If you have an iPhone and don’t think you need all the bells and whistles on the health front, but most importantly, you don’t want to drop $400 on a smartwatch, you’ll be happy with the new Apple Watch SE 3. It’s a nice upgrade if you’re coming from an older model, and also makes a great watch for your parents or kids. It has the same S10 chip as the Series 11 and Watch Ultra 3, but Apple has limited the features to lower the price. The bezels around the screen are chunkier, and battery life is also restricted to the usual 18 hours.

It’s not particularly exciting, but at $249, you’re still getting a heck of a smartwatch that can enjoy many of the new features in watchOS 26, like Workout Buddy, Sleep Score, and the wrist flick gesture to dismiss calls, notifications, and timers.

Anyone with a Samsung phone will be best served with Samsung’s Galaxy Watch8 series (6/10, WIRED Review). I’m not a fan of the new squircle design (or the new proprietary straps), but it runs the latest Wear OS 6, and there are several nice improvements to the interface that make everything more glanceable. (There’s now access to the Gemini assistant, too!)

Within the Galaxy Watch8 series, there are three watches: a 40 and 44 mm model, and the Watch8 Classic, which is 46 mm and sports Samsung’s iconic mechanical rotating bezel—you can physically rotate the bezel to scroll through the interface. My colleague Adrienne So tested the tiniest Watch8 and saw disappointing battery life, but things fared much better for me on the Classic; I hit close to two full days on a single charge. I recommend going for the 44-mm or the Classic.

Samsung’s health- and fitness-tracking features are spot-on here, with reliable heart rate measurements, solid sleep tracking, and dual-frequency GPS for accurate mapping. The automatic workout detection is also among the best. However, newer health features are of dubious helpfulness. The AGEs index, which Samsung introduced in 2024, still doesn’t offer much information, and the Bedtime Guidance is hidden away in a settings menu. New is the Antioxidant Index, which measures carotenoids in your blood to ensure you’re eating healthy, but Adrienne, who has a diet filled with antioxidant-rich berries and fruits, found it completely inaccurate.

Vascular Load is new in the Watch8 series, and it measures the load on your vascular system (your blood vessels carrying blood throughout your body). It takes time to set up—you need to wear it three out of the last 14 days to get a result—and your watch needs to maintain proper skin contact during sleep. When it does work, it’s a nice metric to be able to see (at least, it’s nice to know that my vascular load is “steady”). Outside of that, it’s hard to gauge what helpful information the watch will provide if it isn’t steady. Right now, it just says to get plenty of sleep and physical activity, which, duh.

There’s a lot to like with the Galaxy Watch8 series, but take some of these health features with a grain of salt. You should also remember that some features are limited to Samsung phones only, like the electrocardiogram and sleep apnea tracking.

Like the Apple Watch Series 11, the Watch Ultra 3 now has longer battery life—up to 42 hours on full power. My colleague, Adrienne So, tested it and says she was able to wear it for a full weekend of navigation, activity tracking, and satellite messaging. That last feature is brand-new and exclusive to the Watch Ultra 3: you can send texts to friends and family in areas without reception, provided you’re in a clear area with line of sight to a satellite, and call emergency services

Otherwise, this is the same Ultra smartwatch as before, one that is more rugged and durable than the standard Apple Watch. It now has the biggest display available on the Apple Watch, which makes it better for viewing offline maps, and well as the same three-mic array and dual speakers that showed up on previous Watch Ultras. Also as with previous Watch Ultras, you can dive with it. The bigger and thicker case size is overkill for some, but if you’re in the great outdoors often and you want the best battery life on an Apple Watch, this is it.

Most smartwatches last a day, maybe a day and a half, before needing a recharge. The OnePlus Watch 3 (9/10, WIRED Recommends) has a fantastic five-day battery life. It’s not a small watch, but it’s not terribly thick. It employs a new silicon-carbon battery technology that can fit a denser 631-mAh cell without requiring a thicker body. This, paired with OnePlus’ dual-engine architecture that debuted on last year’s OnePlus Watch 2, allows the smartwatch to sip the battery—I lost only 25 percent per day for five days wearing the Watch 3, which was amazing.

