• Garmin Cirqa users’ workouts are disappearing when they’re finished
• Garmin is apparently investigating the issue
• For now, there’s a temporary workaround that can help

We loved Garmin’s screenless Cirqa tracker when we reviewed it earlier this year, but that doesn’t mean it’s a perfect device. And that’s exactly what some Garmin users have discovered recently, with the device seemingly deleting many people’s workouts as soon as they’re finished.

The issue has surfaced in reports posted on Garmin’s support forum. There, users have complained that workouts are not logged when they are ended in a certain way, despite the Garmin Connect app showing the exercise in progress and the Cirqa wearable vibrating to indicate it has received the instruction to end the session.

Specifically, users noted that the problem arose if they began a workout using the dedicated button on their Cirqa, then ended it in the Connect app. When that happened, the session seemingly went missing. As one forum member put it, “If you start an activity with the button, you have to end it with the button.”

Garmin appears to be aware of the bug, with a company representative posting a potential solution on the forum. There, the rep said that “if an activity is started from the CIRQA, Garmin Connect may first display an ‘Activity in Progress’ message with Resume and End options. Selecting Resume opens the activity recording screen, where the activity can then be stopped and saved. Once the activity is saved and a sync has completed, it should appear in Garmin Connect.”

Confusion and frustration

What’s confusing about this bug — and what has clearly rankled many members in the Garmin forum — is how a logical action is having the opposite effect to the one that is expected. You would think that ending a workout in the Garmin Connect app should automatically log the workout’s details, regardless of whether the exercise was started in the app or on the Cirqa itself. Instead, the workout is apparently deleted.

The good news is that Garmin appears to be aware of the issue, as the company rep followed up with another message acknowledging that “Several users in this thread have reported losing activity data after selecting End from the initial prompt.”

They then explained that “We’ve shared the feedback mentioned in this thread internally for further review, and are reaching out to some users to gather additional information.” Despite that, there’s not yet any solid date for when a fix might arrive.

The news comes at the same time as another report of glitchy Garmin behavior (via the5krunner). People using the Garmin Fenix 9 smartwatch with Mac computers have noticed that the Garmin Express app — which updates the watch’s software and installs offline maps — is not compatible with the latest macOS 27 release. That’s because it’s not compatible with Apple silicon chips and requires Apple’s Rosetta 2 translation layer, which has been removed from macOS 27.

While most Fenix 9 functions can be managed in the Garmin Connect app, the Express app issue will still be irritating in some scenarios. In this instance, Garmin has said it is working on a fix.

If you’ve noticed disappearing workouts with the Cirqa wearable, though, there could be a longer wait, as Garmin has not announced when a patch might land. For now, you’ll have to remember to start and end workouts on the Cirqa itself or use the workaround provided by the Garmin forum rep.

While all eyes this week were on the launch of the Apple Watch Series 12, there are plenty of other wearables out there receiving tempting discounts that might turn your head. As we slowly march towards peak deals season, culminating in Black Friday, we're likely to see discounts on watches from Samsung, Garmin, Huawei and more.

Today it's Huawei's turn, with the excellent Huawei Watch Fit 5 Pro. Right now, you can get the Huawei Watch Fit 5 Pro discounted from £249.99 to just £199 at Amazon, in its black color. Orange and white options are available, but the discounts aren't quite as good. Check out the deal in full below:

Today's best Huawei Watch Fit 5 Pro deal

Why get this deal?

I personally tested this watch, running around the streets of Paris and comparing its stats to a top-tier Garmin Fenix 8 Pro on the other wrist, which costs around £1,000 (or did at the time). The Fenix 8 Pro is the best Garmin had to offer (or was, until the Garmin Fenix 9 Pro arrived), with its Elevate V5 premium heart rate sensor. Comparing the two watches, their respective average heart rate measurements differed by just 1bpm.

I can confirm that it's an accurate watch; the titanium casing looks and feels great to wear, and it's ideal for runners in particular due to a rich feature set. It's got virtual pacers with snappy animations to keep your runs on time, which is perfect for training through your winter arc, ready to hit some races in Spring.

I gave the watch 4.5 stars out of 5 in my Huawei Watch Fit 5 Pro review. It's a great value package, and it's now cheaper than ever, making it easy to recommend.

It's also easily mistaken for an Apple Watch at first glance, so if you're after a Series 12 but don't want to pay launch prices, this is an ideal buy over the Apple Watch SE 3. The only sticking point is that it doesn't work with third-party apps like Spotify and WhatsApp as well as other smartwatches do, and you have to sideload apps via Huawei's AppGallery.

• The Google Fitbit Air is getting some new features introduced with the Google Pixel Watch 5
• Health Guardian includes Insulin Resistance Trends, Blood Pressure Trends and Sleep Breathing Quality
• These features are not behind a Google Health Premium subscription, and are available on the Google Health app for free

The Google Fitbit Air is one of the best cheap fitness trackers, a $99.99 / £84.99 / AU$199 fitness band that offers a basic level of fitness tracking within its free tier, and an advanced AI-powered fitness coach with an additional premium subscription. We liked it at the free tier, although the app is a bit limited, and the premium experience will depend on your tolerance for interacting with chatbots.

However, both tiers are about to get a little bit better, which means the Fitbit Air is becoming even better value, with the addition of Google's new Health Guardian suite of features. The suite comprises a trio of tools, introduced earlier this year on the Google Pixel Watch 5. News site Gadgets & Wearables dug through version 5.07.2 of the app and found the three new features in the app's code.

Pixel Watches get four new tools rather than three, but Google's Breathing Emergency Detection requires the watch's emergency contact and notification infrastructure, which the screenless Fitbit Air doesn't have.

What's new

First up for the new tools is Insulin Resistance Trends. Insulin Resistance is an important metric, as it tells you how sensitively your body responds to blood sugar, and insulin resistance is of course a major precursor to type-2 diabetes. This metric "analyzes multi-week physiological data to track shifts in your metabolic health", pointing at resistance levels going up and down. However, for truly accurate blood sugar metrics, you'll need something like a continuous glucose monitor.

Next up is Blood Pressure Trends, which "passively measure your pulse and motion patterns throughout the month to estimate your blood pressure trends without requiring a cuff or manual calibration". Blood pressure via LED technology is very new to wearables, and it's amazing to see it in a device this cheap. However, it's worth noting this isn't a replacement for a cuff, just a likely indicator of trend. You'll still need regular measurement with either a cuff or a doctor's appointment for anything serious, but it can be an indication to start paying attention to your blood pressure.

Finally, Sleep Breathing Quality is a sleep feature showing you how much time you spent in 'optimal breathing' the night before. Google Health Coach, the AI chatbot you get in the app's premium tier, can offer advice about how to improve this based on your sleep score and other contextual information.

In fact, while you get the basic numbers for all three new metrics, the Google Health Coach can dip in and surface these stats to offer actionable advice. For example, you can use your Insulin Resistance Trends in combination with your nutrition logging to allow the coach to help you make a meal plan to bring that number down.

Worth buying?

While I'm not the biggest fan of Google's AI Health Coach, I did like the Fitbit Air as a whole, and new, useful, actionable metrics can only add to its already-excellent value proposition.

Whoop can estimate daily blood pressure ranges, but it doesn't offer an Insulin Resistance Trends metric, for example, whereas the Garmin Cirqa doesn't cover blood pressure estimates or insulin. Both competitor wearables have SPO2 blood oxygen sensors, however.

Health Guardian tools are only general indicators of your body's trends. However, if any of these metrics matter to you, for many people the Google Fitbit Air is cheap enough that these new features could be an incentive to pick one up over its more expensive rivals.

The Apple Watch Series 12 and its big sibling, the Apple Watch Ultra 4, were the latest wearables announced alongside the iPhone Duo at Apple’s ‘Surprise and Shine’ event, and the array of new health features haven’t let me down.

Though I didn’t get the design upgrades I was hoping for (I wanted Apple to do a 180-degree turn and debut a completely fresh look for its watches), we got some smart new color options in the process. But that aside, the new monitoring tools do more than make up for the lack of visual upgrades — they’re smarter, insightful, and more personal than ever.

It’s hard to tell if all the new wellbeing tracking tools will be available for previous models — for anything powered by Apple Intelligence, it’s likely that these will remain native to the Series 12 and Ultra 4 — but we still think they’ll make for welcomed additions for health-conscious users.

On-camera fitness testing

As part of the wider Health app revamp, health monitoring using the Apple Watch paired with the iPhone's camera is a new feature, starting with full body assessments. The assessments allow the Health app to measure VO2 max — the the maximum amount of oxygen your body can use while exercising, a key measure of fitness — along with flexibility, strength, balance, and movement mechanics.

All you have to do is prop your iPhone vertically against a wall so that your whole body fits in the frame, and it will get you to follow a coach-guided workout. Apple says in order to measure VO2 max, you’ll need an Apple Watch, AirPods Pro 3, or a third-party heart rate sensing device.

Health Age

Apple is slightly behind on the Health Age feature — Garmin and Whoop got there first with Fitness Age and Whoop Age, respectively — but it’s finally coming to Apple Watch.

Health Age can be found under the new Longevity tab in the Health app, a hub for displaying deeper insights for different health topics including heart health, mental wellbeing, nutrition, and hearing health.

Your Health Age reading takes different aspects of your health profile into account and combines them into one score to show how your metrics compare to the average health and fitness level for your age and gender.

Health Sensing System

This is a technical upgrade to the Apple Watch itself, and a welcomed improvement to how the wearable reads your health data.

Both the Apple Watch Series 12 and the Apple Watch Ultra 4 come fitted with new LED sensor arrays designed for better skin contact, including a new heart-rate sensor for more accurate heart rate and heart rate variability (HRV) measurements — which helps to determine the new Readiness score, which we'll discuss in a moment.

Under the new sensors are larger green LEDs, which now measure your heart rate up to every five seconds, all day long. Apple claims that it's the most accurate heart rate measurement on any wearable, and it can back this up with testing results. We can't wait to try it ourselves against an electrical heart rate monitor.

Readiness Score

Much like the Health Age metric, the new Readiness Score is a tool that's been widely adopted by rival wearables in the past — and now it’s Apple’s turn.

Diving into your Vitals, Sleep Score, recent activity, and other metrics, you'll be presented with a score from 0-10, along with a brief explanation to tell you if your watch thinks you need to pace yourself, or if you have the capacity to push yourself further.

It's a clever and handy tool that could stop you from overtraining, or change your plans to fit in a long run on a day in which you're ready for action. Readiness also updates multiple times a day as your Apple Watch gathers new data, telling you exactly what's affecting your overall score.

Insights tab

The Health app's new Insights tab looks very comprehensive. Throughout the day, Insights displays timely information about your health metrics including heart, sleep, readiness, fitness, vitals, and cycle tracking data.

It gives you short summaries about how different fitness categories are impacting your long-term health, while the 'For You' section offers personalized recommendations and even relevant health articles based on your data.

This year has been chock-full of great smartwatch releases from the major players; the latest crops of Samsung, Google, Fitbit, and Amazfit watches. We had the Garmin Fenix 9 and Garmin Fenix 9 Pro at the high-end of the adventure watch category (and pricing range, some costing upwards of four-figure dollars or pounds), and soon the latest Apple Watches, with the Apple Watch Series 12 and (according to rumor) the Apple Watch Ultra 4.

However, I've had the most fun this year with a watch that costs just £55 / AU$119 (around $75).

The Casio F-B100W is a digital quartz watch which connects to your phone via Casio's Mobile Link Bluetooth function, providing a handful of techy features. So I guess you could say it's technically a smartwatch. Looks-wise, it's very similar to the classic, outrageously cheap F-91W, only a little bigger and packing a fourth button on the side rather than the F-91W's usual three.

The F-91W is beloved among watch nerds as a reliable, cheap 'beater' watch you can where anywhere. We've written about it in the past — it was worn by a young Barack Obama, due to its reliable timekeeping and seven-year battery life it was even used as a bomb timer by Al-Qaeda, and its got serious counterculture appeal due to its low-tech defiance of modern trends and the analog revival.

I'm a great advocate of having a 'beater' watch to throw on and wear during gardening, DIY, construction work or any time you want a break from your smartwatch. However, I've always thought the F-91W looked like a child's toy on the average person's wrist, with a tiny size of just 38.2 × 35.2 × 8.5 mm. The F-B100W is slightly bigger at 41.9 × 38.1 × 8.8 mm, a difference of less than 4mm, but it goes a long way towards feeling more like a watch.

It packs more features than the F-91W: as well as a timer, stopwatch, LED and alarm functionalities, it's got dual-time zone features and some very basic fitness tracker functionality thanks to its Bluetooth capabilities: notably, a step counter.

Not only do your steps display on the watch's LCD screen, but it also feeds your steps into the Casio Watches app, where you can see historic graphs of your steps across weekly and monthly views. In this way it acts as a virtual pedometer, just like the original Fitbit did before things got complicated. It also, unbelievably, has a Find My Phone feature, activated by holding the bottom-right button down.

And that's it. It's a stripped-down Bluetooth watch which looks like a classic Casio, with the most basic of fitness tracking functionalities, a useful Find My Phone feature and a two-year battery life. Reader, I am in love.

It's an absolute belter of a watch for the price. I enjoyed taking it for a five-mile hike and watching my step count tick up, and it's extremely light on the wrist at 26g. I've always liked the look of Casio watches, and as someone who perpetually misplaces almost everything I own, the Find My Phone feature is a near-essential tool. I like that it's got a step counter broken down by graphs, but I also like that this is the only fitness tracking functionality it has, apart from the timer and stopwatch — which are in themselves ideal features for interval training, or timing rest periods in the gym.

In an era of all-singing, all-dancing smart technology that tracks everything, and often requires a subscription to sell your own data back to you, it reminds me of a simpler time in wearable technology. It's not a great contributor to surveillance capitalism like lots of wearable tech these days (beyond having to make a Casio account): it's just a fun digital pedometer, and is good value enough to be a 'fun' purchase for many people, rather than a serious investment.

It's accurate, as you can set the time of the watch with your phone and the digital quartz movement is notoriously reliable, and will cost you nothing more than £55 / AU$119 (around $75) and a cheap watch battery every two years — a pack of 10 might run you about $5.99 / £4.99 / AU$8.99.

The F-B100W is sold out on Casio.com right now in the UK, and is "coming soon" in Australia. It's not yet available in the US, but keep your eyes peeled for restocks — this archaic-looking, secretly-smart digital watch is the stripped-back digital pedometer you never knew you needed.

• Brazilian regulatory filings might have just leaked the Garmin Cirqa
• Ten variants of the smart ring were included in the documents
• It suggests the device might be close to launching

In recent months, we’ve seen quite a few tidbits consisting of news and leaks surrounding Garmin’s unannounced Cirqa Smart Ring, and it’s starting to feel increasingly likely that the company is about to launch a new product to take on the likes of Samsung and Oura.

As spotted by Gadgets & Wearables, a new certification listing on the website of the Brazilian National Telecommunications Agency has revealed a spate of mysterious product codes, all of which were filed by Garmin on the same day.

The codes all sit underneath the same certification listing, which implies that they could be different models of the same product – perhaps different colors or sizes, for example. Probably different sizes, as many other smart rings cover sizes ranging from 3-5 or 13-15, and that might be the key clue that points towards this product’s true identity.

If it is indeed the Cirqa Smart Ring, it would be Garmin’s first attempt at a device like this and the second in the Cirqa line. It would follow the Cirqa band, which thoroughly impressed us when we reviewed it earlier this year, and would be designed to take on Oura and Samsung, which are currently responsible for some of the best smart rings on the market.

Not long to go

Couldn’t the devices in the Brazilian certification documents be Garmin watches rather than smart rings? After all, Garmin has never acknowledged that it’s even making a smart ring, so how do we know this listing points to that seemingly top-secret device?

While we can’t be sure, the fact that there are ten separate models appears to point towards a smart ring. A watch wouldn’t need so many different variants, as you’d normally only have a couple of different sizing options. A smart ring, though? They tend to come with far more variations to account for the different finger sizes users will have.

One of the model numbers in the Brazilian listing was AA5124. This number also surfaced in a leak in August, whereby a Garmin product explicitly named the Cirqa Smart Ring appeared in Indonesian regulatory filings. Also included in that filing was an unknown device with the AA5124 model number, suggesting it was part of the same family. With AA5124 appearing among the ten variants in the latest leak, the links to the Cirqa are strengthened.

There’s no solid estimation of when the Cirqa might finally be released, so we’ll have to keep waiting for now. But with the strong suggestion that the Cirqa has just appeared in another official certification process, we might not have long to go.

I hold my hands up. I got this one wrong. In 2022, when Garmin announced the headline feature for the Garmin Fenix 7X was an LED flashlight, I might have had a bit of a chuckle to myself about it.

Since moving to multiple model sizes for its premium outdoor smartwatch, the largest ‘X’ models quickly came to represent the introduction of exciting, cutting-edge innovations that then start to filter down to the rest of the best Garmin watches. But I wasn;t convinced a multi-LED flashlight on the top of the watch case was something prospective Garmin watch owners should get excited about.

Garmin claimed it would be a “game-changer for sport, adventure and daily life”. In the early weeks of testing the 7X, that wasn’t my experience. I’d quite quickly written it off as rather gimmicky. The question I kept on asking myself was; ‘why would I choose it over reaching for the pretty good LED flashlight I have on my phone?’

It probably wasn’t until being out of that testing bubble of a month with the 7X and I started simply living with it, that my opinion began to change. I was using it more and more each week.

It probably wasn’t until being out of that testing bubble of a month with the 7X and I started simply living with it, that my opinion began to change. I was using it more and more each week.

It started to become the flashlight I used when trying to quietly hunt out charging cables at night moving around my flat without turning on the main light and getting a telling-off. I didn’t need to be a further nuisance and look for my phone because I already had an exceptionally bright light on my wrist. Then it became the source of light on darker sections of my nighttime running routes or helping me to navigate my way back home from the gym. When I was dabbling in some DIY, it was less awkward to use than a phone to line up fixings.

I began to appreciate that Garmin didn’t just slap on a flashlight because it could. It wanted to show how useful a wrist-based source of light could be. I now also had a flashlight I could set to strobe or match my running cadence to improve visibility. It could also switch from white to red light for a still bright, yet less intrusive way to illuminate what lay ahead and around me.

As Garmin moved to share the flashlight love to other watches in its range, it also continued to evolve its abilities to become smarter. Now when I went out for a run or walk after sunset, the watch would display a prompt to turn on the strobe mode to make sure I was thinking about staying seen as day turned into night. There’s a distress mode that when set up from the Garmin Connect app, can display emergency contact information on screen while flashing an SOS light pattern.

It’s no big surprise that rival watchmakers thought it was a great idea too. Suunto, Coros, Amazfit and Polar now all have torch-toting smartwatches.

Are there any downsides of having a flashlight on a smartwatch? Well, it does mean creating more space on the watch case for it. That’s likely why so far it’s mainly been included on larger more rugged watches like the Suunto Vertical 2, Amazfit Cheetah 2 Pro and the Polar Street X, although Garmin has managed to plant it onto its slimmer Forerunner and Venu series watches.

Another consideration is battery life. Running a flashlight while also using GPS or any other onboard watch sensors will contribute to that battery drain, but unless you’re planning to keep it switched on continuously for hours, I’m not sure the type of battery life drop you’ll experience is going to be anything to be massively worried about.

How could it become even smarter? I think Garmin in particular has shown it can be more ingrained with your current environment or the time of day. Further integrating with safety features is an obvious one. Especially for anyone that goes on solo adventures. Could we get a UV mode or even be one strong enough to start a fire for that added outdoor appeal? As smartwatch makers focus on making brighter watch displays, should the same happen for the built-in flashlight?

When it feels like there’s more of a focus on breaking new health tracking ground or cramming our lives and screens with more metrics , it’s easy to forget about some of the simpler gadgets that makes a smartwatch a useful thing to own. I’d now put the LED flashlight in the bracket of things I hope to see on any new smartwatch. We’ve not seen one on an Apple Watch Ultra model yet, so maybe that’s to come. I’ve definitely seen the light and it’s in the form of a feature I thought had gimmick written all over it. How wrong I was.

• Smart ring company Circular reveals its Circular Ring 3 series
• The series contains the more powerful Circular Ring 3 Pro and the slender Ring 3 Slim
• Both rings contain NFC contactless payments in addition to health monitoring tools, with the 3 Pro offering blood pressure and ECG functionalities

The best smart rings are usually stuffed with health-monitoring features, such as the Oura Ring 5, while some models are specifically focused on a single dedicated task. These include blood pressure monitoring (like the Vital Signal Ring) or NFC payments, acting as a tiny digital wallet that lets you use your contactless credit cards.

The Circular Ring 3 series manages to do it all, cramming blood pressure and NFC payment features into a health-monitoring Oura rival. The Circular Ring 3 Pro is a smart ring that 'bridges health, wellness and everyday convenience' by incorporating an FDA-cleared electrocardiogram (ECG) heart sensor, activity and sleep tracking with lifestyle features.

