The Best Fitness Tracker

The Garmin Vivofit 3 offers the most features of any fitness tracker we could find under $100. It’s smaller than most wristwatches and about as low-profile as a device with a built-in display can get. (That being said, the display is quite small.) It’s comfortable and customizable, with 17 different band options, including white, red, and even camo. Our testers appreciated Garmin’s intuitive physical interface, clean and user-friendly app, and integration capabilities with MyFitnessPal for nutrition tracking. Also unique in a fitness tracker under $100, the Vivofit 3 can track a range of different movements automatically with its MoveIQ algorithm.

Throughout testing, we had no issues with syncing or pairing (unlike the iFit Link, which we cut after it failed to log our workouts multiple times). Unlike many fitness trackers, the Vivofit 3 doesn’t sync automatically — you have to hold down its single button until the screen blinks “sync.” A few of our testers anticipated that they’d find this annoying, but were surprised to find it was simple enough they didn’t mind. One of our testers noted that after not pairing his tracker to his phone for about a month, the time on his tracker was off by about 30 minutes. It’s not a deal-breaker by any means, but some testers found its three-pronged clasp frustrating and finicky.

Unlike any of our other contenders, the Garmin Vivofit 3 uses a replaceable battery that’s good for about one year, rather than rechargeables that have to be plugged in once a week. Our testers all agreed that this was more convenient for round-the-clock, long-term tracking. It’s also the only basic fitness tracker we could find under $100 that can sync with an ANT+ chest strap heart rate monitor (not included) for zone training and more detailed information during workouts.

You can replace the Vivofit 3’s coin-style battery, but make sure the thin, blue gasket remains in place to maintain the unit’s 5 ATM water rating.

The Vivofit 3 outperformed the similarly priced Fitbit Flex 2 (also $99) in every test from step-count consistency, to ruling out false-positives (counting false steps), but the two trackers are worth comparing in more detail. The Flex 2 is much smaller and flexible — skinnier than a Livestrong band with a bit more structure. For the smaller size, you’ll have to sacrifice the built-in display; instead you’ll get a series of five lights. Tap the Flex 2 and they’ll indicate your progress to your goal. Some of our testers preferred the bulkier Vivofit 3 for the screen; others appreciated the thinner Flex 2 and didn’t miss the display. We also had our testers try the Flex 2’s 22 karat gold-plated bangle; they wanted to love it but didn’t. It looked more like a gold-plated birdcage than a stylish piece of jewelry.

When you choose your tracker, you’re also choosing the corresponding app and fitness community. Going into this review, we didn’t realize how much that’d matter to us. The Fitbit app was our favorite overall, but we were still big fans of the Garmin Connect app. Our testers all said it looked clean and was only slightly less user-friendly than the Fitbit’s.

Like the Fitbit Flex 2, the Fitbit Charge 2 comes with the most user-friendly app we tested. If you’re OK with not having GPS capabilities to track your distance workouts outside, but want to keep tabs on your general heart rate and calorie-burn trends, this is going to be your best option. (It’s also capable of syncing with your phone’s GPS, if you’re willing to carry it in addition to your device.)

The Fitbit Charge 2 was a clear favorite right out of the box. Our testers clamored over its straightforward usability and intuitive interface. Everything about it, from setup, to syncing, to tracking our first exercise was just easy. It just worked, too, unlike the comparably priced iFit Axis HR, which failed over and over to sync our exercises and only had one workout mode (distance). In contrast, Fitbit has a seemingly limitless catalog of trackable exercises. It was also one of the most attractive of the higher-end trackers with built-in heart rate monitors, which seemed to get bigger and clunkier proportionate to their price tags. It’s just 0.29 oz heavier than the Garmin Vivofit 3, which doesn’t have a heart rate monitor, and is just slightly larger. The Charge 2 only comes in six different color options, but that seemed more than enough to us.

When Fitbit added a heart rate monitor to the Alta — which sits between the Flex 2 and the Charge 2 size-wise — we expected it’d oust the Charge 2 from our top picks. What’s not to like about all the same features with a little less bulk? We were surprised to find that the thinner Alta HR wasn’t more comfortable than the Charge 2. Its long and thin shape was less flexible and made us weirdly aware of our wrists. The Alta HR also lacks a few features we liked in the Charge 2: it doesn’t tracking flights of stairs climbed, has no manual start option for workouts, no stopwatch, doesn’t have a relax mode and has fewer workout modes.

