What makes a smartwatch great

The best smartwatch displays time, elevates your outfit, and tracks workouts and heart rate. It serves as a notification hub and voice assistant access point, letting you leave your phone in your pocket.

Prices have climbed

Smartwatches have gotten pricier, driven by rising component costs and supply chain pressures. The Apple Watch Series 12 costs three hundred ninety-nine dollars and Google's Pixel Watch 5 costs four hundred dollars.

Best for iPhone users

The Apple Watch Series 12 is the best everyday smartwatch for most iPhone users. Its new Health Sensing System and faster S11 chip increase the breadth, accuracy, and frequency of health metrics.

Series 12 heart rate tracking

The Series 12 can now track heart rate as often as every five seconds and heart rate variability every five minutes or so. With its new Readiness score, it makes a stronger case as a fitness tracker.

Series 12 battery and software

Fast charging gets a boost, with fifteen minutes offering up to twelve hours of battery life. The streamlined watchOS 27 makes everyday navigation easier, though battery life is still rated at just twenty-four hours.

Best for Android users

The Google Pixel Watch 5 is Google's best smartwatch, with a sleek domed design, slick performance, and repairable build. The screen gets bright, health and fitness features are impeccably accurate, and it supports satellite messaging.

Pixel Watch 5 GPS and charging

The dual-band GPS is more accurate than ever and now accounts for atmospheric interference and multipath errors. Fast charging delivers fifteen hours in just fifteen minutes. Gemini can now tackle offline tasks, such as starting a workout.

Best for Samsung users

The Samsung Galaxy Watch9 is a modest upgrade over its predecessor with no price increase. Samsung's health and fitness tracking features are spot-on, with reliable heart rate measurements, solid sleep tracking, and dual-frequency GPS.

Galaxy Watch9 battery and features

Battery life averages about twenty-five hours with the always-on display enabled, and a full recharge takes about one hundred minutes. Raise-to-talk Gemini is a welcome addition, and automatic workout detection is among the best.

Best budget option

The Nothing CMF Watch 3 Pro costs seventy-nine dollars and is both fun to use and budget-friendly. It has wrist-based gesture controls, onboard mics for voice calling, a voice assistant, and a flashlight.

CMF Watch 3 Pro battery and accuracy

The CMF Watch 3 Pro weighs around fifty-one grams, is IP68-rated for water and dust resistance, and you only have to recharge every ten to thirteen days. Its optical heart rate sensor delivered readings that closely matched those from an Oura Ring 4.

Best for outdoor adventures

The Apple Watch Ultra 4 costs seven hundred ninety-nine dollars and gets the same new Health Sensing System as the Series 12. The main advantage is multi-day battery life, satellite messaging, and greater water resistance.

Ultra 4 emergency and water features

The Ultra 4 lets you text emergency services when off the grid with no cellular or Wi-Fi coverage. It features a built-in siren that emits an eighty-six-decibel sound pattern and is rated for depths up to forty meters when scuba diving.

“86-decibel sound pattern”

Ultra 4 battery boost

Apple has boosted the Ultra 4 battery life to up to fifty hours of normal use, compared with forty-two hours for the Ultra 3. Low Power Mode extends that to eighty-four hours, up from seventy-two hours.

Best fitness smartwatch

The Garmin Vivoactive 6 costs three hundred dollars and offers a bevy of proprietary Garmin metrics, from Body Battery to Training Readiness scores. It has built-in GPS, heart rate monitor, blood oxygen measurements, and eighty activity profiles.

Vivoactive 6 battery and payments

The watch lasts around a week on a single charge and includes Garmin Pay for contactless payments. You can pair it with iOS or Android to see notifications, but only Android users can respond to texts with the onscreen keyboard.

Best smartwatch for kids

The Fitbit Ace LTE costs one hundred eighty dollars and is recommended for children ages seven and up. Google promises not to store children's health data for research and will delete location history after twenty-four hours.

Ace LTE features and subscription

Kids can make phone calls and texts through the watch to the Fitbit Ace app and share their location via Google Maps. Parental controls let you set limits like School Time. The watch requires a Fitbit Ace subscription at ten dollars per month.