These include haptic feedback vibrations used for health alerts and silent wake-up alarms set up via the app, and NFC contactless payments supporting VISA and Mastercard. Finally, you can Jedi-handwave your way through train stations like you've (well, I've) always wanted.

Comprised of plated titanium, the Ring 3 Pro packs up to 12 days of battery life and 5-6 additional charge cycles when used with the case. It weighs just 3-4g, depending on size.

There's also a Circular Ring 3 Slim, which is (as the name suggests) slimmer by around 0.5mm, which may not sound like much, but is a big deal in terms of ring thickness. You still get health monitoring features, haptic feedback, and NFC support, but ECG and blood pressure features are unavailable.

Too good to be true?

On the surface, the Circular Ring 3 Pro sounds incredible. However, with pricing yet to be announced and pre-orders yet to go live, I'd need to know more before adding it to our best smart rings list.

For one thing, we reviewed the Circular Ring 2 earlier this year and found the software somewhat lacking. Our reviewer Becca Caddy wrote, "Unfortunately, the experience is undermined by unreliable syncing, unfinished features and an app that’s confusing to navigate." Circular needs to overhaul its app if it's going to take on Oura.

Second, although its ECG is FDA-cleared, blood pressure calculated through LED technology has only recently been cracked by Apple with its Hypertension feature, Huawei with its Watch D series, and the Signal ring. Otherwise, devices that claim to monitor blood pressure rely on extrapolation from other metrics to varying degrees of success.

Can the Circular Ring 3's advertised feature succeed against strong, new competition from Apple and others? I'm not sure, but the only way to know is to test it out when it finally drops.

Tech companies always love to make big claims. Like the one Google made about the Pixel Watch 5: promised health, wellness and Wear OS improvements aside, there was one feature that my ears pricked up for. Google stated that the Pixel Watch 5 included its most accurate GPS route tracking for exercise. More interestingly, Google said that tracking outperformed the Apple Watch Ultra 3 and the Garmin Fenix 8 Pro.

I’ve used both of those smartwatches and I can confidently say they are two of the best performing smartwatches available for GPS route tracking. I’ve listened to other smartwatch brands talk big about Apple and Garmin-beating performance. Did I really believe Google was going to deliver? I was sceptical, given my experience of the GPS tracking on previous Pixel Watches.

But I still had my Fenix 8 Pro and Watch Ultra 3, which made for the perfect opportunity to see these promised performance gains for myself. Having just recently made it through the millions in the ballot to secure a spot in the double-day 2027 London Marathon, my mind immediately went to the part of the marathon route I know causes major issues with GPS.

I grabbed my watches, jumped on a train, and then onto the DLR tram service to the Isle of Dogs, where the nearby tall skyscrapers always create difficult GPS conditions. I ran miles 18-20 of the London Marathon course, and then did it in reverse, to put the Pixel Watch 5’s big GPS claims to the test.

How exactly does the Google Pixel Watch 5’s new GPS work?

Before getting into how the testing went, it’s worth drilling down into just how Google says its GPS tracking outperforms the competition. Like the Fenix 8 Pro and Watch Ultra 3, the Pixel Watch 5 includes dual-band GPS. This means it can communicate to major satellites responsible for calculating our precise locations over two frequency bands. This can help to boost tracking accuracy when moving through tall buildings, densely forested environments and even during adverse weather conditions.

Dual band GPS setups have started to appear across a range of smartwatches and in my own testing, dual band-packing watches from Apple, Garmin and Suunto have delivered the strongest performance.

Along with the latest in GPS technology in tow, Google says it uses data it has already captured of buildings in Google Maps alongside AI to better account for the areas where GPS signals bounce off buildings. It also used GPS reference stations it has positioned around the world to help deal with the impact that atmospheric conditions can have on GPS tracking.

If you’ve used a smartwatch with GPS, then you’ll know it’s a feature that does have a notable impact on battery drain. This is something Google had to think about here. Google has made the decision to compress the raw GPS data captured on the watch and then send it to a server where it’s processed and corrected, then synced to the Google Health app. So the processing mainly take place off the watch or after your run, ride or hike.

How I tested

I decided I’d do two runs. The first would be starting from mile 18 up to mile 20 on the London Marathon course and go a little further to run 5k. I’d then stop the watches and do the route in reverse.

I had a trimmed down version of the marathon route uploaded to my Garmin Fenix 8 Pro as it was the easiest watch to do it on. I also decided that I would wear the Pixel Watch 5 on one wrist and then swap over to the other for the second run, while having the Apple Watch Ultra 3 and Fenix 8 Pro sat on the opposite wrist. I had to make sure that the two smartwatches weren’t sitting too close together to prevent any accidental button presses that might impact on capturing the correct distance.

It’s also worth adding that I decided to use native workout tracking apps on all three watches to record runs.

The results

On the first run, I had the Pixel Watch 5 on my right wrist with the Apple Watch Ultra 3 and the Garmin Fenix 8 Pro on the left wrist. I uploaded the routes to the very handy comparison tool IloveGPX. Before that though, I had to convert the route file captured by the Pixel Watch 5 from a TCX file to a GPX one. Thankfully it was quite easy.

Even before I began zooming into the GPS tracks I could already see some red squiggles, which belonged to the Garmin Fenix 8 Pro. On closer inspection, all three watches were pretty close to each other before the Fenix 8 Pro track started to noticeably drift off. Google and Apple’s tracks for the majority of the run remain close together.

I actually went a little off-route and ran longer than planned as some parts of the route were partly closed off. That meant an extra loop or two of that problematic GPS signal spot.

Moving onto Trafalgar Way, having passed Billingsgate Market and towards that final mile, and the three tracks come back together. There’s still time for Garmin’s track to veer slightly off course though, as I made my way to the end of the route in Poplar.

Looking at the distance tracked, I ended up running longer than the planned 5k route, and the Apple Watch Ultra 3 and Google Pixel Watch 5 recorded similar distance data — with the Fenix 8 Pro measuring longer with a difference of 0.2 miles/0.3km.

The average speed of the run was again similar on the Watch Ultra 3 and Pixel Watch 5, with the Garmin reporting a slower average speed.

On the second run, I switched the Pixel Watch 5 over to my left wrist and moved the Fenix and Apple Watch over to the right. I ran this run a little quicker than the first. At the beginning of the run, all three tracks remained together. Then as I started to approach those towering buildings around Canary Wharf once again, the Apple and Garmin tracks started to lose their way. Meanwhile, the Pixel Watch 5’s tracks manage to stick closest to the actual route I’d run. It’s not immune to issues, however, especially when I hit around Heron Quays and Bank Street Canary Wharf.

Looking over the distance tracked again and the three smartwatches post three different records. The Garmin again tracks longer, with the Apple Watch Ultra 3 being closest to the planned 5k route. It’s the Garmin that has me running a quicker-than-average pace throughout the run.

GPS tracks are only one part of the story

For anyone that’s run the London Marathon (or any race for that matter), it’s not just about distance covered. Pacing matters. Especially if you’re been training to chase down a particular finish time.

Bad GPS route tracking data can impact on pace data. Having run the London Marathon before, those GPS problems will cause your locating tracking to skip, suggesting you’re clocking off those miles quicker than you’re actually travelling.

That’s also why I paid attention to my current and average pace data on the three watches, as well as looking at how that pacing was broken down post-run.

During the run, the pacing fluctuated across all three watches. I found the Pixel Watch 5 had a tendency to struggle getting pacing data right at the beginning of the two runs before settling down after. It was a similar story for Apple and Garmin as well. They all seemed to struggle in the section of the route I’d expected them to.

Looking at the post-run data in the respective companion apps, the Pixel Watch 5 did indicate some quicker paces that I’d felt I’d run as well.

Are Google’s claims about the Pixel Watch 5’s GPS justified ?

I’m not going to say the Pixel Watch 5 is definitively a GPS great after two relatively short runs in albeit very challenging GPS conditions. What I will say is that I was pretty surprised by the results. I had fully expected the Pixel Watch 5 to flounder, but it was actually the most reliable in plotting my actual running route. The Apple Watch Ultra 3 also did well, while the Fenix 8 Pro had some wild moments in the produced GPS tracks.

I think if you’re mainly interested in having a record of your precise route, then this innovation is going to impress. I’d say hikers will certainly like the idea of it.

From a running perspective, specifically from a racing point of view, I’d also want accurate pacing to go with that strong route tracking in real-time too. I’m not wholly convinced the pacing data is as spotless as the route tracking seems to be. Maybe that’s something Google will look at for the next watch or even tighten up with a software update.

The Pixel Watch 5’s new GPS signals an important breakthrough for how smartwatches can deliver more accurate route tracking. Google’s access to an abundance of positioning data, along with the improvements it’s making with AI clearly play their part in making this type of leap in smartwatch GPS technology.

It’s definitely given me food for thought as I choose which smartwatch I step on that London start line with next April, that’s for sure.

• Whoop launches Meridian, its jewelry-inspired fitness tracker
• It's essentially a Whoop 5.0 with Milanese metal mesh and premium metallic finishes
• It 'keeps the same sensor array and tracking accuracy as the standard band'

If there's one thing Whoop hates, it's people taking their fitness trackers off. After all, you're losing valuable data.

That's why the Whoop MG comes with a charging puck that clips directly onto the wearable as you wear it, and it's why you get push notifications from the Whoop app whenever you remove the tracker, telling you it's 'off body'. But there are occasions when a fabric Whoop band would be inappropriate to wear — a wedding, perhaps, or a fancy dinner.

Enter Whoop Meridian: a sleek metallic fitness tracker with a Milanese mesh band and tapered silhouette, designed to look more like jewelry than gym.

According to Whoop, 'Meridian is designed to solve one of the biggest gaps in health wearables: the fact that most people take theirs off exactly when continuous tracking matters (sleep quality outside routine, recovery on off days, stress during social events).'

It offers the same sensors and tracking accuracy as a standard Whoop 5.0, and can be purchased as an additional accessory rather than a complete Whoop, if you so choose. In theory, Whoop members can swap their standard tracker for their Meridian band when needed and continue seamlessly tracking from day to night.

It's available in four colors: Gold, Rose Gold, Alloy (a generic metallic finish), and Black. It's priced at $149 / £119 / AU$229, and is available from today (Thursday 27 August).

Wearables have tried to capture the jewelry aesthetic before, to varying degrees of success: notably the Fitbit Luxe and Apple with the Hermes editions of its best Apple Watches.

However, I quite like the look of these Whoop bands: some shades like Rose Gold and Gold simply look like bracelets, while the darker, more robust colors almost feel like watch straps. If you can't stand to lose hours of valuable data, this could be a stylish solution.

Argos has launched its Big Red Tech Sale, featuring all manner of smart home products from air fryers to vacuum cleaners — but hidden amongst the deals on home tech are a lot of terrific smartwatch bargains.

These range from the latest Apple Watch SE 3 and Huawei Watch Fit 5 Pro (which we rated 4.5 stars in our review) to older models. There's incredible deals on Garmins, including the five-star Garmin Fenix 8 Pro and the much cheaper Garmin Forerunner 265, which I wore during my first marathon. You can even save £10 off the £49.99 Huawei Band 11 fitness tracker!

You'll need to apply the correct code at checkout for each of the deals below — either RED10 or RED20, saving you 10% or 20% of the listed price respectively — and I've listed each code for you under the "view details" tab for each product, but you'll also be able to see the codes once you click through to Argos' webpage.

Today's best Argos Big Red Tech Sale smartwatch deals

After months of leaks, rumours and anticipation, Garmin unveiled its full Fenix 9 smartwatch range, including the Fenix 9 Pro, and I was in Chamonix for all the action. Immediately after the press conference, I strapped a shiny new Fenix 9 Pro onto my left wrist and hit the trails to find out if it can really live up to the hype.

For the past two years, the Garmin Fenix 8 has been widely considered the best performance smartwatch money can buy. I rated it as the best premium watch for hikers after wearing it for the 11-day trek to Everest Base Camp, and things only got better when the Fenix 8 Pro came along with integrated inReach technology.

Over the past few months, as rumours swirled that the 9 was imminent, I found myself wondering what the brand could really do to improve upon such a brilliant gadget, besides increasing battery life and slimming the case down. Would today’s announcement produce any meaningful changes, or just cosmetic upgrades?

After only a few hours with it, I’d be lying if I said I’ve reached my final verdict, but I’ve already found some epic features that are available in both the Fenix 9 and 9 Pro, plus a few I need to spend more time with.

Testing the Fenix 9 Pro

I got my hands on the Fenix 9 Pro with a 43mm case and summery Shell Pink strap. Whereas the Fenix 8 Pro only comes in either a 47mm or a ginormous 51mm size that looks positively ridiculous on my wrist, the dainty 43mm case turns this into a watch I’d wear all the time, not just for the trails.

This model has a titanium case and bezel (the Fenix 9 is made with a blend of fiber-reinforced polymer and titanium). It’s made using nano moulding technology, and it all makes for a noticeably lighter and more streamlined feel – it’s about 16% thinner than the Fenix 8 in the same size.

The AMOLED display is also significantly easier to view, and in comparison, my Fenix 8 Pro suddenly looks rather dim. The Fenix 9 is twice as bright as its predecessor, and the 9 Pro is up to 3,000 NITS, all of which means I didn’t find myself squinting in either bright sunny or low light conditions.

If you do decide to go for the 51mm size, you’ll get an absolutely cracking display as it’s the first Fenix to feature a 1.5-inch AMOLED screen.

An epic upgrade

By far and away, the feature I’m most excited about is Garmin Epic, which allows you to group together activities and metrics. If you like adventures that last for days or weeks, you’re going to love it too.

Rather than just a gratuitous adventure journal like the one found in the Coros Nomad, Garmin Epic lets you see the cumulative impact of multiple workouts, whether that’s a multi-day trail run or backpacking excursion, an active holiday, a ski trip or a marathon training block. It also shows each run or hike on a single map, so for example if you were to hike the West Highland Way over a week, you’d be able to view it as a single workout.

To start to test Garmin Epic straight away, I decided to divide today’s adventure up into two separate activities. I used Rucking mode to head about 5k up one of my favourite trails in Chamonix, then ended the activity and switched to Trail Running for my descent.

Once in Rucking mode, I started a new Epic within the activity settings, which I just called Chamonix. When I got back to my hotel, after a little searching, I found my Chamonix Epic under Activities in the Garmin Connect app and added both activities as well as a short hike I went on this morning. Already I can see my total distance and elevation for this trip at a glance, view stats like calories and heart rate, and I’ll be able to add tomorrow’s run to it as well for a little capsule of everything I’ve done on the trails this trip.

Epic includes metrics such as sleep, recovery and performance gains, and you can log activities under one epic for up to 92 days, so it’s ideal for anyone working towards a particular training goal. I only wish I had this feature last year when I was training for Everest Base Camp, and for the trek itself, where I’d have loved to have been able to see my distance, elevation and performance stats all in one cohesive presentation.

Green light gets the green light

Garmin might boast all the top-of-the-line training tools and software, but the LED torch is almost everyone’s favourite feature – including mine. Once winter rolls around, I’m heavily reliant on the red light function when I’m getting up for a run in the dark and don’t want to disturb my sleeping partner. Now, my night vision is going to be even better.

Earlier this year, Amazfit added a green light function to the T-Rex Ultra 2 on the premise that, while red light is better for your eyes, green light makes it easier to see objects and the nature of the terrain, which is why hunters prefer it. Clearly, Garmin has the same idea.

I went back out after dark to test the green light function, and it is significantly better than the red light at illuminating the trail. For those runs and runs that go long, I’ll still use white light to navigate after dark, but the green light is the clear winner for fumbling around campsites at night.

A shift in perspective

Garmin’s maps are easily the best out of any smartwatch brand I’ve tested, and I can’t say I felt that they desperately needed to be improved upon, and yet the 9 comes with maps that render 30% faster than the Fenix 8, while the 9 Pro renders 40% faster than the 8 Pro.

Was I bowled over by the difference in speed? Not really, but there are some clear advantages to the new map engine, and overall it makes for a very smooth navigation experience.

Eager to hit the trail as quickly as possible, I quickly created my route in Garmin Connect and set off. Even though I’m testing the smallest case size available (43mm), the map was easy to see and follow, and there was almost no lag at all when I wanted to zoom in or out.

For my return trip, rather than use the Back to Start function, I decided to use the Explore Nearby function to see if I could find my hotel and create a route back. Without any delay at all, my hotel popped up, and soon I was trotting back down the mountain.

When I got back into town, the streets felt a little chaotic, so I switched the map orientation from the default North Up – the usual mode where you’re looking down at your route from above – to Perspective mode. This essentially tilts the map up slightly so it’s more like you’re looking at the route ahead, and it makes it a little easier to see what’s coming up, something I think gets more important the faster you want to move.

What else is new?

The upgrades to Rucking mode are worth a mention here. Last year, Garmin introduced Pack Weight logging, and now they’ve added the ability to edit your pack weight while you’re on the move, set calorie goals and follow rucking workouts thanks to a collaboration with Go Ruck.

I tested the pack weight editing and set myself a goal of 500 calories today, which was all straightforward, but I was mostly interested to see the difference between the calories I’d burned through the actual hiking and the additional calories from my pack. I don’t go rucking as an activity by itself, but for long jaunts with a heavy pack, it could help me fuel accordingly.

One thing that needs work

I haven’t been able to get rerouting to work yet in maps, and I’m not seeing much data yet in the enhanced Stamina tracking, which promises to use stats like VO2 max, lactate threshold and training history to calculate your maximum tolerable distance to help you with pacing. I’m going to chalk those up to it being day zero, and the fact that the brand was pushing out new features at the same time as I was testing. But there was one big disappointment for me, and that was the watch’s battery life.

There’s no doubt that with up to 151 hours in Max Battery mode, the 51mm Fenix 9 Pro has a better battery than the 51mm Fenix 8 Pro, but because I’ve gone for a more wrist-appropriate case size, I’ve lost even more battery power than I would have anticipated.

My watch started out at 83%, and after two hours on the trail it was down to a paltry 66%. At that rate, on a multi-day trek I’d be looking at charging this daily, making it even less powerful than my Fenix 8 and rather reducing its potential as an adventure watch. Of course, you can get around this by simply buying a bigger case size, but it would be great to see Garmin working on a watch for small wrists and big adventures.

Just as smartwatches — like phones — were starting to get dull, with incremental upgrades every year and people beginning to tire of wearing screens, along comes a plethora of high-profile category disrupters to help people track their fitness without getting notifications on their wrists.

These 'focus' wearables are becoming more popular by the week, and I'm seeing more and more screenless trackers in gyms, on the start lines of local races, and out and about in town. It's no longer unusual to see someone wearing an analog watch on one hand, and a fabric-wrapped fitness band on the other — or a discreet smart ring on the index finger.

Without further ado, check out my picks of the coolest screenless fitness trackers to buy right now, from the trending Garmin Cirqa and Google Fitbit Air to little-known gems like the Amazfit Helio Strap and RingConn Gen 3 — then read on to find out why you should get one.

The best screenless fitness trackers of 2026

Why get a screenless fitness tracker?

Screenless smart bands and smart rings are having a moment. They aren't necessarily new — Whoop and Oura have been around for ages, but both are traditionally premium devices relying on subscriptions. Now, with the release of other smart rings and high-profile competitor bands from the likes of Google and Garmin, people have lots of different options for every budget.

Cheaper devices include the super-popular Google Fitbit Air and the lesser-known Amazfit Helio Strap wristbands. You can watch my video review of the Google Fitbit Air below — it's lovely and discreet, weighing just five grams.

Subscribing to the AI-powered premium tier is totally optional too, while the Amazfit Helio Strap is perfectly serviceable without a subscription at all.

My pick of the bands, however, is the recently launched Garmin Cirqa. The Cirqa is a great device, taking the basic Whoop concept and adding a tactile start-stop button as well as stronger haptic feedback. It also interfaces with the excellent Garmin Connect app to give you useful training information without as much clutter as Fitbit's Google Health app and its AI chatbot tier. No subscriptions here, either, unless you want coaching.

You can watch our video review of the Garmin Cirqa below.

As for smart rings, Oura and Samsung remain the twin jewels of this category, but they're facing competition from upstarts like RingConn and its RingConn Gen 3. Our reviewer said the Gen 3 had "excellent battery life, comprehensive health tracking and a comfortable design, all without a monthly subscription".

However, the Oura Ring 5 is a new launch for this year, and despite its premium price, the Oura platform has become an impressive AI-powered health tool with all sorts of features, from bloodwork insights to user-generated tags like 'bath', 'meditation' or 'meeting' providing context to your fluctuating stress levels. Check out our Oura Ring 5 video review below.

You might be looking at the Apple Watch Ultra 3 or Garmin Fenix 8 and balking at the cost of fitness watches these days, but tracking your health doesn't have to empty your wallet. There are plenty of terrific budget options, and below we've listed six of the best, all of which you can find for under $100.

