Buyer's guide to smartwatches 2025: which one is worth your money?

With so many smartwatches to choose from, which one is best for you?

There are quite a few tips and tricks for finding a new smartwatch. Our own experiences come in handy, too, as they help us understand what we want or don't want in a smartwatch.

This year, I had the opportunity to try a few of the many new smartwatches that came out in 2024. So, somewhere between Black Friday deals and the whole upcoming new-year-new-me shebang, I decided that maybe it's time for me to upgrade, too, and perhaps greet next year with a new smartwatch. But which one is worth the money?

Smartwatch must-haves

Considering the huge variety of smartwatches available, the fastest way to narrow down the selection is to decide which features you can't live without.

In my case, I focused on its compatibility with my smartphone, battery life, size, fitness and health tracking, and price.

Why not another Apple Watch?

The Apple Watch was my first smartwatch. Before it, I was using a simple Fitbit tracker that would count my steps and show me text messages. So, when the time came to update the device, I was encouraged to try a smartwatch.

During those three years of use, I discovered many other valuable features, especially when it came to tracking my hikes and runs.

So, surely, I could just upgrade my existing watch with a newer Apple model. However, I decided it was time for me to part ways with it, mainly because of the battery life that proved unreliable when I'm out for day-long adventures and want to track my path, distance, and pace.

Even if I did take the new Apple smartwatch, its "high-end" model can only offer a battery life of up to 36 hours of normal use and up to 72 hours in Low Power Mode. Coming from an $800 watch, this didn’t seem like a fair deal.

The battery is done, and so am I

For the longest time, I thought charging your smartwatch daily was normal. That was until I started testing some of the smartwatches released this year.

now, I’ve learned that I can use my smartwatch to track all-day hikes, multiple workouts, sleep, and other health features for at least a few days without charging the battery.

But in all fairness, during these tests, I wouldn't use the watch for communication purposes, such as receiving texts, calls, or social media notifications. I heard that it might help save the battery, but when it comes to daily use of my smartwatch, I like it when it shows me who's been trying to reach me, even though I still find it weird to have a conversation via smartwatch.

Another wake-up call I got was after discussing the matter with my colleagues, who had already ditched the Apple Watch for more or less the same reasons.

Size, or how not to wear a satellite dish

Considering that the smartwatch has become a device that is somewhat "glued" to our wrists for a whole day and even the night, it has to be comfortable to wear.

Nevertheless, I hadn't considered things like a device's size, display, or design until I got my hands on the Samsung Galaxy Ultra, which was released this summer.

Its latest smartwatch comes only with a 47 mm display, which isn't quite a good fit for a smaller wrist, which was my case. So, while I was happy with the display, the watch did look weird on me.

This is when it dawned on me that "high-end" smartwatches, including Samsung and Apple devices, usually don't come with smaller displays.

It's because it would be difficult to fit all the smartwatch components into a smaller device without compromising battery life, processing power, and display quality.

Another thing to consider when it comes to the physical characteristics of a smartwatch is what kind of strap it comes with. A recent study revealed that most smartwatch bands may include harmful forever chemicals that can cause serious health problems long-term.

What features should a smartwatch include?

Now that a smartwatch can be your coach, keep you up to date with your health metrics, allow you to communicate with others, guide you through untravelled paths, and do even more, I've learned that in all this abundance of features, it's best to know what your next smartwatch should include from the start.

For instance, when it comes to health features, many like to track their sleep in order to improve their rest quality. Meanwhile, I do know that I work well with six hours of sleep, not really batting an eye on further metrics.

But with time, I did find features like heart rate monitoring useful. It would warn me of an unusually high heart rate, alerting me that I'm possibly straining myself.

What's interesting to see is that more companies are working towards creating health-related features to help people monitor their well-being. For example, Apple is hinting at a blood glucose tracker that may be found in its smartwatch.

For fitness enthusiasts, the smartwatch often works as a coach. While I use my watch frequently to track my walks, hikes, and runs, I have also been drawn to various training and workout apps quite a few times.

When I spent a few weeks with the Google Pixel smartwatch, which turned out to be a pretty decent watch, even though it didn't include any va-va-voom, one thing that caught my eye was that it came with a Fitbit Premium subscription.

I'm not going to lie; I thought those well-shot videos were really going to motivate me. However, after a while, I realized that no subscription would keep me going further than those same five songs I listen to while I run.

Compatibility with your smartphone

I've been an Apple product user for quite some time, and if someone asked me what one product the company makes that I would never exchange for anything else, that would be the iPhone. So, with this in mind, I need a smartwatch that is compatible with my phone.

When I was testing Google and Samsung smartwatches, I had to have an Android since I couldn't use my iPhone.

After some digging (or redditing), I found out that one of the options is the Garmin smartwatch. I've also been hearing some good things about the device from my colleagues, so I thought I would research it as one of my options. So, there's a high chance that I'm not yet done with my smartwatch reviews.

Price: the most expensive isn’t always the best

Having a price range when looking for a smartwatch is important since the device's price may range from a couple of hundred dollars to more than a thousand dollars.

Now, companies like Samsung, Apple, and Garmin offer high-end and budget-friendly options.

This is when having a list of things you want or don't want your smartwatch to include might come especially handy. Buying the most expensive watch doesn't mean you'll get the best if you're not using half of its features.

For example, Garmin's latest smartwatches, Fenix 7 and 8, are sold for a thousand dollars and are ready to replace your smartphone if needed. However, my wish to buy the company's latest device soon faded away when I realized that I would be using a $900 watch to run around a block, not hang from a cliff.

It's also worth comparing different models made by the same manufacturer to see if the price spike is worth it.

Is it time for a smart ring?

I have been previously asked why I'm not switching to a smart ring, which seems to be establishing itself quite well in the tracking device niche.

While different types of smart rings can allow you to make payments, track your health, or be your AI assistant, what I enjoy about smartwatches is that they display the information right then and there without me having to check my phone, which is not the case with a smart ring.

Besides, the smartwatch market still has room to grow, according to companies like Apple and Garmin, which are not in a hurry to release their own smart rings.