The Apple Watch needs no presentation: it is one of the best smartwatches you can find. The Watch Series 3 is as competitive as always in design and capabilities. It comes in 2 version: GPS only or GPS + Cellular (has an eSIM), which basically frees you up from your iPhone even more. It is twice as brighter and has a CPU which is 70% faster. There’s not much to dislike about the new Apple Watch Series 3, except maybe for the steep price and the short battery life.
The new Samsung Gear Sport is a premium looking smartwatch, durable and with an attractive design. It is compatible with iOS and Android devices. It is water resistant (50m) and it’s the first Spotify watch so you can sync music from Spotify and listen to it offline without carrying your phone with you. It has a decent battery life that can even last for even 3 days, depending on the usage.
The Fitbit Ionic is basically the first real smartwatch released by Fitbit. While it is still better equipped when it comes to health and fitness features, it also has a lot of the desired capabilities of a smartwatch: NFC and storage space for music. It has a bright display with powerful colors, an impressive battery life and a plethora of accurate and advanced tools for tracking your activities, sleep and heart rate. It’s not the most affordable or elegant watch you can buy, but it pretty much includes everything you need in a wearable device.
Huawei Watch 2 is a sporty smartwatch with a bit of a rugged, chunky look. It doesn’t have the slimmest, most elegant design, but it comes with built in GPS, 4G, NFC and more. It does leave room for improvement when it comes to its operating speed, but its Android Wear 2.0 OS does open a lot of possibilities. It is an average watch with pros and cons, but definitely high-quality enough to be worthy of your consideration.
The Fitbit Versa is a great value for the money. It is really comfortable and attractive, both for women and men, it is lightweight, it has an improved touchscreen over the Ionic, great fitness/workout features and a simple, straightforward interface, all for a more decent price than its major competitors. The only really major downside we could find in it is the lack of GPS.
The LG Watch Style is a smartwatch characterized by elegance. It is stylish, fashionable, slim, lightweight and comfortable. It is not designed for fitness enthusiasts, but for people who appreciate the look and feel of a premium-like smartwatch. The fact that it was developed in collaboration with Google is another plus and it is reflected in its simple, user-friendly interface. On the downside, the LG Watch Style lacks GPS, NFC, a loudspeaker and a HR sensor.
The Garmin Forerunner 645 Music is an upgrade to the Forerunner 645 smartwatch, with one long awaited improvement: it can store and play up to 500 songs directly from the watch, entertaining and energizing your work out sessions. The 645 Music is comfortable, light yet solid, has GPS and a 5 ATM rating.
The ZenWatch 3 by Asus is one of the best looking and most elegant smartwatches we’ve seen. It simply spells luxury and style. While it does lack a lot of features such as GPS, NFC, HR sensor, it does have a microphone and speaker, allows you to reply to messages and it’s now updated to Android Wear 2.0. It is not the best option for fitness enthusiasts and it’s not as practical and complex as the major players on the market, but it does have all the basic tools you need in a smart watch, all packed in an attractive, fashionable wearable.
The Galaxy Watch has everything you want in a smartwatch: it is completely waterproof, it has LTE support, WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS and all your usual sensors. It has an extended battery life compared to the S3 and a really elegant design.
The TicWatch Pro is a high-end smartwatch classified as a mid-range wearable, due to its average price. It has a premium design and almost all the features you want in a smartwatch: GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth, NFC. The downsides of it: it is not fully waterproof and it is a bit slow, due to its insufficient RAM memory and its chipset.
Last updated January 31, 2025
History tends to repeat itself, one way or the other. Even when it comes to technology. In the past, when all the mobile phone madness started, people were bored with corded telephones and we wanted small, comfortable cellular phones that we can fit in any pocket and purse. The smaller, the better. Then things started to advance and phones became more than simple communication tools. They became small, portable TVs, with screens, streaming capabilities and high resolutions. So people started to look for more inches on their display. The larger the screen, the better the view. As technology progressed even more, we realized we can be even smarter than that. We can also check what time is, track our health and sleep, organize our days, get to wherever we want, listen to our favorite music or play games, all using the same gadget. Our mobile phones became smartphones, capable to both simplify our life and entertain it. But what if we can pack all those features into an even smaller device that is even more comfortable to wear? It would have to be as smart as a smartphone, but smaller and easier to wear, without us worrying about it at all times. Thus, the smartwatch was developed.
Smartwatches are portable, computer based wristwatches. Nowadays, most of them act like a miniature smartphone or a ‘watch phone’. They come with a touchscreen display, mobile apps and communicate with your smartphone via Bluetooth. They can do a lot more than just telling you the time. They can support Bluetooth connectivity, WiFi and GPS, they can notify you when you get an email, sms or IM, they let you listen to music, they can act as a fitness tracker (counting your steps, tracking your run), measure your heart rate and quality of your sleep, send you alerts, act as a reminder, make phone calls and much more.
Although the first digital watch with LED was released all the way back in 1972, by the Hamilton Watch Company and Electro/Data, the smartwatch concept as we know it today was popularized in 2013 by an American startup brand named Pebble, which had developed the first real smartwatch and was looking for funding on the Internet. Kickstarter helped them raise enough money to manufacture and sell over one million Pebble smartwatches.
Throughout the years, smartwatches have continued to evolve: their battery life has increased, their display has improved and they include more and more features every day.
There are both pros and cons when it comes to smartwatches. The pros obviously overcome the disadvantages.
Here are some of the PROS of having a smart watch:
There are also some disadvantages in having a smartwatch:
The market is oversaturated with smartwatch choices. There are so many options out there, that you can get a headache just thinking about them. There are so many unknown and popular brands available, for all budgets and tastes, that settling for one can be a difficult task.
Here are some guidelines you can follow when you are in the market for a smartwatch: