Best Fitness Bands Buying Guide

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Fitness bands have blown up in popularity in the last 10 years, owing to greater awareness about health and fitness and the gamification brought about by wearables. Compared to full-featured smartwatches or minimalist smart rings, the best fitness bands offer a sweet middle ground for those who need a good balance between features and accuracy.

Good to know: looking for a full fitness experience? Check out our list of the best smartwatches.

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Garmin Vivosmart 5

Best for Sleep Tracking
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Fitness bands share a lot of similarities in terms of basic activity tracking, health monitoring, and touchscreens. But there’s still plenty to set them apart. From the physical design choices and additional features, to differences in battery life and compatibility with other devices, choosing a fitness band comes down to choosing what works best with your lifestyle and preferences.

Design and Comfort

While they may look similar at first glance, fitness bands can differ a lot in size, weight, and display. The subtle differences in form factor will affect how comfortable the band is to wear every day.

FYI: need the most comfortable Apple Watch experience? These are the best breathable Apple Watch bands.

Battery Life

Battery life is one of the biggest factors when choosing a fitness band that you’ll use every day. You should ideally look for the longest battery life in your budget, along with bonuses, like fast charging.

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Features and Accuracy

Besides the hygiene features, like step tracking, sleep tracking, heart rate monitoring, and smartphone notifications, you may want to prioritize water resistance, stress monitoring, menstrual tracking, or multi-device compatibility. Accuracy of all the fitness features is just as important as how many of them are crammed into your fitness band.

Platform Compatibility

You’ll want to ensure the fitness band you’re buying works flawlessly with your smartphone OS, whether it’s Android or iOS. Ideally, you should pick a platform-agnostic band unless you’re getting some benefits on a particular smartphone ecosystem.

FYI: check out the best Android smartwatches if a fitness band doesn’t cut it for you.

While the concept of fitness trackers dates back to the rudimentary pedometers of the late 90s and early 2000s, modern fitness bands truly emerged in the early 2010s, with pioneers like Fitbit and Nike leading the way.

By the mid-2010s, features like heart rate monitors, GPS tracking, and sleep tracking were commonplace in almost every fitness band. Compared to full-fledged smartwatches, fitness bands prioritized a compact form factor and a sharper focus on health and fitness features.

Today’s fitness bands are highly sophisticated wearables, with features like activity and sleep tracking, heart rate monitoring, AMOLED touchscreens, built-in GPS, and seamless smartphone integration. Tracking your fitness across longer periods has also become awfully simple, thanks to helpful insights and recommendations.

Good to know: which is the better fitness tracker smartwatch: Fitbit or Apple Watch?

Best Overall Pick: Fitbit Charge 6

Fitbit has been doing this since before many of us even knew what a smart band was. And the Fitbit Charge 6 is one of the most feature-packed offerings from the company. Striking the perfect balance between looks, functionality, and affordability, the Charge 6 allows you to monitor your heart and skin temperature, take ECGs, and track your sleep and other activities.

The software side of things is taken care of by Google, the new parent company of Fitibit. Google Maps, Google Wallet, and YouTube Music are now seamlessly integrated with the Charge 6. Being an advanced fitness tracker, water resistance and on-board GPS are a given.

The physical side button makes the Charge 6 satisfying to navigate, and the slim, comfortable design coupled with the AMOLED touchscreen makes it look more premium than it costs.

Pros

Premium-looking design and software experience
Packed with features
Highly accurate tracking
Comfortable to wear
Can send heart rate info to gym equipment
Physical side button

Cons

Average battery life
Some metrics locked behind premium subscription
No app store

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Tip: finicky battery on your Fitbit? Check out how to fix your Fitbit if it’s not charging.

Best Overall Value: Xiaomi Smart Band 8

Xiaomi has been producing affordable fitness bands for quite a while now, and its latest Smart Band 8 is one of the most value-for-money fitness trackers. It’s sleek and comfortable, offers almost every feature you’ll need (including detailed sleep tracking and SpO2 monitoring), and comes with a stunning 1.62-inch AMOLED display.

Battery life is one of its other standout advantages, as a 1.5-hour charge gives you around 15 days of use. It’s ideal for sports enthusiasts, as you get water resistance, and over 150 exercises are supported out of the box. The cool “pebble” mode allows you to attach it to your shoe with an included accessory so that you can track your pace and cadence on both the tracker and the companion app.

The best thing is that there’s no paywall here. All the detailed fitness and health insights are available without any subscription.

