Although generally the stuff of science fiction up until a matter of years ago, the concept of the smartwatch was something that nerds (like me) always wanted to be a reality, but weren’t really sure about the logistics of it all.
While having a full-on phone conversation with your wrist out in public may seem like the absolute height of cool, the sad reality is that to those around you, you like a Dick Tracy wannabe or, at best, deranged.
However, as of 2013 two things collided: the need for health obsessives to monitor and record both their bodily metrics and their exercise routines, and the desire to have a smartphone on your arm.
Naturally, the smart scientists of the time had up until this point kept the two concepts separate, but then, one lightning-lit night in a creepy castle somewhere, a crazed professor stitched the two ideas together and gave the world the smartphone! (Story may not be entirely accurate).
Of course, today, smartwatches are everywhere, on every wrist and in every size and shape (well, round or a bit square-ish, anyway). Some still remain mostly in the fitness tracking and health monitoring domain, while others offer all the wonders of the smart-connected world, concentrating more on the everyday demands of techie types. Then there are some that bridge both those arenas and offer arm-based smart apps.
Because there are so very many options out there, for this review, I’ve hard-focused on the features offered by all comers, across the equally varied price spectrum, and cherry picked my chosen 12, my digital dozen, if you will, of the current smartest denizens of the smartwatch sphere.
If there is not something here that warrants a special place on your wrist, then smartwatches are clearly just not for you…
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OPPO Watch Free
Best for: a brilliant budget smartwatch
No, your eyes do not deceive you, nor have I dropped a massive typo, the all-new Watch Free from OPPO is only £89. This despite it being a fully featured smartwatch. From OPPO. Not one of those next to nameless ones that you get out a plastic egg from the middle aisle of your budget German supermarket of choice.
Yes, after receiving the review model of the OPPO Watch Free, I felt compelled to contact their nice PR lady to double-check that price. Which she did; leading to further frowning and confused mutterings of “No…” and “Surely not…” as I scrutinised the techie timepiece for some obvious flaw, like a strap of barbed wire or sensors that burn into your skin. But to no avail.
So, why the befuddlement? Well, as I said, it costs under £90 and yet this featherweight 33g fresh face in the sphere of the smartwatch cuts no corners when it comes to performance, build or style.
Okay, first off, it’s available in Black or Vanilla flavours, secondly it has a 14-day battery life, thirdly it has built-in 6-axis motion to cover all the sporting activity monitoring you might be involved in (over 100 individual modes), all in conjunction with Google’s damn fine Wear OS smartphone app.
Also, on the health side of the smart-coin, the OPPO Watch Free also measures your heart rate and offers SpO2 (blood oxygen) monitoring. It also features OSleep, a personalised sleep monitoring feature that analyses your shut-eye before, during and after to detect and report back on sleep issues to ensure you always enjoy the full 40-winks.
And that’s not all. No, on top of this plentiful pile of smart also allows for message notifications, lets you see incoming calls, permits music playback and even has a find my phone feature which, I think you’ll now agree, is a befuddling amount of smart stuff, all hidden away behind a highly responsive and bright a 1.6-inch AMOLED display.
Okay, it may lack some of the more advanced bells and whistles of other options many times its price, but for an entry level (and some would argue easily punching above that weight) option, I can’t recommend it highly enough.
Buy now £89.00, OPPO
Xplora X5 PLAY
Best for: a smartwatch designed specifically for kids
A smartwatch designed specifically with children in mind. Why has nobody thought of this before? This is the X5 Play from Xplora, a Bluetooth-enabled smartwatch that pairs nice and neatly with the Xplora app on your Apple or Android smartphone, allowing calls and messages to be answered and made from pre-saved numbers via the watch’s nicely sized 1.4-inch TFT touchscreen display. Which is nice. But it also has space for its own onboard Nano SIM card to allow the above to be performed free from a phone, keeping your kid in constant communication.
All of which more than justifies the ‘smart’ part. But then it gets smarter still. Utilising GPS, active Wi-Fi and GSM triangulation you can zero in on the location of your absent-from-view child with unerring accuracy at all times and even – wait for it – set up Geofenced safe zones at home and, say, at school, so that if they stray beyond the invisible boundary you get instantly notified. Face it, this is location and security tech for kids that laughs in the face of the likes of G4S.
