Your guide to the latest and best smartwatches of 2017. Check out our latest reviews and buyer’s guide on the top smartwatches for this year.
You’ve likely noticed that Fitbit has just announced its first proper smartwatch, the Ionic, and that Samsung will be announcing a couple of new wearables at IFA 2017 in late August. These are not in our best smartwatches chart just yet. We’ve rounded up some of the smartest watches to potentially grace your arm in 2017, but included only those available to buy today.
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There’s an interesting theory that smartwatches are to the smartphone what wristwatches were to the pocket watch. Picture the way the average gentlemen used to have to rummage through his pocket for his watch prior to the 20th century. Now skip forward 100+ years and the average smartphone user still has to dive into his/her pocket to check their phone.
The kicker now is that your smartphone holds far more information than a pocket watch ever did, yet all of which is still locked into your pocket.
Smartwatches aren’t for making phone calls, although some can do this, but instead they provide a quick and easy way to check what notifications are on your smartphone, so you can decide whether it’s worth delving into your pocket or searching around your bag to fetch your smartphone or not.
There are two type of smartwatch around at the moment: those with a colourful touchscreen like would find on your phone, and those which combine a regular analogue watch with smart features.
We call them ‘semi-smartwatches’ but they’re also known as hybrids. It hasn’t quite made the chart here but the Fossil Q Grant is a great example.
The latter we class as a semi-smart device and normally gives you information via a small LCD screen, LEDs or even smaller hands on the watch face.
While a fully-fledged smartwatch can do a lot more, the juice guzzling screen results in a short battery life. Semi-smart watches benefit from longer battery life with some even having separate cells for the watch and smart features.
If you’re an Android user then an Android Wear smartwatch is the obvious choice but it’s not necessarily the best for everyone. Google’s OS tweaked for wearables also plays nicely with iOS but with cut down functionality so iPhone owners will get more from the Apple Watch. Read more on how to use Android Wear with iPhone.
Others have an entirely different system such as Pebble’s range of devices and some even work with Windows Phone like the Vector Watch. Samsung is sticking with its own Tizen, too, so there’s something for everyone here.
When testing for what is the best smartwatch, the important factors to consider are how much of your smartphone’s functionalities can it perform, and how well does it handle each task, the final attribute is obviously style — it’s still bling after all.
You’ll also want to make sure it’s compatible with your smartphone — some are only for iPhone or Android while others support most phones. Note that Android Wear now has iOS support but the experience is cut down in comparison.
Some smartwatches use different software such as the Gear S3 which runs Tizen, Samsung’s own OS — it’s a legitimate alternative to Android Wear. Read about Android Wear 2.0 .
As is stands, you’ll need to pick a watch with more limited functionality if you want long battery life while ones which can do all sorts will typically last a couple of days.
Fitness fans will want to look for a device with a heart rate monitor and built-in GPS, although the heart rate monitors are often poor.
We consider the important factors of a smartwatch to be level of notification detail, battery life, style, water resistance, compatibility with a range of devices/smartphones, plus additional features such as microphones and Wi-Fi support so you don’t have to connect to a phone for full functionality.
With very similar, if not identical, hardware on offer with many of the Android Wear smartwatches, a large part of the decision will come down to design and price.
