A cheap fitness tracker is ideal for those who plan on using it for step counting, occasional workouts, and the like. You don’t need to spend hundreds to get a better grasp of your fitness. To find out more, we’ve put some of the best cheap fitness trackers through their paces by running, cycling, swimming, working, and sleeping in them. During testing, we’ve looked at how easy they are to use, how nice they look on our wrists, and how well they track activities. Read on to see our top picks for the best cheap fitness trackers.
The best cheap fitness trackers you can buy today
The Fitbit Inspire 3 is the best cheap fitness tracker because it nails the basics: heart rate-monitoring, accurate workout-tracking and logging sleep stages. The fact that it doesn’t have built-in GPS is slightly disappointing — you can connect it to your phone’s GPS — but the Inspire 3 makes up for it with other features, such as Fitbit’s inspiring (get it?) community of people trying to get and stay in shape. You can participate in challenges to out-pace friends, colleagues or even strangers. For $100, you’ll get Fitbit’s Active Zone Minutes metric, 10 days of battery life, touch controls, and, in the biggest update from the Fitbit Inspire 2, a bright, beautiful AMOLED screen. The Fitbit unit itself is only available in black, but is sold with three different band colors — black, lilac, and morning glow. The wristband comes in two sizes: small, and large. During testing, we loved how lightweight and comfortable this little tracker was to wear for 24/7 health tracking. We also appreciated how much more premium the tracker felt with a color screen. It won’t be for everyone, but if you’re looking for an affordable fitness tracker, you can’t go wrong with the Inspire 3. Read our full Fitbit Inspire 3 review here. Not only was the Charge 4 Fitbit’s first fitness tracker with built-in GPS, but it introduced Active Zone Minutes, which give you a much better indicator of your overall health than how many steps you’ve taken. We found the touchscreen easy to navigate around on the move and were impressed with how comfortable it was on the wrist. We also found the GPS to be pretty accurate when running and cycling. The battery life lasts up to one week, or five days when using GPS, which isn’t the best but is pretty good for a fitness tracker. The only downside we could find was that we wished it had on-board music options that would allow us to leave our phone at home, but for around $100, this is an absolutely brilliant piece of tech to have on your wrist. With the launch of the Fitbit Charge 5, we can also expect the price of the Charge 4 to drop over the next few months, so now is definitely a good time to buy. Read our full Fitbit Charge 4 review. Ok, so technically this is less than $100, because you pay a monthly subscription of $30 per month instead of buying the tracker (there are 6-month and 12-month subscriptions that work out to be a little cheaper — $288 and $324 respectively). It’s not for everyone — there’s no screen, and no built-in GPS, so if you’re looking for a tracker to just track your daily runs or bike rides, you’ll probably want to keep scrolling. That said, if you’re hoping to gain real insight into your heart rate and recovery data, the Whoop ticks the right boxes. Like all items of fitness tech, the Whoop 4.0 is only worth it if you use it, but if you’re looking to enhance your training with in-depth data, or learn to work out more intuitively after a string of overtraining injuries, it’s one of the most advanced trackers on the market. Read our full Whoop 4.0 review here. One of the best cheap fitness trackers with GPS, the Amazfit Bip is a touchscreen watch with smartphone notifications, lengthy battery life and built-in heart-rate monitor, GPS and GLONASS for accurate workout tracking. Cheap heart-rate-tracking devices are notoriously unreliable, but we put the Bip to the test and found it to be almost as accurate as our Garmin Forerunner. You can eke out 45 days of battery life from the Bip without using any of its smart features, but even using the heart-rate monitor and GPS to track workouts, we went two weeks before the watch dipped below 50 percent. That’s incredible for a fitness tracker, budget or not. Read our full Amazfit Bip review. The $25 Wyze Band is perhaps the most affordable, yet capable, fitness tracker you’ll find in stores or online. The compact wearable has a bright, easy-to-read AMOLED display, lasts a full week on a single charge and provides excellent running metrics. With the companion Wyze app, Wyze Band wearers can view a record of average pace data, calories burned, running heart beats per minute (BPM) and total miles ran. There aren’t metrics for other kinds of work outs, but its a good choice if you walk, jog or run regularly. Of all the best cheap fitness trackers, the Wyze Band is the only one that has Alexa built in. When you speak into the Wyze Band, you can ask Alexa to control your connected smart home devices. We had a few connectivity issues in our review, but enjoyed the ability to turn our smart lights on, James Bond-style. Read our full Wyze Band review. For those looking for a bold colorful display, the Xiaomi Mi Band 4 is the best cheap fitness tracker for the job. You can customize the watch face with a ton of cute, colorful designs in the Mi Fit app, and also set up personalized alerts and control music playing from your smartphone. Fitness and sleep tracking on the Mi Band 4 were good, not great, but on a par with most other cheap fitness trackers. However, the Mi Band 4’s 20-day battery life meant we only had to worry about recharging it once a month. Read our full Xiaomi Mi