Best Buy Fitness Tracker
The best cheap fitness trackers are a great way to keep tabs on your walks, workouts and health metrics on a budget. Plenty of the best fitness trackers are highly-advanced but expensive devices, aimed at experienced exercisers or amateur athletes in training. For anyone who wants a simpler option to track their couch-to-5K progress or make sure they get their daily 10k steps, this list is a good place to start.
best buy fitness tracker
The Fitbit Inspire 3 has replaced its predecessor, the Inspire 2, as the best cheap fitness tracker you can buy today. Although there are other activity bands with more modest price tags, the Inspire 3 offers the most bang for your buck. Not surprisingly, it's also one of the best Fitbits overall, with a lot of the same Fitbit features like the Daily Readiness Score and Active Zone Minutes on the premium models.
The Inspire 3 measures steps and heart rate throughout the day, and the Fitbit Inspire 3 also tracks heart rate variability and stress, how long you spend in different heart rate zones during workouts, and your breathing rate. It can guide you through breathing exercises, score your cardio fitness level, and track your sleep stages each night.
Like other Fitbit devices, this cheap fitness tracker comes with a free one-year subscription to Fitbit Premium, which gives you access to instructor-led workouts, meditation sessions, and nutrition plans. It's not as good as the one-year Inspire 2 subscription, but the new features are probably just enough to justify getting the updated model.
Thanks to Huawei's problems in the States, it's tough for folks over there to get hold of the Huawei Band 7, which is a shame: it's an undeniably impressive fitness tracker at an impressively low price.
With step tracking we found to be just as accurate as an Apple Watch, a nice big 1.47-inch AMOLED screen, and a thin body less than 1cm thick, it's a slender piece of kit, but still packs lots of great fitness tools. TruSleep 2.0 tracks sleep states and offers a more detailed breakdown of phases of sleep, comparing favorably to Apple -although at the time we tested, Apple's updated sleep functions hadn't launched.
The latest addition to Xiaomi's excellent line of cheap fitness trackers, the Xiaomi Mi Smart Band 6 is packed with features you'd usually expect to find in a much more expensive device, making it a great value. Its AMOLED touchscreen is bright, vibrant and responsive. In addition to the standard activity and heart rate tracking features, it also offers stress monitoring and a pulse-ox sensor for measuring blood oxygen saturation.
The crisp color display (one of the best you'll find on a device this size) also shows notifications, weather reports and app notifications. Plus, you can use it to control music playback on your phone with a tap and a swipe.
Fitbit Charge 4 is an older Fitbit which has come down in price, making it just about eligible to be a cheap fitness tracker. It doesn't have Fitbit's new features like Daily Readiness Score, Active Zone Minutes, ECG or EDA scanners, but you'll be hard pressed to find another fitness tracker in this price range with onboard GPS.
GPS is essential for correctly monitoring your runs, rides and swims outdoors, if you don't like to take your phone with you, providing a freedom not normally seen in fitness trackers. However, there's no onboard music storage on the Charge 4, so if you like to leave your phone at home, your runs will be without a soundtrack.
If you're after a simple wearable that can push notifications from your smartphone, wake you up with a dedicated alarm, track your workouts with built-in GPS, and more, the Bip makes a strong case for itself. Gift-wise, it's an excellent buy for anyone in the market for a cheap and cheerful fitness device. Its simple set-up makes it a good choice for complete fitness tech beginners.
A superb upgrade from the Galaxy Fit and the Galaxy Fit E, the Samsung Galaxy Fit 2 is one of the best-looking cheap fitness trackers, with a great color touch display and non-removable silicone band. It might not outclass the Garmin Vivofit 4's one-year battery life, but Garmin's offering uses a non-rechargeable battery that you eventually have to replace.
Meanwhile, the Galaxy Fit 2's rechargeable battery gives you up to 21 days of battery life with low usage (with heart rate and auto workout tracker turned off). However, it is worth noting that it gets cut down to under 15 days with features like continuous heart rate monitoring and regularly workout-tracking activated.
The Garmin Vivosmart 4 might not be the latest entry in the Vivosmart line, but it still holds its own against the sea of fitness trackers, especially if you're seeking something economical. During our testing, we found it an excellent everyday wear tracker thanks to its heart rate and blood oxygen monitoring capabilities and wellness features.
