Readers' Choice Awards 2022: Smartwatches and Fitness Trackers

In this month's PCMag Readers' Choice Award survey, we await at habiliment devices—specifically smartwatches and fitness trackers. In the terminal quarter, Apple lone sold 3.9 million wearables, followed closesly by Xiaomi (3.6 one thousand thousand), and Fitbit (3.v million), according to Canalys. Of class, like many PCMag readers, I embraced wearables early, driven by a very real need.

About viii years ago, I was out having a very nice dejeuner with a friend. To be polite, I kept my smartphone in my pocket, but I had it set to vibrate in case someone was looking for me. Throughout the meal, I never felt the phone vibrate. However, when I checked the phone as I was leaving, I establish several missed calls from my wife likewise as a texted picture of her motorcar, smashed up, with the notation, "If you desire to know why the car looks like this, call me." I felt atrocious and phoned my married woman right away. Manifestly, a driver had ignored a cease sign and plowed directly into her car. Fortunately, my wife wasn't hurt, only we couldn't say the same for the vehicle.

I said to myself that at that place had to exist a article of clothing device that would permit me know when I was getting a telephone call or a text message. This was before large companies like Apple tree and Samsung offered smartwatches. I finally came upon a basic analog scout from ThinkGeek with a tiny Bluetooth-connected digital brandish and a vibration motor. Information technology was cipher fancy, but information technology did exactly what I needed. Unfortunately, the watch portion broke afterward but five months, and I was back in the dark.

Several years subsequently, a pocket-size Canadian visitor, Pebble Engineering, announced the Pebble smartwatch on the crowdfunding website Kickstarter. The visitor was looking for $100,000 to get the production off the ground, but raised over $10,000,000 from virtually 70,000 backers within a month. Conspicuously, I wasn't the only one with this pent-upward demand. The beginning Pebble Smartwatch was i PCMag's commencement Editors' Choice winners for wearables. Sadly, Pebble couldn't compete once the big boys entered the market place and concluding twelvemonth was purchased for its applied science by Fitbit.

Companies like Fitbit, Garmin, Jawbone, and many others were very busy over the by several years creating small, lightweight, and fairly cheap devices to help people rails their steps, heart rate, slumber, and more. The information gathered by these devices helped wearers fix goals and participate in fitness competitions online.

In recent years, the line between smartwatches and fitness trackers has blurred almost completely. Perhaps more accurately, smartwatches are subsuming the fitness tracker market. The Apple Watch, Samsung Gear, and others provide the same measurements as a dedicated fettle tracker. In response, Fitbit, Garmin, and others have added smartwatch functionality to the higher-terminate portion of their product lines.

We asked our survey respondents how they use their article of clothing device; 94 per centum of respondents track health and fitness—information technology's the most pop use. Of class, most devices—even your smartphone—practice this automatically. Fifty-fifty if you're a couch potato, you're existence tracked. (For some reason, it seems that my smartwatch ever compliments me on hitting my movement goal when I'm on the way to the kitchen to go a snack.)

The next most mutual use is as a watch (76 percent), followed past receiving text message notifications (59 percentage), and telephone call notifications (55 percentage). However, the manufacture percentages are dragged down past specific brands. For case, only 66 percentage of Pebble users (there are plenty of them still out at that place) track health and fitness and only virtually a third of Fitbit users get text and phone notifications.

To date, aside from their fitness-tracking capabilities, smartwatches accept primarily served every bit remote screens for smartphones, displaying smartphone notifications, decision-making smartphone music, and then along. Now we are beginning to see smartwatches (such as certain versions of the latest Apple tree Lookout and the Samsung Gear S3) with built-in cellular support, and so they can operate untethered, letting you go out the phone behind and still make calls, transport texts, view maps, and stream music. Although these represent the high stop of the smartwatch marketplace, they may foretell an eventual switch to the smartwatch as the middle of your personal communication and entertainment world.

If you're because your first smartwatch or fitness tracker or thinking about upgrading, read on. See how our survey respondents rated their satisfaction with the devices they use on several criteria to assistance you make the right option.

The PCMag Readers' Choice survey for Smartwatches and Fitness Trackers was in the field from Oct 16, 2017 through November 6, 2022. For more information on how the survey is conducted, read the survey methodology. Each person who completed the survey was entered into a drawing to win an Amazon.com gift carte du jour valued at $350.

You can win! Sign up for the Readers' Choice Survey mailing list to receive invitations for future sweepstakes.

Looking for expert opinion? Read The All-time Smartwatches and The Best Fettle Trackers.

