compared with using a credit card directly.
I have one of the Amazonfit Amazon models in the $60 range, I think Bip 5. It’s a nice watch and it’s nice to have a watch again. I also do use the workout features, it sips power even when doing GPS tracking, much better than using my phone. I went on a 3 day backpack and it did last fine, though I’m not sure if I GPS’ed each day, as using it on indoor workout modes turns off GPS, so I may have used that the last day. Overall I am happy with it,. Also answering the phone on the watch is surprisingly handy at times and works well (good voice quality) for both myself and the person at the end of the call. This allows me to continue by chores without needed to handle my phone, nor do I need to put my wrist up to my mouth. I also can wander around the house with the phone in one place and have not had any issues with signal strength.
The only dislike is that some functions are hard to find, like you find something and turn it on to try it out and then can’t find out how to undo that. However the internet helps there.
I had a few Fitbits for a few years before switching to Garmin a few months ago. I liked how Fitbit has a more regimented style, (e.g. I had to get 250 steps every hour and it would give me a 10 minute warning if I hadn’t met the goal). I switched because Fitbit switched from an online website to a phone App. I hate that. So I wish I had the functionality of the Fitbit and the online access of the Garmin. The Garmin still tries so hard to insert itself into my daily life. I’m always cancelling requests to give the Garmin app access to my GPS any time I go for a walk. If Fitbit had kept its website health dashboard, I’d still be happily with them.
I bought an off-brand one five or six years ago to wear while jogging. Paid $50 for it. After my jog I would download the data, and it would show me the route (from GPS), heart rate, etc. Two things:
It didn’t work well when the sky was overcast or there were many tall trees around. Maybe they’ve gotten better now.
Most important: I discovered I didn’t really care about the data. I’m not training for a race, and I’m not trying to improve my run times. I’m just a 57 year old guy out for a jog.
I eventually discovered that, when I’m out for a jog, it’s a peaceful feeling to be completely disconnected from the “web” for a little while. So I threw that thing in the trash.
Yeah the right device, or any device, is really based on what you are hoping for it to do.
I got my Garmin when I was marathon training and even then it gave me more information than I wanted. Much that wasn’t actionable. But it did what I wanted well.
Now I still like knowing what my heart rate zone was, pace and distance. Whether running or biking. Tracking my VO2 max is of some interest I guess.
My sleep score, body battery? Don’t care. Having something telling me to move every hour? No thanks. But that is what some people are looking for.
I recall wearing a step counter watch and seeing I was about 50 steps short of some milestone; I waved my arms around for a few seconds, and it announced I had met the metric. So your mileage may literally vary.
The other complaint I had about the watch was that, since it was also supposed to track sleep, I would wear it all the time. And it had to be relatively snug to get a good reading. That led to me getting a red rash on my wrist. Do I take it off to get some relief, or do I lose out on recording stats? I eventually gave up on the watch.
So I’ve had a few. My biggest question is what do you want to use it for? Are you a runner? Want to keep track of detailed fitness specs, maps of your routes, etc? Nobody does that better than Garmin.
Do you want just a general workout device to track steps, heart rate, sleep, etc? Fitbit will do. Don’t expect reliable heart rate data from any of them, though unless you’ve got a monitor strapped to your chest.
My current device is a Pixel 3 watch. It’s integrated with Fitbit. It’s fine. The Fitbit features aren’t much different than a standard Fitbit device. But for setting alarms and reminders it’s very useful.
I had the Garmin Venu for a while and that’s a fairly well balanced combination of fitness stats and smart watch features. It just depends on how you plan to use it.
For me that’s a core feature, more important even than my step count, because my work and leisure are both sedentary. I need to be getting up hourly, moving around, grabbing a glass of water, and so I appreciate the nudge.
Disagree. The Garmin seems very reliable in that regard in my use case. Possibly chest strap monitoring is marginally more precise but not a meaningful difference for the usual use case. It is really its major function, heart rate monitoring. Now I don’t take its HRV data as anything to act upon …
I have Samsung Galaxy Watch 7, which is a smart watch with fitness tracking abilities.
The automatic workout detection works pretty well. It claims to automatically detect walking, biking, and running. The walking works reasonably well. If I’ve been walking for 10 minutes it will detect a walk, and back date the recording. It doesn’t always start at exactly 10 minutes after I started, but that’s probably because my walks often contain lots of stops to smell or pee on things.
The bike detection seem to work very well. It will start shortly after I start riding. I’ve never tested run detection.
I’ve manually started it for things like skiing and hiking. The battery lasts for a day of skiing.
For all of the workout tracking it records heart rate and distance. Supposedly the GPS is not the most accurate, but it generally agrees with the track recorded in my phone.
I would not recommend it if you want something that is highly accurate, but it might be well into the good enough zone.
I had the Garmin Venu and had problems with the heart rate, and I got the Garmin because I had problems with the heart rate on the Fitbit. The main issue I have is that it thinks my walking pace is my heart rate. This issue continued with the Pixel watch 3.
Ah. “Cadence lock.” I’ve heard about it. It does happen to some people more than others. Especially if the strap is a bit loose but sometimes no matter what.
I’ve got a Fitbit, but it’s not fancy enough to give me a blood pressure reading. It’ll keep track of my heart beat, how far I’ve walked, election, and how many calories I’ve burned that day. I’ve found distance walked to be accurate in that I can walk the same path and get within .1-.2 miles every time. Elevation seems to be inaccurate. I never know how many floors it’s going to tell me I walked on a particular day. I walk the same route daily and sometimes I go up 4 floors, or 6, or 8 depending on the day.
I’m not sure how accurate it is at measuring heartbeats. There are times when my heart doesn’t elevate very much and other times where it gets high enough to register as real exercise. Each time I’m walking at approximately the same pace, so either I’m not wearing it around my wrist correctly at times or after walking for so long my heartbeat doesn’t get as high as it used to.
My advice would be to be conscious of the battery life. I have an Apple Watch and the battery runs out every 2 days. That’s too often for me to do maintenance on a watch, I never could remember to do it, so it’s in a drawer now gathering dust.
If you don’t need much from it, I’d go with the LCD-screen type, these will stay charged for quite a while.
Thank you. I appreciate everyones post. I started walking daily and want to track my pulse. I use a wrist cuff for bp. I keep it in my car and check myself before and after walking. It would be nice if the fitness tracker did it.
I agree battery life is important. Remembering to charge is always a hassle.
This seems pretty simple in terms of your needs, so I think a Fitbit would do it for you. And those are often much cheaper than Garmin. If you ever get serious about tracking your routes, pace, varied workouts, etc then you might want to look into a greater investment.
The only thing about Fitbit is the subscription fee but I think it’s only for advanced features.
ETA: I’d check which models do blood pressure because I’ve never used that feature.
I have a Garmin Swim 2, which I use for, big surprise, keeping track of my swimming. It will also keep track of steps, and it says it can keep track of running, cycling, and gym workouts, though I only use it for steps otherwise.
It cost me about $200, and I’ve had it for almost two and a half years now. The swimming part works out ok, sometimes it gives me extra lengths in the pool. The step counter seems to be about the same as my buddy’s Apple watch. Charging wise I think I put it on the charger once or twice a week, but I don’t wear it to bed.
I bought my father a Garmin running watch last year for his birthday. I think I paid around $200 for it, but I don’t remember which one it was. He says it works great and I’m guessing it does pretty much the same as mine, minus the swimming.
The “running” ones do swimming too. My understanding is that the Swim is flatter, does better heart rate monitoring with the big underwater arm strokes possibly because of that, and gives more swim specific metrics. While run ones give us a bunch of running metrics that very few use.