Useful features of a smartwatch
So, you have decided to get a smartwatch, good! Here you will find some options to consider.
In Hobby Athlete, we love sport and therefore the smartwatches in our lists were chosen based on the important functions and features related to health and sports. Price was as well a factor because I don’t personally believe that you need to spend a lot of money in order to get a good watch. Like in many areas, there are good products and bad products, cheap and expensive. You make your choice based on your needs, preferences and budget. But of course, the technology and quality of the sensors of the watch can make a big difference.
Brands like Polar, Garmin, Amazfit, Samsung, Huawei, Suunto, Apple and others, offer a wide range of products, but depending on the features you are looking for, you will find products in different prices and quality. Think about the battery life, the design you like the most and whether you want a touchscreen or not. Verify the compatibility of the watch with your phone. Remember that sometimes, for a minimum difference in price, you get more functionality and/or quality.
In order to ease the selection process, the watches will be divided in three categories targeted for different needs
Types of Smartwatch
Fitness Tracker
If you have low physical activity, if you train with low-intensity 1-2 times a week or if you have started with a training plan to keep or to improve your health, you should consider getting a fitness tracker.
Sport Watch
If you already train 2-3 times a week with medium/ high intensity and you have defined activity goals that you seriously pretend to achieve (losing weight,running your first 5-10 km race, etc.), you should consider a sports watch.
Premium Sport Watch
or Hobby athletes. You definitely like sport and train several times a week. You are already a hobby athlete and have the intention to improve your fitness level and eventually break your own marks. Then, you certainly need a performing sports watch with training extras to help you achieve your goals.
Selection
Before we jump onto the options, I would like to explain how I chose the watches. I first considered watches from well-known brands that offer enough health and sport features (as we described in “do I need a smartwatch?”). Then, I compared them side-by-side and used the reference price (€) of Amazon Germany to assess their “value vs. price”. Those smartwatches which were too expensive in proportion to their functions were not considered. For example, if a fitness tracker had great characteristics including GPS, Music Player and other extras, but its price was the same or higher than the cheapest sports watch, I deleted it from the list. Of course, these lists reflect my personal opinion and are intended to be used only as reference. Please feel free to consider as well other watches with more smart functions, like stand-alone call possibilities (LTE) or a fancy design or any other feature that you might want to have. In any case, I added the link to the corresponding Web Sites, in case you can see more details of the options presented here.
Fitness Tracker
Sports Watch
Premium Sports Watch
Conclusion
Personally, I have 4 sports watches: Amazfit pace, Huawei GT, Polar Vantage M and Garmin Fénix 5 Plus. Each one has enough sports functions for my needs.
My first watch was the amazfit, which I like because I can store GPS Routes (GPS Navigation) and mp3 songs in the internal memory. The price was very affordable (around 100€).
My second watch was the Huawei GT. Although it does not have a music player nor GPS navigation, it has interesting smart functions and GPS with an accuracy similar to the polar’s or garmin’s.
The Polar Vantage M looks quite simple, kind of minimalistic and has only two watch faces but the sport functions are very good. I also like the statistics you can analyze to track your progress on the different sport modes. The training plans are great and you can also see mini animations of the proposed exercises. You can also create custom workouts, set your own intervals, etc. My training programs automatically adapt as per the sessions I finish and the performance I had. I exactly bought it to use the training plans and custom interval routines.
The Garmin Fenix 5 Plus was “treat” for myself 😉. I wanted to have GPS navigation, “race companion” and of course Spotify playlists. I also use the different training plans, custom workouts and intervals, etc.
As you may have noticed, I don’t have the Apple Watch on my list. The reasons are battery (18 hours) and price (Apple Watch 4 with gps for 444€). I also consider it more a smartwatch than a sports watch. For me, the battery is very important and I personally avoid getting devices that need to be charged every day. I don’t even charge my phone everyday (Honor View 20 at my normal use). But of course, the Apple Watch is a great smartwatch with many sports functions.
Finally and as a summary, these are my recommendations.