10 Best Fitness Trackers of 2024 to Help You Hit Your Goals
People say we’re all addicted to our smartphones, but if I’m being honest, I’m more addicted to my smartwatch. Specifically, I’m addicted to its fitness-tracking capabilities. I simply refuse to work out or even walk the dog without knowing my heart rate and calories burned. The industry's technology keeps evolving, and the best fitness trackers of 2024 provide even deeper insights into everything from readiness to elevation gain to strain.
We put over a dozen of the best fitness trackers to the test to deduce the benefits of each by sport and discipline. The needs of long-distance runners, triathletes, mountaineers, and gym rats are incredibly varied, as you know. That means it was difficult to name a best overall fitness tracker.
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But, after a month of obsessing over a mountain of data, Whoop 4.0 emerged as our top pick. It offers the most comprehensive scientific suite of data collection in regards to overall fitness and wellness. It’s also idiot-proof in that there are no buttons to push to begin or end a workout; it simply knows when you’re sleeping, walking, weight training, or cross-country skiing. You don’t even have to remove the band to charge it, which is a big plus in my book.
Best Overall Fitness Tracker: Whoop 4.0
What It Is
Whoop 4.0 is the undisputed champion for data nerds. Unlike most fitness trackers that function as a GPS watch as well as an extension of your smartphone, Whoop 4.0 has a simple looped band design with a sensor that sits flush against your skin. It’s designed for serious athletes who want to track biometric data points, receive actionable recommendations to optimize daily decisions and, ultimately, reach peak performance.
Whoop aggregates the exertion you put on your body from a scale of 0 to 21; this is your Strain Score. It comprises Activity Strain from working out (cardiovascular and muscular load), as well as other types of high-stress work from your day job or family life. At night, Whoop tracks time awake, light sleep, deep sleep, and REM to provide a holistic Sleep Score.
The following morning, you'll get a Recovery Score that shows how your body is handling or adapting to your daily stressors.
Over time, you can see trends and whether certain high-intensity workouts are getting easier for your body to handle (i.e. you're getting fitter). Qualitative information—the app prompts you to answer questions regarding your habits before bed and how you feel in the morning—help cue you in on the rituals that are hindering and helping your progress.
For example, during testing, I was urged to get to bed earlier and drink less caffeine.
Pros
My favorite thing about Whoop is it automatically tracks everything. I don’t have to push any buttons at the beginning of a run or workout. It accurately picked up downhill skiing and rounds of golf without me having to log the activity (although you can go in and make adjustments if need be).
It’s also incredibly interactive, sending alerts throughout the day to give status updates on strain, stress, and readiness to perform. The daily journal illuminates habits and behaviors I can change that are small and easy enough to incorporate (avoid alcohol two hours before bed; go to sleep around the same time every day) but can yield big impacts over time. For the record, I like any device that tells me to take a nap, which happened after a few days of little sleep and hard workouts.
I also love that Whoop goes beyond the scope of traditional fitness and feels like a personal trainer, gleaning more insights into my behaviors and what types of activities are hardest for my body to bounce back from. It learns how travel taxes your body, which athletes can use to better plan arrangements around races, events, and competitions.
Cons
My main gripes could be big pros for some users: I wish Whoop could tell time, because wearing a watch and a fitness tracking band feels a bit much. There’s no screen at all (info is relayed through the app on your phone) so you can’t get real-time data without looking at your phone. Moreover, there’s no GPS.
While you get a ton of information with this device and its associated app, it might be overkill for casual users who just want to know how many calories they burned at the gym.
It's a little pricier than other trackers on this list, because it requires a membership plan. Whoop 4.0 is $239 a year after a one-month free trial, but that cost includes the strap itself.
Weight: 15 grams
Thickness: 10.2mm
Touchscreen: No
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Best Budget Fitness Tracker: Coros Pace 3
What It Is
Coros Pace 3 is one of the smaller GPS watches I tested, but it packs a punch for runners. It has all the features you'd expect from a high-end run watch—monitoring heart rate and blood oxygen levels—but clocks in at about half the price.
It tracks how many calories you’ve burned throughout the day, calculates training load and recovery status, heart rate, current elevation, sleep status from the night before, and more.
Dig into the app and you can download training plans—like a six-week-long base-building plan for beginners and a 20-week marathon plan—as well as one-off plyometric workouts and full-body strength training. When you download a workout, your watch can coach you through the plan. You can also find or create a running or cycling route and send it to your watch, which will alert you when you deviate from that route.
Pros
Coros Pace 3 comes preloaded with a variety of sports it tracks, but this watch leans towards cardio pursuits, particularly running with a feature that analyzes your cadence, stride length, and running power, which quantifies the effort you put into each run. The battery life is surprisingly good, too, considering the size of the watch. I’ve had to charge Coros Pace 3 the least of all the trackers on this list.
Cons
My only issue is the screen isn’t as bright as other options, but that’s a minor complaint considering what you’re getting for the price.
Weight: 30 grams
Thickness: 11.8mm
Touchscreen: Yes
Best Fitness Tracker for Runners and Cyclists: Polar Vantage 3
What It Is
Polar Vantage 3 is a multi-sport watch, and it has features to please all kinds of athletes, but endurance athletes have the most to gain. Like to run or bike hill repeats? Polar Vantage 3 has a Hill Splitter feature that automatically detects uphills and downhills, giving granular insights.
Polar partnered with Komoot so you can map routes and get turn-by-turn directions on your wrist. The watch also calculates running power—the energy you put into the run measured in watts based on terrain and speed, and offers detailed training programs for runners looking to tackle anything from a 5K to a marathon.
Polar Vantage 3 tracks everything from heart rate to pulse oxygen to ECG, which lets you know if you have an irregular heartbeat. It even measures your skin temp, which can be an early indicator of sickness. In addition to tracking your nightly sleep and generating a Nightly Recharge score, it tells you how your sleep hygiene is impacting your recovery over time.
Pros
Vantage 3 doesn’t just tell you how many calories you burned during a workout, an algorithm tells you what energy sources you were burning in terms of fats, carbs, and proteins.
Cons
It’s not the most intuitive tracker to use. There are five buttons as well as a touchscreen, and it took me a while to figure out what to push and when to end a workout and access data.
Weight: 57 grams
Thickness: 14.5mm
Touchscreen: Yes
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Best Fitness Tracker for Hybrid Athletes: Garmin Venu 3
What It Is
Garmin Venu 3 is the best watch for hybrid athletes who like to dabble in all sorts of activities. It comes pre-loaded with an incredibly wide variety of workouts, including HIIT, SUP golf, pickleball, and even pick-up basketball; you can add activities like badminton and ice skating, too. I like that because, unless you're a professional athlete, most people engage in a variety of pursuits. There’s even a setting that allows you to track gaming sessions. (COD is a cardio event.)
The watch has a bright screen that’s easy to read, and measures all the basics, like REM sleep and pulse oxygen rate. I like the daily resting heart rate feature, which tells you your average at the end of each day (the lower your heart rate is at rest, the better your cardiovascular fitness). The Body Battery Score—an actual number quantifying how hard you worked that day—is helpful, too. Push the Health Snapshot button and, after two minutes of sitting still, it generates your resting heart rate, respiration per minutes, stress level, and body battery.
Pros
I like having all that data on one screen. It’s one of the more intuitive watches I tested, with prompts that make sense and data that’s easy to find. And the touchscreen and three-button system is easy to navigate. If you need an external motivator, consider this watch, because it’s a ball buster, prompting me to move and stretch throughout the day. Another cool feature I love is the Fitness Age, which quantifies how fit you are compared to your actual age—a number based on your activity intensity, resting heart rate, and BMI calculated by your height and weight. Perhaps best of all, the battery lasts about a week.
