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This year was an interesting one for smart rings and smart bands, and we ended up with a few new devices that mark serious improvements on what was available before. With these new developments in mind, here are my picks for the best fitness trackers to consider giving (or asking for) as gifts this year.
The Fitbit Air is the best fitness tracker for most people
I’ll have recommendations below for athletes, runners, and people with higher budgets, but before we get into those, let me present the best fitness tracker for most people: the Fitbit Air.
Google now owns the Fitbit brand, and it spent the past few years making questionable choices about its software and mostly neglecting the brand’s iconic hardware. Then, in a stunning turnaround, Google launched the smallest, lightest, and most comfortable fitness tracker I’ve ever used (not counting rings, but we’ll get to those).
The Fitbit Air tracks your steps, sleep, and workouts without needing much attention from you. Its battery lasts a week, its app reports all the standard information without a subscription, and the price is sensible for such minimalist hardware: $99.99. The only real downside is the overly chatty AI built into the app, which you can disable if it annoys you as much as it did me.
The Oura Ring 5 is the best fitness tracker to splurge on
If you have $499 to spare (or $399 for some colors), the tracker to get is the Oura Ring 5. Smart rings have always been pretty clunky, but for the fifth generation, Oura managed to get its ring to a size that blends in with jewelry rings. I’ve been wearing Oura rings since the gen 2, and this is the first one that really feels like you can forget you’re wearing a device.
You pay for the privilege, of course: The purchase price, plus a $5.99/month subscription fee. But Oura’s app is one of the nicest and easiest to use of any smart ring I’ve tried. Besides just giving you daily sleep scores, it breaks down your data to show things like how well you’re recovering despite stress, and how regular your bedtimes are.
Smart rings aren’t great for detailed workout tracking (or for strength training), but they’re excellent for casually monitoring how much exercise you end up getting throughout your day. For somebody who either doesn’t need workout tracking, or tracks their workouts with another device, an Oura is great for the rest of their day.
The Whoop band is the best fitness tracker for athletes
Some people may want more information than what the Fitbit Air or Oura Ring can give. If they still want to avoid having a screen on their wrist all day, the perfect pick for this person is a Whoop 5.0, specifically with the Peak (middle tier) subscription.
To explain the pricing: You’ll pay $239 for a Whoop band bundled with your first year’s subscription. After that expires, if you want to keep using it, you need to pay another $239 (or $199, if you want to downgrade your subscription and lose some of the features). That makes it more expensive than my top pick, the Fitbit Air.
But for an athlete who wants data to pore over, the Whoop seriously delivers. During workouts, you can see your heart rate zones on your phone’s screen, which the Fitbit doesn’t offer. The app can also guide you through weekly plans that are specific to your goals—say, totaling a certain number of minutes of zone 4 and 5 training, while also keeping a consistent bedtime and avoiding screens at night. The app is great at analyzing how the habits you log affect your sleep and recovery, and it’s easy to customize toward the goals you actually care about. I find it easy to balance perfectly so you don’t get information overload.
The only real downside is that many athletes may want something that gives them pace or heart rate data on their wrist. If your recipient already has a fitness watch, they can use it for workouts while using the Whoop for the rest of the day, and Whoop will seamlessly pull in workout data from the other device. That said, read on if you’re looking for an actual fitness watch with a display.
The Coros Pace 4 is the best basic fitness watch for runners
You probably thought I was going to recommend a Garmin—and I will, below—but first let me tell you why the Coros Pace 4 is a hidden gem, my personal favorite, and my best overall pick for most runners.
First, the price. It’s $249, which is cheap in the running-watch world. But it punches way above its weight, with dual-band GPS for accurate pace and distance tracking, a heart rate sensor that performed well in my extensive testing, and a fun and useful extra in its voice training logs.
You’d have to pay twice as much for a Garmin with all of those features—specifically, the Forerunner 570. Buying a nice Coros (or a Suunto, for that matter) feels like you’re getting away with something.
The Garmin Forerunner 970 is the best top-of-the-line fitness tracker for a runner
If there’s a runner in your life you love very much (and want your budget to reflect that), you can’t beat the Forerunner 970. Our resident marathoner Meredith Dietz has an in-depth review here that you might like to check out, but as a spoiler: She loved it.
The Forerunner 970 packs in all the features a running watch could possibly have. It’s got all the core features of more basic watches like the Coros I mentioned above, plus onboard maps, so you can see where you are in the world by glancing at your wrist.
The 970 also has a ton of performance metrics and tools to plan your training, plus a feature everyone loves: an LED flashlight that can shine on what’s in front of you without interfering with your view of the watch. If you’re looking for the best fitness watch out there, I can’t think of one that’s better than the 970.
