Top 5 Best Fitness Bands 2018
Gone are the days of watches simply telling us the time. It’s 2018 and we are becoming more and more about jamming as much technology as we can into small spaces. To give ourselves some credit, we are getting pretty darn good at it, as you will see with the following fitness tracker wearable comparisons.
The Nokia Steel
SPECIFICATIONS
- Battery life: 6 months
- Heart-rate monitoring: No
- GPS: No
REASONS TO LOVE
- The best-looking activity tracker
- Easy to use app
- Vibro-alarm function
So, if I am being honest, this is the smart fitness band that I am most likely to actually buy. Call me shallow, but I am a visual girl and the sex appeal of this thing sucked me right in.
You’d be forgiven for thinking this was a normal ol’ fashion watch, but the small secondary dial measures your step goal throughout the day. The Steel will also detect when you’re running or swimming and have a crack at tracking that by making a distance calculation based on steps/strokes taken rather than GPS. It will also have a stab at tracking your sleep and has a useful vibro-alarm function to then wake you up. So yeah, not totally accurate — but very good-looking.
The Fitbit Charge 2
SPECIFICATIONS
- Battery life: 4 days
- Heart-rate monitoring: Yes
- GPS: via linked phone only
REASONS TO LOVE
- Excellent app
- Good for multiple sports
- Decent heart-rate reader
- Gives overall fitness score
As far as the interwebs is concerned, the Fitbit Charge is arguably the best fitness tracker there is. It’s not the prettiest fitness band (I stand by this mattering), but it tracks deep and light sleep, steps, distance and calories and more. Because Fitbit is now such a big-dog you can also use their impressive app and growing ecosystem to create and track a complete fitness and diet programme.
Several targets and goals can be set and thanks to an adequately accurate and reliable heart-rate reader, it’s more useful for serious exercise than many fitness bands. Despite my style reservations, the wearability of the Charge 2, and affordability, combined with a strong app and tracking make it the best you can get. Unless of course, you want to use it while swimming — it isn’t waterproof.
Garmin Vivosport
SPECIFICATIONS
- Battery life: 7 days
- Heart-rate monitoring: Yes
- GPS: Yes
REASONS TO LOVE
- Long battery life
- GPS and HR built in
- Waterproof
This guy packs a punch but sucks at the important stuff. The Vivosport technically smashes the Charge 2 by having GPS built in, an app for counting reps automatically at the gym and something to monitor your stress levels. But, it sucks to wear! It is ugly, it feels cheap, and the screen layout makes no sense. Then to top it off, the syncing is an absolute nightmare.
But, if you can handle all of that, it does have some pretty amazing features and for all of the water babies out there — it is waterproof.
TomTom Spark 3 GPS + Heartrate
SPECIFICATIONS
- Battery life: 4 days
- Heart-rate monitoring: Yes
- GPS: Yes
REASONS TO LOVE
- VO2 Max and Fitness Age features
- Does the basics well
The Spark 3 is really built for fitness junkies. It does the usual health and fitness monitoring, tracking steps, calories and sleep but its main use is as a simple way to track more full-on, heart-pounding workouts, from running to cycling to gym. Though still not perfect, the GPS and heart-rate tracking are more reliable than most. The watch and its app take the pulse data gathered and use it to assign every workout you do a ‘fitness point’ score, rating you daily. I’ll have to admit, this is pretty motivating, you find yourself working for your ‘active’ score.
As always, there are downsides — It’s ugly, it feels dated, syncing sucks and the UI is less than impressive. Basically the Spark 3 is ideal for those who want to count daily steps but also to get more serious feedback and motivation around their gym/run fitness.
The Garmin Vivofit JR 2
SPECIFICATIONS
- Battery life: ‘1+ years’
- Heart-rate monitoring: No
- GPS: No
REASONS TO LOVE
- Long battery life
- Kids are obsessed
- Marvel, Star Wars and Disney designs
Let’s finish with the clear front runner as far as my Disney obsession is concerned — the GARMIN VIVOFIT JR 2. Being the perfect little narcissists they are, kids eat up any info they can get about themselves, so an activity tracker makes some serious sense.
Garmin’s scaled down Vivofit comes in a myriad of cool kid designs. Think everything from Minnie Mouse to Captain America. There are a collection of rewards for your mini me including earning sought after game progression after 60 minutes of activity. Each game is related to the fitness trackers theme — Ultron’s Revenge for the Captain America one, for instance. There are also alerts and ‘chore management’ — winning!
