Smartwatches are a staple of the tech landscape in 2018, with major fashion brands jostling side-by-side with tech giants. There are so many out there that it can be hard to find what you’re looking for, so to make your life just that little bit easier, here are our top 5 smartwatch choices.
Our smartwatch pick for fitness
Garmin Forerunner 935
Garmin have held the lead in fitness tracking for a long time, with their fully-featured watches that intuitively knows your exercise, tracking every motion and movement for robust stats. While most trackers can monitor steps and heartrate these days, the Garmin Forerunner is capable of mind-boggling analysis and is suitable for swimmers: fully waterproof, it can even detect what kind of stroke you are doing in both swimming pools and open water.
Our smartwatch pick for style
Skagen Hybrid – Jorn
Smartwatches often boast of changeable displays and high-resolution screens, but Skagen have created a smartwatch for the discrete. When you receive a notification, the hands briefly move to a coloured node, which can be programmed to indicate whether it’s a message, email, calendar notification etc. It looks great in casual and work settings and has no need for gimmicks.
Our smartwatch pick for features
Apple Watch 3
It’s great for fitness tracking and, being part of the Apple family, means it’s got a huge line-up of apps to make the most out of your humble wrist watch, even if they don’t compare to your normal phone apps. Smartwatches can be notoriously fiddly to navigate, but Siri makes switching apps, and importantly skipping music tracks, really easy, so you can make the most of every feature.
Our smartwatch pick for keeping motivated
Fitbit Versa
As the market leader in fitness trackers, one of the benefits of having a Fitbit is that you are certain to know someone else who owns one. You can use the social features to boost your motivation, including the work-week hustle, which pits you against your colleagues to rack up the most steps in a week.
Our smartwatch pick for those on a budget
Ticwatch Express
For our budget option, the Ticwatch isn’t the cheapest, but it certainly delivers good bang for your buck. This is a fully-featured smartwatch offering music, apps, maps and fitness tracking and, for less than £150, looks good too, channelling bright swatch-like colours.
