
Fitbits are some of the best Android smartwatches and fitness wearables you can buy, keeping you on top of your fitness goals and tracking your health affordably. Let's not forget the battery life: These things can last for days without needing a charge, unlike an Apple Watch that needs to be recharged practically daily. Our favorite of the lineup is the Fitbit Charge 6 thanks to its slim and sleek design packing loads of features. But Fitbits come in all sorts of styles and sizes, so you can find one that best fits your vibe.
TL;DR – These Are the Best Fitbits:
Similarly to other smartwatches and fitness trackers, Fitbits count steps, monitor your heart rate, track your sleep patterns, and a whole lot more. On top of that, they’re incredibly user-friendly and sync up with your phone. Some even make great Apple Watch alternatives.
It’s important to note that Google owns Fitbit and has made several changes to the fitness tracker brand, including requiring a Google account and cutting social features like Challenges, Adventures, and Open Group a few years ago. It's also been removing the music functionality and some third-party apps, pushing people after smartwatch features to the Goole Pixel Watch.
Still, Fitbits make excellent tools for those on a health and fitness journey. Take a look at our top picks below:
1. Fitbit Charge 6
Best Fitbit Fitness Band
The Fitbit Charge 6 is like your personal health guru strapped to your wrist. It's packed with features that make living a healthier life a breeze. This bad boy doesn't just count steps. With over 40 exercise modes, it's got your back whether you're hitting the gym or doing a yoga session at home. The built-in GPS means you can track your routes without lugging your phone around. Plus, it keeps tabs on your heart rate 24/7, and with the Active Zone Minutes and Cardio Fitness Level, you get a comprehensive view of your workout intensity and overall fitness.
Think of the Charge 6 like your health wingman. It has seriously accurate heart rate monitoring, ECG capabilities, and alerts for irregular heart rhythms. With SpO2 monitoring and notifications for high/low heart rates, it keeps a close eye on your overall heart health. And the stress management and nightly sleep scores? They're like your personal wellness coaches, helping you understand and manage your stress levels and sleep quality.
To top it off, you get a six-month Premium membership thrown in, giving you access to deeper insights, exclusive workouts, mindfulness sessions, and more. Plus, it's compatible with both iOS and Android, so it's a buddy for everyone!
2. Fitbit Versa 4
Best Fitbit Smartwatch
Rocking more smarts and a bigger AMOLED touch display than the Charge 6, the Fitbit Versa 4 is the smartwatch-meets-fitness tracker you've been looking for. Its easy-to-use interface makes finding the details of your exercises, responding to phone notifications, and more a breeze. With a battery life hovering around six days, it also outdoes many other smartwatches—we’re looking at you Apple Watch. Though, advanced tracking and the screen’s always-on mode drop that number.
The Versa 4 offers a combination of sensors, including a heart rate (which isn’t as accurate as we’d like), blood oxygen saturation, and even GPS, allowing you to track over 40 different exercises. It can even guide you through various workouts and keep tabs on your fitness goals. If you’re curious about your sleeping habits, the device’s sleep tracking is also impressive, telling you the different stages of your sleep along with providing a detailed overview every month.
3. Fitbit Sense 2
Best Health Monitoring Fitbit
If you like everything the Fitbit Versa 4 offers, the Fitbit Sense 2 takes all that and adds a dash of extra health monitoring. This smartwatch not only automatically recognizes various fitness activities, monitors your heart rate, and tracks your blood oxygen saturation levels but also accurately measures skin temperature variation and detects atrial fibrillation. There's even a GPS and altimeter built-in to keep track of distance, pace, and altitude whether you're hiking, biking, or running.
Your mental health is just as crucial as your physical well-being, so this Fitbit includes a sensor to track your stress levels throughout the day using continuous electrodermal activity (cEDA) responses. It then prompts you to reflect on your feelings during those stressful times and suggests ways to decompress, ensuring you’re in better shape inside and out. Beyond that, you get a decent six-day battery life with light use and your typical smartwatch features, though there’s no music functionality or third-party app support.
4. Fitbit Inspire 3
Best Budget Fitbit
Fitness tracking doesn’t need to be expensive, especially if you’re just looking for the basics. Look at Fitbit Inspire 3: It's the best budget fitness tracker you can buy, costing under $100, and you really aren’t missing out on too many features. You can scroll through fitness data and view pings from your connected smartphone’s supported apps on a bright AMOLED touch display with two haptic buttons for easy navigation. Its battery life is also the best you can find on a Fitbit, lasting an impressive 10 days — though that’s less when taking advantage of the always-on display mode.
