If you're looking for the best Apple Watch alternatives, this page is your one stop shop. Some find the distinctive Apple Watch design just isn't to their taste, others get frustrated by the short battery life. And still more people find the price of the Apple Watch simply too high to justify.
So if you're among those not interested in buying an Apple Watch – whether that be a premium Apple Watch Ultra or the more affordable Apple Watch SE – we're here for you. There are lots of great options from brands like Fitbit, Samsung, Garmin, Withings and AmazFit. And so we've picked the very best Apple Watch alternatives in our list below and have made sure to list the pros and cons of each listing to help you quickly compare.
All of these smartwatches can be teamed with iPhones as well as Android phones. All of them have advanced and sophisticated smartwatch features. And most of them come in at prices well below the cost of an Apple Watch, so it's a win win. If you're procrastinating between a few different wearables, we also have a handy guide to Apple Watch vs Garmin to help you on your way. For now, let's check out the best Apple Watch alternatives on the market today!
The best Apple Watch alternatives available now
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Shocked by the price of an Apple Watch? The Fitbit Versa 4 is considerably cheaper and yet offers a quite similar experience. Yes, it's mostly targeted at those with an active lifestyle, and doesn't have quite as many high-tech features as the latest Apple Watches. That said, it comes pretty close in most areas.
Like the Apple Watch, it offers an always-on display, Wi-Fi connectivity, built-in GPS and water-resistance. There are lots of great health and fitness features, including swim tracking, sleep tracking, heart rate monitoring and 40 exercise modes. You can play, stream and store music, use Google Assistant and Alexa, and there's a generous range of sensors, including an accelerometer, barometer/altimeter, heart rate monitor, gyroscope, ambient light, pulse oximeter and thermometer.
Where you lose out compared with a modern Apple Watch is the limited storage (4GB), no safety tracking, and lack of ECG. Also, while six months' premium subscription is included, after that you'll have to pay for the most advanced features. On the plus side, battery life of up to six days is more generous, and there's that very affordable price. All in all, then, we reckon this is the best Apple Watch alternative overall.
Looking for an Apple Watch alternative under $100 / £100? Then check out the Amazfit GTS 2 Mini. Despite its low price, it boasts a beautiful, always-on, 1.55-inch AMOLED touchscreen display with 450 nits of brightness. And thanks to the four-curved corners of the 2.5D glass cover, the product has no obvious border on the front, resulting in a cool, bezel-less look.
There are a ton of great features too, including heart rate monitoring, blood-oxygen saturation measurement, sleep monitoring, stress level and menstruation tracking. You can use Alexa for voice control, there are 68+ sports modes and a pomodoro tracker for productivity, and the 220 mAh battery lasts 14 days on a single charge.
Don't get us wrong: the smart features are quite limited here: for instance, there's no music player or payment functionality, and little in the way of apps. But for a low price, it still does an awful lot.
While Fitbit is known for fitness (the clue's in the name, after all), the Fitbit Sense is more focused on health than exercise. Here you'll find ECG, stress sensing and a skin temperature sensor, along with sleep tracking, heart rate zones, skin temperature measurements, and meditation tools for better mental health.
Fitness isn't forgotten, though. This watch can track and record 20 different exercises and provides a great range of workout stats to pore over afterwards. (Note that you need to take out a premium subscription to use many of these features, though.) Beyond that, the battery can last up to six days, there's onboard GPS, and you can use voice control via Alexa or Google Assistant.
Another great fitness tracker that's a decent Apple Watch alternative is the Garmin Venu 2. It's more expensive than the Fitbit Versa 3, number one on our list. But it does has the edge on it when it comes to battery life of 11 days, and the on-board GPS is more accurate.
If you're into running, you'll love the Garmin Coach app, which helps you train for a 5K, 10K or half marathon race with expert coaching and a dynamic training plan that shifts based on your goals and performance. And there are excellent features for gymgoers too, including muscle map graphics that helps you plan workouts and support for weights, spinning, HIIT, treadmill running and resistance machines.
The Garmin Venu 2 also benefits from an crisp AMOLED screen and well-designed interface that means you can do a lot of stuff without having to connect to your smartphone. That said, if you're not into formal exercise or sport, then you may find of all this overkill for the elevated price.
If you're not interested in fitness and just want a generic smartwatch, Samsung Galaxy Watches have a lot of appeal. However, the brand's latest model, the Samsung Galaxy 4, is not compatible with iOS. So if you want one that will work with your iPhone, your best option will be the slightly older Samsung Galaxy Watch 3.
Headline features include IP68 water resistance, fall detection, wireless charging, an ECG, and blood pressure monitor. The Samsung Galaxy Watch 3 also boasts accelerometer, gyroscope, barometer and an ambient light sensor. And although the first two watches on our list offer more sophisticated tracking, the Samsung Galaxy Watch 3 nevertheless provides a good range of health and fitness features. On the downside, battery life of just two to three days isn't so great.
In general, then, if your priority is fitness, we'd go for one of the first two models on our list, while the Samsung Galaxy Watch 3 is a better bet for couch potatoes looking for other advanced smartwatch features.
The Samsung Galaxy Watch Active 2 is pretty similar to the Samsung Galaxy Watch 3, which we list above, but cheaper, slimmer, lighter and better suited for workouts. It comes in two sizes, 40mm and 44mm, and you can choose between a Bluetooth/Wi-Fi version and a pricier one with cellular connectivity.
On the downside, battery life is limited, at just 24-60 hours depending on what you use it for and overall the Watch 3 has more advanced features, such as blood pressure monitoring. If you're on a tight budget though, the lower price may make those compromises worthwhile, and overall this is still a really nice Apple Watch alternative.
The TicWatch Pro 3's headline feature is a 577mAh battery that promises to last up to 45 days in Essential Mode. It also boasts a Snapdragon Wear 4100 processor, which makes everything run very fast and smoothly. Its 1.4-inch retina AMOLED + FSTN screen offers impressive 454 x 454 resolution. And overall, it offers sophisticated features like a heart rate monitor and blood oxygen SpO2 sensors at a lower price than, say, an Apple Watch 6 or a Samsung Galaxy Watch 3.
You can use it to track your heart rate, stress, steps, sleep and progress in 10+ workouts. It's IP68 water resistant, and suitable for pool swimming. On the downside, there's no wireless charging, and the GPS isn't particularly accurate.
Want an Apple Watch alternative that looks like a traditional watch? Then you want a hybrid watch, and our top recommendation is the Withings ScanWatch Horizon. It has all the old-school looks, but turn it over and you can benefit from the functionality of a smartwatch.
In terms of health, that means advanced features such as an ECG, SpO2 monitoring, heart monitoring and scans, breathing disturbance detection, and sleep tracking. Fitness features are strong, too, with support for cycling, running, and walking, although there's no onboard GPS, so you'll have to team it with your phone for that. On the plus side, battery life is up to 30 days on a single charge.
Overall, it's not as sophisticated as an Apple Watch, and its tiny display on the back is a very different proposition to the large and detailed screen of the former. But for a halfway house between classic watch looks and smartwatch capabilities, you won't find finer.
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