We tested 14 fitness trackers to find the most comfortable, stylish and easy-to-use bands to monitor your health and sleep, and record walking, running, cycling, swimming and other activities.
The fitness and activity trackers that we recommend for adults all have a heart rate monitor, sleep tracker, step counter, and a way to connect to GPS.
We also expected the top trackers to have a clear touchscreen display, smartphone notifications and a long battery life.
We found the Fitbit Charge 4 is the best fitness tracker or activity band for most people, with built-in GPS for accurate tracking, detailed sleep insights and a useful Fitbit app.
All the Best Gear
Top Gear: Fitbit Charge 4
A lightweight fitness tracker packed with features usually found in a smartwatch, but with a more affordable price and discreet design. Built-in sensors, including GPS, allow it to accurately monitor activities, health, heart rate and sleep.
Best Health Tracker: Garmin Vivosmart 4
A slim, stylish activity tracker that gives detailed insights into your health and wellbeing. It also lets you control music from your wrist and has smart notifications to keep you connected.
Best Budget Buy: Xiaomi Mi Smart Band 5
The best value activity tracker you can buy, with a full colour touchscreen display, and smartwatch features like notifications and the ability to control music playback.
Best Tracker for Kids: Fitbit Ace 2
Make activity tracking fun for kids and families, while also helping to build healthy habits. Designed for kids aged 6 and over, this waterproof fitness tracker comes in bright colours with an animated touchscreen display.
Reviews and Recommendations
Top Gear: Fitbit Charge 4
The best fitness tracker
The Fitbit Charge 4 is a lightweight fitness tracker packed with features usually found in a smartwatch, but with a more affordable price and discreet design.
Fitness tracking features
The Charge 4 is Fitbit’s first tracker with built-in GPS, to display and accurately record your speed, distance and direction during outdoor activities like running and bike riding.
The Fitbit band also records typical stats like steps taken, stairs climbed, calories burned and active minutes (or hours), using a 3-axis accelerometer to track motion patterns.
A new Active Zone Minutes reading only kicks in when your heart rate hits a personalised range. It tracks how much time you spend in each heart rate zone, and whether your heart gets pumping for the recommended 150 mins of moderate activity (or 75 mins of vigorous activity) each week.
Other sensors allow it to monitor your health and heart rate 24/7, through Fitbit’s PurePulse technology, and give detailed insights into light, deep and REM sleep using a SpO2 sensor.
Helpfully, the Fitbit Charge 4 automatically recognises and tracks the most popular exercises and activities, including walking, running and swimming, using Fitbit’s SmartTrack feature.
You can also manually select from 20 goal-based exercise modes like cycling or yoga, set heart rate zones and activity goals, and follow a guided breathing session or workout routine.
A waterproof body means you can wear the band in a pool and track your swimming time and laps, or just keep it on while in the shower or bath.
A dashboard on the fitness tracker display helps you get a snapshot of your daily activity stats, and can send reminders to regularly move around or to reach your activity goals.
Smartphone notifications keep you connected to your favourite apps, show calendar and weather alerts, play music on Spotify, and let you know when you receive a call or text message. Android users can even send quick replies from the Charge 4 touchscreen.
Display and design
The Fitbit Charge 4 has a large touchscreen OLED display, which is 40mm or 1.57-inches, and can adjust to lighting conditions to make it easier to see activity stats, notifications or the time in sunlight or at night.
Although the screen is bright and clear, a full colour display, rather than using 16 shades of grey, would’ve meant an even stronger recommendation for the Charge 4 activity tracker.
The fitness band can sync wirelessly to Android, iOS and Windows phones and devices, using Bluetooth 4.0, to automatically send your activity, fitness, health and sleep data to the excellent Fitbit app. But we did find the Bluetooth connection can be unreliable.
The useful and user-friendly Fitbit app provides detailed activity data to help you understand more about your health and fitness, set goals and challenges, earn achievement badges, and connect with friends to encourage and motivate each other.
