The Best Fitness Trackers For Recording Your Exercise, Heart Rate and Sleep
Click here to read the full article.
Technology can often seem like it’s distracting you from being more active, but fitness trackers are a big exception to that rule. Worn around the wrist, these gadgets can monitor your activity throughout the day, and log all of that data into an app, so you can view it on your phone. By seeing your fitness trends over time, you can begin to make changes to your routine that may improve your health over time.
Modern fitness trackers are slim and sleek, so you won’t have to feel self conscious about wearing them all the time, and transfer data to your phone wirelessly, so you don’t have to think about syncing it at the end of every night.
More from Rolling Stone
Getting a fitness tracker does not guarantee that you’ll see improvements in your health. Your diet and the intensity and frequency of your exercises will play a huge role in the results you see. A waterproof fitness tracker can give you the information you need to succeed, but how you use it is entirely up to you.
What Are the Best Fitness Trackers?
There are many factors to consider when choosing the best fitness tracker for you; below are the most important ones, which we considered while we were researching this list.
There are many factors to think about when choosing the right waterproof fitness tracker for you; below are the most important ones, which we considered while we were researching this list.
Durability: Your fitness tracker is going to be exposed to everything from sweat and rain, to sand and dirt, which is why durability is the most important feature to consider. An electronic’s resistance to dust and water is typically measured on the IP (Ingress Protection) scale, but some fitness trackers use the ATM (atmosphere) measurement instead. All of our fitness tracker recommendations are designed to handle water.
Health Features: The point of wearing a fitness tracker is to monitor activities that impact your health, so we made sure that all our picks cover some basic health features. All of them can track your calories burned, distance traveled, heart rate and sleep.
Battery Life: You never want to go for a long run only to find your fitness tracker died and didn’t record your progress. The fitness trackers we’ve selected can go at least one day without charging, but some last over a week. The way you use your fitness tracker (cranking up its screen brightness, recording long runs frequently, etc.) will have a big impact on how long it lasts per charge.
Smart Features: While fitness trackers have traditionally been used for one purpose — monitoring your health — the ones in our guide have smart features, too. Whether it’s displaying your text messages, or the ability to use a smart assistant to help guide workouts, these features are meant to complement its primary function.
1. Wyze Band Activity Tracker
Wyze has made waves in the tech industry with its innovative, compact home security cameras, and its fitness tracker the Wyze Band continues that trend.
The Wyze Band has a 5ATM durability rating, which means it can be worn during showers, shallow-water swimming, and snorkeling, but not for deep water exercises like diving. It has sensors that can track your calories burned, heart rate, and sleep, plus a dedicated running mode that displays your distance traveled, pace, and total run time. The Wyze Band can also detect when you’re sitting down for an extended period of time and encourage you to become more active. You can access all of this fitness information on your phone via the Wyze Band app (iOS and Android).
Wyze says this fitness tracker can last up to 10 days on a single charge with “normal use.” If you’re very active, you’ll have to plug it in more frequently. The Wyze Band fitness tracker has a .95 inch touch screen, which can display your phone’s notifications, from text messages, to incoming calls, to social media updates. It supports notifications from all apps, but you can choose to silence some, which may make it easier to concentrate when you work out.
This is the only fitness tracker we recommend that has Amazon’s Alexa built into it. this allows you to use the watch to get answers to questions (will it rain today, for example) and control smart home accessories. This feature allows the Wyze Band to bridge the gap between fitness tracker and smart watch. If you want a more fitness-focused smart watch substitute, the Wyze Band is your best choice.
2. Fitbit Inspire HR
Fitbit is responsible for inventing the modern fitness tracker, and its Inspire HR is a great choice for most people.
Fitbit says the Inspire HR is water resistant up to 50 feet, but doesn’t recommend wearing it in hot environments like hot tubs and saunas. From a durability standpoint this means the Inspire HR is a good fit for undersea activities in addition to being durable enough to survive exposure to sweat or a sudden rainstorm.
The Inspire HR can track your calories burned, distance traveled, heart rate, and sleep. Its sensors track your heart data once per second when you’re active, and five seconds if you’re not. This fitness tracker can automatically detect when you’re walking, swimming, biking, and more, so you don’t need to manually start a workout before you get going. All of this data is stored in Fitbit’s app (iOS and Android), so you can review your progress and look for trends.
Fitbit’s app is really sophisticated, and allows you to challenge fellow Fitbit owners (they don’t need to have the Inspire HR specifically) to friendly competitions. By getting your friends involved, it may encourage you to try being more active. Fitbit says the Inspire HR can get up to five days of battery life based on your usage.
You can receive notifications like text messages, social media updates, and phone calls on the Fitbit Inspire HR, but don’t have the option to customize them. If you don’t want to be disturbed while you work out, you’ll need to turn notifications off completely.
If you want a fitness band that allows you to get friends and family involved in a little healthy competition, Fitbit’s Inspire HR is the right pick.
3. Garmin Vivosmart 4
Garmin’s Vivosmart 4 is a highly sophisticated fitness tracker that can give you a lot of granular information about your health.
The company says the Vivosmart 4 is water resistant enough to survive exposure to water up to 150 feet deep, so it can be used for everything from swimming to snorkeling. Garmin says the Vivosmart 4 can last up to a week per charge if you don’t use some of its more advanced health monitoring features. The Vivosmart 4 can track calories burned, floors climbed, heart rate, and sleep, but its sensors are mo
re sophisticated than those in the other fitness bands we recommend in this guide.
For example, this fitness tracker can detect whether you’re in light, deep, or REM sleep, and track whether or not you’ve been restless and moved around. It has a sensor that can estimate your blood oxygen level to determine how well your body is absorbing oxygen. It has different modes that can track how many calories you’re burning based on the activity you’re doing, and will automatically detect when you’ve started working out. It’s even smart enough to know whether you’re using machine like an elliptical. All of this data is accessible via Garmin’s app (iOS and Android), and can be shared with other Vivosmart users through the Garmin Connect network.
By collecting information about your exercise habits, sleep, and blood oxygen level, the Vivosmart 4 can estimate how much energy you have, and suggest rest days so you don’t overextend yourself. By measuring the interval between heartbeats, this fitness tracker can calculate your stress level, and send you a notification suggesting you take time to relax. These advanced features can help give you a better sense of your overall physical health, while allowing you to optimize and tweak your current exercise regimen.
The Vivosmart 4 can display notifications from your phone on its screen, but doesn’t give you a lot of control over them. Some Android users can respond to text messages via preset responses through this fitness tracker, but the feature isn’t available on any iOS devices.
If you’re determined to taking a data-driven approach to forming healthier habits and getting in better shape, Garmin’s Vivosmart 4 is the right fitness tracker for you.
See where your favorite artists and songs rank on the Rolling Stone Charts.
Sign up for Rolling Stone’s Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.