---
title: Smartwatches: who are they for and which is best?
author: mrjeeves
date: 2020-07-19
---
Smartwatches are becoming more and more common in daily life. They provide a quick and easy way to interact with your phone on your wrist, such as checking your notifications, sending messages, navigating around or just checking the plain old time.
There's a bunch of different smartwatches on the market from all sorts of manufacturers, running all sorts of different software.
It's more difficult to answer than you might think. Here's what Wikipedia says:
A smartwatch is a wearable computer in the form of a watch; modern smartwatches provide a local touchscreen interface for daily use, while an associated smartphone app provides for management and telemetry.
Most people's definitions vary, though. For example, I'd only consider something as a smartwatch if it connected to my phone and showed my notifications, at the very least.
There's a few main candidates.
- Fitness bands - the one that people
- Apple Watch - the one almost everyone knows
- Wear OS - Google's slightly lacking competitor
- Tizen - Samsung's first-party offering
- Huawei Wear - Huawei's relatively new software
Each of the above have their own pros and cons, but we've got to get down into the details as that's what you're here for.
Every type of smartwatch differs in one way or another, whether it's price or functionality. What one person might need, another might not, so the perfect watch will be different for everyone.
The cheapest form of smartwatch is the fitness band. There are many of these on the market, but the most common are the Xiaomi Mi Smart Band, the Huawei Band or Fitbits. These have far less features than fully fledged smartwatches, but compete in the way of pricing. Fitness bands offer the simple features at an extremely low price.
The Mi Band 4 is my favourite. It connects to your phone via the Mi Fit app. It can do a wide range of things, including step counting, heart rate tracking, workout recording, showing you the weather and even more
Here's a full list:
- step tracking
- workout tracking
- includes full swimming tracking courtesy of the 6-axis gyroscope
- GPS tracking
- shows phone notifications
- weather forecast
- alarm and sleep monitoring
- massive 20 day battery life
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Includes the basic functionality which most people want | Quite basic |
| Very cheap (under £30) | Some features not available outside of China (NFC payments, voice assistant) |
| Works as well on iOS as it does on Android (no find phone feature) | Can increase battery drain on your phone due to the constant Bluetooth connection |
| No need to recharge every night (20 day battery) | Mi Fit app isn't particularly great |
| Sleep tracking support | Heart rate sensor isn't particularly accurate |
You can pick this up from the Xiaomi website for £34.99, or Amazon UK for £26.90 (as of writing). Watch out for fake listings on some sites, like eBay, as these can be quite common.
Buy now
There's no doubt you've heard of the Apple Watch and, most likely, you've seen one. Quite obvious from its name, the Apple Watch is made by Apple for Apple devices. Sorry Android fans!
We're going to focus on the newer Series 5 Apple Watch, which starts at £399 from Apple. The Watch features a rotatable crown on the side, as well as a button on the side. It's also got an Always On OLED display, meaning the screen can stay on all the time, so you can see the time at a glance.
The Series 5 also comes in 4 different materials: aluminium, stainless steel, ceramic and titanium, each costing far more than the ones before. It also features an ECG app which can provide very basic information about your heart rhythm and Apple claim is "similar to a single-lead electrocardiogram".
There's also support for fall detection if you enable it in the app. If the watch detects that you've had a hard fall, it'll ask if you're ok. If you don't respond, you'll start feeling stronger and stronger vibrations and voice alerts. If you still don't respond after a minute, it'll sound an audible alarm before calling the emergency services.
Here's a longer list of features:
- GPS connectivity for map directions
- Always On display (Series 5+)
- Heart health monitoring
- High and low heart rate notifications
- Irregular heart rhythm notifications
- ECG app
- Emergency SOS (call for help and alert emergency contacts)
- Fall detection
- International emergency calling (can complete emergency calls automatically)
- Digital crown (with haptic feedback on Series 5+)
- Compass
Some of these features aren't available in all countries, so make sure to check the availability list. All the features are available in the UK.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Works perfectly with iPhones | Very expensive |
You can pick this up from the Apple Website from £399 for the GPS only model, or £499 for the GPS and Cellular model. Cellular isn't supported on giffgaff yet, but it's in the works.
Both models have WiFi and Bluetooth, which are how the watch and phone communicate with each other. Cellular just allows the watch to function the same when you're away from your phone as when you're right next to it.
Buy now
This is where it all starts getting a little tricky. Google's Wear OS is like Android: so many devices run it, meaning you can't just talk about Wear OS, you need to talk about specific watches that use it.
I've used two Wear OS watches: the Verizon Wear 24 and the Fossil Sport. Both watches are great contenders, but I'd steer away from the Wear 24 as it's no longer supported.
The Fossil Sport is a great entry device. It supports almost everything Wear OS is capable of, while being constantly on sale. It weighs in at an ultra-light 40g, meaning half the time you'll never even feel it on your wrist.