The Fitbit Charge 4 also works with Fitbit Pay, to make secure payments from your wrist.
The compact and comfortable Fitbit Charge 4 comes in 4 colour combinations, including Fitbit’s classic black and a fresh rosewood style. The Fitbit bands can be changed easily, if you prefer a leather, sports or woven strap.
Pros
+ Packed with fitness features
+ Built-in GPS for accurate tracking
+ Large touchscreen display
+ Waterproof swim tracker
+ Detailed sleep insights
+ Music playback control
+ Long battery life
+ Useful Fitbit app and Fitbit Pay
Cons
– Black and white display
– Bluetooth connection unreliable
Tech and Specs
Display: Touchscreen, OLED, black and white
Call and Text Alerts: Yes
App Notifications: Yes
Heart Rate Monitor: Yes, optical PurePulse sensor
Sleep Tracking: Yes, including SpO2 sensor
GPS: Yes, built-in
Water Resistant: Down to 50m or 164ft, 5 ATM
Battery Life: Up to 7 days (5 hours when using GPS)
Sizes: One size, with S and L bands included
More Guides to Best Buys
Best Health Tracker: Garmin Vivosmart 4
Detailed health and wellbeing insights
The Garmin Vivosmart 4 is a slim, stylish fitness tracker that gives detailed insights into your health and wellbeing. It also lets you control music from your wrist, and has smart notifications to keep you connected.
Fitness tracking features
The Garmin fitness band can monitor and record workout data, heart rate and calories burned. But it stands out for also telling you about your energy, stress and blood oxygen levels, and giving deep insights into sleep quality.
Everyday activities like steps taken, distance travelled and floors climbed are tracked using a 3-axis accelerometer and barometric altimeter.
If you aren’t moving regularly enough to meet your daily goals, the tracker can send vibration alerts to remind you it’s time to get up and move.
Exercise modes are already set up on the band, including walking, running, pool swimming, strength training and yoga. The strength training mode is especially useful for tracking exercises, reps, sets and duration as you work out.
If you forget to start the tracker before the most popular activities and workouts, Garmin’s Move IQ feature will automatically recognise and record them, although we found this doesn’t always work as well as it could.
For especially accurate tracking during outdoor activities, connect the Vivosmart 4 to your phone GPS. The tracker can also pair with ANT+ sensors, such as on heart rate straps.
The Vivosmart 4 is waterproof down to 50m, so is safe for swimming and showering. But you’ll need to count your laps and enter them when dry, as the touchscreen doesn’t work well when wet.
Enhanced health and fitness tracking tools that have trickled down from premium Garmin wearables include an accurate optical heart rate sensor, which also helps monitor your stress levels.
The band has advanced sleep monitoring features, and uses movement sensors and heart rate data, to tell you how much time you spend restless or awake, or in light, deep and REM sleep.
For deeper sleep insights, turn on the pulse oximeter to estimate blood oxygen saturation (Sp02) throughout the night, which could alert you to signs of sleep apnea or atrial fibrillation. You can also check this Sp02 reading during the day, to see how your body is absorbing oxygen.
The pulse oximeter can also give you a VO2 max reading, to give an idea of how much oxygen your body can utilise during intense exercise. This also helps the Vivosmart 4 suggest your ‘fitness age’.
Garmin’s fascinating Body Battery feature pulls together all of this activity, health, heart rate, stress and sleep data, to estimate your energy levels. It then gives a score to suggest whether you’re primed for exercise or better suited to rest, and over time can help you understand when and how often you should workout.
Display and design
The lightweight Garmin Vivosmart 4 has a touchscreen OLED display that adjusts to ambient light levels, so it’s easy to read in bright sunlight or at night.
The tracker uses Bluetooth Smart connectivity to notify you about incoming calls, text messages, emails and social media messages, with on-screen or vibration alerts. Android users can send preset text message responses.