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Vesture Survey Results

Apple has a way of bringing legitimacy to a market. Information technology wasn't the offset out of the gate with a digital music player, for example, but iPods soon dominated sales. Information technology also wasn't the first in smartphones; BlackBerry had smartphones for years before the iPhone arrived. And it certainly wasn't the outset to market with a smartwatch or fitness tracker. Only when the Apple Watch showed up in 2022, it had a polished, thoughtful pattern not frequently found in first-generation products. Now on its tertiary generation, Apple is delivering the highest satisfaction ratings on nearly every measure and information technology wins our showtime Readers' Choice Award in the wearables category.

V companies received the requisite minimum 50 responses from readers to be included in our survey assay. Apple tree earned height marks on almost measures, including overall satisfaction (8.8 on a calibration from 0 for extremely dissatisfied to x for extremely satisfied), satisfaction with reliability (9.1) and ease of setup (9.0) amidst other ratings. In add-on, it received a nine.2 for likelihood to recommend, a very important measure of client satisfaction; information technology too is the question used to generate the Net Promoter Score of 73 percent, the highest of all the vendors.

Apple Watch's highest rating was ix.6 for satisfaction with traditional watch functions, but it likewise received loftier marks for satisfaction with receiving phone notifications (9.0), satisfaction with receiving text bulletin notifications (9.2) and satisfaction with setting timers (nine.four), a relatively mundane but extremely useful office of these devices.

Dedicated fitness trackers primarily compete with smartwatches on price; they do and toll less. When it comes to satisfaction, yet, they don't rate whatever better. Apple tree'southward rating of 8.8 for satisfaction with tracking health and fitness shell Fitbit and Garmin, which both received ratings of 8.6 for tracking. Samsung, which primarily makes smartwatches but as well offers obviously ol' fettle trackers, was correct behind at 8.v.

Interestingly, the second highest rated product in overall satisfaction was the now-defunct Pebble brand. Respondents gave Pebble an 8.five for overall satisfaction, beating Samsung (viii.4), Garmin (viii.2), and Fitbit (7.viii). Pebble owners were realistic about the futurity of the brand—it simply rated 6.1 for likelihood to recommend—merely it's clear respondents liked their Pebble smartwatches. The company delivered uncomplicated, cheap customizable devices that let you know when you received a telephone call or text bulletin. Pebble received a nine.half-dozen for satisfaction with traditional spotter functions, tied with Apple. Its rating of nine.1 for satisfaction with call notifications was best in our survey and its rating of 9.1 for satisfaction with text bulletin notifications was just behind Apple'south 9.two. Both Apple tree and Pebble received ratings of 8.3 for satisfaction with customization through apps, the highest marker on that mensurate.

Pebble smartwatches work with Apple iPhones and Android smartphones, every bit practise the Samsung, Garmin, and Fitbit devices. (Some functionality is express on certain platforms.) The Apple Watch, on the other manus, but works with iPhones—fifty-fifty the latest version with built-in LTE won't pair with Android devices.

If you're an Android user, consider Samsung first. Among brands that piece of work with Android, Samsung wearables had the highest overall satisfaction (8.4), satisfaction with reliability (8.seven, tied with Garmin), satisfaction with ease of setup (8.7, tied with Fitbit), and likelihood to recommend (8.half dozen). Samsung beat Apple by a substantial margin in satisfaction with talking on the phone via the watch; an viii.8 compared to Apple tree'south eight.0. Using a picket as a speakerphone may seem a lilliputian too Dick Tracy at start, but it's actually a very useful feature when your hands are occupied.

Garmin has a definite focus on fitness, but information technology competed well with the other smartwatch-oriented companies. Its ratings of nine.1 for satisfaction with traditional watch functions, 8.7 for satisfaction with telephone call notifications, and 8.v for satisfaction with text notifications are all very proficient, if not quite up to Apple, Pebble, and Samsung's ratings. The main knock against Garmin was in satisfaction with customizing the device through apps, where it simply received a six.9. Garmin does have several apps in its Connect IQ shop, but it can't match the breadth of apps that Apple tree, Samsung, and Android Wear watches offer.

Fitbit received an even lower rating in satisfaction with customizability (6.4) and in most other categories it had the lowest satisfaction ratings. In addition, Fitbit had the highest percentage of respondents reporting needing repairs (21 percent). Every other company was below ten percent.

Meet all of our survey results for wearables.

WINNERS: WEARABLES

Apple
Apple is setting the standard for satisfaction in the smartwatch market, receiving the highest ratings in nearly every category, including satisfaction for tracking wellness and activeness, besting brands that primarily focus on fettle.

Source: https://sea.pcmag.com/feature/18275/readers-choice-awards-2017-smartwatches-and-fitness-trackers

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