Enlarge / The Apple Watch Series 7 is the best all-around smartwatch on the market and watchOS 9’s fall 2022 launch should considerably step up its already-solid fitness tracking abilities.
Corey Gaskin
For all the shoddy deals it throws out, Amazon’s Prime Day sale can still be a good time to snag a good deal on a worthwhile wearable. We’ve sifted through the detritus to spotlight the best smartwatch and fitness tracker deals we’re currently seeing from the event.
This year the Apple Watch Series 7 hits a record low to headline this list, as does Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 4. We’ve called these two the best all-around smartwatches for iPhone and Android, respectively, in our guide to the best smartwatches.
If you’re more serious about fitness tracking than smartwatch capabilities, there are also a number of deals on Garmin watches we like, including models in the Forerunner, Fenix, and Vivoactive lineups. All of our picks below have solid hardware foundations in terms of health sensors—all but one will soon be picks in our forthcoming guide to the best fitness trackers—and their differences are mostly in the depth of activity-specific tools and metrics they offer. Below we break down which Garmin watch may be best for you, alongside the rest of our shortlist of top wearable deals.
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Apple Watch Series 7 (41mm) smartwatch for $279 ($335) (GPS + Cellular for $379)
Apple Watch Series 7 (45mm) smartwatch for $309 ($365) (GPS + Cellular for $409)
The Apple Watch Series 7 is the best all-around smartwatch on the market. It has class-leading health hardware for heart rate, ECG, and blood oxygen monitoring, as well as GPS and music storage. If you opt for the cellular version, then you can genuinely leave your iPhone at home, as the Apple Watch can make and receive calls and texts from your wrist, during workouts, swims, hikes, or a leisurely walk. The device’s unparalleled third-party support means most of your favorite iPhone apps have Apple Watch equivalents, often with integrated complications for quick access from the main watch face. Both the cellular and non-cellular versions are on sale for their lowest prices we’ve tracked, and in a variety of sizes, colors, and configurations at that.
Enlarge / Garmin’s Vivoactive 4 is the company’s best blend of smartwatch aesthetics and fitness tracking capability on this list. It has all the fitness tools of an Apple Watch SE (heart rate, blood oxygen, GPS, music storage) and an always-on display, which the SE lacks.
Valentina Palladino
Garmin Vivoactive 4 (45mm) smartwatch for $188 ($280)
Garmin Vivoactive 4S (40mm) smartwatch for $188 ($270)
Garmin’s Vivoactive 4/4S is a great option for a well-equipped smartwatch with some traditional watch looks. With a heart rate sensor, blood oxygen monitor, GPS, music storage, and contactless payments on board, it covers just about all the smartwatch and fitness essentials. Throw in menstrual cycle tracking, a built-in altimeter, 5 ATM water resistance, and it’s just about on-par with an Apple Watch SE in terms of hardware. It can’t match Apple from an app perspective, but it gets much better battery life than any Apple Watch, clocking in at up to eight days.
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True to its name, the Vivoactive is great for more active wearers, offering a range of activity tracking options with some deeper analytics—VO₂ max, heart rate zones, swimming SWOLF scores, and a suite of golfing tools, to name a few—than many wearables currently provide, Apple Watches included. There are even on-screen exercise animations for some of the workouts you can load onto the watch. At this new low of $188, it’s one of the top values on this list.
Enlarge / Garmin’s Venu Sq Music may be the best value on this list for what you get.
Corey Gaskin
Source: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/07/best-prime-day-deals-wearables-apple-watch-garmin/