Add in a pedometer for fitness following, with rewards available to achieve for keeping active, calendar and calculator apps, a stopwatch, the ability to set alarms and play music, and even a 2MP camera for taking snap as they enjoy the innocence of a social media-free upbringing and the brains behind the Xplora X5 Play seem to have thought of everything.
No, wait, they have thought of everything – getting even smarterer still, it also features a ‘School Mode’ in which you can programme it to disable all functions other than the watch’s clock (and the SOS feature) during school hours, ensuring that all security regulations and GDPR compliances are adhered to.
Is it the best smartwatch for children? Is it the coolest smartwatch for children? Well, built to be even accident-prone kid-proof, waterproof down to 1.5m and coming mounted on a silicon strap that’s not coming off without considerable effort, I strapped it to the wrist of my 10-year-old son to find out for sure and I can confirm, yes, yes, it is, on both best and cool counts.
Buy now £160.00, Amazon
Mobvoi TicWatch Pro 3 Ultra
So, you’ve never heard the name Mobvoi? Well, that’s not too much of a surprise, as many Chinese smart tech companies fail to garner much attention in the Western world due to others in the US, Europe and South Korea already having a stranglehold.
However, what you immediately need to know about Mobvoi is that it is the leading wearable AI company in China; and China is a bloody big place. Leading the charge with its Mobvoi mobile app, Mobvoi have made considerable waves with its TicPods line of true wireless smart earphones, the TicMirror smart rearview mirror, the TicKasa line of smart speakers and, of course, the TicWatch range of smartwatches.
Which brings us to this: the TicWatch Pro 3 Ultra, a decidedly stylish and well-built example of the smartwatch maker’s art, available with interchangeable leather straps. Packing the Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear 4100 platform, the TicWatch delivers a throbbing combination of a powerful processor to deal with your apps and an ultralow power processor that gives a heaping helping of 72-hours battery life in Smart Mode and up to a whopping 45-days in Essential Mode.
Featuring some 20-odd workout modes, a 24/7 blood/oxygen saturation monitor, 24/7 heart rate monitor, built-in GPS, sleep tracking, stress management and fatigue assessment, the TicWatch Pro 3 Ultra is nicely specced-up. But what really helps it score highly is that it is also works seamlessly with Google’s Wear OS, meaning you can link up to your blower over Bluetooth to take and make calls, receive and send text messages and, of course, receive notifications from all your essential social media feeds.
Offering interchangeable faces aplenty and swim-safe to boot, if you seek a smartwatch with full sports functionality that can keep pace with the more famous brands while offering individuality, take the TicWatch Pro 3 Ultra under serious consideration.
Buy now £238.00, Mobvoi
Garmin epix
Best for: The all-demanding athletics addict
What defines a ‘smartwatch’ for you? I mean, don’t write in, it’s a rhetorical question, but what are the main functions and features that make a watch ‘smart’ for you? For me, while I admire and am fascinated by all the health-led apps attributes with which they come imbued, I’m probably most tech-turned-on by having a virtual assistant on my wrist that also allows me to make and receive calls, check and reply to messages and pay for stuff without ever having to worry my wallet. Equally important to me is design – I like a watch to look like a watch and not something from mid-70s Sci-Fi. And this is why I absolutely adore the epix from smart- sports-watch maker to the gods, Garmin.
Okay, it has quite a few buttons festooning the case, but these are nicely recessed into that light, strong and stylish titanium case. Then there is the 1.3-inch, always-on, bright and beautiful, touchscreen AMOLED display, behind which hides Garmin’s new interface for epix-lly improved interaction, which is effortless in operation. So, aesthetics boxes firmly ticked.
Then we come to what I view as ‘every day’ smart functions. Does it do notifications for incoming calls, text messages, social media updates, calendar reminders etc.? Check. Is there space for music storage from the likes of Spotify, Amazon Music, and Deezer? Check. Does it allow you to download endless apps over Wi-Fi from the Connect IQ Store with no phone required? Check again. Can you stump up the virtual readies when out and about with Garmin Pay? Check. And can you set up safety tracking and incident detection in case stuff goes south? Check. Which pretty much covers all my day-to-day demands.
