Reaching your health objectives doesn’t need to be costly or difficult. Holding monitor of your progress might be essential, however not everybody must drop lots of of {dollars} on the finest smartwatches on the market. The common reasonably priced tracker would possibly supply simply the suitable instruments to assist kickstart your well being journey, like a coronary heart charge monitor, sleep high quality information and so forth. And, after testing plenty of reasonably priced health trackers, I can say with confidence that you just is likely to be stunned by how a lot a $100 (or much less) wearable can do — a welcomed deal with for many who don’t need to spend a ton of money on an Apple Watch. Many of those devices go effectively past being glorified pedometers, offering in-depth reviews on the way you’re sleeping at evening or providing you with a breakdown of your coronary heart charge variability throughout a exercise. However given their worth, there might be some sacrifices. That can assist you resolve which is best for you, I examined plenty of the most effective low cost health trackers accessible at present to search out those which can be value your cash.
What to search for in an affordable health tracker
All the finest health trackers ought to have not less than three options: a program to trace exercises or motion of some kind, the choice to watch and acquire sleep information and the power to measure well being metrics like coronary heart charge and blood oxygen ranges (although, the readings won’t be tremendous correct). Don’t set your sights too excessive and anticipate metrics like blood stress monitoring; for that, you’d must put money into a dearer wearable like a Samsung Galaxy Watch, which can set you again over $400.
Health options
An affordable exercise tracker may be nice for somebody trying to maintain tabs on small, achievable objectives like 10,000 steps earlier than sunset or half-hour of a HIIT exercise to get your coronary heart charge peaking. An skilled long-distance runner trying to prepare for a triathlon would possibly go for a dearer system that may measure cadence or floor contact time, and might monitor extra customizable exercises, supply totally different sports activities modes or give deeper insights into efficiency information.
On the very least, a price range exercise tracker ought to have the ability to supply health monitoring options past strolling and operating — in any other case, it might simply be a pedometer. The variety of actions a tool will acknowledge varies. Some will get funky with it and think about skateboarding a exercise, whereas others gained’t have the ability to monitor a leaping jack.
At this worth, you possibly can anticipate a tool to measure a mixture of cardio, machine exercises and power coaching. With every, you would possibly get a numerical or visible breakdown of coronary heart charge exercise, total tempo, and energy burned per session. Though some low cost trackers can supply a extremely good overview of coronary heart charge zone exercise throughout a exercise, a extra technically superior system would possibly have the ability to go a step additional and clarify what your outcomes imply and coach you on the right way to maintain your coronary heart charge in a selected bracket so that you could burn extra fats per exercise. I discovered that the extra budget-friendly the system, the extra possible it’s {that a} tracker will fall quick on the subject of good counseling or providing predictive insights past a given exercise. If a price range tracker does occur to supply some semblance of a training program, you possibly can anticipate it to take a seat behind a paywall.
Exercise monitoring and planning your restoration is simply as important to any health journey. A sub-$100 system ought to have the ability to inform you how lengthy you’ve slept and supply a breakdown of deep, mild and REM sleep exercise. It isn’t a assure that you’ll get a sleep “score” or insights on the right way to get higher relaxation — that information is often discovered on dearer wearables. Additionally, as a result of these trackers aren’t designed for bedtime particularly — be conscious of consolation. The bands and watch face on a price range health tracker might not be splendid for getting some good shut-eye.
Connectivity and practicality
Not all exercise trackers, budget-friendly or not, are designed to seamlessly combine with a smartphone. The trackers examined for this roundup can’t instantly make calls or ship texts to contacts on a paired smartphone. They’ll, nevertheless, show and dismiss incoming calls and notifications by way of a Bluetooth connection. You possibly can overlook about checking your electronic mail or paying for a espresso out of your wrist utilizing these extra reasonably priced gadgets.
Most inexpensive health trackers additionally will not embody a built-in GPS. As a substitute, they often depend upon a paired smartphone to collect location information. The disadvantage of utilizing a health tracker with out GPS is that it won’t present as exact for monitoring distance or tempo. You can also’t use a price range tracker to get turn-by-turn instructions throughout a stroll or whereas operating errands. For the extra outdoorsy customers, having GPS could possibly be a key security characteristic if you need this sort of performance at your fingertips.
Design
You additionally would possibly discover that a cheap health tracker is more durable to navigate than a extra superior smartwatch. Whether or not or not it’s a display screen measurement challenge or just not having a sensible sufficient interface, do not anticipate each characteristic to be one which you could have interaction with instantly in your wrist. Oftentimes, you’ll need to tug out your smartphone to log info or entry extra in-depth well being information.