There's the Xiaomi Smart Band 10, which tops our general guide to the best cheap fitness trackers and offers plenty of fitness modes and handy lifestyle features, all for a very affordable price. You'll also find the new-for-2026 Google Fitbit Air — a trending AI-powered screenless device and Whoop competitor worthy of inclusion. If you bought into its optional premium subscription, that would take it over the $100 mark, but it serves just fine as a basic, discreet wellness tracker without it and the option to subscribe is always there should you want more. On the other hand, its rival the Amazfit Helio Strap doesn't actually need a subscription at all.

Staying with Amazfit, the Amazfit Active 2 got a massive five stars when we reviewed it last year, and you can pick it up on Amazon for just $99 now. If you're looking for a cheap fitness watch, it doesn't get much better.

Found one you like, but not sure how best to use your new toy? Check out our list of 5 ways to use a cheap fitness tracker to supercharge your gym workout.

Today's best cheap fitness tracker deals

When I started regularly going to the gym several years ago, I did so without bothering with the best fitness trackers. These gadgets, I thought, were only good for running, tracking my sleep and counting my steps. But I’ve since learned that I was totally wrong.

Now I keep a cheap fitness tracker as a handy weightlifting companion. That’s right, a budget option; all of the functions I need, I can use on my low-cost Xiaomi Smart Band 10, making a purchase like the Apple Watch Ultra 3 totally unnecessary.

New to the gym, or eyeing up a new wearable purchase and wondering how it could help you? Let me walk you through five small-but-mighty functions of a cheap fitness tracker which will help you out at the gym.

1. Timekeeping

Honestly, it’s one of the simplest features of my fitness tracker that helps my workout the most. When you start tracking a workout on any wearable, you’ll see an on-wrist timer to tell you how much time has elapsed, and I use that timer constantly.

I use this not to see how long I work out for after the fact, but to dictate how long I exercise for during each set. I make sure I take a consistent amount of time for each set to maintain the right level of intensity and, more importantly, rest for the same amount of time between sets. I'll try to keep each rest period to a minute or less.

When I first started using the gym, I could sometimes rush through sets if I had lots of energy, or waste absolutely ages of time if I didn’t. Neither of those is good practice.

With my fitness tracker’s stopwatch, I’ve been treating my body better, between sets and rest periods. It also makes it far easier to predict how long a session will be – if my work on each kit is reliable span of time, and I know what I want to do ahead of time, I know how long I’ll be at the gym. Great for planning my day, and encouraging me to try shorter workouts if I have less time instead of not working out at all.

2. Heart rate

One of the basic functions of any fitness tracker is that it can monitor your heart rate. They all do so, to varying degrees of accuracy, and again I find this a really useful metric to help me stay healthy on a workout.

According to the British Heart Foundation’s simple math on ideal heart rate during exercising (220 minus your age, then work out 50% to 70% of that), my heart rate should be between 95bpm and 133bpm when working out.

Suffice to say, it isn’t always that. Sometimes when I’m really pushing myself with a new heavier weight, or I’m still recovering from my trip to the gym (I always run or cycle), my heart rate will push higher. And at other times, like when I’m being sluggish (should’ve kept a better eye on that timer!) or if I’m spending my rest times typing elaborate article pitches to TechRadar’s editors [like this one! — Ed.], I might be dropping too low.

As before, having my fitness tracker update me on my heart rate during the workout can help me decide how long to rest between workouts, whether to spend my rest period doing active recovery exercises or in 'true rest', and often what workout to do next too if I don't have a pre-prescribed plan to follow. Most wearables make this even easier, by having a ‘red zone’ indicating my heart rate is too high, and a blue zone if it’s low.

3. Longitudinal fitness overview

Both of my previous points have been about using a fitness tracker’s stats to dictate how I plan and adapt my workout. That principle stands on a longer-term scale too: fitness trackers are almost always tied to a fitness app on your phone, which can track performance over time and provide an insight into how our exercise habits are affecting our bodies.

I can see how frequently I exercise per week, month or even year, and what different types of workout I tend to do. I can see the trends in my workouts: if I find myself going on fewer runs during winter because of the cold, I can make a conscious decision to compensate and do more treadmill runs instead. If I’m doing less weight training during the tennis season, I can add in a session or two to course-correct.

Some of these changes to a workout program are harder to notice without data, since my fitness decisions tend to be idiosyncratic and made on-the-fly, so using an app's graphs gives me useful insights I’d otherwise miss.

4. Calorie information

One of the many pieces of information that fitness trackers tell you after a workout, is how many calories you burned. I’m always a little skeptical of this data, and it’s best to take it as a rough estimate rather than a concrete figure, but it’s still a useful reminder of an aspect of working out lots of gym-goers forget, and a core tenet of building muscle and losing fat — calories in versus calories out.

I’ve often struggled with under-fueling; I definitely didn’t eat enough when I trained for a marathon, and find it too easy to fall into the same trap as many in thinking that ‘being healthy’ is the same as ‘eating less’. When you’re doing a lot of exercise, your body needs proper upkeep, and that means eating more than you otherwise would.

When I started exercising with a fitness tracker, I’d see how many calories I’d burn per exercise — some of the marathon training runs saw almost 2,000kcal burned, and I did one every week — and it was a lot more than I expected. This, more than any ache or groan in my body, served as an important reminder to eat more. A lot more; bigger meals, more healthy snacks, less starvation. Doing so improved my energy and made my run recovery smooth.

I know that calorie counting is a slippery slope for a lot of people, however, and I don’t advise paying too much attention to this metric if that’s you. If in doubt, listen to your body more than tech.

5. Rest and recovery

My golden rule with fitness trackers is that I shouldn’t let them make decisions for me. I should always defer to how my body feels, not what tech tells me. But sometimes you need a second opinion, and that’s where rest timers come in.

Different fitness trackers have different names for it, but many wearables, even budget ones, pack functions that tell you how drained you are, or how long you should wait before you exercise again. On my Xiaomi tracker it’s called Training State, and it gives you an idea of how hard you've been training recently. The best Garmin watches call it Body Battery or Training Readiness, while Google Health calls it Daily Readiness. The gist of all of these features is that they tell you how much energy your body has – and recommends a level of workout intensity for the day.

These scores use the various metrics captured by your fitness tracker, like what workouts you’ve done and how often you’ve done them, to make an informed guess as to when you should next work out. Sometimes this comes in the form of a timer, telling you how long you need to wait before you next work out, and sometimes it’s a body battery telling you how ‘charged’ you are.

I never rely on this feature over my own gut feeling, but sometimes I just can’t decide whether I’m feeling up for a run or workout. That’s when my fitness tracker steps in, to give me some extra data and push the needle in one direction or another.

Google may have moved on from its previous line of Fitbit smartwatches and fitness trackers, but these devices remain some of the best options for tracking your health and exercise. And now, one of the more affordable and entry-level options just got a welcome discount, which drops the Fitbit Inspire 3 on Amazon to £58.99 (was £84.99).

If you've been put off by the cost of other more premium smartwatches, then this is a super-low price for a great beginner fitness tracker. I like it if you want to dip your toes into the tech, as it offers all the essentials you need, with heart rate, sleep, and exercise tracking all on-wrist.

Another benefit of going with the Fitbit Inspire 3 is that it offers a solid 10-day battery life. Most smartwatches and many other fitness trackers fall way behind this, with some of the more advanced options requiring recharging every day or two.

So, if you want the convenience of not having to worry about battery life all the time, all the basic tracking features you might need, and phone notifications beamed to your wrist, the Fitbit Inspire 3 is a fairly feature-rich option for under £60.

Today's best Fitbit deal at Amazon

As if to prove my point, we called the Fitbit Inspire 3 "a great entry point to the health and fitness-tracking world" in our four-star review. As well as being packed with all the health and fitness tracking features a beginner might need, it is also very easy to use, thanks to the bright AMOLED display — even if it can be a little fiddly given its small size.

Altogether, it's easy to see why it's on our guide to the best Fitbit as the one we'd pick if you're on a budget.

• Garmin has apparently filed documentation for a smart ring
• It seems to be carrying over the Cirqa branding from the fitness tracker
• The device could potentially launch in the coming months

It seems Garmin is on a tear when it comes to expanding its range of fitness wearables: having challenged Whoop with the launch of the screenless Cirqa band in July, it's now apparently mulling over taking on the likes of Oura with its very own smart ring.

As per an Indonesian certification filing spotted by the rumor site Garmin News, the proposed smart ring would carry on the 'Cirqa' branding. It's categorized as a 'fitness product', and is a strong sign that a Garmin smart ring is coming — though not quite a guarantee.

Garmin has previously played down the idea of launching a smart ring to go with all of its smartwatches, but it seems something may have now shifted. It's not clear exactly when we might see the Cirqa smart ring, but a launch within a few months seems likely if the rumor is true; according to Garmin News, upcoming devices 'usually show up in database approvals right before manufacturing'.

The smart ring market is certainly a competitive one, with the recent launches of the Oura Ring 5 and the Ultrahuman Ring Pro. There have also been persistent rumors that Apple might eventually launch a smart ring to go alongside the Apple Watch.

What I want to see

I already have a Garmin Instinct 3 Solar which I love, for the breadth of its tracking features and the excellent battery life (the solar aspect helps here). If Garmin gets it right with the Cirqa ring, I could be tempted to invest in another fitness wearable.

First and foremost, it has to be thin and light enough that I forget I'm wearing it. As great as my Instinct 3 is, it is bulky, and it's not particularly comfortable to wear during strenuous exercise or while sleeping (I tend to use my phone as a sleep tracker instead).

Secondly — and apologies for being very predictable here — it has to offer excellent battery life. Smart rings work best when they're worn constantly. This is an area Garmin has done well in historically, so I'm quite confident here.

Thirdly, I'd like to see it offer as full a range of features as possible, without a Garmin Connect+ subscription. The subscription has already caused enough controversy, and if too many of the Cirqa smart ring features are paywalled, it'll be a no thanks from me.

No more needles. Until the Google Pixel Watch 5 arrived as part of Google's Made by Google 2026 event, the only way most people could monitor their blood sugar's responses to food and exercise with smart tech was to use a continuous glucose monitor, or CGM. A small puck with a Bluetooth receiver inside and a spike to connect to your blood, it projects your blood sugar levels to your phone in real time.

Very useful — and originally developed — for diabetics, it was also quickly co-opted by the wellness sector and marketed as a way to curb blood sugar spikes. I attended a product launch for one of these devices in a fancy hotel, where a celebrity chef talked us through how to make healthy canapés that wouldn't spike our blood sugar, As proof, we could see our blood sugar broadcast to our phones in real time, monitored by the needles in our arms.

Too much sugar increases the body's insulin resistance, leading to fat storage, while exercise uses your body's glucose stores as fuel. Simple enough in theory, but I found the constant readings from the CGM easy to obsess over during my trial period, checking my graphs after every meal and mentally planning how much exercise would be needing to offset the effect of those spikes. I am not diabetic.

The Google Pixel Watch 5 is heralding in, as part of its passive-tracking Health Guardian suite of features, a non-invasive Insulin Resistance Trends feature for Pixel Watches 3 and above. According to Google: 'The tool uses passive sensors on your wrist to track monthly shifts in your metabolic health, reserving formal lab work for when you're at the doctor's office.

'The goal of this new feature is to help you take control of your health journey, serving as a gentle reminder to pause and check your routines,' continues Google's press release. 'When this Health Guardian feature detects sustained, elevated insulin resistance trends over the month, it alerts you with a gentle nudge to help you adjust your daily habits and get your metabolic health back in its sweet spot.'

'Metabolic health' refers to the process of your body turning food into energy. A healthy body turns food and sugar into energy very effectively, while an unhealthy body works harder to mitigate those blood sugar spikes, leading to excess blood sugar being stored as fat rather than fuel. This results in weight gain and in some cases, Type-2 diabetes.

The feature isn't on watches yet (it'll arrive next month) and there's no indication of exactly how Google has been able to wrangle its optical LED sensors to manage this non-invasive Insulin Resistance Trends monitoring.

In its press materials, Google has been keen to emphasize that 40% of Americans are living with 'invisible shifts in their metabolic health'. The feature might help the US obesity crisis with a two-pronged assault; education about insulin resistance, and providing an accessible way to monitor this growing health problem without sticking a needle in your arm

However, just as I could see myself compulsively checking my blood sugar graphs, I worry that this might become yet another metric for otherwise-healthy smartwatch users to obsess over. Like weighing yourself every day or taking GLP-1s, weight management techniques can quickly transform from a healthy, positive thing into an addiction.

Research published in the Cardiovascular Digital Health Journal in 2020 has identified a trend we've seen before in health tech users: an obsession with metrics, streaks and optimization.

The researchers said that although wearables provide lots of actionable data and improve real-time surveillance of disease, they found "another aspect of the digital health revolution that has not yet received due attention: the unanticipated and potentially negative effects of wearable devices on patients’ psychological health, quality of life, and health care utilization."

Just recently, our writers Becca Caddy and Alex Blake wrote about their own experiences with this phenomenon, with Caddy stating "What I didn't understand at the time was how thin the line between discipline and obsession can be. You can cross it gradually, one habit and one goal at a time, until something that started as a genuine attempt to look after yourself becomes another source of pressure, anxiety and control."

The messaging around weight management can be difficult to get right, and as much as the feature is likely to improve wearer's health, I worry Insulin Resistance Trends could become quite a triggering metric for people at risk of disordered behaviors.

To Google's credit, however, the glimpse of the feature we've seen so far isn't a moment-to-moment graph. Instead, it shows month-to-month general trends, presumably to avoid people checking the feature too much. There's also a lot of good to be done around educating users about the relationship between blood sugar, insulin, weight gain, and diabetes.

Regardless, when the feature does arrive next month, I hope thought is put into its execution so we can have as many of the good consequences as possible, while avoiding the bad.

The Garmin Cirqa is making waves in the fitness community. I put the new screenless tracker through its paces over 10 days of intensive testing, and awarded it 4.5 stars in my Garmin Cirqa review. As part of the testing process, I wore it for all of my workouts over the past couple of weeks — and, unusually for a device I've been testing for review purposes, I'm still wearing it now.

I normally alternate between an Apple Watch Ultra 3 or a Garmin Fenix 8, but I've found myself loathe to ditch the Cirqa just yet. This isn't only because it's good: I'm gravitating towards the Cirqa because it interfaces with a system I already use, and because it's helping me get over the dreaded "Strava-itis".

Last month, our writer Becca Caddy wrote about optimization culture — how wearables are causing us to engage in unhealthy mindsets and disordered behaviors. I can certainly attest to that: I'm guilty of glancing at my watch during a run, wanting to push my pace even on zone 2 sessions and easy days, because I know the end results are going to end up on my Strava account for all to see.

Even uncoupling my watch from automatically uploading my run to Strava is only half the battle. I'm constantly glancing at the watch to check my pace and time, engaging in subconscious judgement, comparing my own performance to that of my mates, colleagues and acquaintances. I didn't realize quite how much my self-judgement was sapping my enjoyment of exercise.

The Cirqa, and to some extent the Google Fitbit Air I tested earlier in the year, goes some way to changing all that.

While the Cirqa offers up some fitness and wellness metrics (certainly plenty to understand the effect of exercise on your body and health), what it doesn't give you is workout specifics. You won't find split pace per kilometer, for example, which runners use to measure average speed across a distance run, or heart rate zones to display a workout's intensity. With other models, I get those statistics piped into my ears at regular intervals, and my watches offer them at a glance.

Having access to such statistics removed during the workout can be detrimental to performance or for those times you're training for a specific event, but it's oddly freeing for day-to-day fitness training. I ran a 10km route during the testing period (at least, I assume it was 10km based on previous runs) and the Cirqa recorded plenty of heart rate-based statistics and applied them to recovery metrics such as my Training Readiness Score, along with how it improved stats such as my VO2 Max and Fitness Age.

However, it informed me of these statistics after the run, and didn't deliver any specific run performance information at all beyond time and heart rate information. Without my watch to glance at during the workout, I wasn't adhering to a target pace: I was running on vibes and perceived effort.

I concentrated on how my body felt, and responded to that in the moment. I paid attention to my form, my music, the trees and the road. I didn't feel guilty about stopping to stretch part way through, nor did I pause the Cirqa for that particularly pause, as doing so would invalidate the whole "complete, holistic workout overview" thing it's got going on. For the first time in quite some time, I had no idea at all about how fast I had run — but I knew that it was a good workout as a result of every other metric and the fact that I felt awesome.

Although it isn't a running-specific device, the Cirqa is exactly what I needed to reinvigorate my relationship with the road. When the time returns to take my training seriously again, taking speed and times on board again, I'll switch back to my best Garmin watch, with all my fitness stats ready to be incorporated into Garmin's workout plans.

Do you run without a fitness tracker, or use a screenless model, to better run on vibes, or are you a metrics-fiend with a dedicated running watch? Let me know in the poll below.

• Latest Garmin rumors point to details on the Garmin Fenix 9
• We could get three sizes
• And MIP solar technology may not be dead yet

The Garmin Fenix 9 range is likely to be arriving soon. The rumor mill, fuelled by comments made by CEO Cliff Pemble on Garmin's quarterly earnings call earlier this year, suggest this is going to be the case. But plenty of Garmin fans were wondering how the Fenix 9 line would look.

The Garmin Fenix 8 line came in three sizes (43mm, 47mm and 51mm), and two screen options: a standard bright AMOLED screen of the sort you see on many smartwatches, and a duller memory-in-pixel (MIP) varient with solar charging. The MIP displays used to be used on all of the best Garmin watches as it was more battery-efficient, but these days it's almost entirely used for models that use Garmin's Power Glass solar charging tech, which uses a solar panel behind the display to suck up lumens and extend the watch's battery life in bright conditions.

It's likely that once Garmin figures out how to do the same with its AMOLED watches, MIP screens will bite the dust permanently, which is a shame. There are lots of fans of the lower-power screen tech, as this poll suggests.

A year after the already-premium Garmin Fenix 8 line entered the fray, we got the Garmin Fenix 8 Pro, a model which came in two sizes (47mm and 51mm) with InReach messaging connectivity using Garmin's satellite communication network, LTE which uses a standard internet connection, and on some models an even brighter MicroLED screen.

So, where does that leave the upcoming Fenix 9?

Three sizes, two Pros, two MIP displays

According to Garmin Rumors, the Garmin Fenix 9 will arrive in three sizes like its predecessor, and in three different models; the base version, the Garmin Fenix 9 Pro (with the release not being staggered like the Fenix 8/Pro) and the Garmin Fenix 9 Pro InReach.

This time, all three models are said to be arriving in all three sizes, so those with smaller wrists are still getting the Pro experience. The Fenix 9 Pro InReach is obviously getting access to Garmin's satellite network for off-the-grid messaging, but GarminRumors is not sure what upgrades the Pro will sport over the base model. Apart from one.

Both the Garmin Fenix 9 Pro and Pro InReach are said to be getting Solar models, which means the MIP screen would be back for another generation — but the standard Garmin Fenix 9 will remain an AMOLED watch. This would be the first time a standard Garmin Fenix won't get an MIP model, but it does make sense if Garmin is now reserving its solar charging for its premium Pro models.

If true, it's a shame. The MIP display isn't just a vehicle for solar charging: its lower-power technology is reminiscent of a digital watch, and as well as being more battery efficient, it's a way for Garmin users to distinguish their training tools from other, say, Apple and Samsung smartwatches. There's also no info on the Garmin Enduro 4.

We'll have more details on the Fenix 9 range as we get closer to its likely launch date. Stay tuned!

Garmin Cirqa: One minute review

I’ve spent a week with the Garmin Cirqa screenless fitness tracker, wearing it constantly during sleep, exercise and rest to determine how comfortable it is in everyday life, and measuring it against an electrical heart rate monitor and other wearables to determine accuracy.

After all my testing, I can confirm the Whoop and Google Fitbit Air have got serious competition. While some people will still want the AI-powered coaching from Whoop and Google Health, and others will want the screen-based interaction and notification features available on the best smartwatches, most users looking for a simple but high-quality screenless fitness tracker will be just fine getting the Cirqa.

If you’re reading this review wondering how it compares to the likes of the Whoop MG and the Google Fitbit Air, you’ll already know what to expect from the design: a fabric band that stretches over the fitness tracker’s plastic puck to create a solid-color screenless wearable. The idea is that you can use it for working out, sleeping, rest and work, get accurate metrics all day, and not glance at it all the time or be distracted by notifications on your wrist.

Where it differs is in the design specifics. It’s quite a large fitness tracker, sitting more obviously on the wrist compared to its rivals, and thus people with very small wrists might want to try it before they commit. However, I like the design overall, especially the inclusion of an actual button on the side of the device. This button is used to start a workout, signified by a strong vibration, and stop a workout, at which point it vibrates again. You can also use it to turn off its vibrating smart-wake alarm. It’s so much easier than tapping the Whoop’s puck, and provides certainty and security when tracking an activity, so you're not just hoping the device picks it up. It’s the perfect level of minimalist interaction for a tracker like this.