Pros

Offers much more than some pricier trackers
Comfortable and easy to use
Large, 1.62″ AMOLED screen
Unique pebble mode for pace and cadence tracking
No subscription for detailed insights

Cons

No built-in GPS; you’ll need your phone
No NFC for contactless payments

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Good to know: need some fitness inspiration? Check out the best mobile apps to help you stay healthy.

Best for Women: Amazfit Band 7

The Amazfit Band 7 is another affordable fitness band from the seasoned company. Besides the usual litany of monitoring features and sports modes, the Band 7 also helps you track your stress level and monitor your menstrual cycle. The large HD AMOLED display can display your heart rate, SpO2, and stress level all at once with a single tap.

It supports 120 sports modes, so all of your workouts are covered. Battery life is excellent, as it can last for up to 18 days on a single charge. The lightweight OS is snappy and easy to use, plus it has Alexa support for voice commands. You also get 5ATM water resistance and decent sleep information. The sleek design, especially in the white variant, coupled with the menstrual tracking feature makes it a great option for women.

Pros

Great design with multiple color options
Decent features with menstrual cycle monitoring support
Excellent battery life
Large, 1.47″ AMOLED display
Alexa support
Lightweight OS is easy to use

Cons

No built-in GPS
No NFC

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Best for Android: Samsung Galaxy Fit3

Samsung launched the first-ever Galaxy Fit in 2019, and the new and upgraded Galaxy Fit3 is one of the best smart bands if you have an Android, or better yet, a Samsung smartphone. The Fit3 is Samsung’s affordable alternative to its Galaxy Watch series, but it still offers almost everything you’ll need in a fitness tracker. Due to the integration with apps like Samsung Wearable and Samsung Health, the Fit3 enjoys a superior ecosystem, compared to the options from some smaller brands.

The Fit3 has a huge, rectangular-shaped AMOLED display that makes it look slightly bigger than other smart bands. But that doesn’t affect the comfort. The operating system here is not Wear OS but FreeRTOS, which is Samsung’s lightweight software that runs smoothly yet enables a long battery life.

Pros

Samsung’s health and fitness apps
Long 14-day battery life
Comfortable to wear
Stylish design with multiple color options
Large 1.7″ AMOLED display
Smooth UI

Cons

Doesn’t connect to iPhones
No GPS

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Good to know: struggling to work out? Gamifying your workouts can reboot your fitness routine.

Best for Sleep Tracking: Garmin Vivosmart 5

If your focus is solely on accurate sleep tracking, the Garmin Vivosmart 5 is one of the best options for you. While it doesn’t have a fancy display or extensive list of features like some other fitness bands, that can be a huge plus. The small, monochrome display keeps you free from distractions as you monitor your health and sleep quality. The band also suggests how to improve both the quality and quantity of your sleep.

The excellent Garmin Connect app is one of the highlights of the Vivosmart 5. There are no additional costs to download courses for rides and runs. You get adaptive training plans, can track your fitness over a sustained period, and compete with fellow Garmin users. There’s even Garmin Golf, that allows you to post scores and chat with other golfers.

Pros

Detailed sleep tracking and suggestions
Decent fitness-related features
Small, distraction-free display can be a plus
No paywalls
Fantastic Garmin Connect app with lots to do

Cons

No color display
No GPS

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Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between a smart band and a smartwatch?

Functionally, smartwatches solve the same problem as smart bands, i.e., tracking fitness and health, staying connected, and controlling your smartphone. But they’re typically more advanced and offer additional features, like onboard music storage, built-in GPS and LTE connectivity, contactless payments, larger displays, and a bigger focus on being a fashion accessory rather than simply a fitness tracker. Check out the best deals on smartphones and fitness trackers this week.

Is a fitness band accurate?

Fitness bands are generally accurate at movement activities, such as walking, running, swimming, etc. But the accuracy dips with more advanced measurements, such as heart rate, blood oxygen, ECG, and more. In such cases, either high-end smart bands or smartwatches are more reliable.

How does a fitness band track sleep?

Fitness bands and smartwatches use a combination of sensors to measure sleep quality, such as accelerometers, gyroscopes, and heart rate sensors. By sensing your movements (or lack thereof) during the night, they can make an estimate of your sleep quality and provide a sleep score. This technique is called actigraphy and is believed to be prone to a high margin of error.

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Tanveer Singh

After a 7-year corporate stint, Tanveer found his love for writing and tech too much to resist. An MBA in Marketing and the owner of a PC building business, he writes on PC hardware, technology, video games, and Windows. When not scouring the web for ideas, he can be found building PCs, watching anime, or playing Smash Karts on his RTX 3080 (sigh).