Band 4 review. The Huawei Band 3 Pro seemingly has everything you could want in a cheap fitness tracker: A colorful OLED touchscreen display, heart rate-monitoring, built-in GPS and in-depth sleep analysis. It even has swim-tracking, and you can use it as a remote shutter for your smartphone’s camera. And all for $70—it’s hard to find all these features in something so inexpensive. But the Band 3 Pro has a few things we wish could be improved. Its metal frame is too bulky for small wrists, its GPS took forever to capture a signal, and its heart rate data isn’t entirely accurate. Read our full Huawei Band 3 Pro review. The least expensive of Garmin’s fitness trackers, the Vivofit 4 covers the basics: Steps and sleep. And that’s all that some people need or want. This cheap fitness tracker doesn’t have a heart rate sensor, built-in GPS, touch screen or the ability to receive notifications from your phone. But, it’s good at recording your daily motion, and Garmin’s app lets you set custom goals, challenge other Garmin users, and even show the local weather on the Vivofit 4. And, this fitness tracker will last up to a year on a charge. Read our full Garmin Vivofit 4 review. Like other popular Withings wearables, the Move looks like an analog timepiece with a round display and traditional watch hands. But an in-laid subdial on the watch face marks your progress toward your daily activity goal. This tracker doesn’t have a heart rate sensor. It also lacks smartphone notifications, so you can’t respond to texts (or even know when you receive them). Its fitness-tracking is pretty basic, though it does offer connected GPS when you take your phone for a run. This stopped working for me at one point, but unpairing and repairing the watch to your phone will fix the issue. What the Withings Move lacks in advanced features, it makes up for in spades with lengthy battery life. The watch lasts 18 months (yes, months) without needing to be charged. In a sea of smartwatches and fitness trackers that need to be juiced up daily — or at least once every few days — the Move is refreshingly low-effort. The only time I felt the need to take it off was after a run, to give my skin a break while I showered. If battery life is your highest priority, there aren’t many other fitness trackers that can last longer than a year without needing to be charged. But you sacrifice quite a few features to get lengthy battery life in a light, cheap, stylish package.
How to choose the best cheap fitness tracker for you
When looking for an inexpensive fitness tracker, you’re going to have to make some tradeoffs, but that doesn’t mean you should have to accept any compromises. The best cheap fitness trackers come with many of the same features as more expensive models, so here’s what you should look for: Automatic workout tracking: Ever forget to press the Start button when you went out for a run? There’s nothing more frustrated than not getting credit for your exercise, which is why a good fitness tracker can automatically detect when you start running or biking, and log that event accordingly. Heart rate monitor: Unless you want to wear your fitness tracker as a pendant, this is a table-stakes feature that will give you not only much better insight into your fitness, but your health, too. That’s because adding heart-rate data gives you a more holistic look into your body, both awake and sleeping. Decent battery life: A fitness tracker needs to last at least two days on a charge. Otherwise, you won’t be able to track things such as sleep and other metrics that require you to keep it on your wrist for extended periods of time.
How we test cheap fitness trackers
Our testing methodology for cheap fitness trackers is pretty much the same as how we test pricier fitness trackers. We wear the device for a week or so, and explore its various features. For starters, how comfortable is the device to wear? Given that they’re designed to be on your wrist 24/7, you want a fitness tracker that feels like it isn’t even there. If a fitness tracker has a heart rate monitor, we check its accuracy against other known trackers, as well as our own intuition. Generally, heart rate monitors are pretty accurate at this point, but the variance comes in how quickly they can respond to changes in your heart rate. When working out, we see how easy it is to read a tracker’s display; if the numbers are too small, it’s hard to make them out when your arm and body is moving. And, if the controls are too small, it’s hard to do things such as change your music or switch screens. Lastly, we check the battery life claims of the manufacturer. For the most part, they’re pretty accurate, but when using features such as GPS or streaming music, battery life can degrade much more quickly. Get healthy and in shape with our other fitness guides: Best treadmills | Best exercise bikes | Best adjustable dumbbells | Best home gym equipment | Best yoga mats | Best workout apps | Best running apps | Best sports watches | Best smartwatches | Best smart scales
title: “Best Cheap Fitness Trackers In 2022” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-06” author: “Bertha Szychowski”
A cheap fitness tracker is ideal for those who plan on using it for step counting, occasional workouts, and the like. You don’t need to spend hundreds to get a better grasp of your fitness. To find out more, we’ve put some of the best cheap fitness trackers through their paces by running, cycling, swimming, working, and sleeping in them. During testing, we’ve looked at how easy they are to use, how nice they look on our wrists, and how well they track activities. Read on to see our top picks for the best cheap fitness trackers.