I generally found it accurate over my testing period, apart from a single outlier workout in which the heart rate sensor showed a 10BPM difference compared to my electrical heart rate monitor, the Polar H10 — my accuracy benchmark. The other workouts I recorded were within 1-2bpm of accuracy, and Garmin Connect correctly showed my wake-up times when recording sleep.

I found myself enjoying running more than I have in months by ‘vibe running’: ditching my watch with its pace and heart rate metrics updating me every kilometer and allowing the Cirqa to track in the background, leaving me to focus on my form, the trees, my music and my thoughts. It’s no good for specific training for timed runs, new courses, intervals and the like due to the lack of on-wrist information, but for wellness tracking, it works nicely.

It’s going to be a real boon for cyclists using Garmin’s Edge series of cycling computers. Many of the best Garmin watches double-up on the cycling computer's GPS features, so the Cirqa allows cyclists to add wellness metrics without a more expensive watch.

Watch our video review of the Garmin Cirqa here:

Garmin Cirqa review: Price and availability

• $199.99 in the US
• £179.99 in the UK
• AU$299.99 in the AU

The Garmin Cirqa fitness tracker costs $199.99 in the US, £179.99 in the UK and AU$299.99 in Australia. There’s no subscription fee — at least, no mandatory one — but Garmin Coach features are locked behind the Garmin Connect+ paywall in the app, which costs an extra $6.99 / £6.99 / AU$12 per month or $69.99 / £69.99 / AU$120 annually. A bicep band for the Cirqa comes at an added extra too.

You can get along just fine without the subscription, if you don’t want the coaching features. Live heart rate broadcasting was also originally locked behind this paywall, but Garmin rolled that back after an outcry. The free tier of Connect is an excellent training aid, and isn’t as stripped-back as the free tier of the Google Health app you use with the Google Fitbit Air. However, the Cirqa is also twice the price of Fitbit, so this is reflected in the price, and Connect (being Garmin’s app for all its devices) lists some stats you don’t get access to via the Cirqa if you dig a little deeper, leading to some annoying friction moments.

However, for most people, it’s better value than Whoop, which requires an annual subscription starting at £169 / $199 / AU$299 and going up from there. With Whoop, you never actually own either the device or the data you collect, merely rent it. With two years of the cheapest Whoop subscription, you could also buy a cheap Garmin running watch like the Garmin Forerunner 165 as well as a Cirqa and alternate between the two of them for many years.

While serious athletes such as CrossFit and Hyrox enthusiasts will want Whoop’s vast swathes of unique metrics such as the Strain score and AI-powered workout building features, the Cirqa’s subscription-free tier is much more affordable and better value for most, despite the relatively high price of the tracker itself compared to some of Garmin's more feature-rich running watches.

• Value score: 3.5/5

Garmin Cirqa review: Design

• Choice of four colors
• Screenless form factor
• Tactile button

The Garmin Cirqa is a simple design. A fabric band with four color options — Mauve, French Grey, Captain Blue and Black — wraps around a plastic puck with Garmin’s Elevate V4 heart rate sensor array. The puck is slightly curved to mimic the wrist’s shape, and as previously mentioned, it includes a ridged button on the side to start and stop workouts.

The design is very simple, and the button is the only way to interact with the puck. It’s very comfortable to wear, weighing only 21g, and light enough and comfortable enough that I often forgot I was wearing it during the week. That made wearing it for sleep and exercise a frictionless experience, and the band is soft to the touch.

It’s quite large for a ‘discreet’ band due to the size of Garmin’s Elevate V4 sensor, but not uncomfortable — at least, for my wrists. Those with very thin wrists may struggle, but I was told the more up-to-date Elevate V5 sensor would have made the puck even bigger.

I’ve always been a fan of the Garmin Connect app, and its design is really comprehensive. It can be difficult to navigate at first due to the breadth of information on offer, meaning some stats and features get lost in the mix, but once you’re used to it, it’s easy to access a lot of detail along with community features such as challenges.

• Design score: 4.5/5

Garmin Cirqa review: Features

• Deliberately hardware feature-light
• Plenty of detailed metrics
• Not as many as a full Garmin watch, or Whoop

There are very few interactive features on the Garmin Cirqa puck; you can start and stop workouts, or stop an alarm, but that’s more or less it. However, the information the Cirqa collects and shows you in the app aren't lacking in detail.

The Garmin Cirqa tracker collects data on sleep stages, heart rate variability (HRV), pulse ox and provides Garmin’s Training Readiness and Body Battery scores. Garmin’s Sleep Coach feature can recommend bedtimes and sleep length, letting you know if you’re in a sleep deficit, and smart wake alarm using the device’s haptic sensors buzzes on your wrist in a light sleep stage to wake you within a pre-prescribed window.

Automatic activity detection means the Cirqa quietly records activities lasting longer than 15 minutes, such as walks, which become more accurate if you amend the detected activities in the Garmin Connect app, including extending or trimming the duration. Alternatively, you can simply press the button to start a timed activity, and again amend in-app.

While you won’t get advanced running features like many Garmin watches, such as cadence, stride length, Hill Score (based on elevation) and so on, you still get generic training information like heart rate, VO2 Max and Training Load, which can help you tell you if you’re under or overtraining. Garmin also carries features like Fitness Age, which uses heart rate and activity data to tell you how well your body performs compared to its actual age. Whoop has a similar feature named Whoop Age — another example of the Cirqa eating Whoop’s lunch here.

You get quite a lot for your money. There's a small value issue, though: it’s not packing quite as many features as the premium Whoop subscriptions, nor a watch like the Garmin Forerunner 165, which gets you all of the above plus dedicated GPS, running and notification features for the same price. But it also comes with a screen, which you might not want. The Cirqa avoids bloat, prioritising the fitness and recovery metrics users want to see and eliminating the interactive features that screenless wearables fans don't want at all.

As well as the Garmin Coach features, AI-powered photograph-based nutrition tracking and AI-generated training insights are also available as part of Garmin’s premium Connect+ tier.

• Features score: 4/5

Garmin Cirqa review: Performance

• Accurate workout metrics, aside from one outlying workout
• Sleep tracking was competent
• Comfy and easy to wear

I tested the Garmin Cirqa for around nine days, performing several workouts compared against a Polar H10 heart rate monitor, tracking my sleep, and draining the battery. If you’re working out three to four times a week and enabling auto-detection for walks and other activities, it lasts a solid week between charges — I topped mine up on day seven of testing.

It recorded my sleep well and correctly identified wake-up times in the middle of the night and in the early hours of the morning. If I slept well or went to bed early, the Cirqa correctly identified this and the numbers matched my energy levels and perceived sleep quality. If I got up in the middle of the night (which I often do several nights out of the week), the Cirqa clocked it. Its sleep stages graph is easy to parse, while Sleep Score and HRV are sortable by the last week, month or year to show trends.

When it comes to measuring workout accuracy, while there’s no GPS to draw from other than piggybacking off my phone, the Cirqa closely matched my Polar H10 heart rate monitor during workouts. There was one instance in which it was an average of 10bpm off during a 40-minute strength session in the gym, but other workouts cleaved very closely to the HRM, within 2-3bpm accuracy (as you can see below). My guess is that if that particular workout was longer, the readings would have evened out.

Like other Garmin devices using the Elevate V4, the Cirqa is generally accurate enough for anyone who doesn’t need elite-level metrics, at which point they’d be using a heart rate monitor or Garmin’s Elevate V5. But even record-breaker Sebastian Sawe was spotted using a Garmin Forerunner 55, which uses a V4, during his sub-two hour London Marathon run.

I can’t overstate how nice the Cirqa is to wear. I found it a better daily driver than the Whoop band, despite its size, largely due to the Whoop’s often-detaching clasp. The tactile button gave me a sense of certainty in my recording, and I didn’t have to open the app to manually start a workout like the Google Fitbit Air if I wanted to be accurate. The haptics are nice and strong too.

• Performance score: 4.5/5

Garmin Cirqa review: Scorecard

Garmin Cirqa review: Should I buy?

Buy it if…

Don’t buy it if…

Also consider

How I tested

I tested the Garmin Cirqa for over one week, draining the battery down and wearing it constantly during sleep, work, exercise and rest. I undertook multiple workouts, comparing them to a Polar H10 electrical heart rate monitor for accuracy, and compared its featureset to its peers in the screenless fitness tracker market.

First reviewed: August 2026

• Whoop has partnered with women's health tracking app Natural Cycles
• Whoop users get one year of the app totally free
• Natural Cycles will use that data to provide a 'daily fertility status' through its app

Whoop has partnered with women's health tracking app Natural Cycles, offering a year's worth of membership to existing Whoop users free of charge.

Whoop users also using the Natural Cycles app can now enable their Whoop app to import skin temperature data into Natural Cycles, said to 'eliminate the need for manual daily tracking' using a fingertip sensor or similar. Natural Cycles will incorporate this data to provide a daily fertility status, as basal body temperature is a key indicator in cycle tracking.

“At Natural Cycles, we're committed to making digital contraception as seamless as possible for our users," Dr. Magda Armbruster, VP of Product at Natural Cycles, said in a statement.

"Integrating with WHOOP removes friction from the experience by allowing members to use the wearable they already rely on to automatically capture overnight skin temperature used by the NC° app to determine daily fertility status."

It's worth noting the integration is only available with Whoop MG and Whoop 5.0 devices: anyone still rocking the Whoop 4.0 is unfortunately left out in the cold.

Whoop isn't the only wearable that Natural Cycles works with. Natural Cycles can use data from Whoop's fellow subscription-powered premium wearable, the Oura Ring, as well as the best Garmin devices and Natural Cycles' own NC Band.

Natural Cycles costs $149.99 in the US, £89.99 in the UK or AU$149.99 in Australia, so you're saving a packet here.

Natural Cycles is unusual for a women's health tracking app in that it claims to be the 'only FDA-cleared, hormone-free birth control app'. Clearance from the US Food & Drug Administration is a badge of quality in the consumer health tech space.

The Whoop's recently seeing a new challenger in the screenless smart band form factor: the Garmin Cirqa. You can watch our video review of the device below.

• Casio has two new watches and a new smart ring
• All these models offer some kind of fitness tracking too
• We're still waiting on international availability

Casio is pushing further into wearables that can be used as fitness trackers and not just timepieces, with a couple of new watches and a revised version of its smart ring that can monitor some key health metrics while you're wearing them.

The smart ring is the Casio CRW-H001 (via Notebookcheck), which looks like a tiny watch that you slip on your finger — but can also keep tabs on steps, sleep, heart rate, and body temperature according to the product blurb. You can also use it to get alerts about incoming smartphone notifications.

It's a significant step up from the Casio CRW-001-1JR that was launched in 2024. That device was limited to telling the time, setting alarms, and stopwatch timers. There was no companion mobile app and nothing in the way of fitness tracking.

This latest version is a genuine smart ring, though for now it's only available in China for 1,990 yuan (about $295 / £220 / AU$420). Given that the Casio CRW-001-1JR eventually made its way to international markets, we're hopeful that this device will too.

New watches too

On to the watches, and we have the new Casio ABL-100WE series on the Casio UK website (via Notebookcheck again): there's the ABL-100WE-2A (with a black finish) and the ABL-100WE-7A (with a silver finish).

Alongside the classic Casio looks, these watches give you step counting that can be synced to a smartphone via Bluetooth and displayed on the built-in screen. Extra features include water resistance and dual time zone support.

You don't get much in the way of fitness tracking, but it's something — the watches can send you alerts about meeting your step count goal for each day, if you want, and you're also able to see your recent progress in the form of simple graphs. Both models come with multi-row stainless steel bracelets.

For now these models have been spotted on Casio's UK website — where they're retailing for £70 (about $95) — and an official distributor in Australia for AU$249 — so as with the smart ring we're waiting for news on further global availability.

I didn't realize I'd developed an unhealthy obsession with wellness and optimization. But looking back, there were definitely signs. This was more than a decade ago, long before recovery scores, longevity influencers and what the best smart ring colors are became water cooler conversation.

As a technology journalist, reviewing health gadgets and fitness trackers has always been part of my job but they gradually spilled over into my personal life too. At one point, I was wearing multiple fitness trackers at the same time because I didn't fully trust any single device. I'd compare the data, then transfer it into spreadsheets each night so I could better analyze it myself.

Most days I walked more than 20,000 steps. Some days it was closer to 30,000 and I got such a kick out of seeing those numbers climb up. I became fascinated by the idea that there was an optimal way to do almost everything. An optimal diet, optimal morning routine, optimal supplement stack and an optimal sleep schedule.

Every new wellness trend arrived with the promise of hidden knowledge and I was eager to believe it. I spent money on retreats, courses and gadgets. I followed advice that ranged from questionable to ridiculous. And the less said about the gruelling fasting retreat where we were all given daily wheatgrass enemas, the better.

The strange thing is that none of this felt unhealthy at the time — if anything, it felt virtuous. My trackers congratulated me for hitting goals and fitness apps handed out badges and streaks. There was always another target to hit and another metric to improve. The obsession disguised itself as self-improvement so effectively that I barely questioned it.

What I didn't understand at the time was how thin the line between discipline and obsession can be. You can cross it gradually, one habit and one goal at a time, until something that started as a genuine attempt to look after yourself becomes another source of pressure, anxiety and control.

More than a decade later, as wearables, recovery scores and optimization culture have since become mainstream, I don't think my experience is unusual. If anything, I'm surprised we don't talk more about the psychological cost of constantly measuring ourselves and the role technology plays in keeping us focused on the numbers.

Why health data can become a trap

For a long time, I assumed my experience was unusual. When my obsession with optimization was at its worst, there weren't podcasters talking about longevity-maxxing and relatively few people owned fitness trackers.

Over time, I managed to develop a healthier relationship with exercise and health data. But as wearables have become more common and self-tracking has moved into the mainstream, I've started noticing some of the same patterns I once recognized in myself.

When I spoke to psychotherapist Sarah Dosanjh, who works with people experiencing health anxiety and disordered relationships with food, much of what I'd experienced sounded familiar.

"What I'm noticing in my practice is that people who already have some form of anxiety seem particularly drawn to health data technology devices," she says. "An anxious client seeks certainty and control and health information feeds a sense of control, making it very appealing to an anxious person."

Looking back, some of the periods when I was most immersed in tracking and optimization were also periods when other parts of my life felt uncertain or difficult. The data gave me something concrete to focus on. It offered numbers, targets and routines at times when everything else felt far less predictable.

Dosanjh explains the irony is that tools designed to help people feel more in control can backfire. "The most common devices I see people struggling with are food and exercise tracking apps and continuous glucose monitoring devices," Dosanjh says. "But what starts as feeling in control can quickly turn into feeling controlled by the technology."

She describes people becoming increasingly preoccupied with maintaining specific numbers and avoiding anything that might disrupt them.

"Closing exercise rings, achieving a certain step count and keeping blood sugar within a specific range can turn into a compulsion,” she tells me. “Anxiety peaks at the mere thought of not hitting numbers. What feels like a good thing to do for your health can become a source of intense anxiety instead."

These behaviors rarely look unhealthy from the outside. Going for a walk, exercising regularly or paying attention to what you eat are generally considered positive things. The difficulty is knowing when useful habits become rigid rules and when health stops being something that supports your life and starts becoming the thing your life revolves around.

Dosanjh says that cycle can become self-reinforcing. "This situation becomes more dangerous when the person believes they can manage this added anxiety by setting even higher goals,” she explains. “They are chasing the initial relief and dopamine hit that they experienced early on in their tech use. It can become an addictive trap, driving people further into disordered eating and compulsive exercise."

I think that’s what makes optimization culture so difficult to talk about. For some people, tracking genuinely is helpful. It can encourage movement, show them useful patterns and provide much-needed motivation via streaks and digital rewards, such as badges and kudos from other users. For others, particularly those already vulnerable to anxiety, perfectionism or compulsive tendencies already, the same tools can pull them further down a path they may not even realise they're on.

When tracking went mainstream

When I first started reviewing fitness trackers, this kind of behavior felt relatively niche. Most people weren't tracking their sleep. Very few people knew what heart rate variability was. The idea of waking up and checking a readiness score before deciding how hard to exercise would have sounded bizarre. But today, optimization is everywhere.

More than 45% of people in the UK and around 60% of people in the US now own a smartwatch or fitness wearable. Even if you don't actively seek out health tracking, many of the features, like step counts and calorie estimates, are now built directly into devices like Apple Watches or smartphones that we all use every day.

Despite this, researchers are still trying to understand the psychological impact of living with a constant stream of biometric data. There's no clear evidence that large numbers of wearable users are developing serious problems. But a growing body of research does point towards some worrying patterns. Several studies have linked fitness tracking technologies with increased anxiety, body dissatisfaction and rumination. Others have found associations between wearable use and higher levels of obsessive-compulsive traits, like perfectionism and over-conscientiousness.

I found that one study even introduced a new term: technohypochondria. Researchers defined it through three features: biometric data obsession, digital catastrophizing and a pathological need for algorithmic feedback. Unlike traditional health anxiety, which tends to focus on illness itself, technohypochondria describes a dependence on the continuous flow of personalized health data and the reassurance it appears to provide. I guess I’m a recovering technohypochondriac?

What I found particularly interesting was that researchers working on one of the key studies raised a really important question: “are people with pre-existing compulsive tendencies more drawn to wearables, or do continuous tracking and feedback loops foster or exacerbate these tendencies?”

It’s a chicken-and-egg sort of question and the answer is probably complicated. But the researchers do suggest a feedback loop may exist, where pre-existing vulnerabilities and constant self-tracking reinforce one another.

None of this means that everyone who wears a smartwatch is heading towards a crisis. I know personally that I did already have compulsive tendencies and controlling behaviors with food long before Fitbit released its first device. But I think it does suggest that the emotional impact of optimization deserves more attention than it often receives. Because once tracking becomes woven into everyday life, it can be surprisingly difficult to tell where useful information ends and unhealthy fixation begins.

When the numbers become the point

When I asked my friends and followers on social media to share their experiences with wearables and health tracking, I expected a handful of disparate stories. Instead, I heard from people who described becoming trapped by numbers in ways that felt extremely familiar.

Some were dealing with chronic illness. Others were recovering from major health events. Some simply wanted to get fitter or sleep better. But again and again, there was the same pattern. What began as a search for reassurance gradually became another source of anxiety.

I spoke to Emma, who started relying heavily on health data after cancer treatment and surgical menopause left her worried about the long-term impact on her health. "My watch became reassuring," she tells me. "I thought if my heart rate looks normal, I'm probably okay."

But over time that reassurance became its own form of dependence. "It felt like I was controlling my health anxiety," she says. "But I think I was just making it worse."

Sarah, who has used wearables for years while managing endometriosis and dysautonomia, described a different concern. "I wake up and let Oura tell me if I've slept well and then Visible gives me a score for the day, and that just feels wrong," she says. What impacted her most was the lack of trust she had in her own judgement. "I think it's made me lose trust in myself a little. Am I actually tired and am I really that stressed because an app said so?"

I think that gets to the heart of what can make continuous tracking so complicated. The problem isn't necessarily that you’re looking at data a lot — the problem is what happens when the data becomes more important than your own lived experience.

Understanding the cycle

Even though all of the stories I heard about wearables were different, a common thread was just how many seemed to be born from a feeling of trying to manage uncertainty.

Many of the people who contacted me weren't trying to become superhuman, chase longevity records or optimize every minute of their lives when they first started tracking. They were dealing with health scares, chronic illnesses, anxiety, weight issues and burnout.

And the data that their wearables collected offered reassurance. But the problem is that reassurance doesn't tend to last.

"Many of my clients understand that something doesn't feel quite right about their technology use, but they are afraid to stop using it," Dosanjh tells me.

She often explains this through what psychologists call the anxiety cycle. It starts with uncertainty. Am I healthy? Am I eating the right thing? Am I doing enough? The device provides an answer, whether that's a sleep score, a heart rate reading or a closed exercise ring. The anxiety temporarily decreases and the brain learns that checking the data creates relief.

But, over time, that starts to fade. "The temporary relief that comes from hitting a target or seeing a reassuring number keeps feeding the illusion of mastery over your health," Dosanjh explains. "Helping clients understand that what they are seeking in the tech is certainty, and since complete certainty is impossible, the focus of our work moves from trying to eliminate anxiety to developing the capacity to tolerate uncertainty."

That really describes my own experience. The more I tracked, the more I felt I needed to track. The more information I had, the more information I wanted. The pursuit of health slowly became the pursuit of certainty, which, as we all know logically, isn’t something you can ever get, achieve or “win” at.

What actually helped me

A big part of getting better was realizing that my obsession with health data wasn't really about the health data at all.

