Maybe you’ve set new fitness goals for yourself, but you’re not sure how to achieve them.
Modern wearables have made it much easier to keep track of things like your daily step count, heart rate, sleep stages, and more, so you spend less time monitoring that data and focus on other healthy habits you can implement. Thankfully, you don’t have to spend hundreds of dollars to buy a wearable that can do all of that for you.
Budget fitness trackers have come a long way in the last few years, with many now including connected GPS tracking for outdoor runs, real-time heart rate tracking to keep you in the right zone during workouts, and more.
Plus, most work with both iPhone and Android devices, so you can choose the right device for you and your budget without worrying about compatibility. From simple step counters to more advanced running watches, affordable fitness trackers offer plenty to help you on your journey towards better health. These are our top picks.
The Xiaomi Smart Band 8 stands out on several fronts – not only does it have the easiest interface to navigate when recording workouts, it also has the most comfortable band to sleep in. This device has everything you would expect from a fitness tracker, and it comes at a price that’s hard to beat.
The 1.62-inch, 192 x 490 pill-shaped AMOLED display is full colour and gets plenty bright both indoors and outdoors. While there are no physical navigation buttons, you can move through the UI by swiping up and down or left and right.
The Smart Band 8 is comfortable enough, but what secured it the top spot was how detailed its workout reports were. Unlike some of the other trackers we’ve tested, the Smart Band 8 doesn’t require you to download any exercises from its companion app.
This means you can start tracking specific exercises, such as skiing, right away. When a workout is complete, you get all the information you want right on your wrist – from heart rate readings to speed and pace, calories burned and more. This might sound basic, but other trackers we’ve tested only report the number of steps and distance traveled after a run. The time spent in each heart rate zone will appear in your summary, from light, intense, aerobic to anaerobic.
Xiaomi’s tracker also has a unique “pebble” mode, which allows you to clip the tracker onto a shoelace using a special case to collect running and cycling data. Using Pebble Mode, you can get a better analysis of your performance during sprints – namely stats like flight ratio and ground contact time, as well as general information about your running form.
Sleeping with the tracker was easy as it’s very lightweight and comfortable. The do-not-disturb feature is easy to turn on from the watch face and I had no issues with the screen waking me up during the night. After wearing it overnight the sleep information impressed me with their detail. On my wrist, I was able to know how long I slept and also got a detailed sleep graph that showed me when I was in light and deep sleep. All of this was free, on my wrist and it was laid out in even more detail for me in the Mi App. I was also able to gather information about my average heart rate and my breathing patterns during sleep.
Also, importantly, Xiaomo’s impressive battery claims checked out – the Smart Band 8 only needed 30 minutes on the charger before needing to refuel for about two weeks of use. I never worried about not being able to track my activity or sleep.
Best Cheap Fitness Tracker – Runner Up
Like the Xiaomi Band 8, the Amazfit Band 7 also has all the workouts you can track already built right into your wrist. It also has a unique interface that allows you to set custom goals like burning 500 calories before starting a workout. Plus, it features 18 days of battery life (or more if you enable battery-saver mode).
The Amazfit bands have a special scoring system called PAI, which stands for “Personal Activity Intelligence.” This metric is derived from your heart rate during all activities (even activities that don’t involve tracked workouts) and gives you a numerical score from 1 to 100. You want to get your score as close to 100 as possible through workouts and rest to keep your overall cardiovascular health strong. Like the Xiaomi Smart Band 8, the Amazfit Band 7 gives the user details of their overall heart rate zone activity on the watch face.
The watch also has a unique “One Tap Measure” that gives you information about your heart rate, blood oxygen levels, and even a stress score based on your heart rate variability.
The Band 7 does have a few shortcomings, however, such as it is noticeably slower than the Xiaomi Smart Band 8 in terms of starting and ending exercise sessions. There are also no physical navigation buttons, which sometimes makes it difficult to exit a page.