The standard and construct of shows and bands can even range on this class. Don’t anticipate the best decision OLED shows or the fanciest supplies within the bands. However you possibly can anticipate some degree of sweat and water resistance.
Finest low cost health trackers for 2024
Tracks: Coronary heart charge, sleep, stress, blood oxygen, girls’s well being | Supported Working System: Android 6.0 and above, iOS 12.0 and above | Reminiscence: 100GB | Display screen measurement: 1.62” | Waterproof: 5ATM water-resistant | GPS: No | Battery life: 16 days
The Xiaomi Sensible Band 8 stood out on many fronts — it not solely has the simplest interface to navigate when recording exercises, it additionally has essentially the most comfy band to sleep in. This system has just about every little thing you’ll anticipate on a health tracker, and it comes at a worth that’s laborious to beat. The 1.62-inch, 192 x 490 pill-shaped AMOLED show is full shade and shines fairly brilliant each indoors and out. Though it does not have a bodily navigation button, you possibly can transfer by means of the UI by swiping up and down, or left and proper.
The Sensible Band 8 is sort of comfy, however what actually made it safe the highest slot is how detailed its exercise reviews have been. In contrast to among the different trackers we examined, the Sensible Band 8 doesn’t require you to obtain any workouts from its companion app. Which means, you may get proper into monitoring workouts as area of interest as snowboarding. When a exercise is full, you get all the data you’d need in your wrist – from coronary heart charge readings to tempo and pace, to energy burned and extra. It might sound fundamental, however among the different trackers we examined solely report step rely and distance traveled after a stroll. The period of time spent in every coronary heart charge zone will seem in your abstract, from mild, intensive, cardio to anaerobic.
Xiaomi’s tracker additionally has a singular “Pebble” mode, which lets you clip on the tracker to shoelaces utilizing a particular case to collect operating and biking information. Utilizing Pebble mode, you may get a greater breakdown of the way you carried out throughout a dash -– particularly stats like flight ratio and floor contact time, together with normal details about your operating kind.
The tracker was straightforward to go to sleep with due to how light-weight and cozy it’s. The do-not-disturb characteristic is simple to activate from the watch face and I did not have any points with the display screen waking me up at evening. The sleep insights after sporting it in a single day impressed me with their element. Proper on my wrist, I used to be in a position to find out how lengthy I slept and likewise acquired an in depth sleep graph that confirmed me once I was in mild and deep sleep. This was all free, on my wrist and it was additional damaged down for me within the Mi app. I additionally was in a position to collect info on my common HR throughout sleep and my respiratory patterns.
Additionally, importantly, Xiamo’s spectacular battery claims checked out – the Sensible Band 8 solely wants half-hour on a charger earlier than being fueled up for about two weeks of use. I by no means anxious about not having the ability to monitor my exercise or sleep.
- Simple to navigate interface
- Full shade show
- Comfy design that helps Pebble mode
- Good health monitoring and sleep monitoring
- Lengthy battery life
- No bodily navigation button
Tracks: Coronary heart charge, sleep, stress, blood oxygen, girls’s well being | Supported Working System: Android 7.0 and above, iOS 12.0 and above | Reminiscence: 2.3GB | Display screen measurement: 1.47” | Waterproof: 5ATM water-resistant | GPS: No | Battery life: 18 days
The Amazfit Band 7, just like the Xiaomi Band 8, has all the exercises you possibly can monitor pre-loaded in your wrist. It additionally has a singular interface that permits you to set a customized aim, like burning 500 energy, earlier than beginning a exercise. Plus, it contains a beneficiant 18 days of battery life (or extra for those who allow battery-saver mode).
The Amazfit band has a particular scoring system known as PAI, which stands for “Personal Activity Intelligence.” This metric is derived out of your coronary heart charge throughout all actions (even ones that do not contain tracked exercises) and offers you a numeric rating from 1 to 100. You need to get your rating as near 100 as potential, by means of exercises and relaxation, to maintain your total coronary heart well being sturdy. Just like the Xiaomi Sensible Band 8, the Amazfit Band 7 offers a consumer a breakdown of their total coronary heart charge zone exercise on the watch face.
The watch additionally has a singular “one tap measure” that provides you insights into your coronary heart charge, blood oxygen ranges and even a stress rating primarily based in your coronary heart charge variability.
There are some downsides to the Band 7, although, particularly that it’s significantly slower than the Xiaomi Sensible Band 8 on the subject of beginning and ending train periods. It additionally doesn’t have a bodily navigation button, making it generally laborious to exit a web page. That will have been one thing I might have neglected if the watch’s show had been a bit on par with the Xiaomi Band 8’s. Regardless of having an AMOLED shade show, the Band 7’s display screen was generally laborious to view even indoors.