Looking back, some of the periods when I was most preoccupied with optimization were also periods when other parts of my life felt difficult, uncertain or out of my control. The trackers gave me something concrete to focus on. There was always another metric to improve, another target to hit, another problem that seemed solvable.

But many of the things I was actually struggling with couldn't be fixed with a spreadsheet or a sleep score. Therapy helped me recognize that pattern. So did learning to tolerate uncertainty a little better. Over time, I became less interested in controlling every variable and more interested in understanding why I felt the need to control them in the first place.

That doesn't mean the tendency completely disappeared, I still recognize it in myself from time to time. The difference is that now I see it for what it is and can catch the early warning signs.

Should wearables be designed differently?

I don't think every fitness tracker needs to be redesigned around people like me. The most effective intervention for my own unhealthy behavior was surprisingly simple: I took all the devices off. But some researchers argue that the design of wearables does deserve more attention.

One of the studies I looked at found that some of the negative psychological effects associated with fitness technologies could be linked to the features themselves. Feedback systems, gamified rewards, social comparison tools, constant notifications and the stream of immediate statistics can all encourage people to engage more frequently with the data, sometimes in ways that become unhelpful.

The researchers believe that psychological wellbeing should be treated as an important measure of success alongside more familiar metrics, like engagement, accuracy and battery life.

That doesn't necessarily mean removing goals or progress tracking. But it could mean giving people more control over how they interact with the technology.

Based on what I’ve seen from years reviewing wearables, that could mean less judgemental language, fewer alarming warnings, more ways to take breaks without feeling punished, and more flexibility over what data is displayed and when.

Most wearable companies already offer some degree of customization. Yet many products are still built around the assumption that more engagement is always better. In many cases that's true; regular use makes the data more useful over time because you can see patterns and track trends. But there should always be room for people to step back when they need to. A healthy relationship with wearable technology shouldn't require constant engagement, and users shouldn't feel punished for taking a break.

Health should improve your life, not become your life

The irony is that I became interested in health and fitness because it genuinely helped me. I learned from a really young age that exercise improved my mood, moving more reduced my anxiety and looking after myself made life feel calmer and more manageable. But I started paying way too little attention to how I felt and too much attention to what the numbers said.

These days, I still review fitness technology and sometimes still wear trackers outside of work. But I pay attention to different things now. If I feel guilty taking a device off, that's a warning sign. So is chasing a target despite being exhausted and spending more time thinking about the data than paying attention to my actual experience.

But most importantly, I ask myself what else is going on. Because when I feel like I’m becoming overly fixated on optimization, there's often something else happening underneath. Data is usually not the cause. It's just where all that energy and anxiety ends up being funnelled.

Dosanjh encourages people to approach health data as information rather than instruction. "Health tech should be an enhancement in your life and not an additional source of stress," she says. "Prioritize your wellbeing over optimization."

She also encourages people to regularly check whether the technology is still serving the purpose they originally bought it for. "How you feel is a more helpful barometer of wellness than numerical data. Be clear about your reasons for using the tech and check they align with your life values,” she says.

That's the lesson I wish I'd understood years ago. Health should improve your life but not become your life. Because no matter how sophisticated our trackers are there are still some things they can't measure. Like whether you have enough energy to spend time with the people you love, whether you're enjoying your life and whether you're actually feeling well. Those are infinitely more important than if you hit 10,000 steps today.

The Garmin Cirqa is a strong new addition to Garmin's ecosystem of devices. It's a screenless fitness tracker like a Whoop band, working with the Garmin Connect app to track sleep, workouts, and health metrics. You can read all about what happened when I tested the Garmin Cirqa against a heart rate monitor during its UK launch event here.

One under-the-radar announcement most people have glossed over is that even though most features are subscription-free, you need a Garmin Connect+ subscription to access Garmin Coach. This is Garmin's digital coaching feature, offering personalized training plans for its users to help achieve their strength, running, or cycling goals.

The reason this is important is that it's the first time Garmin Coach has been locked behind a paywall. It used to be that more expensive watches came with Garmin Coach features, while less expensive watches didn't. That was it. This latest development means we could see future budget-friendly Garmin offerings, such as the successor to the Garmin Forerunner 70, get Garmin Coach capabilities but keep them locked behind Connect+ in order to keep costs down.

While this is very much in line with how Fitbit and Apple run things on their fitness apps, it's a big change for Garmin and one that could rile existing users. We've seen how the Garmin community reacted to Connect+ when it was first introduced last year — negatively, with many people fearing new watch features would be locked behind a paywall, as ongoing subscriptions are very profitable for tech companies.

At least it's still substantially better value than Whoop's pay-annually mandatory subscription model.

Garmin acquires TrainingPeaks and TrainHeroic

Garmin has acquired TrainingPeaks and its sibling platform TrainHeroic. TrainingPeaks is an incredibly popular cross-platform programming software where users can download and use fitness plans and communicate directly with coaches. It's available on lots of different devices, not just Garmin watches.

Naturally, many people are afraid this means TrainingPeaks will become a Garmin-exclusive piece of software, and anyone who currently uses, for example, an Apple Watch Ultra 3 will be left in the cold. Even those that use it on Garmins may fear another subscription will be required.

Our homes editor and ex-fitness editor Cat Ellis uses TrainingPeaks to train for her marathons. She said: "I use TrainingPeaks and a Garmin watch, so I’m interested in what the future will hold as the two become intertwined — but also concerned for owners of non-Garmin devices. It seems plausible that owners of devices from other brands — such as Polar, Suunto, and Amazfit — might be left out if Garmin folds TrainingPeaks plans into Garmin Connect+.

"I’m also curious how Garmin might integrate TrainingPeaks. Will there be a separate Connect+ membership tier that unlocks access to TrainingPeaks plans? What about plans from coaches that TrainingPeaks users currently pay for separately? It’s going to be an interesting time."

Watch our Garmin Cirqa hands-on on our TikTok below:

Cross-platform confirmation

TrainingPeaks & TrainHeroic MD Lee Gerakos told DC Rainmaker that "TrainingPeaks will continue to operate as a cross-platform ecosystem, enabling athletes and coaches to use the devices, platforms and services that best suit their needs."

TrainingPeaks users can breathe a sigh of relief, for now — but it's not hard to connect the dots. Garmin's most recent, highest-profile product puts its coaching features behind a paywall at the same time it announces the acquisition of one of the most popular third-party coaching platforms. Garmin could be aiming to improve its coaching platform to get more people to join Connect+.

This isn't a bad thing per se — much of the criticism levelled at Connect+ was that its offering was a bit thin — but the pressure will be on for Garmin to keep its existing users, along with existing TrainingPeaks and TrainHeroic users, happy with how the new coaching features are implemented.

• Live heart rate data will be free for Garmin Cirqa users
• Early testers noticed it had been put behind the Connect+ subscription
• The new tracker costs $199.99 / £179.99 / AU$299.99

We've already put the newly unveiled Garmin Cirqa through an extensive hands-on testing session, and came away very impressed. However, there were complaints from those who had early access to the device that live heart rate data was locked behind a paywall.

Now Garmin is taking that negative feedback on board: as reported by seasoned tech reporter Ray Maker (via Android Police), live heart rate data will be available to every Cirqa user "in the coming days", with or without a Garmin Connect+ subscription.

The subscription, which applies across all of Garmin's wearables, has been the subject of much debate since it launched last year. For $6.99 / £6.99 / AU$12 per month or $69.99 / £69.99 / AU$120 a year, it gives you access to more metrics and more insights about the fitness data you're amassing.

Live heart rate readings aren't usually locked behind Connect+, so it's strange that Garmin initially made this the case with the Cirqa. Whatever the reasoning or confusion, the anomaly is now being dealt with, which is good news.

The rise of subscriptions

If you're new to the Garmin Cirqa (and it was only announced a few days ago), it takes on the likes of the Whoop wearables and the Fitbit Air by giving you a capable, lightweight wrist tracker without the distraction (and battery drain) of a display.

Both the Cirqa and the Fitbit Air offer basic tracking features and functionality for free, with a pile of extras available if you sign up for a subscription. With Whoop bands, like the Whoop MG, a subscription is compulsory, otherwise it's pretty much useless — plans start at $199 / £169 / AU$299 per year.

As we've written about before, it's a sign of the times that so many tech devices, from smartwatches to security cameras, now come with monthly subscriptions attached — usually stealing away the best features for the device in question.

If you're tempted by a Garmin Cirqa and its display-free design, it's available for $199.99 / £179.99 / AU$299.99 direct from Garmin, with availability from tomorrow, July 24 — and you will be able to record real time heart rate data, via the accompanying Garmin app.

• There was very little mention of the Samsung Galaxy Ring at this year's Unpacked presentation
• Nevertheless, it sounds like a Galaxy Ring 2 is coming
• I interviewed Annika Bizon, VP of Product and Marketing for Mobile Experience, who gave me the inside scoop

What a day! We've just seen Samsung's vision for the future of wearables at Samsung Galaxy Unpacked, including its AR glasses and the new Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 and Watch 9.

However, conspicuous by its absence was the next iteration of Samsung's smallest wearable, the Samsung Galaxy Ring. While Samsung did confirm the Samsung Galaxy Ring's sleep apnea detection functionality was getting a coveted FDA certification — a significant badge of quality — very little else was said about the Ring, or its next generation.

While the silence has led some to believe that the Ring might be a one-and-done device, people are still passionate about the smart ring form factor. After all, the Oura Ring 5 was released this year, so I thought Samsung would be looking to follow up its smash-hit Galaxy Ring with a Galaxy Ring 2.

While it didn't appear in this year's presentation, it seems that a successor is, indeed, on the way. During an interview with Samsung's VP of Product and Marketing for Mobile Experience, Annika Bizon, I asked if there was any word on a potential Galaxy Ring 2.

"I will say yes, we are looking at the future of Ring, watch this space," Bizon told me. "It will definitely form part of our future portfolio of wearables."

I noted that Bizon was wearing a Samsung Galaxy Ring as we were speaking. "Well, I love it because it's discreet health," she said. "It tells me some of the things I need to know and when I put my watch back on, they'll work together."

There was definitely a "yes" in there, and the remark about the future portfolio suggests a new device, as well as a follow-up to the existing one, could be in the works. And the Galaxy Ring has certainly got fans inside Samsung's executive team.

Besides, Samsung aggressively pursuing certifications for the first-generation Ring shows it remains committed to investing time and money into its smallest wearable form factor. The short segment at Unpacked felt like a reminder that yes, the Ring exists, and there's more on the way.

Even though it's a mere tidbit compared to all the big news we got at the event, this is exciting stuff for fans of the best smart rings. The recent announcement of the blood-pressure monitoring startup Signal Ring from ex-Head of Android Tom Moss shows that tech companies are still pushing the limits of what smart rings can do.

Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra 2: One minute review

The Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 might look much the same as last year’s Galaxy Watch Ultra, but it feels very different to wear thanks to Samsung’s efficiency savings. A 12% slimmer titanium body and a lighter band (that remains the same size) mean the watch weighs less as an overall package and has better lockdown onto your wrist, so it doesn’t move around as much during strenuous exercise.

It’s got a new chipset under the hood: the AI-capable Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear Elite, which, Samsung says, offers 32% faster CPU and 19% faster GPU performance compared to last year’s model. It’s launching with three new bands, new wellness features like Vital and Heart Health, and all the usual smartwatch goodies like notifications, call accept/reject, digital wallet and third-party app support. The Ultra comes with LTE capabilities as standard to add the watch to your phone’s data plan, and new fitness tools tailor-made for adventurers, including trail running features with GPX routes, a Daily Cardio Load metric, mid-activity hydration alerts, professional-level diving certifications and — soon — a dedicated diving app.

Fortunately for them (but perhaps unfortunately for Samsung) adventurers find themselves spoiled for choice these days between the Apple Watch Ultra 3, the best Garmin watches, and challengers from brands such as Coros, Polar and Amazfit. The Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 may be good in a vacuum, with excellent health and fitness features, but it’s fighting for space amid a crowd of exceptional wearables. Ultimately, it’s the best Galaxy Watch ever from a specs perspective, and does everything you expect a smartwatch to do (and several things you might not expect); but it’s also expensive, big and bulky. I do wonder how many Samsung users will opt for this over either the much cheaper Galaxy Watch9 or, at the other end of the scale, a chunky specialist tool such as the Garmin Fenix 8 if they’re really interested in wilderness exploration.

It’s fast, it’s accurate (albeit with some niggles — see the Performance section below for more details), it’s got the brightest screen of any smartwatch, on-device Gemini capabilities, and is packed with enough features to make any smartwatch aficionado happy. It’s a terrific gadget, and if you’re a Samsung user who wants the best native watch for your phone’s ecosystem, this is it. But if you’re buying it for trails and routes, Garmin does this better, and with far better battery endurance, albeit with a less robust AI-powered interface for all your communication features.

Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra 2: Specifications

Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra 2: Price and availability

• $699.99 in the US
• £649 in the UK
• AU$1,299 in Australia

The Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 is priced at $699.99 / £649 / AU$1,299. This is actually a small increase of $50 / £50 in the US and UK over the launch price of the original Watch Ultra (but it's the same in Australia), likely due to the escalating price of electronics components.

While it’s still relatively competitively priced compared to the Apple Watch Ultra 3 and premium Garmins such as the Garmin Forerunner 970, it’s certainly on the higher end of the smartwatch price scale; but then again, this is a higher-end smartwatch.

• Value score: 4/5

Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra 2: Design

• 12% slimmer, but still quite bulky
• Titanium squircle cushion
• Strap is 25% lighter

The Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 iterates on the titanium squircle case design we first saw on the original Ultra, which Samsung calls a ‘cushion’, and which has since become a staple of the entire Galaxy Watch range. Housed within this body is the circular display, which is, according to Samsung…

The cushion incorporates new innards, including a larger 800mAh battery and a new Snapdragon Wear Elite processor. Despite the upgrades, the chassis is actually 12% slimmer than the original Watch Ultra’s, which is really a blessing, as that watch was a real beast. The cushion shape looks bulbous, but while it’s still a big watch that’s unsuitable for small wrists, it’s now better suited to a slightly wider variety of wrists than 2024’s enormous cuboid.

Couple this with the bands being 25% lighter this year, and the Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 has had a serious size and weight reduction, which makes it much better for staying locked on your wrist during strenuous exercise, where the previous model was prone to moving around.

The Ultra 2 has the Samsung Galaxy Watch series’ standard pair of side buttons, plus the programmable ‘Quick Button’ that only the premium watches get. This is set to opening ‘my exercises’ as standard, while a long press can activate the watch’s emergency siren, but you can assign a different function to this button to suit your needs. If you’ve used a Samsung watch before, the UI (One Watch UI, to be exact, based on Google’s Wear OS) is virtually unchanged, and for beginners it’s easy and intuitive to use.

The redesigned, AI-forward Samsung Health app is simple to use too, and even though much was made of its big makeover, it’s a far cry from Google Health’s chatbot-focused premium tier.

• Design score: 4.5/5

Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra 2: Features

• All the smartwatch features you’d expect
• Parcel of new health metrics: Vitals, Vascular Load & more
• Diving and trail-running features

The Ultra 2 offers all the usual smartwatch features you’d expect from an LTE-enabled watch, so I won’t list them all here, but suffice to say you can use virtual wallets, accept calls, message, control or store music, use the screen as a viewfinder for a Samsung phone’s camera, and even use Google Gemini via the new, easier Raise-to-Talk feature. Gemini works across devices, so you can make a quick voice note in the moment, and have it transcribed and saved to Samsung Notes or Google Keep, to be viewed later on your phone, tablet or laptop.

Samsung watches have always had strong health credentials, and the Ultra 2 is no different. It retains more esoteric features like blood-pressure monitoring (which requires an inflatable cuff for regular calibration, then uses your biometrics to predict fluctuations) and body composition (which uses electrical signals to estimate your fat and muscle mass) alongside the usual heart rate monitoring, sleep tracking, ECG scan functionality (which is medically certified, according to Samsung) and more. Running Coach, introduced last year, also makes a welcome return, along with its advanced analytics for runners.

New health features include Vitals, which looks at readings of five different heart-related metrics while you sleep and lets you know of any baseline deviations, a Daily Cardio Load score that estimates how much stress your exercise routine is putting your heart under, and Vascular Load, which measures stress and arterial stiffness.

Finally, new features have been added in the shape of two adventure-themed activity profiles. The watch is now a working dive computer — or will be when its companion app is released later this year in partnership with diving company Mares. The Apple Watch Ultra has a similar app, so I’m sure Samsung has been working overtime to catch up.

The Trail Running profile now includes the ability to save GPX routes into the workout activity itself, so you can follow turn-by-turn directions and see maps on your watch with a swipe of your finger. You can download routes yourself, or you have the option to save previous outdoor runs as a route to test yourself against later on, if you want to try to beat your own personal best. What you can’t do is create your own routes in-app, as you can in Garmin Connect for example.

• Features score: 4.5/5

Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra 2: Performance

• Heart rate had some drift compared to Apple Watch Ultra 3 and Polar H10, but tightened up after 10-15 minutes of wear
• Watch is more comfortable to wear than its predecessor
• Accurate sleep tracking

I wore the Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 for five days and four nights before writing this review, and I'll update it when I’ve logged enough nights sleep for features like Vitals to calibrate with seven-day averages. I was dreading wearing the Ultra 2 to bed given its bulkiness and size, but the slimmer, lighter Watch Ultra 2 was surprisingly comfortable for all-day wear — although I’m a man of fairly average build, and those with slimmer wrists may still find it uncomfortable.

Battery life was as described, with the Ultra 2 lasting the as-described 60 hours with always-on display enabled before needing a charge. Sleep was estimated accurately, with the watch and app correctly identifying my wake-up times during the night, and generating numbers corresponding with my energy levels.

To test GPS and heart rate accuracy, I went on a 30-minute run with the Watch Ultra 2 on one wrist, the Apple Watch Ultra 3 on the other, and a Polar H10 electrical heart-rate monitor (the gold standard for wearable heart-rate accuracy) strapped to my chest.

I was initially quite surprised at the difference in heart-rate readings the Watch Ultra 2 recorded at the start of the workout compared to the other two devices, with the Samsung watch sometimes reading 20 beats per minute lower than the Apple and Polar devices. However, after 15 minutes of exercise, I found that the Ultra 2’s readings were closely matching those of the other devices, as you can see from the corresponding graphs and readings below / above.

Initial heart rate ‘drift’ is a known problem with many optical heart-rate sensors (used by all smartwatches) in comparison to electrical ones, although Apple seems to have ironed out much of the problem with its Ultra 3. Still, even if the Samsung Ultra 2 does show some deviation at the beginning of a workout, if you’re exercising for any length of time your results are likely to be broadly accurate. I repeated this test during an indoor HIIT workout, and the results were the same: accurate after a brief warm-up period.

I also tested Body Composition, which uses the same method as the best smart scales — an electrical pulse moving through fat, muscle and water at a variety of speeds. I tested this against an industrial scale at my local gym after my run, and the ticket the scale produced showed that I was at 19% body fat. The smartwatch estimated 9%, a huge difference. It wasn’t until I did the test again later that day, after hydrating and adjusting my technique by raising my arms, that the watch showed 16% — a much closer result, and within the range of deviation I’d expect from two different devices.

I also tested the Ultra 2’s water lock feature by dunking it in a glass of water — after all, I’ve been burned before by so-say dive-ready watches — and it worked just fine afterwards.

• Performance score: 4/5

Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra 2: Scorecard

Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra 2: Should I buy?

Buy it if…

You’re a runner

The Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 is awash with terrific running features, and now trail runners are well catered for too.

You’re a Samsung phone user

Unsurprisingly, the Watch Ultra 2 works perfectly within the wider Samsung ecosystem.

You’re a Gemini user

Use AI for everything? Samsung’s Raise-to-Talk functionality and true on-watch Gemini makes using the smart assistant a doddle.

Don’t buy it if…

You need ultimate battery life

If you prioritize battery life and fitness features over connectivity, consider a Garmin or Coros watch.

You’re a casual exerciser and gym-goer

The Samsung Galaxy Watch9 is a much better-value fitness tracker for those who won’t use all the extra adventuring, diving, and safety features.

You’re an Apple user

The Watch Ultra 2 doesn’t work with Apple phones.

Also Consider…

How I tested

I wore the Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 for the better part of a week, running the battery down and using it as my daily driver to accept and reject calls, check notifications and messages, use Gemini and control music. I tested it against devices such as the Apple Watch Ultra 3, the Polar H10 electrical heart rate monitor, and an industrial smart scale, and I dropped it into a glass of water to test its water lock feature.

First reviewed: July 2026

• Garmin Cirqa smart band has finally dropped
• The screen-free smart band costs $199.99 / £179.99 / AU$299.99
• I tested its accuracy and found it to be very good

It’s here! After months of leaks, the Garmin Cirqa smart band (styled ‘CIRQA’ by Garmin) has finally arrived. I got a chance to check it out — and wear it for a workout — at the official launch event. A sleek-looking fabric smart band in four colors (French Grey, Black, Captain Blue and Mauve) wrapped around a plastic puck, there’s no denying it looks a lot like a Whoop, Polar Loop or a thicker version of the Google Fitbit Air.

