Whether you’re obsessed with the gym or just interested in getting a little healthier, smartwatches have become an invaluable accessory. Pretty much all of them now come with heart-rate monitors, and plenty include GPS trackers, which is a great start for runners and cyclists.

But while almost all of the best smartwatches nod towards fitness, some take it far more seriously than others. At the other end of the scale, some wearables are loaded with fitness features, but have limited smarts. In this guide, we’ve tried to pick the best of both worlds: genuine smartwatches that are also great for fitness.

Start working out with these fitness trackers

If there’s truly a sweet spot between an excellent smartwatch and a quality fitness tracker, the Samsung Galaxy Watch 6 continues the trend. Right out of the box, it can track over 90 different exercises, ensuring there's a way to track and measure even the most complicated fitness routine. And while Samsung Health lacks the in-depth metrics of Garmin Connect because it’s built on Wear OS, you can always introduce plenty of other third-party apps to mix things up.

The Samsung Galaxy Watch 6 doesn’t just track heart rate and location, but also measures blood oxygen, heart rhythm, bioelectrical impedance, akin temperature, and even blood pressure in some regions. All of this adds up to a great all-rounder at a pretty reasonable price. But if you want to save a few bucks, consider the last-generation Samsung Galaxy Watch 5, which isn’t all that different.

Garmin's slow roll to making a true smartwatch with broader appeal is coming into greater focus, as evidenced by how the Venu 3 straddles the line between fitness and lifestyle. The built-in speaker and microphone means you can talk without touching your phone, including to your digital assistants straight from the wrist. Despite that, third-party app support still trails the likes of other Google Wear OS watches, but you could still find something pretty useful in the Garmin IQ store. Truth be told, the first reason you'd want to strap this on your wrist is for the deep fitness tracking features.

Garmin watches have long been the runner’s choice due to accurate GPS tracking and bevy of options, like training regimens and workout routines, but the passive health features are just as good, like Body Battery and Fitness Age, among others. These features give you real feedback on how well you're doing and where there might be room for improvement.

Improved and deeper sleep tracking will do the same every night, too. New ECG and skin temperature sensors can also look out for atrial fibrillation or skin temperature fluctations, but Garmin has yet to turn those on, so you'll have to wait for a future firmware update to unlock them.

On a tight budget? Look no further than the Amazfit GTS 3 or GTR 3, which share the same MSRP and can be found for cheap as an alternative to the (slightly disappointing) Amazfit GTR 4. You can usually find it for under $150, meaning you get real bang for the buck wearing the Amazfit GTS 3 or GTR 3. Along with the usual GPS, accelerometer, and gyroscope, both watches also come with the BioTracker 3.0 optical sensor, which analyzes heart rate, stress, and blood oxygen levels. Between them, these sensors track 150 exercises (8 automatically) and provide insights like training load, VO2 Max, and recovery time to help you plan your workouts.

Both lack third-party apps and the polish of some rivals, but it’s hard to complain too much, given the low cost of entry. This is the kind of smartwatch you go with when you want to keep it simple and just focus on the activities you want to engage in.

If you want the excellent fitness features that Garmin wearables provide, but can’t justify the expense of the Venu 3 or Venu 2 Plus, then the Garmin Venu Sq 2 is a solid compromise. Granted, you lose out on the altimeter, gyroscope, and workout animations, but it proves itself a valuable workout companion at a fraction of the price.

You may also like the 11 days of battery life, accurate fitness tracking, and brilliant Garmin Connect app, which includes all the stats you could ever want. The excellent Body Battery feature will tell you how prepared you are for a workout on any given day, making it extremely handy for those looking to build their fitness.

As a smartwatch, the Fitbit Sense 2 is only smart-ish, but you must admire Fitbit’s dedication to fitness and wellness. To that end, as well as packing the usual GPS and heart-rate sensors, the Fitbit Sense 2 can measure stress, blood oxygen, body temperature, and an irregular heartbeat via its ECG sensor.

It’s able to track up to 40 exercises and has one of the most user-friendly apps around, clearly showing progress to beginners while encouraging friendly competition between friends and colleagues. Yes, some of the better features are pay-walled, but the watch comes with six months of Fitbit Premium, which isn’t bad at all. However, what is bad is the lost features from the previous generation: third-party apps have gone, there’s no music storage, and playback controls have also inexplicably vanished. There are signs it’s getting better — Google Wallet and Maps were recently added — but if you want a truly smart experience, you may want to look elsewhere.

