Whatever your budget, goals or experience there’s a running watch here for you.
Better battery life, improved performance insights and smarter design, these are just some of the things we’ve come to demand each year as we sift through the latest offerings from the likes of Garmin, Polar, Suunto and TomTom in search of the best running watch.
Of course we still want highly accurate GPS, idiot-grade usability and excellent partner apps to help us learn from our stats and stay motivated.
Thankfully, 2017’s new crop of running partners haven’t disappointed, with a few familiar (watch) faces getting a welcome overhaul and the odd newcomer joining the fight for that space on our wrist.
‘But what’s the best?’ we hear you ask. Well, from the perfect partner for trail running through to the ideal watch for marathons, we’ve run with every watch on this list and selected the best devices for every running need.
Polar’s best-selling tracker with a HR upgrade
Polar’s fuss-free M400 was Europe’s best selling running watch for a reason. Simple, effective and at a good price, the company was clearly onto a winner.
Thankfully with the new Polar M430 they’ve heeded the old adage ‘if it ain’t broke’ and kept most of what made the M400 a favorite but added some useful new skills.
Still easy to use, with a durable, if unremarkable design, the biggest upgrade is that the M430 now comes with built-in heart rate (HR) monitoring for zone training and continuous HR tracking off the wrist, so you can monitor your resting heart rate and your fitness progress.
There’s also sleep tracking and smart notifications and the benefit of the ever-improving Polar Flow app, which allows you to add smart coaching to your wrist for training that’s tailored to your abilities and goals, as well as providing one of the best ‘see your day’ views of everything you’ve done.
Somehow the wizards at Polar have squeezed in these extra smarts while still offering a decent battery life of up to 30 hours of training tracking. While it lacks some of the deeper running dynamics you’ll find on the Polar V800 or Garmin Forerunner 935, this is a very accomplished running watch at a very reasonable price.
For music lovers who like to run to the beat
If you need music to motivate your runs but you hate carrying your smartphone then the Spark 3 Cardio + Music, with its 5GB built-in storage for more than 500 songs, custom playlists and Bluetooth skills, is a great option.
Connecting your Bluetooth headphones with the Spark 3 Cardio also means you can make the most of its audio training features, with alerts that tell you if it’s time to speed up or slow down, or if you’re shifting outside of your target heart rate zone.
As you improve you can actually see your Fitness Age drop, showing that your efforts are having an effect on your body.
There’s treadmill tracking, interval training and an 11-hour GPS training battery time, while water resistance, route guidance and multi-sport support are just a few other benefits thrown in on top of this watch’s running training skills – and all for a really impressive price.
Still the best Android smartwatch for runners
Android Wear has been around for years now, bringing plenty more than GPS and heart rate tracking to watches like the Polar M600. Sure it’ll track speed, pace, distance, calories and more while you run – but it’ll also keep you fully connected via your phone 24/7.
That means route guidance, calendar alerts, messaging and even music onboard, all with voice controls too.
Being Polar, the M600 is made tough with IPX8 water resistance for swim tracking and a rugged comfy strap for all day tracking. You also have minimalist controls for quick access even while you’re a sweaty running mess.
In terms of battery life, you get eight hours of training with GPS, which is plenty for most race distances, or up to two days of normal daily use.
Slimmed down Suunto for urban to off-road adventure
Let’s be honest, most Suunto watches are bulky beasts. They’re capable but they’re rather chunky and that means for some runners the brand has been a bit of a no go.
That’s where the new, more compact, Spartan Trainer Wrist HR comes in. It’s lighter and smaller than its predecessors but still comes with built-in (and excellent) optical heart rate tracking, bringing Suunto’s multi-sport and adventure running smarts to smaller wrists.
With this we’ve also finally got a Suunto we think looks good enough to wear all day, so you can take advantage of its activity tracking features as well.
At 56g it’s only 6g heavier than something like the TomTom Spark 3 and offers 10 hours of training time or up to 14 days of activity tracking and general use.
As you’d expect from Suunto there are trail smarts too, with GPS route navigation and breadcrumb view, which makes it easy to go in search of new routes and places but still find your way back home.
The Suunto Movescount app helps here too. In addition to laying your training data out clearly it also gives access to its community, where you can see how your efforts stack up against the rest of the world and dive into trail running routes logged by others in the community that might not appear elsewhere – being able to see runs in new areas is a really nice feature.
Brilliant for serious runners on a budget
This reasonably affordable watch offers everything the world of Garmin has perfected for runners, in compact form. That means GPS tracking for 11 hours and activity tracking 24/7 for 9 days on a charge.
It also means you get wrist-based continuous heart rate and Garmin’s many apps for things like custom watch faces or marathon-specific training apps. You can enjoy smartphone notifications, audio prompts, live tracking and of course the Garmin Connect app for an in-depth analysis of your efforts.
While out on a run you can use information like aerobic Training Effect to ensure you don’t push yourself too far and hinder training, all while powering through heart rate zones to ensure progress – and following that, monitoring your VO2 Max will show how you’re getting fitter (although pay no heed to the utterly inaccurate race time predictors).
Another nice feature: if you ever get lost you can use the Back To Start feature to be guided right back to where you came from.
Advanced tracking tool for goal-chasing amateurs and serious athletes
A bit like having a Fenix 5 crammed into a slimmer body, with the Forerunner 935 Garmin has taken everything it learned from years of making GPS running watches and applied it all to this one do-it-all device, producing what we’d suggest is the most complete running watch we’ve seen to date. This is a tool for serious runners and triathletes.
In addition to the reliable GPS you’d expect, there’s a huge range of advanced running metrics including cadence, ground contact time, vertical oscillation, VO2 max, recovery time guidance and more.
The emphasis here is on using your run data to adapt your training, make alterations to your form like shortening your stride, and keep an eye on your overall training load in the build-up to your next big challenge.