The puck packs an Elevate V4 heart rate sensor, the same one used on some of the best Garmin watches. The more powerful Elevate V5 was apparently too big for the size of the unit, according to Garmin.

The tracker offers some of Garmin’s best features including Health Status (Garmin's feature that monitors your vitals overnight), Body Battery, Training Readiness, pulse ox, women’s health tracking, and stress tracking and lots more. The Garmin Cirqa has a 10-day battery life, and the same proprietary charging port as the brand's watches. As expected, there's no onboard GPS, but it can piggyback off your phone's GPS.

Size-wise, it's slimmer than the Whoop MG but thicker than the Fitbit Air.

Many other screenless trackers have no buttons at all, but here Garmin has stuck with its tradition of creating smartwatches with tactile buttons, and added a button to the plastic chassis.

You can press this button to start and stop a workout, but you can also rely on automatic activity tracking for this. Garmin states this will improve the longer you wear the band, and it's also possible to edit workouts in the Connect app to ensure the right movements are correctly interpreted. For example, if you run a lot, the Garmin Cirqa will interpret the swinging of your arms and acceleration as a running workout and start one automatically.

Watch our hands-on below:

No subscription... or is there?

The band is subscription-free at its base price. Many screen-free trackers from the likes of Whoop and Oura rely entirely on subscriptions, but there is an element of monthly payment creeping in there. You can access Garmin Coach to get personalized training plans, but only if you subscribe to Garmin’s premium Garmin Connect+ tier.

This is the first time Garmin Coach has been locked behind the Garmin Connect+ paywall — previously, it either came with a watch or it didn’t.

Chrissy Wheeler, Garmin’s EMEA Senior Product Manager for Fitness, was at the launch and spoke about the Cirqa. She said: “You do have the option for premium content under Garmin Connect+. There are additional features, if you want to, you can pay for those, like all of our coaching side of things with this device. For some of our higher-end devices, these come included, but because this doesn’t have a screen, you need Garmin Connect+ to access the coaching size, our nutrition app… as well as Active Intelligence and AI insights.

“The key thing is that disconnect. People wanting to disconnect from phones, electronics on a day-to-day basis, but still want those metrics. It’s ideal, firstly, for people getting into fitness for the first time, but also for a lot of our athletes. Cycling, for example. They might record all their workouts on an Edge [Garmin cycling computer], but they’re missing out on that 24/7 recovery information, Body Battery, that goes alongside it.”

How I tested

After the product presentation, we were taken through a short HIIT workout by a trainer at the venue, for which I opted to wear the Polar H10 heart rate monitor. The Polar H10 is an electrical heart rate monitor worn on the chest, rather than an LED-based heart rate monitor worn on the wrist like the Cirqa.

It’s the gold standard for heart rate accuracy, used by many athletes all across the world. As fitness trackers use heart rate as the basis for almost all their metrics, it’s the perfect device to use as an accuracy benchmark.

During my workout, the Polar H10 recorded an average heart rate of 155 beats per minute, or bpm. The Garmin Cirqa recorded an average heart rate of 153 bpm, just 2bpm shy of the other device and well within the statistical margin for error. Graphs also aligned very closely.

Based on this first early test, I’m satisfied with the Garmin’s accuracy, but of course more testing will be required. Stay tuned.

• The Garmin Cirqa is a rumored screenless smart band, like a Whoop or Google Fitbit Air
• It's been the subject of a few unofficial leaks, and has been posted on Garmin's site in error before
• Another recent now-deleted post on Garmin's Romanian website has added fuel to the rumors

The Garmin Cirqa smart band is all but confirmed at this point. For months now, we've seen leak after leak about Garmin's Cirqa fitness tracker, and while we don't know too many details, it's seemingly a screenless smart band designed to compete with the likes of Whoop and the Google Fitbit Air.

Now it's reportedly leaked yet again. As spotted by Gadgets and Wearables, a recent update to Garmin's Romanian website, on the page explaining a feature called Health Status, mentions the Garmin Cirqa smart band (styled 'CIRQA') as a compatible device.

Health Status is a feature that combines five core metrics — heart rate, heart rate variability, respiration, skin temperature and pulse ox — to give an overview of your general health. It's a feature on most of the best Garmin watches now, so it's unsurprising that the Cirqa would be getting it.

The reference to Cirqa was reportedly swiftly deleted, but not before a screenshot was captured.

In January, Garmin posted the Cirqa on its own website, including color options (black and French Gray), before swiftly deleting it. It seems this has happened again. Add in other recent leaks, and you can see why it's basically confirmed at this stage.

The screenless 'focus wearables' category is having a moment. We've already seen the launches of the Oura Ring 5, Whoop competitors such as the Polar Loop (as seen in the image above, alongside the Whoop MG and Amazfit Helio Strap), and most recently the Google Fitbit Air. It makes sense that Garmin, one of the leading names in fitness tracking, wants in on the action while the category is still on the up.

I don't think a launch can be far away at this point, and I'll be keeping my ear to the ground for more Cirqa news as it breaks.

• The Garmin Cirqa, Garmin's long-rumored screenless smart band, is breaking cover
• Trademark filings have been spotted with governing bodies for the US, Canada, and EU, suggesting an imminent launch
• Google launched its screenless band with a redesigned, AI-powered app — but I hope Garmin doesn't follow suit

Garmin's long-rumored screenless smart band, designed to compete with the rising trend of 'focus wearables' such as the Google Fitbit Air and Whoop bands, is on the way. We initially thought it was the Garmin Index Sleep Monitor (pictured above), but that turned out to be a different product entirely.

The screenless fitness band is instead likely to be named the Garmin Cirqa, according to leaks; it's going to be a cool new deviation from Garmin's existing fitness watches list, and we now have more evidence that it's going to be launching soon.

Garmin has been filing trademarks for the name 'CIRQA' (styled in all caps, but we'll refer to it as Cirqa in text the same way we do Whoop, which is styled on its official branding as 'WHOOP'), with an entry to the US Patent and Trademark Office database spotted earlier this year.

However, Gadgets & Wearables have also found trademark filings for relevant governing bodies in Canada and the EU, adding fuel to the rumors that a launch may be imminent.

All the filings connote a body-worn sensor rather than a communication device, suggesting the Cirqa isn't just a new smartwatch: it's exclusively for health and fitness.

This is quite exciting: at the moment, people looking for screenless, discreet wearables have no shortage of options, from the Oura Ring 5 to the Fitbit Air to last year's Polar Loop strap. Clearly, the category and people's interest are growing, and a top-quality device from Garmin would sell like hot cakes.

However, I hope Garmin doesn't repeat one aspect of Google's Fitbit Air launch. At the same time as the Fitbit Air came out, Google transformed the Fitbit app into Google Health, eliminating the last of its community features like shareable badges and challenges, controversially redesigning the app, and turning the Premium tier into an AI 'Health Coach' chatbot.

Garmin's user base would revolt if such dramatic changes came to the Garmin Connect app. There was widespread outrage last year when Garmin introduced a Premium tier with AI-powered features — the community is a passionate and outspoken one that loves its technology, and any hint that features are being scrapped or the app transforming to better conform to the AI-first nature of most screenless trackers would be met with an enormous outcry.

Garmin will have to make its Cirqa band work within its existing watch-focused ecosystem, unless it wants to launch a separate app or risk losing some frustrated customers.

Samsung has officially confirmed that the Galaxy Ring 2 is in development. Dr. Hon Pak, Senior Vice President and Head of Samsung’s Digital Health Team, recently told Forbes that the company is “working on the next generation” of its smart ring.

Beyond confirming that a successor ring is on the way, Pak offered only a few hints about what we might expect. But the smart ring market looks different than it did when the original Galaxy Ring launched in 2024.

Competition is growing rapidly, with new smart rings appearing almost every month. While many still struggle to match the devices in our best smart rings guide, the bar has been raised considerably. The original Samsung Galaxy Ring remains our top overall pick, while the newly launched Oura Ring 5 is one of its strongest rivals.

I’ve tested many of the latest smart rings, and if Samsung wants its next ring to remain at the top, these are the upgrades I’d most like to see.

1. Resist the temptation to add a subscription

Even though interest in smart rings has surged over the past few years, I think we can still say they’re a relatively niche category. And I think one of the biggest barriers to entry is the ongoing subscription fee some brands charge.

For example, Oura requires a monthly membership of $5.99/£5.99 per month to unlock its full experience, and subscriptions — optional or otherwise — are on the up with fitness apps. Meanwhile, rivals like Ringconn have built some of their appeal around offering a similar health tracking experience without that additional fee.

Samsung certainly got this right with the original Galaxy Ring. And there are currently no signs a subscription is coming. But maintaining that approach feels increasingly important. We’ve already seen some companies introduce subscription-free products only to later place some features behind a paywall.

If Samsung wants to keep the Galaxy Ring truly competitive, it must make core health insights available without a monthly fee.

2. A slimmer and lighter design

Designing a smart ring has always been a challenge. Manufacturers need to pack in sensors, batteries and processing power all while making the ring feel as comfortable and jewellery-like as possible.

That’s one reason the new Oura Ring 5 has generated so much attention. It’s managed to become smaller and lighter while still adding some new capabilities.

Now, the Galaxy Ring 2 doesn’t necessarily need to be the smallest ring on the market. But even a slight reduction in size and weight would demonstrate that Samsung understands just how important comfort is when you’re asking people to wear something 24 hours a day.

3. Better battery life

Battery life is such an important part of the smart ring experience. The more I take off a ring, the less likely wearing it everyday will become a habit. And the more likely I become to forget about it. It also makes monitoring for trends and average vitals more tricky and less accurate.

As I write this, I’m testing the RingConn Gen 3, which promises significantly longer battery life than many of its rivals at 12 days on average. Other manufacturers are also exploring new battery technologies and the Samsung Galaxy Ring 2 is rumored to be getting a powerful solid-state battery upgrade

The original Galaxy Ring already offers a good battery life, but expectations are rising fast. And again, Samsung doesn’t necessary need to beat every rival. But if competing rings continue pushing to longer runtimes, the Ring 2 will need to remain competitive.

4. iOS support

I think we can safely say this one feels less like something I’d like to see in the next generation of Samsung Galaxy Ring and more like something that must be a necessity.

The Samsung Galaxy Ring was only for Android users. Now, reports already suggest Samsung is working towards iPhone compatibility. If that’s true it could dramatically increase the Galaxy Ring’s appeal.

Because at the moment, limiting the ring to Samsung’s ecosystem excludes loads of potential buyers. Sure, Samsung users will continue to benefit from deeper integrated and additional features. But core functionality across both Android and iOS feels like a necessity.

However, we know Apple's already filed a patent for ring technology — see the above diagram — so even if it never comes to fruition, it's certainly a form factor Apple is mulling over.

5. Add a compelling new health feature

Most smart rings track the same core metrics, like sleep, heart rate, activity, stress and recovery. That means Samsung may need to offer something genuinely distinctive to stand out.

I say that because I’ve been testing the RingConn Gen 3 over the past few weeks, which adds features like vascular health insights and sleep apnea monitoring. Now, whether those features prove valuable to most users over the long term remains to be seen. But, they give the ring a clear point of differentiation.

I don’t think Samsung needs to copy those exact features. But offering something beyond the standard collection of health metrics could help the Galaxy Ring 2 feel like a meaningful upgrade over the original and a solid choice in a sea of similar offerings.

6. AI that isn’t annoying

I’m generally sceptical about AI chatbots in wearables because most implementations I’ve tested simply repeat the same information that’s visible in the app or provide really generic recommendations.

That said, some of Pak’s comments to Forbes do suggest Samsung is thinking beyond a basic execution of AI. Explaining that people have different motivational styles, so the approach needs to be tailored accordingly: “Over the next two to three years, the AI will be able to say, based on this person's characteristics, I'm going to nudge them this way, and 70 or 80 per cent of the time I can predict that person is going to exercise more or sleep more.”

I’m still cautious, especially as Samsung has already added some AI features to Samsung Health. But many wearable brands underestimate how much language matters when it comes to behavior change. The best implementation isn’t just telling users to sleep more, it might identify useful patterns, changes or spot warning signs and deliver advice in a way that’s genuinely personalized.

If Samsung can achieve that, AI could become one of the Galaxy Ring 2’s most compelling features rather than another box-ticking exercise.

There’s a good chance we’ll learn more at Samsung’s next Galaxy Unpacked event, which is scheduled to take place in London on July 22, 2026.

Garmin Forerunner 170: One minute review

The Garmin Forerunner 170 and 170 Music sit nicely between the cheaper Garmin Forerunner 70 and more expensive 570 and 970 duo, the latter of which features on our best Garmin watches guide. As such, both Music and non-Music versions are a bit of a halfway house; not quite cheap enough to be picked up on a whim by budget-conscious consumers, nor expensive enough to be stuffed with top-quality premium features.

However, it is stuffed with plenty of robust fitness features that will suit any active exerciser, especially runners. Sebastian Sawe, who who broke the world record by running a marathon under two hours in London, was toting a Garmin Forerunner 55 — Garmin’s cheapest, most stripped-back running watch.

What you’re paying for here is the Garmin Forerunner 70 — an excellent smartwatch on the cheaper end, and the successor to the popular Garmin Forerunner 55 — with additional smartwatch features attached. These include Garmin Pay, a virtual wallet which lets you pay with cards held on-watch, and the Smart Notifications feature, which allows you to view and manage alerts from a paired smartphone. The Forerunner 170 Music adds an extra 4GB of music storage.

If you’re largely uninterested in these features and you just want an excellent training tool, I’d get the Garmin Forerunner 70 instead, as it’s the best value of the three newcomers overall. But the Garmin Forerunner 170 Music does allow you to hit that Saturday morning parkrun, pay for your coffee, and jog home with headphones in — all without using your phone at all. It’s incredibly convenient, but not a package everyone will need or want.

Still, during my testing I found the watch good to use, comfortable to sleep in, and accurate against testing units like my Polar H10 heart rate monitor. Our writer Michael Sawh found the same with the Garmin Forerunner 70. You can read my full thoughts on the 170 Music below, but whichever watch you choose, you’ll be in good hands.

Garmin Forerunner 170 review: Specifications

Garmin Forerunner 170 review: Price and availability

• Garmin Forerunner 170: $299 / £259.99 / AU$479
• Garmin Forerunner 170 Music: $349.99 / £299.99 / AU$549
• Garmin Forerunner 70: $249.99 / £219.99 / AU$399

The Garmin Forerunner 170 without music storage costs $299 / £259.99 / AU$479.

The Garmin Forerunner 170 Music, the upgrade with 4GB internal memory for music storage, costs $349.99 / £299.99 / AU$549. The Forerunner 70, which doesn’t have the 170’s smartwatch features such as Garmin Pay and Smart Notifications, is cheaper at $249.99 / £219.99 / AU$399.

We’re zeroing in on the Garmin Forerunner 170 today, and I think the watch is generally good value for money compared to some of the seriously expensive premium Garmins in the lineup, but perhaps not compared to the 70, which is $100 / £80 / AU$150 cheaper for a very similar watch. If you don’t want Garmin Pay or notifications, you’re better off saving your cash and getting the 70.

None of the Garmins have a particularly wide feature set compared to watches from Apple and Samsung at a similar price point, but their batteries last far longer — up to 10 days for the 170 — and their workout credentials are fantastic. This ensures you can get multiple battery-sucking GPS workouts in each week while still retaining enough smartwatch functionality to matter, all without needing a charge for ages. Each Garmin watch is durable too.

I’d say it’s generally a good value prospect, even if it does edge into the expensive end with the 170 Music.

• Score: 4/5

Garmin Forerunner 170 review: Design

• Iterates on existing Forerunner design
• Surprisingly dull AMOLED screen
• Elevate V4 heart rate sensor

The Garmin Forerunner 170 looks very much like every other Forerunner, but if this is your first Garmin that won’t mean much. It’s got a five-button configuration — up, down, light, start, stop or select, and back (or lap). You can use these, a touchscreen, or a combination of the two to navigate the watch, which is ideal if you’re wearing gloves.

It comes in a single size, with a 42.6mm screen, and its packing an AMOLED display rather than the duller digital-watch-style memory-in-pixel screen of older watches, but it’s not particularly bright even at full power. It comes with a silicon two-tone strap, and on the back it has one of Garmin’s older heart rate sensors, the Elevate V4. More expensive watches get the more accurate V5, but the V4 has been included here presumably to keep the cost down.

It’s very light, with a listed weight of 41g, and feels like less than that in the hand. A light watch is great for running and collecting wellness info as it’s easy to wear, and this checks the boxes.

Those familiar with Garmin products will be happy to know no liberties have been taken with the design of Garmin’s established software, either on-watch or in the Garmin Connect app. I think it’s the perfect mix of stripped-down and information-heavy, although there are a lot of menus to lose yourself in. The buttons make it fairly intuitive to navigate around for old hands. It’s a tried and tested design, that doesn’t break the mold in any significant way.

• Design score: 4/5

Garmin Forerunner 170 review: Features

• Advanced running dynamics
• Limited smart notifications functionality
• 170 Music offers mp3 and streaming downloads

Plenty of running features abound here. As the name suggests, Garmin’s included its advanced running dynamics tools such as running power (a measure of your total running effort using motion data as well as heart rate), along with advanced statistics such as stride and cadence data after your run. During workouts, you can set up routes in Garmin Connect with virtual pacers to keep you on time.

You also get the usual health stuff, such as heart rate and sleep score, 80 workout modes (although not all have dedicated metrics or GPS enabled) and reports in the morning and evening that provide information about your training along with the weather and a motivational quote. The Garmin Forerunner 170 gets Smart Notifications, which allow you to answer some tests with simple replies and the Garmin Pay functionality which acts as a virtual wallet like Apple Pay.

The 170 Music’s 4GB of storage allows you to upload tunes directly onto the watch, including by saving playlists from the likes of Spotify. Even without the dedicated Music model, you can listen on apps like Spotify, Deezer, YouTube Music and so on through your phone, and control music on the watch there. The Garmin Connect IQ store has dedicated widgets for these services, along with thousands of other apps from a mixture of big-name brands and enthusiastic amateurs.

Otherwise, what’s missing? I wasn’t expecting full-color maps at this price, just the breadcrumb navigation and route direction common on most Garmin watches without maps, so I don’t feel like the feature is missing, as such.

However, to justify the price increase from the 70 to the 170 Music, I think it needs more hardware features. A microphone like the Garmin Forerunner 570, and the ability to take calls on watch and use Garmin’s simple voice assistant, would better separate it. As is, most people who want dedicated smartwatch features will just get one of the best Apple Watches or best Samsung watches instead.

• Features score: 4/5

Garmin Forerunner 170 review: Performance

• Accurate against a heart rate monitor
• GPS works well against an Apple Watch Ultra 3
• Comfortable and easy to wear day-to-day

I checked the Garmin’s heart rate accuracy against an electrical chest-mounted Polar H10 heart rate monitor — the gold standard of heart rate accuracy — during a 25-minute treadmill test, and was very pleased to report that despite the older sensor, both average and maximum heart rate were within 1-4bpm of the heart rate monitor; a very acceptable margin for error and not a statistically significant one.

GPS was accurate compared to my Apple Watch Ultra 3, and battery life was representative of its claims, with total drain taking just over a week with multiple GPS workouts completed. I feel as though the ‘up to 10 days’ listed battery life is reflective of reality.

Being lighter and smaller than many Garmins I’ve tested, it’s comfortable to wear every day and fine to sleep in.

• Performance score: 4.5 / 5

Garmin Forerunner 170 review: Scorecard

Garmin Forerunner 170 review: Should I buy?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

Also consider

How I tested

I wore the Garmin Forerunner 170 Music for over a week, draining the battery down and using as many of its features as possible. I ran and used it for strength and yoga sessions, tested its smart features, and pitted it against multiple competitor devices, including a chest strap heart rate monitor.

Amazfit Active 3 Premium: One minute review

Amazfit has been a company I’ve been keeping an eye on since their Bip 3 ‘budget’ smartwatch blew through all my expectations (and then some), followed by a slew of other watches across a range of price points, aiming to undercut the likes of Garmin — but most notably the $99 / £99 Amazfit Active 2, which earned five stars in our review. So when they put the word “Premium” on a product, it piques my curiosity.

Not only does the Amazfit Active 3 Premium have a bunch of excellent features that rival some of the biggest in the business, like excellent sleep and fitness tracking, but it’s also a fantastic-looking smartwatch.

The ‘Premium’ moniker signifies the addition of the super-tough sapphire glass coating, and the inclusion of the NFC payment feature. This was the distinction that the Amazfit Active 2 Premium used to separate itself from the base Active 2: however, there is no base Active 3, so even though this watch uses the ‘Premium’ model distinction, it’s the only watch in its range.