In terms of performance during testing, the Charge 2 was comparable to the other contenders; it was off on just about everything except for the “distance from steps” measurement (which it aced), but the other contenders were off by about the same margin. Its standard deviation during our step-counting test was 14.73, which is just under the average across all the devices we tried. As with the other heart rate monitoring devices we looked at, both the maximum and the average heart rates recorded by the Charge 2 during exercise were off by 16 and 14.33 beats per minute on average, respectively, with no clear bias toward high or low readings. The TomTom Touch, Garmin Vivosmart HR, and Fitbit Surge were the only devices that fared any better; although, not by much. Even the Touch, which was the top performer in our heart rate monitoring test, was off by an average of 7 bpm. This makes the Charge 2 (and actually any of the trackers that we tested) less than ideal for zone training, but still useable for tracking relative intensity during workouts and all-day heart rate trends.

The Fitbit app is also the most aesthetically pleasing option our testers found, as well as the most user-friendly. The level of information isn’t as detailed as the Garmin Connect app, but we just liked using the Fitbit app more. Unlike the Garmin app, it comes with its own nutrition tracking, and you can set goals and movement alerts, or connect with friends to keep you motivated.

Tracking multiple exercises was seamless; just swipe to the exercise menu and tap the device to scroll through the six preset exercise options (which range from interval training to bicycling, but can be customized through the app), and hold down the button to start. For movements that can be tracked with its accelerometer (walking, running, etc.), it will record distance and even route and elevation if you’ve enabled GPS pairing with your phone. For more complex exercises, the Charge 2 relies on the heart rate monitor to determine effort and logs the activity through the app, deducting the calories expended from your daily total.

The Charge 2 is also the only tracker we tested with a relaxation mode, which guides you through two or five minutes of deep breathing to slow your heart rate and help reduce stress, which we thought was a really creative and potentially beneficial use of the heart rate monitoring function.

Another cool perk we loved: If you have more than one Fitbit, you can link both of them to your account and they’ll both sync seamlessly.

Choosing between Garmin’s top-of-the-line Vivosmart HR+ and the Fitbit Surge was actually a pretty tough call. They’re both strong products that include most of the same features. Both have well-designed and well-executed apps, and they both worked seamlessly out of the box. The difference comes down to the details. For one thing, the Vivosmart HR+ is $200 — $50 less than the Surge. It’s also completely waterproof and can be used to track swimming, which the Surge is not rated for (though some intrepid users take theirs in the pool against the manufacturer’s recommendation).

It has just about every feature you could cram into such a small device: heart rate monitoring, onboard GPS, smart notifications from your phone, exercise tracking and movement identification through MoveIQ, the Garmin Connect app with MyFitnessPal integration, and, of course, the ubiquitous daily step/calorie/distance count. The device itself is only a little bit bigger than the Fitbit Charge 2 or iFit Axis HR, which made it more comfortable for long-term wear than the Surge. The simple interface features a large display with swipes for navigation and a single button for selection — the design is minimal and attractive.

From left: the iFit Axis HR, Vivosmart HR+, and Fitbit Charge 2

Another thing that impressed us was that the Vivosmart HR+ was the only device we tested that you can calibrate for improved accuracy: When you first set up the device, it asks you to take a brisk walk or jog for 20 minutes to establish a baseline so that future heart rate and calorie measurements will be more accurate. The Vivosmart HR+ also displays the weather directly from your phone, which no other device does. You can even use it to locate a lost smartphone, as long as it’s within Bluetooth range and paired at the time.

At first, we weren’t quite sure what to make of the TomTom Touch. Sure, it measured steps, calories, distance, and sleep throughout the day about as well as our other trackers, but it only had one workout mode, “gym,” which didn’t measure distance or steps at all: only heart rate, duration, and calories. Intriguingly, it was the only device we tested with a body composition sensor that uses bioimpedance to calculate your muscle-to-fat ratio. This last detail clued us in that the TomTom Touch might have been built with the weight room, yoga studio, or aerobics class in mind more than the typical running- and walking-oriented trackers.

Our experience with the TomTom Spark 3 wasn’t necessarily bad — it was actually one of the more accurate devices we tested. But our testers unanimously prefered both Fitbit’s and Garmin’s apps over TomTom’s. On the other hand, it is a GPS-enabled fitness tracker that only costs $130, and the feature didn’t give us any issues during testing. Most fitness trackers with GPS capabilities cost almost twice that much. That means that for the same spend as a simple pedometer-style fitness tracker, you can still have all the same basic step-counting functionality, plus distance/route/elevation data from a GPS sensor for outdoor workouts. You can also opt to spend an extra $30 the get the upgrade Spark 3 Cardio, which also comes with a heart rate monitor.