The best cheap fitness trackers you can buy today
The Fitbit Inspire 3 is the best cheap fitness tracker because it nails the basics: heart rate-monitoring, accurate workout-tracking and logging sleep stages. The fact that it doesn’t have built-in GPS is slightly disappointing — you can connect it to your phone’s GPS — but the Inspire 3 makes up for it with other features, such as Fitbit’s inspiring (get it?) community of people trying to get and stay in shape. You can participate in challenges to out-pace friends, colleagues or even strangers. For $100, you’ll get Fitbit’s Active Zone Minutes metric, 10 days of battery life, touch controls, and, in the biggest update from the Fitbit Inspire 2, a bright, beautiful AMOLED screen. The Fitbit unit itself is only available in black, but is sold with three different band colors — black, lilac, and morning glow. The wristband comes in two sizes: small, and large. During testing, we loved how lightweight and comfortable this little tracker was to wear for 24/7 health tracking. We also appreciated how much more premium the tracker felt with a color screen. It won’t be for everyone, but if you’re looking for an affordable fitness tracker, you can’t go wrong with the Inspire 3. Read our full Fitbit Inspire 3 review here. Not only was the Charge 4 Fitbit’s first fitness tracker with built-in GPS, but it introduced Active Zone Minutes, which give you a much better indicator of your overall health than how many steps you’ve taken. We found the touchscreen easy to navigate around on the move and were impressed with how comfortable it was on the wrist. We also found the GPS to be pretty accurate when running and cycling. The battery life lasts up to one week, or five days when using GPS, which isn’t the best but is pretty good for a fitness tracker. The only downside we could find was that we wished it had on-board music options that would allow us to leave our phone at home, but for around $100, this is an absolutely brilliant piece of tech to have on your wrist. With the launch of the Fitbit Charge 5, we can also expect the price of the Charge 4 to drop over the next few months, so now is definitely a good time to buy. Read our full Fitbit Charge 4 review. Ok, so technically this is less than $100, because you pay a monthly subscription of $30 per month instead of buying the tracker (there are 6-month and 12-month subscriptions that work out to be a little cheaper — $288 and $324 respectively). It’s not for everyone — there’s no screen, and no built-in GPS, so if you’re looking for a tracker to just track your daily runs or bike rides, you’ll probably want to keep scrolling. That said, if you’re hoping to gain real insight into your heart rate and recovery data, the Whoop ticks the right boxes. Like all items of fitness tech, the Whoop 4.0 is only worth it if you use it, but if you’re looking to enhance your training with in-depth data, or learn to work out more intuitively after a string of overtraining injuries, it’s one of the most advanced trackers on the market. Read our full Whoop 4.0 review here. One of the best cheap fitness trackers with GPS, the Amazfit Bip is a touchscreen watch with smartphone notifications, lengthy battery life and built-in heart-rate monitor, GPS and GLONASS for accurate workout tracking. Cheap heart-rate-tracking devices are notoriously unreliable, but we put the Bip to the test and found it to be almost as accurate as our Garmin Forerunner. You can eke out 45 days of battery life from the Bip without using any of its smart features, but even using the heart-rate monitor and GPS to track workouts, we went two weeks before the watch dipped below 50 percent. That’s incredible for a fitness tracker, budget or not. Read our full Amazfit Bip review. The $25 Wyze Band is perhaps the most affordable, yet capable, fitness tracker you’ll find in stores or online. The compact wearable has a bright, easy-to-read AMOLED display, lasts a full week on a single charge and provides excellent running metrics. With the companion Wyze app, Wyze Band wearers can view a record of average pace data, calories burned, running heart beats per minute (BPM) and total miles ran. There aren’t metrics for other kinds of work outs, but its a good choice if you walk, jog or run regularly. Of all the best cheap fitness trackers, the Wyze Band is the only one that has Alexa built in. When you speak into the Wyze Band, you can ask Alexa to control your connected smart home devices. We had a few connectivity issues in our review, but enjoyed the ability to turn our smart lights on, James Bond-style. Read our full Wyze Band review. For those looking for a bold colorful display, the Xiaomi Mi Band 4 is the best cheap fitness tracker for the job. You can customize the watch face with a ton of cute, colorful designs in the Mi Fit app, and also set up personalized alerts and control music playing from your smartphone. Fitness and sleep tracking on the Mi Band 4 were good, not great, but on a par with most other cheap fitness trackers. However, the Mi Band 4’s 20-day battery life meant we only had to