Smartwatches are some of the most exciting gadgets out there right now, and we’ve tracked down all the best smartwatch deals. If you’re looking to save big on the latest technology, read on while we take you through them all. We take a look at why you might want to buy each smartwatch and sum up what makes them so great.
Best smartwatch deals
Garmin Forerunner 45 — $140, was $200
Why Buy
The Garmin Forerunner 45 is the ideal companion for the avid runner, hiker, or other outdoor-loving people. It provides you with extensive tracking tools to mean that you can easily see how you’re improving and what you need to do to ensure you do even better on future adventures. A large digital display means that information is always easy to read at a glance even when you’re on the move. The watch is able to monitor daily steps, distance, calories burned, along with your all-day stress levels and even how well you’re sleeping. Including 24/7 heart rate monitoring is a fantastic way to see how your body is performing with built-in GPS able to also monitor how far you’ve traveled, how fast, and even where you’ve run.
The Garmin Forerunner 45 offers a bright, always-on color screen along with a reliable five-button interface so you can easily get things done with it. One sweet feature is the ability to mark your laps with just one quick press. The watch includes profiles for running, cycling, indoor track events, treadmill, elliptical, cardio, yoga, and much more. Other features include incident detection and assistance so the watch is able to send your real-time location to emergency contacts if you run into a problem. It also has live tracking so your family and friends can check on your progress.
For training purposes, Garmin Coach helps you out. It lets you choose your expert coach along with your goal, whether that’s a 5K, 10K, or half-marathon, before providing you with a great adaptive training plan along with step-by-step guidance. Besides helping you achieve your goals, you also get smart notifications for incoming texts and calls, along with controls for the music you play on your phone. For the active user, the Garmin Forerunner 45 is a consistently reliable tool.
Fitbit Versa 3 — $230
Why Buy
The Fitbit Versa 3 is the fitness tracker you can wear and forget about thanks to it being so simple to use, as well as incredibly comfortable. Tying into the Fitbit ecosystem means that the Fitbit Versa 3 is incredibly convenient. If you’ve ever owned a Fitbit before, it’s like that, but better. The Fitbit Versa 3 is able to monitor all your activities all day long. That includes 24/7 heart rate monitoring, all the steps you take, your calorie burn, along with real-time pace and distance tracking. It will even track your sleep, monitoring deep and REM sleep patterns, as well as giving you tips on how to sleep better. Each morning, you’ll be given a sleep score so you can see how you’re doing.
Thanks to how well Fitbit’s software works, you’ll also always know when is the right time to work out. You’re provided with personalized heart rate zones based on your age and resting heart rate, so the Fitbit Versa 3 is able to detect when you’re fine to push yourself. Known as Active Zone Minutes, the idea is to exert yourself for about 150 minutes each week. The Fitbit Versa 3 is able to monitor over 20 different types of exercise with automatic recognition of them. It will also track if you’ve been swimming and for how long, with a swim proof design meaning you really don’t have to think twice about wearing it.
Other options include guided breathing sessions and other mindfulness features to help you calm yourself and feel soothed throughout the day. Alongside all those fitness features, the Fitbit Versa 3 also offers up notifications for all your calls, texts, and other apps, along with Alexa assistant support, and the ability to download and play songs from Pandora and Deezer. You can even control Spotify directly from your watch.
Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 — $210, was $250
Why Buy
One of the best Android smartwatches, the Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 is easily the ideal Wear OS smartwatch for many people, especially those with smaller wrists. It offers a supremely comfortable fit and size, which means it fits just as well in the office as it does the gym. iPhone owners won’t be able to use it but everyone else will have plenty of reasons to seriously consider it. With a rounded display that is sleek and lightweight, its 1.2-inch screen looks fantastic in any lighting situation. It has a digital bezel for working your way through menus with an aluminum body that feels great to your fingertips.
Underneath that stylish appearance are a bunch of great features. The Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 offers up body composition analysis so you can always see how best to crush your targets thanks to extensive body readings. The Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 goes further than most watches by offering you your BMI, Basal Metabolic Rate, weight, muscle and fat mass, and body fat, before combining it all to see how you’re doing. Alongside that, you get real-time ECG monitoring so you get accurate readings on how your heart is performing. VO2 Max readings assess your cardio levels each step or jog.
Elsewhere, the Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 even works throughout the night. It provides you with advanced sleep and continuous SPO2 ratings so it can manage your overall sleep quality, pinpointing where you need to improve. Whether it’s automatically monitoring your workouts or spotting sleep issues, the Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 has your back all the time. Consistently practical while looking great, it’s a truly great smartwatch indeed, and you’re going to love how it works as an extension to your phone.