Despite this, it’s not an expensive buy. Sure, it’s pricier than the older Active 2, but it’s still undercutting the cheapest Apple and Garmin watches while delivering performance that belies its price. Another excellent example of a fitness tracker from Amazfit, a company which has by now shown itself to be a serious contender in the fitness tech space.

Amazfit Active 3 Premium: Specifications

Amazfit Active 3 Premium: Price and availability

• Starts at $169 / £169 / AU$239
• Not Amazfit’s cheapest, but still cheaper than many rivals
• Available in three color options

It’s hard not to look at the Amazfit Active 3 Premium and not feel as though there’s a catch somewhere when it comes to its price, but it really is a sub-$170 / £170 / AU$250 fitness watch with the kinds of features and accuracy you’d have spent double that for not long ago. Our review unit is the Atlas Blue model, but it’s also available in Apex Silver and Aero White.

• Value score: 5/5

Amazfit Active 3 Premium review: Design

• Heavier than some alternatives
• AMOLED display

Regardless of your color choice, the Amazfit Active 3 Premium is a looker. It has a circular body with a metallic finish, with the underside color-matched to the bands for Atlas Blue and Aero White (Apex Silver would be my pick, but the whole body is silver with a black strap).

The strap itself is the standard polymer-style you’ll have felt on just about any other smartwatch, but the fact that the Amazfit Active 3 Premium uses a pin system like a more traditional watch adds a touch of class (and some minor fiddliness). It’s got a 1.32-inch display, which isn’t large —but it’s the same size as the Amazfit Active 2. I didn’t feel like I was losing much in terms of screen space compared to some of Amazfit’s larger watches, but I was surprised to find it’s slightly heavier than the Coros Nomad I tested recently.

With that said, I’m not sure I’d consider it rugged. I wasn’t prepared to hurl my review unit to the ground to test its durability, despite its sapphire glass and scratch-resistant coating. It might not be the watch you’ll want to take on an ultramarathon, but it’ll stand up to runs, rides and gym workouts with ease.

• Design score: 4.5/5

Amazfit Active 3 Premium: Features

• Full-color maps
• HybridCharge is great
• 170 sports modes

Ok, so the Amazfit Active 3 Premium is a looker, but does it have the smarts to back it up? Despite the relatively low price, the answer is a resounding yes. You’ll need to use the Zepp app, and while I’ve tested it before and found it to be a little cumbersome, I am pleased to report that (at least in the time I’ve been away), it’s much slicker these days.

You can use it as a dashboard, and there are badges to collect that include step goals, monthly targets, and much more.

Fitbit Premium’s Daily Readiness Score has led the charge to distill a bunch of complex metrics into an easy-to-read number that calculates how hard you can push your workout on any given day, and Amazfit’s version is called “HybridCharge”.

It takes into account sleep, heart rate, activity, and recovery, as well as subjective inputs like stress, health, and more, to help you make a judgment on whether today is a workout day or a rest day, and it does so pretty well.

One day during testing, I’d struggled to sleep and had an early start at work, and the app and watch understood that maybe I needed to take it easy and recover that day. It’s something you used to need a premium subscription for with other manufacturers, but I’m glad to see it’s included in the price of the product here.

PAI is also back, so those looking for a quick look at a glance to see how their natural fitness is holding up can check it out by testing their heart rate zones. The watch supports basic notification features, and of course offers that NFC payment digital wallet feature for convenience. A barnstorming inclusion is full-color maps, offering turn-by-turn navigation. This is a premium feature crammed into a value package, offering turn-by-turn navigation during runs, rides and walks.

• Features score: 4.5/5

Amazfit Active 3 Premium: Performance

• AMOLED display
• 12 days of battery life
• Excellent accuracy

Performance is uniformly excellent across the board with the Amazfit Active 3 Premium. Fitness tracking offers a deep suite of metrics, including running ones like stride length, ground contact, and just about anything else you could possibly ask for as a runner. And, if you’re just learning what all of these measurements are, fear not: Everything is handily explained within the Zepp app.

When you’re done, the app also does a great job at showcasing your fatigue level, which then feeds into the aforementioned HybridCharge metrics.

I very rarely check my sleep outside of Apple’s Sleep Score number, but the Amazfit Active 3 Premium does make me want to dig deeper — and offers plenty of data to do so. I was surprised at how often I was getting up in the night without realising it, and the Aura section of the Zepp app even includes relaxing music to help you settle back down.

Battery-wise, Amazfit claims you can get 12 days from a single charge. In my experience, it’s been closer to 10 days, but it’s still very respectable given the amount of data it’s collecting day in, day out. The AMOLED display is plenty bright for just about everything, even direct sunlight.

The only minor gripe I have with the Amazfit Active 3 Premium is that it doesn’t automatically offer to track a workout if you start walking/running/doing anything. As someone who still forgets to hit the button before setting out, it’s nice when devices like the Apple Watch give a nudge.

• Performance Score: 4.5 / 5

Amazfit Active 3 Premium: Scorecard

Amazfit Active 3: Should I buy?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

Also consider

How I tested the Amazfit Active 3 Premium

I’ve been testing the Amazfit Active 3 Premium while walking, hitting the gym for weights and cardio (primarily using the cross trainer), and wearing it for just about everything in life.

I tested the GPS across various areas of London and more remote areas like the countryside where I live, and wore it to bed, too. I tested many of its measurements by pairing it with my Apple Watch Series 11 on the opposite wrist.

• Ultrahuman hits Ring Pro production problems
• Kickstarter backers are left wondering when they'll get their ring
• August 10 is the new expected date but it's far from guaranteed

Ultrahuman is no stranger to producing some of the best smart rings, but not even that could protect them from the outpouring of disappointment and frustration that came its way after informing Ring Pro Kickstarter backers that shipments were being delayed yet again.

Customers took to Reddit to share their annoyance after u/enzolecorbeau started a thread by sharing a screenshot of the official Ultrahuman message. In it, Ultrahuman states that shipments were now "expected to begin from August 10 onwards".

Kickstarter backers were expecting to receive their orders in June, and this latest delay isn't the first. A single delay is one thing, but now it has happened several times, backers are starting to get vocal about the continued delays to the fitness tracker.

One Reddit user was annoyed that the unit had been sent to "influencers" and not to "people who paid money". Others report that they've requested cancelations but without success.

It's not all negative, though, with one Reddit user hoping the delay is down to the battery "because that would mean they may actually be looking to improve it."

Ultrahuman doesn't mention the battery but instead attributes the delays to issues experienced during the scaling of production. Ultrahuman says they are "taking extra care to ensure every Ring PRO meets the quality and experience standards we've set for it."

Their commitment to quality is no bad thing. They go on: "Each ring is individually crafted with a high level of precision and care – from the finishing to the final quality checks – and this process is taking slightly longer than originally anticipated."

Ultrahuman has always delivered before

Ultrahuman ran Kickstarter campaigns for both their Ring and Ring Air devices and faithfully fulfilled orders of both.

In reality, crowdfunded projects are often subject to delays. For Ultrahuman, the challenge of manufacturing a titanium unibody with a cutaway safety feature en masse is no doubt contributing to the delays — the last thing Ultrahuman will want is to ship a ring with issues, especially as smart ring problems can prove dangerous.

Customers are more likely to forgive the brand for a delayed shipment than they are for receiving a device with issues. A botched product release could damage customer trust and mean the end of the wearables brand.

None of this will appease the community of people who were expecting to receive their ring back in June and are still left waiting. Only time will tell when Ultrahuman will start fulfilling these orders.

After publishing the original article, Ultrahuman CEO, Mohit Kumar, replied with the following statement:

"The Ultrahuman Ring PRO pushes boundaries with a 15-day battery life and a titanium unibody with ProRelease, which lets the ring be cut apart safely if a finger ever swells. As with anything novel, scaling it has proven harder than anticipated. Production is running, but not yet fast enough; however, the path to full capacity is clear for 10 August.”

I’ve been writing about fitness tech for years, and we’re finally at a point where more affordable fitness trackers are now every bit as capable as models that would have cost hundreds of dollars or pounds, little more just a few years ago. That’s not to say premium options don’t have their place too, but many of the standouts this year have certainly been on the cheaper end.

Whether it’s screenless devices showing less can be more, the latest iteration of the popular Oura Ring, or a pair of Amazfit options that can cut it with much more expensive models, here are the best fitness trackers in 2026 so far, in no particular order.

1. Google Fitbit Air

• Release date: May 26
• Rating: 4/5

Whoop bands are growing in popularity for their distraction-free, sensor-packed, highly comfortable nature, and Google didn’t want to be outdone.

The tech giant’s answer to Whoop’s popularity, the Google Fitbit Air’s companion app boasts an effective but controversial AI-powered premium tier for additional insights, courtesy of Google’s new AI Health Coach. However, even on the free tier, this comfortable tracker weighing just 12 grams and reasonably priced at $99.99 / £84.99 / AU$199 is well worth a look.

Its real strength is heart rate metrics, which are consistently impressive for a cheap device, and it includes FDA-certified background AFib detection for additional peace of mind.

Our main gripe (outside of the two-tier app offering) is that it lacks GPS, and therefore run data feels less accurate than we’d have liked – even at this price.

Watch our YouTube review of the Google Fitbit Air here:

2. Oura Ring 5

• Release date: June 4
• Rating: 4/5

From the low-priced end of the spectrum to the expensive, the Oura Ring 5 is the latest offering from the company that, if they’re not the only game in town, more or less popularised the smart ring form factor.

Starting at $399 / £399 / AU$649, it’s hardly cheap, but it does a great job of offering a less intrusive way of tracking your wellness and fitness. In fact, despite its size, the fact that it could easily be mistaken for a piece of jewellery, and how comfortable it is, it’s remarkably accurate, too.

With a week of tracking between charges (including sleep), it offers more color options and better connectivity (Bluetooth 6.0 vs 5.4) at the same price as the Samsung Galaxy Ring. It’s also somehow 40% smaller than the last generation of Oura Ring, while still matching up with a dedicated chest strap for heart tracking.

Watch our YouTube review of the Oura Ring 5 here:

3. Amazfit Cheetah 2 Pro:

• Release date: April 16
• Rating: 4/5

When a company like Amazfit (one of the best budget tracker manufacturers) takes aim at the premium market, it’s wise to take notice. The Amazfit Cheetah 2 Pro offers a Garmin-like experience with a bunch of runner-focused tools like training plans and detailed metrics, all with marathon-tackling 31 hours of dual-band GPS tracking.

Using it day-to-day can get you 20 days of battery life, and while it is a fairly bulky watch on the wrist, it’s a much cheaper rival to Garmin offerings.

GPS tracking is solid, but offline maps could use some work. Still, if you’re a runner, this is one of the models to beat this year.

4. Amazfit Active 3 Premium

• Release date: February 26
• Rating: 5/5

Another Amazfit, sure, but if the Cheetah 2 Pro is too much for you, the Amazfit Active 3 Premium is well worth a look. Despite the name, it’s priced very reasonably at $169 / £169 / around AU$325), while still offering an AMOLED display, built-in GPS, and a fairly weighty (but comfortable) 54.6g chassis.

Battery life can run you for up to 12 days according to Amazfit (but I hit around 11 in testing), and the Zepp app has improved massively in recent years so it’s a very solid running companion with some bona fide coaching options.

You’ll likely want something a little more durable if you’re going off-trail, but what it lacks in ruggedness, the Amazfit Active 3 Premium makes up for by being a great-looking budget option.

5. Garmin Forerunner 70

• Release date: May 15
• Rating: 4/5

Reviewer Mike Sawh wasn’t kidding — the Garmin Forerunner 70 really might be better value than its more premium cousin, the Garmin Forerunner 170.

High praise indeed, but even without Garmin’s latest, more expensive sensors, it packs accurate metrics alongside an easy-to-read AMOLED display and physical buttons that make it easy to use, excellent sports tracking, and impressive training insights.

It does lose the affordability of the Garmin Forerunner 55, and doesn’t have smartwatch features like NFC payments, but for a runner it’s a great option that’s one of the year’s strongest.

• Samsung is phasing out the Vascular Load feature on Galaxy Watch in the US
• It's replacing it with Blood Pressure Trend in late July
• Users believe this is due to FDA compliance issues

Samsung's range of smartwatches covers every base when it comes to fitness tracking, but the tech giant is pulling the plug on a health monitoring tool it rolled out only last year. Don't fret; a replacement feature is on the way.

The company’s experimental Vascular Load feature, a tool that was introduced alongside the launch of the Galaxy Watch 8 at last year’s Galaxy Unpacked 2025, will be phased out in the US by late July. Its removal aligns with the upcoming Samsung Health 7.0 and One UI 9 watch updates, but it appears that Vascular Load will still be available to users outside of the US following the changes.

When Samsung removes Vascular Load at the end of the month, you'll no longer be able to access this data in the Samsung Health app. However, you can download your existing data by opening the app and tapping Samsung Health Settings, then find Samsung Health Information to continue.

Users are currently being notified via the Samsung Health app, but the company has yet to issue a wider announcement, which is a little frustrating, as I can imagine users just want a bit of clarity. That said, Samsung isn’t leaving you high and dry.

To make up for the loss of the Vascular Load monitoring tool, the company is offering an alternative: Blood Pressure Trend — which Samsung says will be available in the upcoming Galaxy Watch (we assume this is referring to the Galaxy Watch 9).

While Vascular Load uses your heart rate data to measure factors like changes in blood volume, Blood Pressure Trend is designed to monitor your blood pressure periodically and show you a trend over time. In addition to this, it will also offer you tips and tricks to help maintain healthy habits.

To get started with Blood Pressure Trend, Samsung highlights in the notification that you’ll need to use a blood pressure cuff with your Galaxy Watch, and then once every 28 days to maintain accuracy (according to Android Authority). The company also shared that Blood Pressure Trend “is for wellness only”, and “not for the diagnosis and treatment of any medical condition”.

It’s still early days, and Galaxy Watch owners are awaiting further information on the upcoming changes, which have sparked online debate regarding the reasons for its US removal.

A vast majority of the online commenters believe that Samsung is concerned about Food and Drug Administration (FDA) compliance — one user says that the FDA often drags out approvals like this. While this idea gives the removal credibility, Samsung has yet to detail the reasons for its decision to stop access to Vascular Load, so we have to take this speculation with a pinch of salt.

If you've been making the most of the sunny weather by getting out and exercising, then you'll no doubt have considered buying one of the best fitness trackers around. But with so many different brands and models to choose from, it can be difficult to decide which is best for you.

Well, maybe the decision became a whole lot easier because the Fitbit Charge 6 is now on sale at Amazon for just £79 (was £139.99). That's a spicy 44% discount for those interested in the numbers.

For the price, it has excellent exercise tracking, sleep tracking, ECG functionality, and irregular rhythm notifications, all of which add up to an impressive feature-rich smartwatch.

Today’s best Fitbit deal

If you've had a look at our Fitbit Charge 6 review, then you'll notice that we only awarded it 3.5 out of five stars. That might put you off, but it's worth stating that the rating was given when we compared it to full-on fitness watches.

If you're only looking for a watch for occasional health tracking and some exercise tracking, then the Charge 6 is well worth a look, especially at this price.

Our reviewer actually concluded by calling it a “solid companion for all kinds of activities", and with a widespread array of features, including an ECG heart health reader and full GPS, there's a lot to commend it.

And let's not forget that it's a Fitbit, which means you get all the benefits of the Fitbit ecosystem with a six-month free trial to Fitbit Premium bundled in.

Still exploring your options? If you're a runner, then one of the latest Garmin deals is worth a look. Alternatively, if you want a better all-rounder with broader smartwatch integration, such as receiving and responding to texts, then have a look at the best smartwatch deals available right now.

• SVP at Samsung says the Galaxy Ring 2 is officially in development
• It could come with a slew of design upgrades as well as deeper integration with other Samsung devices
• The biggest improvement is support for iOS, a first for Samsung wearables

When Samsung released the Galaxy Ring in 2024 it shot to the top of our list of best smart rings, but the Korean tech company has been rather silent on plans for the next-gen wearable — until now.

Speaking with Forbes, Senior Vice President and Head of the Digital Health Team at Samsung, Hon Pak, shared that the company’s next smart ring (presumably named the Galaxy Ring 2) is officially in development; “We are working on the next generation. I can tell you that,” he shared.

The announcement arrives just after the new Oura Ring 5 hit the shelves which, compared to its predecessor, is roughly 40% smaller with an even longer battery life, although does come with a higher price tag. It’s about time Samsung returned to the smart ring world given how fierce the competition has grown over the last two years — so how will the Galaxy Ring 2 stand against its rivals?

When Samsung released the first Galaxy Ring, Pak described it as “a comprehensive and simplified approach” to health and sleep, and it seems that he wants to build on this across both hardware and software.

For starters, if we look at the Oura Ring 5’s slimmer redesign, it wouldn’t come as a complete surprise if Samsung replicated a similar ‘smaller but tougher’ approach to its own smart ring for added comfort improvements.

Additionally, Samsung could take a page out of Oura’s book and remove skin contact bumps from the inside of the ring, all while extending its battery life — we also predicted that it will come with a solid state battery.

Though design upgrades are likely, Pak hinted that this won’t be the biggest difference with the Galaxy Ring 2. “If you look at the comparison of other rings, regardless of the competitor, the sensors are not that different right now,” he said, adding “It’s really about what services you create on the top layer. It’s really the software differentiation that you see.”

With these remarks in mind, the Galaxy Ring 2’s main focus will be on developing deeper software integration rather than reupholstering the hardware. Pak also shared that Samsung has plans to build on its connected ecosystem to help users receive more accurate metrics and get a better sense of their health habits.

Instead of using just the Galaxy Ring 2's collection of metrics to present the full picture of your well-being, Samsung takes your data from the smart ring and blends it with other devices in its network via the Samsung Health app. This could include Galaxy Watches and smartphones, and even its range of SmartThings home appliances to give you more detailed context into your daily activity and overall well-being.

For users who are deep into Samsung’s ecosystem of devices already, it’s a huge win, but one of the biggest setbacks with the first-gen Galaxy Ring is its lack of support for iOS. While Samsung has the overall edge over the likes of Oura, the latter supports iOS, giving users more reason to opt for its wearables over Samsung’s — but this could change with the Galaxy Ring 2.

In addition to software upgrades, Pak heavily teased that iOS support will finally be coming to the Galaxy Ring; “I’m smiling but I can’t say anything,” he hinted. Out of all the new upgrades, iOS support would throw the biggest curveball into the competition, giving non-Android users even more reason to make the switch to Galaxy Ring over rival wearables.

While it’s not exactly a formal announcement, it’s certainly a promising affirmation of what to expect from the long-awaited wearable. Despite not giving any details on an official launch date, Galaxy Unpacked 2026 is just around the corner where we’re expecting the announcement of the S26 lineup — could Samsung also throw the Galaxy Ring 2 into the mix?

• The Fitbit Air is getting its first software update
• It should fix problems with automatic workout detection
• An old Fitbit app workaround is going away

The first software update for the Fitbit Air is rolling out now, and the hope is that it's going to fix one particular bugbear for users — but there's also bad news for those who are still using the older Fitbit app rather than the Google Health replacement.

First up, the update is rolling out now, as reported by 9to5Google, though you might not see it right away: look for a notification inside the Google Health app that an update is ready. As per Google, it contains "bug fixes and general improvements".

There's a bit more detail in a post on the Google Health support forum from last month, suggesting that there are fixes to exercise tracking, split runs, exercise exports, multiple device support, and how the device deals with lost connectivity when tracking.

As noted by Android Authority, one of the most commonly reported problems on the Fitbit Air has been the inaccurate labeling of workouts that are detected automatically — tagging runs as general workouts, for example — and this issue now seems to have been resolved.

No more Fitbit app workarounds

While a software update is positive news for Fitbit Air owners, those who have been clinging on to the old Fitbit app on their phones won't be pleased that Google has now closed off a workaround for avoiding the upgrade to Google Health.

As explained by Gadgets & Wearables, some users have been sideloading older versions of the Fitbit app: these older versions don't get automatically replaced by Google Health, so it's a way of sticking with the old app interface and layout.

From July 15 though, these older versions of the Fitbit app are going to stop working. Users will have no choice but to switch to Google Health, which moves around a lot of the key elements on screen and introduces a new AI coach.

Fitbit fans have been complaining loudly about the changes that the Google Health app brings with it, and many are unhappy about being forced to upgrade: "I think I'm going to have to find an alternative to the AI slop," writes one Redditor.

The countdown to the end Amazon Prime Day has officially started and after today, all the deals you didn't take advantage of will be gone, so take this as a nudge to make the most of what's still available.

One of this year's most popular products have been the best fitness trackers but despite the popularity, there are still plenty left on Amazon to our surprise. And the best thing is that you don't have to break the bank to get started with your new fitness craze — I've selected four that are under $100.