As well as owning Fitbit, Google has a smartwatch of its own: the Pixel Watch. Indeed, the company promised “help from Google” and “health from Fitbit” which sounds like the best of both worlds when you’re looking for a fitness-focused smartwatch.

In truth, the results are more mixed. It’s missing out on a few things that make the bundled Fitbit Premium valuable for the Sense 2, including a number of sensors (EDA, ECG, temperature) and automatic workout detection. Its one-day battery also runs down the built-in GPS quickly, which isn’t ideal for aspiring athletes. But as a smartwatch, it’s hard to fault, which is unsurprising given it’s essentially a device designed to show off what Wear OS can do.

After skipping it for a year, Samsung brought its vaunted physical rotating bezel back in the Watch 6 Classic, which only makes navigating the interface faster and more intuitive. It’s also officially the largest Samsung smartwatch — specifically the 47mm variant — though you can also go with the 43mm if you prefer. With a stainless steel body and a sapphire crystal glass screen, there's a certain durability to the watch that builds trust in it withstanding some punishment.

You can still track over 90 exercises, and with improved sleep tracking, you get some coaching to help you enjoy your slumber more every night. If you have a Samsung phone, you can use the Health Monitor and ECG apps to look for potential signs of atrial fibrillation (AFib). Body Composition gives you a more holistic look at where you stand. Plus, Wear OS gives you apps, including the likes of Google Maps, Samsung Wallet, and more.

Despite newer Galaxy Watch 6 models already available, the Pro version stands out on its own because of the more rugged design courtesy of a titanium body to match the sapphire glass. It offers many of the same fitness functions the other Galaxy Watches do, along with a couple of extra things fitness fans will appreciate, like maps for hiking and cycling with a handy trackback to help you retrace your route.

Also, the chunky 590mAh battery will last up to three days on a single charge. While GPS will eat into that quickly, it'll still manage 20 hours — enough for all but the most dedicated ultra marathoners.

If you want a long battery life without the high price tag, the Mobvoi TicWatch Pro 5 is worth a look. The 628mAh battery should easily give you three or four days of use, which isn't all that common on Wear OS devices, but very welcome. That use of Wear OS means it’s an excellent and flexible smartwatch, but how is it for fitness tracking?

Not bad at all, with roughly a dozen workouts tracked from within the TicExercise app via the included heart rate and GPS trackers. It’ll measure blood oxygen levels via the built-in SpO2 sensor, too. It doesn’t feel as polished as other Wear OS wearables, and it’s undeniably bulky on smaller wrists, but the TicWatch Pro 5 packs a lot in for what it costs.

The Watch Ultra 2 is Apple's toughest smartwatch by far. With a titanium body flush against a rugged glass to protect the screen, it's built to handle whatever adventurous pursuit you have in mind. It's also super bright clocking in at 3,000 nits peak brightness for a much easier time seeing it in the bright sun. When it gets dark, it can drop all the way down to a single nit of brightness, preserving battery life (up to 36 hours) in the process. And with all that, Apple still used 95% recycled materials for the watch's casing.

It runs on Apple's faster S9 chipset, which enables new features like Double Tap, where you tap your index finger with your thumb twice to access certain features without even touching the watch. Then there's offline Siri support like that already available on the iPhone, where you can talk to the assistant without an Internet connection. All that comes on top of the plethora of exercise and health tracking readily available through the Watch Ultra 2.

What are your priorities?

As is often the case with wearables, you have to decide whether you’re looking for the best fitness tracking experience or the best smartwatch experience. There are plenty of ‘jack of all trade’ devices, but ultimately you need to decide whether you’re prioritizing fitness or smarts, and purchase accordingly. Overall, we picked the Samsung Galaxy Watch 6 as the best choice here because it’s keenly priced, feature-packed, and offers plenty of health options, even if it’s still more of a smartwatch that dabbles in fitness than a dedicated fitness watch.

Our Premium Pick — the Garmin Venu 3 — is very much the other way around. It offers as good a fitness tracking experience as you’ll find in any dedicated fitness tracker, but there’s not much in the way of customization, and its smartwatch experience is considerably more limited.

Our value pick — Amazfit’s GTR 3 and GTS 3 smartwatches — are more focused on fitness than smarts, but offer an incredible amount of value for their low cost of entry. If you’re on a tight budget, you won’t be disappointed.