There are several things to consider when choosing a fitness tracker, but it gets trickier when you're trying to find a cheap one. That's because you're working with a smaller budget, which means you can't exactly go for the best money can buy. Luckily, quite a few affordable fitness trackers will see you through most of your health, fitness, and wellness needs.
Be sure to consider what type of activity you enjoy most. For example, if you're into cycling or running, you should get a cheap fitness tracker with a built-in GPS module. If you just want a device to log your workouts and track your sleep, the Fitbit Inspire 3 is your best bet. It doesn't have GPS, but it can monitor your energy levels with its Daily Readiness Score, and use Active Zone Minutes to tot up how much activity, both active and passive, you're doing each week.
That's necessary to track your route and speed accurately. If you're training for an arduous multi-day hike up a mountain or a marathon, you might be better off with a proper fitness watch, or a tracker with GPS like the Fitbit Charge 4. If you frequently find yourself too tired to exercise, the Vivosmart 4's Body Battery metric can monitor your recovery and tell you the best time to work out.
Make sure you have a list of stats you require, especially for everyday use, and pick the best cheap fitness tracker that offers them. You might have to sacrifice some, but not too many, since many of these trackers are feature-filled. Battery life is also something to consider, as are display, resolution, and design.
Testing cheap fitness trackers mainly involves using them in our day-to-day for a week or more. That's the best and most efficient way of seeing how much data they gather, how accurate they are, how well they perform, and how comfortable they are on our wrists.
Naturally, we put them through different fitness and wellness activities, from different workouts to things like breathing exercises and sleep. That way, we can test aspects like the heart rate monitor's accuracy and responsiveness, GPS accuracy, and build or ruggedness. We'll also measure the heart rate and exercise metrics against a control smartwatch during physical exercise.
Who said getting fit had to cost the earth? Whatever your workout goals are in 2023, the best cheap fitness trackers can help you get in shape without you needing to spend hundreds of dollars. In fact, for less than $100, some of the best cheap fitness trackers can monitor your sleep, your heart rate and send you notifications from your smartphone. A few of these affordable trackers have companion apps with social features for challenging friends, which is a great way to get (or stay) active.
If you're going to work out more regularly, we suggest checking out our picks for the best fitness trackers, as well as the best Garmin watches, and the best Fitbits which can track more activities, have better designs, and other features.
To find out more, we've put some of the best cheap fitness trackers through their paces by running, cycling, swimming, working, and sleeping in them. During testing, we've looked at how easy they are to use, how nice they look on our wrists, and how well they track activities. Read on to see our top picks for the best cheap fitness trackers.
During testing, we loved how lightweight and comfortable this little tracker was to wear for 24/7 health tracking. We also appreciated how much more premium the tracker felt with a color screen. It won't be for everyone, but if you're looking for an affordable fitness tracker, you can't go wrong with the Inspire 3.
Not only was the Charge 4 Fitbit's first fitness tracker with built-in GPS, but it introduced Active Zone Minutes, which give you a much better indicator of your overall health than how many steps you've taken. We found the touchscreen easy to navigate around on the move and were impressed with how comfortable it was on the wrist. We also found the GPS to be pretty accurate when running and cycling.
The battery life lasts up to one week, or five days when using GPS, which isn't the best but is pretty good for a fitness tracker. The only downside we could find was that we wished it had on-board music options that would allow us to leave our phone at home, but for around $100, this is an absolutely brilliant piece of tech to have on your wrist.
One of the best cheap fitness trackers with GPS, the Amazfit Bip is a touchscreen watch with smartphone notifications, lengthy battery life and built-in heart-rate monitor, GPS and GLONASS for accurate workout tracking.
You can eke out 45 days of battery life from the Bip without using any of its smart features, but even using the heart-rate monitor and GPS to track workouts, we went two weeks before the watch dipped below 50 percent. That's incredible for a fitness tracker, budget or not.
The $25 Wyze Band is perhaps the most affordable, yet capable, fitness tracker you'll find in stores or online. The compact wearable has a bright, easy-to-read AMOLED display, lasts a full week on a single charge and provides excellent running metrics. With the companion Wyze app, Wyze Band wearers can view a record of average pace data, calories burned, running heart beats per minute (BPM) and total miles ran. There aren't metrics for other kinds of work outs, but its a good choice if you walk, jog or run regularly. 041b061a72