• Browse the full Amazon Prime Day sale

Fitbit devices are usually your best shot at scoring a fitness tracker that's not only affordable and beginner-friendly, but on that's going to cover every health tracking tool you'll ever need — even if you know you'll use some more than others.

Right now, the biggest saving you can score is on the Fitbit Charge 6 which is now $85.45 down from $159.95, taking it to its lowest-ever price and saving you $70 at the same time. However, it doesn't end there, and there's more than meets the eye when it comes to Prime Day deals on wearables.

Today's best fitness tracker deals in the UK

More Prime Day deals in the US

• Amazon Devices: Fire Sticks & Echo from $18
• Amazon Haul: viral gadgets, tech & appliances from $1.99
• Apple: MacBooks, AirPods & AirTags from $29
• Beauty: 50% off toothbrushes & hair tools
• Cheap TVs: smart TVs from $69.99
• Garden: tools, mowers, planters from $24.99
• Headphones: 50% off Beats, Bose & Samsung
• Laptops: Apple, HP & Dell from $199
• Mattresses: Sealy, Serta & more from $186
• Patio: outdoor furniture, rugs & decor from $19.99
• Sports: 50% off fitness gear, treadmills & clothing
• Vacuums: Dyson, Shark & Bissell from $34

It's the last day of this year's big Amazon Prime Day sales event, and I assumed many of the discounts were pretty much fixed at this point. However, I certainly didn't see a second price drop on the Oura Ring 4 coming today.

• Browse the full Amazon Prime Day sale

Our engagement editor Amelia Schwanke wrote about the 4.5-star Oura Ring 4 hitting a record low price earlier in the week, but I'm excited to report that it's dropped even further, as you can get the Oura Ring 4 for just £199.99 (was £349.99) at Amazon in Black, Brushed Silver, Silver, and Stealth colours. The Gold and Rose Gold colours are still a little bit more expensive at £229.99, but even if you do want to shell out for these, it's a hell of a deal.

Check it out below. If you're in the US and you've found yourself here, there's good news too — you can also get the Oura Ring 4 for just $226 (was $349).

Today's best Oura Ring 4 deals

It's an incredible piece of technology (it even won our health and fitness device of the year award), made even better by this crazy discount. Remember: Prime Day ends tonight, so you don't have long to snap this up.

More Prime Day deals in the US

• Amazon Devices: Fire Sticks & Echo from $18
• Amazon Haul: viral gadgets, tech & appliances from $1.99
• Apple: MacBooks, AirPods & AirTags from $29
• Beauty: 50% off toothbrushes & hair tools
• Cheap TVs: smart TVs from $69.99
• Garden: tools, mowers, planters from $24.99
• Headphones: 50% off Beats, Bose & Samsung
• Laptops: Apple, HP & Dell from $199
• Mattresses: Sealy, Serta & more from $186
• Patio: outdoor furniture, rugs & decor from $19.99
• Sports: 50% off fitness gear, treadmills & clothing
• Vacuums: Dyson, Shark & Bissell from $34

The sun is setting on this year's Amazon Prime Day, but thankfully, the offers on the best fitness trackers haven't gone anywhere.

Finding a new fitness tracker can be a little overwhelming given all the options that are available, but if it's a simple, easy-to-use yet effective device you're after then the search becomes a lot easier.

I've chosen five of the best deals on entry-level fitness trackers, and the best part is that they're mostly under £100 (one is just a few pounds over), so you can start your fitness journey without breaking the bank.

• Browse the full Amazon Prime Day sale

The standout deal for me is the Fitbit Charge 6, one of our favorite devices, which is down to a record-low £75.05 (was £139.99). You can also snag the Fitbit Inspire 3 for even cheaper at £59.99 (was £84.99).

If you've been thinking about taking the plunge and getting a new fitness wearable, this could be your final chance to bag some of these deals for a while, so don't miss it!

Today's best fitness tracker deals in the UK

More Prime Day deals in the UK

• Amazon Prime: get a 30-day free trial
• Amazon Devices: Fire, Ring & Blink from £13.99
• Amazon Haul: up to 30% off
• Apple: up to 33% off AirPods & Apple Watch
• Appliances: up to 45% off Ninja & Tefal
• Beauty: up to 60% off Philips & Oral-B
• Essentials: household goods from £5
• Fans: from £20
• Fashion: up to 50% off
• Gaming: £90 off PlayStation 5
• Headphones: up to 50% off Beats & Sony
• Laptops: from £149
• Tablets: Samsung & Lenovo from £79.99
• Toys: up to 25% off Lego and Tonies
• TVs: from £129.99
• Vacuums: up to 40% off Shark & Roborock
• Wearables: up to 30% off Garmin & Oura

As TechRadar's Senior Fitness and Wearables Editor, I'm usually testing at least one smartwatch, and sometimes two at once. But occasionally I get overwhelmed with the volley of notifications or the compulsion to check my metrics, and swap the tracker out with something more discrete and screenless.

I'm not the only one. 'Focus' wearables are on the rise, be they fitness bands without screens, smart rings, or something else like hybrid watches. They're different form factors, but they all do fundamentally the same thing — passively track your health and fitness in the background, rather than actively show you information during a workout like the best smartwatches.

Below is a trio of fitness trackers I've personally tested, along with my verdict about what kind of person they're best suited for — and where to find the best deals for Amazon Prime Day.

• Browse the full Amazon Prime Day sale

If you dislike the idea of a smartwatch but still want a useful fitness tracker — maybe you want to wear a proper analog/digital watch — then I would recommend you start your search by looking at these three wearables.

1. Google Fitbit Air

• Best for: everyday exercise, budget buyers

I recently reviewed the Google Fitbit Air and really liked it. The old Fitbits have been redesigned as a screenless fitness tracker, around 12g including strap, with all the information being fed into the app so you can check it at your leisure. There's a haptic alarm you can tap to get rid of, but that's really all the interaction you have with the wristband, other than charging it around once a week.

It's very comfortable to wear during sleep because of its lightweight, and it cleaves very close to chest-based heart rate monitors and the likes of the top-tier Apple Watch Ultra 3. It's very popular because it's cheap too, at just $99.99 / £84.99 / AU$199 — at its base tier.

It does have an AI-powered premium health coach attached, which is an optional extra costing $9.99 / £7.99 / AU$14.99 a month, or $99.99 / £79.99 / AU$140 annually. Without this, you get your base stats such as sleep, steps, recovery, heart rate, and workout tracking. As you'll see later on in this article, premium tiers and subscriptions are becoming a theme. But whether you choose to subscribe or not, the Fitbit Air remains a solid choice for screenless tracking.

Read our full Google Fitbit Air review

2. Oura Ring 4

• Best for: holistic wellness, sleep tracking

The Oura Ring 5 is out, true, but that just means there are lots of deals on the Oura Ring 4 this week. Another subscription-based wearable, starting at $349 / £349 (less if you snag a Prime Day deal) with a $5.99-in-all-regions subscription attached, the Oura Ring 4 sits firmly at the premium end of the finger.

But it is undeniably impressive. It's even more comfortable than the Fitbit above (and thus a top-tier sleep tracker), boasts accurate metrics, and has an impressive suite of features, including a tag-based system to allow you to add context to your day's metrics and a sophisticated auto-exercise detection feature. It emphasizes holistic wellbeing, with emphasis on balance and mindfulness, even if the option for in-app blood tests is a bit creepy and, for want of a better word, 'biohacky'.

It comes in a range of finishes and colors, so it is a lot more discreet than the cheap plastic Fitbit. Price aside, it's an excellent fitness tracker, and the Prime Day deals should help soften that blow.

Read our full Oura Ring 4 review

3. Whoop 5.0

• Best for: serious athletes, optimizers

The screenless fitness tracking pioneer, Whoop is a wearable for perpetual optimizers. Whoop is designed to effectively be never taken off: the charging puck included with two of Whoop's three membership tiers effectively allows you to charge the device while it's still attached to your wrist, so you need never, ever take it off at all. Whoop collects and organizes an enormous amount of data, spitting it out in the form of all sorts of metrics, from your Whoop Age to its proprietary Strain score.

Its app is fantastic, implementing AI features well and housing an intuitive, comprehensive workout builder for gym rats. It's an excellent device for competitive athletes, casual CrossFit and Hyrox enthusiasts, and weekend warriors.

But Whoop is a premium device which you don't exactly buy: you rent access to it each year, starting at £169 / $199 / AU$299 per year for the Whoop One 5.0 and rising to £229 / $239 / AU$419 per year for the premium Whoop Peak tier, which nets you extra features like Whoop Age.

The highest tier is Whoop Life, which gets you a premium Whoop MG device with medical-grade heart health features, costing £349 / $359 / AU$629 per year. In my opinion, paying that each year in perpetuity doesn't represent good value — unless you can score an Amazon Prime Day deal on it.

Read our full Whoop MG review

More Prime Day deals in the US

• Amazon Devices: Fire Sticks & Echo from $18
• Amazon Haul: viral gadgets, tech & appliances from $1.99
• Apple: MacBooks, AirPods & AirTags from $29
• Beauty: 50% off toothbrushes & hair tools
• Cheap TVs: smart TVs from $69.99
• Garden: tools, mowers, planters from $24.99
• Headphones: 50% off Beats, Bose & Samsung
• Laptops: Apple, HP & Dell from $199
• Mattresses: Sealy, Serta & more from $186
• Patio: outdoor furniture, rugs & decor from $19.99
• Sports: 50% off fitness gear, treadmills & clothing
• Vacuums: Dyson, Shark & Bissell from $34

More Prime Day deals in the UK

• Amazon Prime: get a 30-day free trial
• Amazon Devices: Fire, Ring & Blink from £13.99
• Amazon Haul: up to 30% off
• Apple: up to 33% off AirPods & Apple Watch
• Appliances: up to 45% off Ninja & Tefal
• Beauty: up to 60% off Philips & Oral-B
• Essentials: household goods from £5
• Fans: from £20
• Fashion: up to 50% off
• Gaming: £90 off PlayStation 5
• Headphones: up to 50% off Beats & Sony
• Laptops: from £149
• Tablets: Samsung & Lenovo from £79.99
• Toys: up to 25% off Lego and Tonies
• TVs: from £129.99
• Vacuums: up to 40% off Shark & Roborock
• Wearables: up to 30% off Garmin & Oura

An Amazon Prime Day deal on Garmin’s Vivoactive 6 for £169 (was £225.62) has tempted me to jump back into the smartwatch arena after a bad experience with an Apple Watch caused me to abandon smartwatches entirely.

• Browse the full Amazon Prime Day sale

I don’t run or jog and I’m not overly obsessed with statistics about how well I slept and how many steps I’ve taken today, but I think it’s time I got a smartwatch again.

My colleague Matt Evans first brought the Garmin Vivoactive 5 for £117 (was £174.99) to my attention with the great price he’d found it for as part of Amazon Prime Day.

But after researching the Vivoactive range for a little while I decided I actually wanted the Garmin Vivoactive 6 (currently on our best Garmin watches list) and the chance of saving 25% was too tempting — I was sold.

Today's best Garmin Vivoactive 6 deals

Slave to technology

It’s not that I hated my Apple Watch, I just couldn’t be bothered to keep charging it every day. I actually started to resent the watch because it was forcing me into this daily ritual of caring for it that felt like I was a slave to technology, not the other way around.

The main thing that attracted me to the Garmin was that it’s got an 11-day battery life. Why hasn’t Apple made something that will last that long on a single charge? Yes, I know that you can do more with an Apple Watch, but I rarely used the voice control features.

I have definitely missed some aspects of not having a smartwatch. For example, notifications on my wrist are a lot easier to deal with than having to fish my phone out of my jeans pocket to see the latest Whatsapp from a family member.

It’s the same with payments — having the device on my wrist would make it a lot easier to pay for things when my hands are full. And finally, general health tracking, including sleep tracking, would be nice to get back into. I’ve got more and more curious about what kind of sleep quality I’m getting, and even if it’s just counting my steps all day. I miss having all those stats at my fingertips.

Body Battery Score

There is a Garmin subscription service called Garmin Connect+ that has AI and coaching features I don’t want or need, but you’re not required to join it to get any of the watch’s features to work. All the health and fitness features remain gloriously subscription-free.

In fact, the only downside I can see with the Garmin is to do with transferring music to it. I’ve got a subscription to Apple Music, not Spotify, and you need Amazon Music or Spotify Premium to transfer music to a Garmin. (You can transfer MP3 files you've purchased, of course), but if I eventually get back into jogging I might have to be content with podcasts if I want to leave my phone behind.

I'm looking forward to getting to play with a smartwatch again, and to seeing whether Garmin's much-praised Body Battery score really is as useful as its fans claim. But mostly, I'm curious to find out whether a smartwatch has finally become something I actually want to wear every day.

The irony is that the feature that brought me back isn't AI, advanced health tracking, or even fitness coaching. It's battery life. After years of increasingly clever gadgets demanding more of my attention, the thing that finally tempted me back was a watch that promises to stay out of the way for nearly two weeks at a time.

If the Vivoactive 6 can manage that while quietly handling my notifications, music, payments, and the occasional sleep report, then it might just convince me that smartwatches were worth another chance after all.

More Prime Day deals in the UK

• Amazon Prime: get a 30-day free trial
• Amazon Devices: Fire, Ring & Blink from £13.99
• Amazon Haul: up to 30% off
• Apple: up to 33% off AirPods & Apple Watch
• Appliances: up to 45% off Ninja & Tefal
• Beauty: up to 60% off Philips & Oral-B
• Essentials: household goods from £5
• Fans: from £20
• Fashion: up to 50% off
• Gaming: £90 off PlayStation 5
• Headphones: up to 50% off Beats & Sony
• Laptops: from £149
• Tablets: Samsung & Lenovo from £79.99
• Toys: up to 25% off Lego and Tonies
• TVs: from £129.99
• Vacuums: up to 40% off Shark & Roborock
• Wearables: up to 30% off Garmin & Oura

• Real-life experiment shows bug spray can kill Fitbit Airs
• It's to do with the chemicals inside the repellent
• Spray carefully, as you won't be covered under warranty

Here at TechRadar we've been rather impressed by what the Fitbit Air has to offer, but one unfortunate user has found out the hard way that you shouldn't use bug spray when the fitness tracker is wrapped around your wrist.

The problematic incident was recorded on Reddit (via Phandroid), and it seems that a thorough and protective application of bug spray has eaten into the plastic component of the Fitbit Air, stopping it from functioning.

"Went on a hike this weekend with my Fitbit Air," reads the original Reddit post. "I've had it for 14 days now, and I found out that bug spray will destroy it. I had put some on the cuffs of my hiking shirt and it transferred over to the device and broke down the plastic."

To make matters worse, the user reports that the same fate befell his wife's Fitbit too (though it's not clear if that's also a Fitbit Air). The original post ends with a recommendation to "save your cash for something built better".

Little sympathy

The Reddit detectives went straight to work, determining that it was likely the chemical DEET (N,N-diethyl-meta-toluamide) causing the problem. It's widely used in insect repellents, and is pretty harsh on plastics as well as bugs.

And sympathy seems to be in short supply on the Reddit thread. "The documentation very clearly states that it shouldn't come in contact with sunscreens and bug sprays," writes one poster, while another says: "This is on you buddy."

Google isn't being particularly sympathetic either, telling the affected user that the damage counts as environmental or accidental damage, and so isn't covered under the warranty. No replacement Fitbit Air will be forthcoming in this case.

There have been other stories like this in recent days, so it seems a substantial number of people aren't aware about the damage that insect repellent can do. As ever, always read the small print — on both your fitness trackers and your bug sprays.

Every smartwatch and fitness tracker comes with heart rate tracking, but they're not all accurate, so we test them against a Polar H10 chest-mounted heart rate monitor. The Polar H10 is used by athletes all around the world, and can be linked to a smartwatch to provide incredibly accurate metrics using its electrode system. Now it's on offer in the Amazon Prime Day sales, and if you care about fitness tracking, you should probably get one.

• Browse the full Amazon Prime Day sale

The Polar H10 works with a strap that goes around your ribcage underneath your heart, and connects the device to the electrodes running along the underside of your band. These electrodes monitor the electricity generated by your heart when it expands and contracts.

This is very different to (and more reliable than) the way smartwatches and the best fitness trackers measure your heart rate on your wrist. These devices use LED-based optical heart rate monitors, shining lights through your skin to measure your heart rate by detecting the changes in your blood flow. Electrical heart rate monitors are simply more accurate.

Fortunately, most smartwatches allow you to pair up a heart rate monitor like the Polar H10 via Bluetooth or ANT+ networks, so you can incorporate the more accurate data from the chest strap into your recovery and health metrics. Most heart rate monitor users tend to wear them only during workouts for the more accurate data, then rely on other fitness trackers for a general 24/7 overview. So, if you care about your fitness tracking and you already have a smartwatch you like, the Polar H10 should be your next purchase.

Where to buy

Right now, you can get the Polar H10 heart rate monitor (with black M-XXL strap) for $76.99 (was $104.95) at Amazon US. Those who need a small strap will need to pay a little extra — it's in XS-S for $89.21 (was $104.95) so you still get a little discount.

In the UK, you can get the Polar H10 with XS-S strap for £59.92 (was £70.49) and the Polar H10 with M-XXL strap for £65.99 (was £86.70).

Polar alternatives

There are other heart rate monitor designs out there, such as the more expensive Garmin HRM 600 that interfaces with the Garmin Connect app in a less roundabout way than Polar.

Armbands exist too, if you prefer those to chest straps, although these tend to use optical technology rather than electrodes. The Polar Verity Sense and Coros Heart Rate Monitor are armbands, and during testing they've proved nearly as accurate as the H10 due to the placement on the arm being better than the wrist. Check out the best deals on those products below.

More Prime Day deals in the US

• Amazon Devices: Fire Sticks & Echo from $18
• Amazon Haul: viral gadgets, tech & appliances from $1.99
• Apple: MacBooks, AirPods & AirTags from $29
• Beauty: 50% off toothbrushes & hair tools
• Cheap TVs: smart TVs from $69.99
• Garden: tools, mowers, planters from $24.99
• Headphones: 50% off Beats, Bose & Samsung
• Laptops: Apple, HP & Dell from $199
• Mattresses: Sealy, Serta & more from $186
• Patio: outdoor furniture, rugs & decor from $19.99
• Sports: 50% off fitness gear, treadmills & clothing
• Vacuums: Dyson, Shark & Bissell from $34

More Amazon Prime Day deals in the UK

• Amazon Prime: sign up for a 30-day free trial
• Amazon Devices: Fire TV, Ring & Blink from £21.99
• Apple: AirPods Pro 3 for a record-low price
• Appliances: up to 45% off Ninja, Tefal & Sage
• Essentials: household goods from under £10
• Laptops: from £149.99
• Tablets: Samsung & Lenovo from £125
• TVs: from £129.99

The Amazfit Active 2 got a whopping five stars in our review, because a watch this good simply shouldn't be this cheap. Now the Amazfit Active 2 Premium, which boasts a sapphire-glass screen and NFC payments in addition to the base Active 2's suite of health features, has received an Amazon Prime Day price cut in the US and the UK, and it's the perfect price point for anyone who's looking for a cheaper fitness tracker, and who's dissatisfied with the changes to the former Fitbit app as a result of its rebranding as Google Health.

• Browse the full Amazon Prime Day sale

Right now, you can get the Amazfit Active 2 Premium at Amazon US for $108.99 (was $129.99). In the UK, you can get the Amazfit Active 2 Premium at Amazon UK for £104.49 (was £129.99). Check out the deals in full below:

Today's best Amazfit Active 2 Prime Day deals

As we previously reported, many people aren't happy with the changes that have been made to the Fitbit app as part of its rebranding to Google Health, and are looking for alternatives — but most of the best-known alternative device ecosystems such as Garmin, Apple and Samsung are prohibitively expensive.

Not so with the Amazfit Active 2 Premium, which gives you a lot of great smartwatch features for comparatively little money. Those looking to move away from smartwatches like the Fitbit Sense or Versa ranges, or trackers like the Charge 6, will find the Active 2 Premium is now attractively priced, and offers a lot of great features.

The other recommendation I'm making this week is the Garmin Vivoactive 5, another smartwatch that, thanks to Amazon Prime Day discounts, is not excellent value. You can check out the best deals on this watch below.

More Prime Day deals in the US

• Amazon Devices: Fire Sticks & Echo from $18
• Amazon Haul: viral gadgets, tech & appliances from $1.99
• Apple: MacBooks, AirPods & AirTags from $29
• Beauty: 50% off toothbrushes & hair tools
• Cheap TVs: smart TVs from $69.99
• Garden: tools, mowers, planters from $24.99
• Headphones: 50% off Beats, Bose & Samsung
• Laptops: Apple, HP & Dell from $199
• Mattresses: Sealy, Serta & more from $186
• Patio: outdoor furniture, rugs & decor from $19.99
• Sports: 50% off fitness gear, treadmills & clothing
• Vacuums: Dyson, Shark & Bissell from $34

More Amazon Prime Day deals in the UK