The best Fitbit for monitoring every type of activity

For those who are more stylish than sporty when it comes to wearables, the Fitbit Luxe is the fashion-minded offering in the lineup. It’s more bracelet than tracker, and has a much slimmer, sleeker profile on the wrist than other Fitbits.

The Luxe rewards you for achieving goals and gives you reminders to keep up good work and habits. It’s subtle but motivating all the same. As with other Fitbits, you can challenge friends to keep the motivation levels up.

While the battery life is short compared to other models in the lineup — and there’s no GPS, which isn’t great for runners — it works for swimmers and tracks 20 other exercises, plus your blood oxygen and stress. 

It’ll also keep an eye on your sleep and heart rate around the clock and estimate how many calories you’ve burned during your latest bootcamp class or yoga session. It will also give you a little buzz when you reach your target heart rate zone. And if you want to keep an eye on your breathing rate and heart rate variability, it can dive into its apps to pull that data for you. 

The Inspire 3 is another upgrade and perfect for anyone who's on the fence about trying a Fitbit. It costs under £100, but it’s still packed with enough features to ensure the average user will get tons of use and benefit. 

It’s smaller and pared-down in terms of display, but the Inspire 3 does the big, all-important job of getting you motivated. Like other Fitbits, it gamifies your activity by having you work toward 150 weekly minutes of activity, and it’ll keep track of how many calories you burn and how far you go in the process.

You can team up with friends to compete in challenges and earn badges. It’ll also keep an eye on your heart rate around the clock, and when you’re sleeping it monitors your sleep patterns and issues you a sleep score. But for detailed, sport-specific stats and features, a more advanced Fitbit might be best.

And despite being on the lower end of the Fitbit price spectrum, you can still take this into the pool — it’s water resistant to 50 metres. 

A perfect Fitbit for kids, the Fitbit Ace 3 has a colourful design and low-key but effective trackers that they’ll love learning to use.

All the important bases are covered here: Physical activity monitoring, sleep tracking, and a pedometer. It’ll also nudge little ones to rack up 60 minutes of activity daily and remind them when it’s time for bed, too. 

Parents can sync the Ace 3 to their own device to monitor activities and messages. Be warned though: Switching between kid and parent modes in the app is a bit of a pain. Using the app, kids can challenge friends to keep pace with steps and send messages. If the child is older and has their own smartphone, they can use the watch for phone notifications.

The battery life is also child-friendly. It’ll last up to eight days, so they have more than a week to remember to charge it. Kids will have fun choosing a band and picking out one of the clock faces, too. Swim lessons after school? No problem. It’s water-resistant like most of the grown-up Fitbits. 

Read our full review of the Fitbit Sense.

The Fitbit Sense does it all and looks good doing it, thanks to a sleek design. It carries the same standard features as other Fitbits — 50m water resistance, app notifications, and music via streaming apps — and builds on those features. The Fitbit Sense 2 is actually available now but we prefer the OG.

It has a temperature sensor so you can access minute-by-minute readings of your temperature, and there’s an ECG sensor that checks your heart’s rhythm, too. These extra features come courtesy of two bonus sensors that you won't find elsewhere in the Fitbit line.

Mindfulness and wellbeing is where the Fitbit Sense really comes into its own. An EDA app scans for stress, indicated by your body's electrodermal activity, and gives you a daily readiness score (i.e. it tells you when to put your feet up for a rest). The stress-tracking allows you to record your mood and set yourself mindfulness goal. Fitbit Premium (six months included) offers breathing and meditation sessions too.

The Fitbit Versa 4 is great as an entry-level or causal option, which is where it excels. It dropped a few health-based features from the previous gen model. But there's no denying that the Versa 4 looks good on the wrist and it has more than enough features to track your post-work gym session. 

It tracks your heart rate and sleep, and offers a daily stress management score. It also measures blood oxygen. In terms of fitness tracking and stats, it auto-detects when you start exercising and has 41 modes, including running, cycling, yoga, weights, interval training, swimming, and more — even kickboxing.

The biggest negative is that there's no onboard music storage, which means if you want to listen to music when you workout, you'll need your phone. Though it's not that big deal — most of us have our phones at all times anyway. It's worth noting that third party apps have also been dropped from this upgrade.

Other plus points include a six-day battery life (though expect some features to drain it faster) and a 6-month Fitbit Premium membership trial. We also enjoy the selection of colours on this Fitbit model, too.

Read our full review of the Fitbit Charge 5.

The Fitbit Charge 5 is one of the best all-round fitness trackers available. It has a baseline of basic features, such as GPS for tracking runs and a heart monitor. All standard features these days. But the Fitbit Charge 5 takes things to the next level, making this tracker a great choice whether you're a casual gym-goer or you're looking for more advanced fitness features and stats.

It has a daily readiness score, which assesses your energy levels and tells you when you need a recovery day. The Charge 5 also monitors your mental health and gives you a stress management score, as well as offering sensor-based mindfulness sessions when you're having a rough day.

On a more superficial level, the display is sleek, with the same AMOLED screen as the Versa, just narrower. And like all Fitbits, you unlock even more benefits with a Premium membership, but it offers plenty on its own. 

You can also use this Fitbit for everyday tasks, such as contactless payments, checking the weather forecast, and setting reminders. If you want to upgrade, the Fitbit Charge 6 is also available, though the Charge 5 has better reviews.

When is a Fitbit not a Fitbit? When it's a Google Pixel Watch 2, perhaps? Well, no. Google bought Fitbit in 2019, so all Fitbits are actually Google-made. And all health and fitness features on the Google Pixel Watch 2 are run by the Fitbit app. It's the top choice for anyone who wants Fitbit health tracking along with the features, functionality, and style of a top-of-the-line smartwatch.

The Google Pixel Watch 2 doesn't pack the battery power of straight up Fitbit trackers — just a single day vs. the usual six or seven — but it charges fast and the Fitbit app gives you all the health and fitness tracking you need.

There's a big emphasis on monitoring your heart rate, as well as a heart zone feature that tells you when you've moved from one zone to another during training. It also detects when you start working out and automatically collates all the key information.

It's just about working out, but rest and mental wellbeing too. It has skin temperature sensors that get to work while you sleep, plus stress management data. As with all Fitbits, there are even more health and fitness features via a Fitbit Premium subscription — and you get six months free to get you started.

As a Google-powered Wear OS smartwatch, it also integrates lifestyle apps and features — emails, calendar, a link to your Pixel phone, Google Assistant, and access to third-party apps, such as Spotify.