As for fitness, the Fitbit Inspire 3 counts your steps, measures sleep quality, and automatically detects various exercises to track and catalog them for you. There’s no GPS on this model, but the device still measures your heart rate and blood oxygen saturation. Its water-resistant design can go down to 50m, so the only time you’ll ever need to take it off is to recharge.
5. Google Pixel Watch 3
Best Premium Fitbit
The Google Pixel Watch 3 is technically not a Fitbit, but it offers Fitbit health and tracking features alongside wearOS smarts, making for a brilliant premium option. With a range of sensors, including blood oxygen, optical heart rate, and ambient light, the watch delivers helpful metrics. In turn, it uses that data, along with AI, to build custom workouts.
It’s especially great for runners, building plans, tracking form, and offering real-time guidance. A daily readiness score can even be created using sleep tracking and activities from the previous day, letting you know the best way to tackle the day ahead. Just note that some of these features require a Fitbit Premium subscription.
Using Fitbit features is simple since the Fitbit app is preloaded onto the Google Pixel Watch 3, but this smartwatch is capable of a whole lot more. Google’s wearOS and a Qualcomm processor are zippy and lag-free. Shuffling through and opening the endless apps is painless, while doing things like answering calls, responding to texts, and using Google Pay is seamless. When connected to a Pixel phone, the watch’s abilities are amplified. With all of those features crammed into a wearable, it'll net you only about 24 hours of use from a single charge.
The latest model of the Pixel Watch has a slight redesign from previous models. Most notably, it now comes in a larger 45mm size option. Even when opting for the smaller 41mm watch, the screen feels bigger due to its thinner bezels. Brightness is also doubled with this model for easy viewing in just about any environment. Other than these changes, the Watch 3 comes with a familiar rounded body and digital crown that works wonderfully in conjunction with the touchscreen.
6. Fitbit Ace 3
Best Fitbit for Kids
A fitness tracker for kids may seem extra, but these devices can challenge and excite them to get up and moving. One of the few kid-friendly options out there is the Fitbit Ace LTE. Designed for ages 7 to 11, this compact smartwatch is full of games and activities to get kids away from their screens and focused on reaching movement and step goals. To appease parents, it includes GPS location tracking, LTE for calls and texts, and activity tracking for a constant link to your child.
For parents who are hesitant to get a phone for their kid but still want a way to keep in contact when they’re outside, on a playdate, or at school, the Fitbit Ace LTE is a great solution. Its cellular support makes it possible to call or text straight from the watch, while the GPS powered by Google Maps will quickly and accurately pinpoint the watch’s location. It also comes with tons of safety features and parental controls, like trusted contacts, school time hours, and full access to what kids are doing on the watch, making things far more restricted than typical smartwatches.
The downside with this is that access to the LTE network and many games require a $9.99 monthly subscription, though it is cheaper than most cell plans. The watch is sturdy and durable, while the display is colorful, vibrant, and easy to interact with. Unlike this smartwatch's biggest competition, the Verizon Gizmo Watch 3, a selfie camera isn’t available.
7. Fitbit Luxe
Best Stylish Fitbit
The Fitbit Luxe takes Fitbit’s tracking tech, and packs it into a classy little number that flies under the radar. The silicone band comes in several subtle colors, including orchid, black, and white, or you can go for the soft gold link band from jewelry designer Gorjana. There’s also a choice of stainless steel frames in soft gold, black, or platinum that blend smoothly with the rounded glass AMOLED display of the tracker. You can even customize your watch face using an app, making it uniquely yours.
The small footprint of the Fitbit Luxe keeps it subtle on your wrist but still delivers capable tracking that can keep up with you throughout the week, thanks to the five-day battery life. In total, it tracks 20 different exercises, and you won’t need to take it off when you shower after with water resistance down to 50m. It’ll monitor your heart rate nonstop and let you know your sleeping habits, though you don’t get GPS on this model.
8. Apple Watch Series 10
Best Fitbit Alternative
Fitbit has cornered the market on fitness trackers, but Apple runs the smartwatch game, and it continues to shine with the Apple Watch Series 10. It’s the best Apple Watch model you can buy for a reason. Apple’s latest wearable sees the biggest design changes in years, as it’s now rocking a bigger OLED display while remaining thinner and lighter than previous generations. Anyone will appreciate the better readability and lower profile for added comfort.
Under the hood, the Series 10 offers a S10 SiP chip, essentially the same processor on the Apple Watch 9. While that means there isn’t a major performance boost with the new model, it’s still full of machine learning and ready to power the extensive sensors and tracking that go head-to-head with the best Fitbits – and often surpass them. From an ECG and skin temperature to crash detection and GPS, this watch does it all — except for blood oxygen saturation in the U.S. due to an ongoing patent dispute. Divers and swimmers will love the new water temperature sensor and depth gauge, while an FDA-approved sleep apnea detection tool could help doctors in a diagnosis.
Beyond health and fitness tracking, the Apple Watch Series 10 is ready to take advantage of the extensive apps available with watchOS. For those looking to make calls, the upgraded voice isolation helps to eliminate a decent amount of background noise, and audio playback sounds better than ever. When responding to texts and notifications, or even just navigating, the larger display will make a surprisingly big and welcome difference in your experience. If you’re looking to unlock even more capability out of the device, there is the option for cellular connectivity.
Battery life remains unchanged with the Apple Watch Series 10, lasting far shorter than all the Fitbits. Eighteen hours of juice is the average with typical usage, while a power-saving mode doubles that time to 36 hours. The one positive is charging times have gotten a boost. With a 30W USB-C charger, the watch will be 80% charged in about 30 minutes.
What to Look for in the Best Fitbits
Most Fitbits share the same set of core features: tracking steps, exercise, and activity level, as well as provide at least a rudimentary sort of sleep tracking, and approximate a calorie count as well. From that basic set, though, trackers can vary quite a bit, with simpler models clocking in under $100 and advanced smartwatch models costing $200 or more.
These days, virtually all fitness bands can conveniently detect when you’re starting common kinds of exercise, but not all trackers are equipped to measure every kind of exercise. If you’re a swimmer or want to track stairs, your options will narrow significantly. And if you want to leave your phone at home when you go for a jog, look for models with integrated GPS (and perhaps even the ability to store or stream music).
The key takeaway is that you don’t need a tracker bristling with sensors that can do everything – it depends upon what you want to track. If you never swim, you obviously don’t need swim tracking. If you’re mainly trying to get your 10,000 steps in and don’t do intense workouts, you probably don’t need a heart rate monitor.
Since most fitness trackers go on your wrist, some try to replicate some smartwatch functionality. Many bands can display phone call and text notifications, for example, but the best smartwatch experience comes from a fitness tracker that’s actually shaped like a watch, with a large screen, support for apps, and perhaps even the option to show on-screen workout while you exercise.
Finally, keep an eye on battery life. While most Fitbits run for at least a few days on a charge, some can go over a week. And that’s not necessarily true of non-Fitbit trackers. The Apple Watch, for example, needs to be charged daily.
While the Fitbit device itself is a big part of the equation, don't forget that Fitbit also has a large community of active users. Getting a Fitbit will let you join the community, sharing exercise tips, troubleshooting issues with devices, and plenty more. Although, as we mentioned, Google has cut some of those features. There's also Fitbit Premum, which can offer guided workouts to help you reach your fitness goals.
Fitbit FAQ
What are the disadvantages of a Fitbit?
Although Fitbits are great tools to track your fitness activity and help motivate you to reach your fitness goals, everything isn’t perfect. Its sensors and tracking aren’t always 100% accurate, so you must view the information provided with some skepticism. Also, most Fitbits cannot connect to cellular networks, so to use certain apps and features, you’ll need to be connected over Wi-Fi or paired via Bluetooth with your smartphone. Plus, accessing some advanced health data and tracking requires a subscription, adding an additional expense to make the most of your Fitbit.
Does your Fitbit require a subscription?
Fitbits don’t require a subscription to use most features, but a Premium Membership Plan for $9.99/month unlocks more detailed health data and fitness classes. With this subscription, you’ll get a daily readiness score to know when to exercise, recipes, a sleep profile, mindfulness sessions, audio/video workouts, and more. But if you’re just looking to get all the traditional tracking and fitness basics, there’s no need for a Premium Membership.
What are some upcoming Fitbits?
The Google-owned Fitbit has been slow to release new models of these budget-friendly fitness trackers. Instead, Google is focusing more attention on its Google Watch lineup, most recently announcing the Galaxy Watch 8 Series models.
Dave Johnson has been writing about gaming and tech since the days of the Palm Pilot. See him shout into the Twitter void @davejoh.
Danielle Abraham is a freelance writer and unpaid music historian.