The small display, which is 19mm or 0.74-inches, helpfully lets notifications scroll across the screen.
You can expect to get up to 7 days of battery from each charge, or a bit less if you use the pulse oxygen sensor at night for sleep tracking.
The Garmin Connect app makes it quick and simple to upload activities, see a snapshot of your daily fitness and health data, and dig deeper into your activities and progress.
The durable Garmin Vivosmart 4 comes with the choice between 5 different tracker and band colour combinations.
Pros
+ Advanced health and fitness tracking
+ Detailed sleep insights
+ Music playback control
+ Waterproof swim tracker
+ Long battery life
Cons
– Small touchscreen display
– No built-in GPS
– Black and white display
Tech and Specs
Display: Touchscreen, OLED, black and white
Call and Text Alerts: Yes
App Notifications: Yes
Heart Rate Monitor: Yes, optical heart rate sensor
Sleep Tracking: Yes, including pulse oximeter
GPS: Connects to a phone
Water Resistant: Down to 50m or 164ft, 5 ATM
Battery Life: Up to 7 days
Sizes: One size, with S or L band
Best Budget Buy: Xiaomi Mi Smart Band 5
Essential features at a bargain price
The Xiaomi Mi Smart Band 5 is the best value activity tracker you can buy, with a full colour touchscreen display and smartwatch features like the ability to control music playback.
Fitness tracking features
Made by Xiaomi, a Chinese tech giant, the band has all the fitness features that most people will need. It can count steps, monitor sleep and send reminders if you’ve been idle for too long. This is all possible through 3-axis accelerometer and 3-axis gyroscope motion sensors, and connected GPS.
You can also select from 11 workout modes to accurately track walking, running outdoors, exercising on a treadmill, cycling, swimming in a pool, yoga, skipping and a few other activities. A barometer tracks changes in elevation, like walking up a lot of stairs.
The swim tracking mode is especially useful, as it recognises different swimming styles and records 12 data sets including pace and stroke count. The fitness band is waterproof down to 50m, so can be worn in the pool, shower and bath.
The tracker can connect to the GPS signal on your phone to accurately record the speed, distance and direction of your activities.
The Mi Smart Band 5 can accurately monitor heart rate during exercise, through a PPG heart rate sensor. This monitor also helps provide a PAI score based on the intensity of your weekly activities, which can be a more useful insight than simply counting steps.
The heart and activity sensors also help you keep an eye on the number of calories burned.
The heart rate monitor works well with automatic sleep tracking to assess sleep quality. There is a lot of accurate sleep data to look through, including light, REM and deep sleep analysis, and a ‘sleep score’ compared to other Mi Fit users.
Stress levels and breathing exercises can also be monitored, as can women’s health with menstrual cycle records and reminders.
A very long battery life – up to 20 days when mostly on standby – runs the batteries on our other recommendations dry. A still-impressive battery life of 10-14 days is more likely if you regularly track activities, monitor heart rate and receive notifications.
Display and design
A colour touchscreen AMOLED display is a standout feature of the Mi Smart Band 5. The 28mm, or 1.1-inch, screen is large, bright and clear enough to be seen in all conditions.
The watch face can be customised with your choice from more than 100 styles, and to show live activity and health data like daily steps and current heart rate. Or you can just have it showing the time.
Customisable call and app notifications can appear on the screen or through vibration. Text, What’s App and Facebook messages can be read on the display, to ensure you keep in touch and up to date.
An auto-wake up feature, powered by a capacitive proximity sensor, means you can simply raise your wrist to light up the screen and view data, messages and notifications, without the touch of a button (though that is possible too).
The Mi Fit app, for Android and iOS devices, connects and syncs quickly through Bluetooth 5.0, and makes it easy to access a breakdown of your daily activity. But it does take a few taps to dig for deeper insights, historical data or to set activity goals.
