The point of using a fitness tracker is to keep track of all your workout progress on a regular basis so that you may better tweak your routine to up your results. With the help of a fitness tracker, you get to monitor your heart rate, your calorie intake, your laps, your time spent working out, and a host of other useful information. Now, we should point out that not all fitness trackers can be expected to perform the same way, which is why you should take the time to learn about what makes a good fitness tracker and what to avoid. To help you in that regard, we put together a list of the ten best fitness trackers the market has to offer right now.
Best Fitness Trackers – Top List
Withings Steel HR
Although taken over and re-branded by Nokia, Withings is a French company that still shines by producing one among great quality fitness trackers. Their Steel HR features an elegant analog watch bod, and swim tracking among its uses. It is also waterproof to 50 meters deep, which is impressive to say the least. Although you cannot take advantage of things optical heart rate tracker in the water, Steel HR’s automatic tracking software recognizes the moment you jump into the waters and will aptly put the exercise toward the goal of your daily activity.
Misfit Shine 2 Fitness Tracker & Sleep Monitor
With this ingenious fitness tracker, you can achieve your fitness goals by doing laps around the pool in the knowledge that the tracker will record your every lap. Misfit Shine helps you in this by providing swim-specific algorithms for tracking lengths and laps, distance covered and calories shed. An improvement of the original Shine, this smart tracker is conveniently wrist wearable and also attachable to your trunks, making it quite flexible. It is waterproof to a 5 ATM rating, meaning it remains safe to use down to 50 meters underwater.
Beartwo Smart Bracelet IP67
Also doubling as an activity tracker, this smart bracelet from Beartwo is sure to meet all your fitness tracking needs. It can record daily calories, it features a step pedometer and has the capacity to recharge with a built-in USB plug. Speaking of which, this fitness tracker has a battery life of up to 7 days with just 1-2 hours of charging required. Furthermore, it also features an anti-lost system and a remote for good measure.
TwobeFit Waterproof Fitness Activity Tracker
With this particular tracker, you get the ability to not only monitor your heart rate and sleeping patterns but also to get calls and texts like a regular smartphone. It is also IP67 waterproof, which means that you can safely wash your hands without having to worry about damaging the device. Not only that but it also benefits from an impressively long-lasting battery with a very wide compatibility that only requires that you charge it for about two hours for a full charge.
Moov Now
If you are looking for the very best in waterproof fitness trackers, Moov Now could be your best pick. It offers more than just fitness tracking. It has been advanced for integrated coaching that provides metrics on making you improve the swimming experience besides giving you feedback on the same. Moov Now is waterproof to 30 meters deep and features Moov app with a dedicated swim mode which you turn on before the splash. After you finish swimming, you will find clear feedback about your stroke type, instance, rate, and efficiency, plus lap times and a general indicator of your swimming stamina.
TomTom Spark
TomTom’s Spark 3 is built as a waterproof running watch but it also packs great fitness tracking features. More is its dedicated swim mode that has passed the test to enter the league of the best swim trackers, making it a more versatile option than most. It offers a variety of data, including distance, speed, laps, and SWOLF scores. For accurate data on lap counts, you can choose pool sizes according to your personal preference and even record split times. It also provides various training modes like flexible intervals.
Garmin vívoactive HR
The Vivoactive HR provides more of what the original Garmin Vivoactive does, but also in the swim details tracking, recommending it as one of the most appreciable multi-purpose trackers you wear into waters. It is a sporty smartwatch with a 5 ATM waterproof rating. Moreover, it can resist pressure even to a 50-meter depth and further features a dedicated swimming screen in Garmin Connect for collecting data regarding time, distance, SWOLF, stroke, pace, speed, temperature, and more.
Apple Watch Series 3
Apple has always flared in smart device production, and their new Series 3 watch is no exemption. It takes all the great swimming properties of the Series 2 a notch higher thanks to its better processor and a cellular connection, just in case you want to take a call while in the water. GPS is integrated, too. Apple’s open swim and pool tracking are some of the finest. The Series 3 serves you with a range of metrics—lengths, miles covered, your average pace, and it also distinguishes stroke style.