This is a Wear OS smartwatch, so you get all the bells and whistles including taking calls, talking to Google Assistant, and responding to notifications from all your apps. OnePlus has ramped up its health and fitness offerings this go-around, improving the heart rate monitor’s accuracy thanks to better sensor placement and build materials, plus a bevy of new features, including fall detection, irregular heart rate notifications, and wrist skin temperature sensing. There’s also an electrocardiogram, but it’s unavailable in the US and Canada. Still, the company has made strides here. It might not be my first choice if I wanted a health- and fitness-focused watch, but it delivers reliable results without needing to be charged every day, and that’s more helpful than a dead smartwatch.

For folks who may find the 47-mm size comically huge on their wrist, OnePlus offers a smaller 43-mm OnePlus Watch 3. I wore it for several weeks, even to bed, and found it immensely comfy. The lugs slope down nicely, and the silicone 18-mm strap is soft on the skin. It’s slim, yet the 1.32-inch screen doesn’t feel small. I tracked my health after a week of traveling in London, and my sleep and activity data were spot on. It’s too bad battery life isn’t as notable, though still excellent for a smartwatch of its size. I routinely got close to two days out of this smaller watch with multiple tracked activities. If you’re not tracking a ton of workouts, it’ll probably last two and a half days on a single charge.

Fitness watches are typically not as sleek or simple to operate as more robust smartwatches, but the Garmin Vivoactive 6 (8/10, WIRED Recommends) bucks that trend. WIRED editor Adrienne So enjoyed the bevy of proprietary Garmin metrics on this fitness watch, from Body Battery to Training Readiness. There’s a built-in GPS, a heart-rate monitor, blood oxygen measurements, a sleep tracker, incident detection for personal safety, and 80 activity profiles to track workouts. Oh, and the watch lasted around a week on a single charge.

On the smartwatch end, you can pair it with iOS or Android to see your notifications, but only Android users can respond to texts with the on-screen keyboard. You won’t be able to access third-party apps, though. There’s also Garmin Pay, so you can leave the wallet and phone at home and still check out at Starbucks on your way back from a run. Read our Best Fitness Trackers guide for more recommendations.

There are a lot of poor-quality kids’ smartwatches with potentially dangerous vulnerabilities. That’s why we’re more comfortable recommending the Fitbit Ace LTE (8/10, WIRED Recommends). Google-owned Fitbit promises not to store children’s health data for research, and it will delete location history after 24 hours and all health data after 30 days. This watch requires a subscription to Fitbit Ace ($10 per month), but that includes cellular connectivity, so you don’t need to add it to your carrier’s cellular plan. You can set contacts, and your kids can make phone calls and texts through the watch to the Fitbit Ace app, and they can share their location via Google Maps.

Fitbit is bringing the gamified fitness tracking experience that adults are used to for kids with Fitbit Arcade, and there’s even a Tamagotchi-like virtual character (Eejie) your kids can take care of. These games are time-based, so your kids can hit their activity goals by completing them. Parental controls let you set limits, like School Time, which locks down many of the watch’s features. It’s a great way for your kid to go out and be independent, while also giving you the peace of mind of knowing how to reach and find them, without the problems that come with giving them a smartphone at such a young age.

I thoroughly enjoyed wearing this Casio watch—designed for the outdoors—in decidedly non-outdoor conditions for several months. From the green case to the plant-derived Castlon green strap, it looks smart and works with various outfits, even for city slickers. I largely relied on it for timekeeping (in several time zones) and the stopwatch during workouts, but you can also monitor barometric pressure, altitude, and temperature, plus check the compass to get your bearings. The LCD is easy to read, and I like the auto LED function that lights up the screen when you tilt the watch. Best of all, this is a Tough Solar watch, so you won’t have to bother with a charging cable.

It might not do heart rate and notifications, but the small feature set makes this Casio useful and slightly smarter than your average timepiece.

It’s a calculator … on a watch. How much smarter can you get? Seriously, the buttons might be tiny, but you can calculate how much your tip will be when grabbing the bill at the restaurant, and everyone will marvel at your brilliance. This cheapo watch from Casio is a classic—it’s comfy and lightweight—and you can cycle through a few modes, including a stopwatch, an alarm, and a second time zone. There’s a five-year battery life, and the fully automatic calendar goes through the year 2099 (that’s 15 battery changes).

If you’re interested in non-smart watches, check out our Best Cheap Watches Under $1,000 guide.