Cons
The software isn't as modern or appealing as what's offered from Apple and Samsung. As such, it might be more difficult to navigate the watch and app if you're new to Garmin.
Weight: 30 grams
Thickness: 12mm
Touchscreen: Yes
Best Fitness Tracker for Adventure Athletes: Suunto Race
What It Is
Suunto has been a trusted name in adventure watches for more than a decade, and Race fulfills that reputation, with an oversized watch face (49mm), downloadable topo maps you can use offline, a compass, and an advanced GPS system that uses four different satellite systems at the same time. But it also has all the fitness-tracking elements you want, including a heart rate monitor, sleep tracking, pulse oxygen, and HRV.
Pros
This watch is the ideal partner for adventure athletes who primarily train outdoors, but still log gym sessions, too. The interval feature is handy—not only does it track intervals, but it can guide you through an interval workout. You can also tap into the Ghost Runner feature to set a pace during runs to keep you on track.
Suunto Coach uses AI to monitor your workouts and suggest activity and recovery strategies. I like the global heat maps, which show you popular routes for 20 different sports, and the fact you can zoom in on a map and use the Breadcrumb feature to get back to trailheads.
Cons
The size might turn some people off, and I admit it’s overkill if you’re not going to use the maps feature, but that oversized watch face means you can actually use this watch to navigate.
Weight: 83 grams
Thickness: 13.3mm
Touchscreen: Yes
More Fitness Trackers We Love
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Our Testing Process
I wore most of the trackers on this list myself for more than a month, switching the watches out regularly and wearing Whoop and Oura Ring constantly. I tracked my daily workouts as well as runs, walks, and bike rides. I also logged every night’s sleep, multiple ski trips, and several rounds of golf. If I couldn’t get a hold of a tracker myself, I relied on one of MJ’s stable of writers to test the product first-hand.
What We Look for in a Fitness Tracker
A lot of fitness trackers today have similar capabilities and measure similar biometrics. At the bare minimum, you want a tracker that can measure your heart rate, which is the key piece of data for determining calories burned and overall effort. In recent years, tech within fitness trackers has improved to include pulse oxygen monitoring (literally the amount of oxygen in your blood), respiratory rates, and skin temperature, the latter of which can be an early indicator of sickness. Every product on this list includes some sort of sleep monitoring, which is key to recovery. A few offer some sort of AI-driven coaching based on your workouts and goals, which is handy if you often feel lost in the gym. If you’re an avid runner or cyclist, make sure your watch has a GPS tracker.
Beyond the actual fitness aspect of these devices, think about what you need from a wearable. Do you want to receive messages or control music from your wrist? Are downloadable meditation and workout sessions to mix up your sessions important? Keep in mind the size and comfort of fitness trackers and watches is tricky to gauge online. Most brands have generous return policies, but always check before you buy. You don’t want your watch getting in the way of pushups or floor routines.
Also, size and weight matters. I’ve had watches so big I inadvertently pushed buttons while training. Size also impacts battery life, especially if you’re looking for a tracker with a GPS. Apple Watch Ultra2 needs to be charged every few days, at least, while the much larger Suunto Race can withstand several days of heavy use without needing to be docked.
Why You Should Trust Me
I write about fitness for Men’s Journal and Outside, among other publications, and I’ve been testing fitness trackers for more than a decade. When I first started testing devices in the category, I had to wear a heart rate monitor around my chest and slide a pedometer pod into my Nikes to gauge distance. Needless to say, things have gotten better. What used to be considered space-age tech (pulse ox monitor!) is now commonplace. I also know first-hand what these fitness trackers can do for everyday athletes who don’t have personal trainers and coaches holding them accountable. I’ve always been obsessed with fitness, but I didn’t know what a hard workout was until Apple put a heart rate monitor on their watch. Finally, I could use hard data to quantify the effort I was putting into sessions.