worry about recharging it once a month. Read our full Xiaomi Mi Band 4 review. The Huawei Band 3 Pro seemingly has everything you could want in a cheap fitness tracker: A colorful OLED touchscreen display, heart rate-monitoring, built-in GPS and in-depth sleep analysis. It even has swim-tracking, and you can use it as a remote shutter for your smartphone’s camera. And all for $70—it’s hard to find all these features in something so inexpensive. But the Band 3 Pro has a few things we wish could be improved. Its metal frame is too bulky for small wrists, its GPS took forever to capture a signal, and its heart rate data isn’t entirely accurate. Read our full Huawei Band 3 Pro review. The least expensive of Garmin’s fitness trackers, the Vivofit 4 covers the basics: Steps and sleep. And that’s all that some people need or want. This cheap fitness tracker doesn’t have a heart rate sensor, built-in GPS, touch screen or the ability to receive notifications from your phone. But, it’s good at recording your daily motion, and Garmin’s app lets you set custom goals, challenge other Garmin users, and even show the local weather on the Vivofit 4. And, this fitness tracker will last up to a year on a charge. Read our full Garmin Vivofit 4 review. Like other popular Withings wearables, the Move looks like an analog timepiece with a round display and traditional watch hands. But an in-laid subdial on the watch face marks your progress toward your daily activity goal. This tracker doesn’t have a heart rate sensor. It also lacks smartphone notifications, so you can’t respond to texts (or even know when you receive them). Its fitness-tracking is pretty basic, though it does offer connected GPS when you take your phone for a run. This stopped working for me at one point, but unpairing and repairing the watch to your phone will fix the issue. What the Withings Move lacks in advanced features, it makes up for in spades with lengthy battery life. The watch lasts 18 months (yes, months) without needing to be charged. In a sea of smartwatches and fitness trackers that need to be juiced up daily — or at least once every few days — the Move is refreshingly low-effort. The only time I felt the need to take it off was after a run, to give my skin a break while I showered. If battery life is your highest priority, there aren’t many other fitness trackers that can last longer than a year without needing to be charged. But you sacrifice quite a few features to get lengthy battery life in a light, cheap, stylish package.
How to choose the best cheap fitness tracker for you
When looking for an inexpensive fitness tracker, you’re going to have to make some tradeoffs, but that doesn’t mean you should have to accept any compromises. The best cheap fitness trackers come with many of the same features as more expensive models, so here’s what you should look for: Automatic workout tracking: Ever forget to press the Start button when you went out for a run? There’s nothing more frustrated than not getting credit for your exercise, which is why a good fitness tracker can automatically detect when you start running or biking, and log that event accordingly. Heart rate monitor: Unless you want to wear your fitness tracker as a pendant, this is a table-stakes feature that will give you not only much better insight into your fitness, but your health, too. That’s because adding heart-rate data gives you a more holistic look into your body, both awake and sleeping. Decent battery life: A fitness tracker needs to last at least two days on a charge. Otherwise, you won’t be able to track things such as sleep and other metrics that require you to keep it on your wrist for extended periods of time.
How we test cheap fitness trackers
Our testing methodology for cheap fitness trackers is pretty much the same as how we test pricier fitness trackers. We wear the device for a week or so, and explore its various features. For starters, how comfortable is the device to wear? Given that they’re designed to be on your wrist 24/7, you want a fitness tracker that feels like it isn’t even there. If a fitness tracker has a heart rate monitor, we check its accuracy against other known trackers, as well as our own intuition. Generally, heart rate monitors are pretty accurate at this point, but the variance comes in how quickly they can respond to changes in your heart rate. When working out, we see how easy it is to read a tracker’s display; if the numbers are too small, it’s hard to make them out when your arm and body is moving. And, if the controls are too small, it’s hard to do things such as change your music or switch screens. Lastly, we check the battery life claims of the manufacturer. For the most part, they’re pretty accurate, but when using features such as GPS or streaming music, battery life can degrade much more quickly. Get healthy and in shape with our other fitness guides: Best treadmills | Best exercise bikes | Best adjustable dumbbells | Best home gym equipment | Best yoga mats | Best workout apps | Best running apps | Best sports watches | Best smartwatches | Best smart scales