The Mi Smart Band 5 tracker comes with a sporty silicon band that is available in a 6 different colours and styles. You can also buy replacement bands and straps, which might be more secure than the standard band.
Pros
+ Great value
+ Colour touchscreen display
+ Music playback control
+ Waterproof swim tracker
+ Very long battery life
Cons
– No built-in GPS
– Mi Fit app could be more intuitive
– Standard band could be more secure
Tech and Specs
Display: Touchscreen, AMOLED, colour
Call and Text Alerts: Yes
App Notifications: Yes
Heart Rate Monitor: Yes, PPG sensor
Sleep Tracking: Yes
GPS: Connects to a phone
Water Resistant: Down to 50m or 164ft, 5 ATM
Battery Life: Up to 20 days
Sizes: One size, adjustable band
More Guides to Best Buys
Best Tracker for Kids: Fitbit Ace 2
Early steps to healthy habits
The Fitbit Ace 2 makes activity tracking fun for kids and families, while also helping to build healthy habits.
Designed for kids aged 6 and over, this waterproof fitness tracker comes in bright colours, and with the option to earn rewards and add an animated watch face to the touchscreen display.
Fitness tracking features
Active kids will be able to check how many steps they take and how many minutes they hop, skip and move each day, as tracked by a 3-axis accelerometer.
A daily goal of 60 active minutes, as recommended for kids by the World Health Organisation, is already set up in the Ace 2, to encourage kids to move around and be rewarded with fun goal celebrations.
Parents and kids can set up other activity challenges and games, with virtual badges earned for reaching milestones and trophies given for winning friendly competitions.
You can also set up for a nudge to be sent if kids are inactive for too long, though we can’t imagine many children under 12 needing these reminders.
The Ace 2 can send bedtime reminders and track sleep, so parents can see if kids are getting enough rest. Just be wary of youngsters waking up in the middle of the night to check their progress.
Kids who also own a smartphone will love getting call notifications on their wrist – and parents will appreciate how much easier it is to get in touch.
And if you’re like us, you’ll be pleasantly surprised how much kids enjoy and use the most basic features on this fitness tracker – the clock, timer and stopwatch.
Sensibly, the Ace 2 doesn’t count calories or monitor heart rate, as the focus is on encouraging kids to be active rather than risk raising concerns about body image or fitness levels.
Display and design
The touchscreen OLED display on the Fitbit Ace 2 is 23mm, or 0.9 inches, so large enough to show a useful on-screen dashboard that gives kids a snapshot of their daily steps and active minutes.
There is more detailed information and controls in the ever-impressive Fitbit app, which has two modes for Ace 2 users – Parent View and Kid View.
Parent View lets you monitor and motivate your child’s activity and sleep, and approve connections with friends and family. Fitbit ensures the Ace 2 is compliant with all child privacy laws, but parents can also control how data is shared.
Kid View has a playful user-interface but kids under 13 can only see their activity stats and badges, send emojis and messages to connected friends, or tweak display settings like adding a rocket ship animation.
The Ace 2 has the same design as the Fitbit Inspire but comes in 5 bold colours and fun patterns, each with a durable plastic around the tracker and adjustable silicon band. You can easily switch to one of the Inspire bands when kids feel they’re too mature for the Ace 2 styles.
Additional band designs are sold separately, to let kids express themselves and their interests, and help ensure a Fitbit Ace 2 is not just for Christmas.
Pros
+ Activity and step tracking
+ Sleep tracking
+ Waterproof
+ Call alerts
+ Large touchscreen display
+ Good battery life
Cons
– Annoying to switch app modes
– Black and white display
Tech and Specs
Display: Touchscreen, OLED, black and white
Call and Text Alerts: Call alerts only
App Notifications: No
Heart Rate Monitor: No
Sleep Tracking: Yes
GPS: No
Water Resistant: Down to 50m or 164ft, 5 ATM
Battery Life: Up to 5 days
Sizes: One size, adjustable band
First published: 25 February 2020