It does get brownie factors for being a bit extra comfy to sleep in than among the others we examined, however it nonetheless takes some getting used to. If you happen to do sleep with the Band 7 for every week although, you may get an in-depth sleep evaluation about your susceptibility for situations like sleep apnea. The caveat is that it is advisable to pay a premium for this extra detailed sleep report. By the Zepp app (previously Amazfit) you possibly can pay $10 month-to-month or $50 yearly for a premium subscription, which additionally contains meditation content material and an AI sleep coach.
- Helps customized aim setting per exercise
- Good exercise and sleep monitoring
- Comfy design
- Sluggish efficiency
- No bodily navigation button
Tracks: Coronary heart charge, sleep, stress, blood oxygen, girls’s well being | Supported Working System: Android 10.0 and above, iOS 15.0 and above | Reminiscence: 6.4GB | Display screen measurement: 0.7” | Waterproof: 5ATM water-resistant | GPS: No | Battery life: 10 days
I anticipated extra out of the Fitbit Encourage 3 as a result of, effectively, it’s Fitbit. Additionally, contemplating it is the most costly tracker on the checklist, you’ll assume you’ll get extra. The tracker does serve its function -– it might probably file your exercises. Nevertheless, solely 6 sorts of actions may be tracked at a time. So as to add extra area of interest workouts like a weight-lifting routine, it is advisable to open the Fitbit app and swap one train widget for an additional. It does give a rudimentary breakdown of your energy burned, coronary heart charge, and all the stuff you would usually need to get in a efficiency report. Compared to the Fitbit Cost 6, the Fitbit Encourage 3 doesn’t boast a built-in GPS, so it’s a must to take your cellphone with you to precisely file tempo or distance.
One factor I do recognize concerning the Fitbit Encourage 3 is its Energetic Zone Minute breakdown after a exercise is tracked. This can be a characteristic distinctive to Fitbit that calculates how laborious your exercises have been and the way a lot fats you burned within the course of. The app does a very good job of breaking down different well being metrics throughout train and might inform you how a lot restoration you want earlier than your subsequent exercise. It is good to have that info, however the truth that it is advisable to pull out your cellphone to get deeper insights generally is a nuisance.
The Encourage 3 additionally doesn’t mean you can instantly log menstrual cycle information on it, whereas the Xiaomi Band 8 and Amazfit Band 7 do. The battery life on this tracker is on par with what the corporate says, although. It costs to full in beneath 45 minutes and dies after about 10 days of use. So in between monitoring exercises and gathering sleep information, I didn’t have to fret a lot about lacking an evening of sleep monitoring to cost it in a single day. The Fitbit Encourage 3 is comfy to sleep with, possibly even barely extra comfy than the Amazfit Band 7, however the truth that its sleep teaching is simply accessible for premium Fitbit subscribers does take away from the attraction.
- Helps Energetic Zone Minutes monitoring
- Good battery life
- Comfy design
- Can not manually add menstrual cycle information instantly from the band
- Plenty of information hidden behind Fitbit Premium paywall
Different low cost health trackers we examined
Wyze Watch 47c
I did not have excessive expectations of the Wyze Watch 47c, however I used to be shocked at how little this tracker can do. The 47c can solely monitor walks and runs. It has a devoted widget, a small brand of a person operating, and whenever you faucet it, it begins measuring your tempo, coronary heart charge, energy burned and mileage. It doesn’t auto-detect or auto-pause exercises and it does not differentiate between a run and stroll. Most significantly, this system can’t monitor another workouts. It’s principally a glorified pedometer.
The 47c was additionally my least favourite to sleep with, primarily as a result of the sq. watch face is so massive and heavy. Even when I did handle to sleep by means of the evening with it on, it solely gave me a fundamental sleep report.
Garmin vivofit 4
The Garmin vivofit 4 has a tiny show that isn’t a touchscreen and all navigation occurs by means of one button. The watch face is inconceivable to learn outdoor and the train widget can be very finicky. To start out monitoring a run, it’s a must to maintain down the principle button and flip by means of some pages till you get to a shifting particular person icon. As soon as there, it’s a must to press the underside proper nook of the bar and maintain down and for those who press for too lengthy or within the improper spot, it’ll change to a different web page, like a stopwatch. It’s extremely irritating.
When you begin a run although, it’s going to begin monitoring your steps, your distance — and that is just about it. It doesn’t auto-detect or auto-pause exercises. It does not provide you with a warning of any mileage or calorie milestones.