Fitness Tracker Buyer's Guide

Fitness trackers play a key part in many people’s road to a healthier lifestyle, either through personal choice or as part of insurance deals. Getting the right one for you can make the difference between staying healthy or another gadget getting lost in the drawer. 

Fitness trackers offer many features including; various style features and display types, monitoring various types of activity and sleep trackers, GPS monitors and heart rate checkers. Your choice needs to fit in with your routine and your current smartphone. Fortunately, most trackers will work with any device, but typically some work better with one app or another.

Types of fitness tracker

The most common type is the wrist fitness tracker, narrow comfortable and displaying key information on a LED screen, they are low-cost and easy to forget about or not worry about losing it. You can easily modify them with bands that are more to your style and protective cases if needed. 

Increasingly common are smartwatches that bring many of the apps from your smartphone to the wrist, with the ability to make phone calls, listen to music and so on without taking your phone. Other options include health rings or necklace pendants if you want something less obvious. 

For your health, you want the one that’s right for your activity level. If you only take walks then a simple pedometer will do the job. If you want to take up running, something that can track distance and effort might be more suitable, while multi-sports types might want a waterproof one for swimming, off-track activities and other exercises.

A GPS-equipped fitness tracker can create routes as part of an exercise plan, while heart sensors and other monitors can measure your effort. 

The right fitness tracker for you

As you can see, the number of features grows dramatically the more you spend, but someone just happy to track their walk with the dog or regular park walk event will not need all the bells and whistles offered by high-end fitness trackers and smartwatches. 

For those serious about their fitness, advanced features and the smarter apps you can buy will give better insights into improving your performance. And for those who like a bit of a fashion accessory, there are plenty of ways to bling up smartwatches with cool straps.