Smartwatches and fitness trackers are both designed to make your life easier and keep track of your activities. They’re suitable for health monitoring and achieving fitness goals. For more detailed tracking, many models can get synced with apps on smartphones. Although they share the same features, they have some differences. Also, not every smartwatch and every fitness tracker is the same.
To answer which of the two mentioned smart devices is the best, you need to consider your lifestyle and preferences. Then, we’ll list and explain some of the essential features smartwatches and fitness trackers have. So keep track of those features, and if most of the smartwatch/fitness tracker features are on your must-have list, you found your perfect match.
Activity Tracking Options
Fitness trackers are primarily for tracking fitness activities. It’s why they can be better for this particular thing than smartwatches. Some fitness trackers have basic tracking options, but many of them have advanced options. For example, they can track your calories, steps, sleep, body temperature, and heart rate. Also, they can track activities for specific sports.
Smartwatches can have all the same activity tracking options mentioned above, depending on the model. But, smartwatches are generally more expensive than fitness trackers. Also, since they’re using smart features, most smartwatches have basic tracking options.
Additional Features
Some fitness trackers have smart features, and this is where they overlap with smartwatches. Additional features can include smart notifications, music playback, and apps. These models are more expensive since they’re more advanced. If you’re into water sports, some fitness trackers and smartwatches are waterproof.
Smartwatches usually have all the same features as fitness trackers and some additional. But, sometimes fitness trackers offer more fitness-related features. Other features smartwatches can have include Bluetooth connection to wireless headphones, better music control, voice assistant, and microphone for taking calls.
Although they’re smart devices, smartwatches have limited media options. Few tech outlets found a way to open some links up with third-party apps or tricks, and they concluded that they aren’t for web browsing. Among more demanding tasks, they’ve tried to play Canadian online slots on both the Android and Apple watch, where they did manage to open the page. However, when they dug deeper into it, they found out that although the page can open and show a list of slot games, smartwatches don’t fully support HTML5, so they could only browse the thumbnails for these games, not run one.
Design
Fitness trackers are usually easy to use and comfortable to wear. Also, they’re smaller and lightweight if you don’t want to have a bulky watch on your wrist. Furthermore, they’re thin and usually have a small touchscreen. If you wish to track your sleep, a small and comfortable look will be the right fit.
Smartwatches are more stylish for those who want to wear a nice watch and have a useful smart device. Since they have a bigger screen, it’s more convenient to track the feedback of activities. A more oversized watch also means more space for additional sensors for temperature, location, health, fitness monitoring, etc.
Battery Life
Fitness trackers have better battery life than smartwatches. Since smartwatches have additional features and larger screens, they use more power. On the contrary, smartwatches are available that use a mechanical clock with few intelligent features, so they’re long-lasting battery-wise and have basic fitness tracking options.
Author: Petra