Fitbit Ionic Smartwatch
Until recently, the Fitbit Flex 2 was the only fitness tracker with swim-proof capability this company had. Now there is the Ionic Smartwatch which packs all the great features of the Flex 2 with the added benefit of a more advanced display, allowing you to have a better view of your statistics in real-time. It also provides an impressive 5-day battery life, while its tactile buttons make it simple for you to start or stop workouts while in the pool. As such, you need not worry about messing up with the wet screen.
Fitbit Flex 2
The highly ingenious Flex 2 boasts a water resistance of down to 50 meters in any body of water. Offering a 5-day battery life, it features LED alerts and other fancy accessories along the usual Fitbit activity and sleep tracking features. It also recognizes the four major swimming strokes—breaststroke, freestyle, butterfly, and backstroke. Although you won’t get an all-inclusive collection of your swim metrics, it will track basics like your swim distance, time, and rate. As such, if you want a basic fitness tracker suitable for the splash, Fitbit Flex 2 will certainly not disappoint.
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What To Look For In A Fitness Tracker
Before getting into the type of fitness tracker you should buy, you must first consider your daily routine and the activities you plan on using the tracker for. Fitness trackers are known for helping people get more exercise and living a healthier lifestyle overall, a good enough reason to consider investing in one if you haven’t already. Before that, however, we should spend a few minutes finding out what makes a good fitness tracker and what to look for when buying one.
Design
You should know by now that most fitness trackers are either wrist-worn or come with a clip to hook the device to your attire. We should point out that some of these devices even provide you with the flexibility of choosing the way you want to use them with no limitations whatsoever. Furthermore, some of these trackers benefit from third-party bracelets or pendants that make these devices easier to accessorize and customize.
As far as design goes, the more advanced a fitness tracker is the bigger and clearer its display. Some of these trackers even boast touch screens and behave more or less like smartwatches or smartphones. It should come as no surprise that some of them look almost identical to regular watches because, for the most part, they are designed to fit the part. As a matter of fact, some people actually prefer the trackers that look more like analog wristwatches than fitness tracking devices for aesthetic reasons.
Water Resistance
If you plan on wearing your fitness tracker all day long, then consider getting a waterproof fitness tracker. These devices are roughly the same price and they provide the added benefit of being waterproof to an impressive standard. Some of these trackers are even tested and guaranteed to work properly down to 50 feet deep in any body of water, which is impressive to say the least, especially for such small devices.
Features
While you can safely expect most fitness trackers to meet certain standards like calorie tracking and distance traveled, some are equipped with a few other interesting features like sleep quality, heartbeat rate, and phone integration. Some even keep track of how many flights of stairs you climb on a daily basis, thus built with altimeters and accelerometers along a variety of other features.
Calories Burned – If you’re trying to lose some extra weight, then you need to keep a close eye on your calorie intake. With the help of a quality fitness tracker, you can measure the number of calories burned every day so that you can plan your next meals accordingly. This allows you to tweak your daily meals in a way that enables you to burn calories without starving yourself too much.
Heart Rate Monitor – High-end fitness trackers tend to boast heart rate monitoring capabilities. A good heart rate monitor sends light through the skin and blood vessels and measures the rate of your blood flow. Back in the day, similar systems employed heart rate monitors that you would strap to your chest and measure your heart rate via electrical impulses which would then relay the data to a standard activity tracker.
GPS – Although not all, some fitness trackers have built-in GPS trackers to measure everything from your walking speed to elevation and distance covered during a time interval. Given the fact that GPS relies on satellite signals to function, the tracker’s GPS functions might not work that well when the weather takes a turn for the worse. You also have to keep in mind that GPS systems drain a device’s battery life quite fast.
Smartphone Notifications – Modern fitness trackers also have smartphone integration features that you can employ for your benefit. With such a technology, you can receive and send notifications straight from your wrist without having to reach into your pocket for the phone. Interestingly enough, some of these trackers even have onboard storage that allows you to transfer files from other devices, which means that you can set up a nice workout playlist for yourself.
Apps – Also interesting is the fact that high-end fitness trackers come with specialized applications that enable you to get the most out of using them. For instance, some of these apps track your synced data, allow you to track the quality of your sleep, and customize all their other features freely. Not only that but some of these apps also enable you to input all the information regarding your food and drinks intake throughout the day in order to estimate their calorie count.
I began my writing career writing for various content firms, but it was under the tutelage of the editors here at SavantMag.com that I grew as a writer and editor. I love the content we write here and bringing solid reviews to consumers is rewarding beyond what I can even describe.
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