Apple Watch SE (40mm, GPS) — $229, was $279
Why Buy
The Apple Watch SE is the best Apple Watch for most people. While it lacks some of the key features of the Apple Watch Series 7, it still packs in plenty to love. At its simplest, that means it’s a breeze for you to take calls, reply to texts, or check important notifications from your wrist and without needing to pull out your phone. Ultimately though, it’s so much more than that. It’s whatever you want it to be right down to the fact you can swap out different straps and watch faces so it looks at home in the office or when you’re hiking up a long trail on a Saturday.
The Apple Watch SE is able to track all your daily activity from a quick walk around the local neighborhood to monitoring when you go swimming or go for a long run. It now tracks tai chi and Pilates workouts, too. At all times, you can see your trends developing, such as the steps you take, how much faster you’re walking, and even how often you stand up throughout the day. The Apple Watch SE goes even deeper than that as it looks at your heart rate. It’s able to tell you if your heart rate is unusually high or low, as well as detects irregular heart rhythm and shoots you a notification if there’s an issue.
It looks great, too, with a 1.78-inch Retina screen under Ion-X strengthened glass, and a digital crown to the side for moving through menus. There’s no Always-On screen feature but you won’t miss it too much. A reasonable battery life of two days is the reward for no always-on display and that’s certainly helpful. An easy to use watch, you’ll soon wonder what life was like before you had the Apple Watch SE encouraging you every step of the way.
Apple Watch Series 7 (41mm, GPS) — $329, was $399
Why Buy
The Apple Watch Series 7 is the ultimate smartwatch. Easily the best smartwatch out right now, it looks gorgeous, it’s super speedy to use, and it has a bunch of fantastic and genuinely useful features. Whether you’re looking to track everything about your health or simply want a stylish timepiece in the office, this is the smartwatch for you.
The first thing you’ll notice is the Apple Watch Series 7’s amazing display. It has an always-on Retina display with nearly 20% more screen area than its predecessor — the Series 6 — which means everything is much clearer and easier to see and use. It’s also Apple’s most crack-resistant front crystal yet so it’s highly durable thanks to its IP6X dust resistance and swim-proof nature. If you’re liable to knock your watch from time to time, you won’t have to worry so much here.
The Apple Watch Series 7 is powerful and starts off with the usual range of features. You can use it to receive notifications instead of needing to look at your phone. Also, you can track all your workouts, including monitoring the steps you take, the calories you burn, and other core details. However, the Apple Watch Series 7 keeps on giving. It also measures your blood oxygen levels via a sensor that is able to see what’s going on. It’s a useful extra tool in keeping you safe and healthy. In addition, the Apple Watch Series 7 can take an ECG at any time, so you’ll always know how well your heart is performing. Any time your heart hits an unusually high or low rate, you’ll also receive a notification with separate notifications if your heart is suddenly irregular. It’s a great way of keeping on top of your health in a hands-off but effective manner.
When are the best smartwatch deals?
We don’t blame you if you can’t resist and need to buy a new smartwatch right now. Generally, smartwatch deals occur throughout the year so you’re still likely to get a good price right now. However, if you can hold off a little longer, there are some specific times of the year when you may see the best smartwatch deals.
The next big sales event is Prime Day and that’s highly likely to be a great time for smartwatch deals. It’s in honor of Amazon’s birthday and celebrations tend to extend to other retailers also keen to sell big. Amazon often discounts many smartwatches throughout the year so count on it offering deeper discounts during Prime Day celebrations with other retailers matching or beating the offers. The downside is that you’ll need to wait until the summer and you may want to enjoy your new smartwatch much sooner than that.
Still, if you’re patient, the best discounts may be later still. Black Friday and Cyber Monday are hugely popular times for all things technology-related to be discounted. We almost always see smartwatch deals like no others during the late November event. Yup, of course, Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving and that’s a really long way away. Still, if you can hold out until then, it’s fairly likely we’ll see the best smartwatch deals going on around the holidays. You’ll need to bear in mind that your finances may be tighter given you’re likely to be spending more for the holidays, plus you miss out on a summer of workout tracking, but if you can put up with all that, it could be worth the wait.
Ultimately though, the best smartwatch deals are the ones you pick up at the best time for you. That may well be now which is why we won’t blame you for hitting the buy button immediately on a precious new acquisition.