So, what of its sport and health tracking abilities? Where do you start? Designed with multisport firmly in mind, the epix offers 24/7 health monitoring across the entire spectrum to cover everything from your heart rate to your stress levels, respiration, blood oxygen, hydration and body energy. Then there comes sports stuff, represented by a ludicrous array of apps for gym workouts, tennis, climbing, bouldering, golfing, surfing and skiing, and even something called ‘pickleball’ which I have never heard of and won’t even dignify with a Google.
And while you’re out indulging in all that, you can do so safe in the knowledge that the Garmin epix’s multi-GNSS support will keep you constant, accurate contact with GPS satellites to keep your motion precision mapped and even offer you turn-by-turn directions.
Is it expensive? Hell, yeah. Is it also possibly the ultimate expression of smartwatch superiority seen so far this year? Just read all this again.
Buy now £720.66, Amazon
Bugatti Ceramique Edition One
Best for: Endless super-car based smartwatch luxury
Let’s face it, it was only a matter of time before some Turtle Island-tanned chief exec of a hyper car company slowly swivelled around in his Eames Executive chair to face the board before him and announced that the company needed to further build the brand its own badged-up smartwatch. Well, that time has arrived, and Bugatti appear to have hit pole position in fusing together stupidly fast cars and stupidly fine smart tech.
The first thing you’ll notice about the Bugatti Ceramique Edition One is that it’s impeccably good-looking to the point where it could pass for one of those swish Swiss-engineered chronographs that command a king’s ransom a piece. Then, leading directly from that, the next thing you’ll notice is that it appears shockingly under-priced for a genuinely useful piece of Bugatti-badged bling.
So, what does £1 shy of a grand get you? You get a smartwatch that’s hand-made from more than 100 individual parts by a team of horology-industry-renowned watchmakers, so as to “represent the same standard of quality and technical innovation of Bugatti’s own hyper sports car models”, so the blurb says.
Sat behind that almost scratchproof AMOLED Sapphire glass touchscreen display, you’ll find a 6-axis combined accelerometer, a gyroscope, dual sensors to monitor your health, a vibration motor, multiple satellite links for advanced GPS and Bluetooth 5.2 to link up with your smartphone, so not only is it unerringly accurate when it comes to maps and your movement, it also monitors your calories, stress levels, hydration levels, heart rate, tracks your sleep and even advises on how long to rest between the 72 multisport training activities it also recommends.
Then there’s the everyday stuff too. Texts, calls, social media notifications and a calendar are all present and correct, making the Bugatti Ceramique Edition One no simple branding exercise aimed at label-freaks, but a truly accomplished smartwatch.
Which is where Bugatti springs its surprise punch in the face of its contemporaries, you see not content with merely being impeccably good-looking just once, the Bugatti comes with no fewer than three interchangeable bezels, letting you change your look to suit your mood or situation.
Still costing less than £1000, it won’t surprise you to learn that the Bugatti Ceramique Edition One sells out as quickly as its cars clock 0-62, but with the October 2022 batch available to pre-order now, if you want a masterclass in smartwatchery mounted on your wrist, follow the link now.
Buy now £999.00, Bugatti
Xiaomi Watch S1
Best for: A big name-rivalling bargain
Another name that may feel new under your eyes, Xiaomi is a 12-year-old Chinese tech brand upstart that’s coming, in no uncertain terms, for both your coin and to savagely rattle the collective cages of the more established names at this point of the globe.
Let’s take the Watch S1 as an excellent example of Xiaomi’s intentions: a decidedly modern-styled, professional and sophisticated-looking smartwatch that will look just as at home adorning your wrist down some fancy wine bar as it will watching over your workout at any over-priced gym.
Android and iOS compatible, the Watch S1, seen here in its super-slick stainless steel and brown leather strap configuration (also available in Space Black, Moon White and Ocean Blue finishes), features a nicely sized, round 1.43-inch AMOLED touchscreen display resplendent with scratch-defying Sapphire glass, links to your smartphone via Bluetooth for phone-free calling, texts and app notifications, utilises Amazon Alexa as your ever-reliable voice-controlled virtual assistant, allows for NFC payments and includes dual-band multi-system GPS for pinpoint precision.
What’s more, it also comes armed with 117 different fitness modes, all the expected health monitoring gubbins, such as tracking, heart rate and blood oxygen, and even offers sleep monitoring to ensure you’re resting right.
And all this arrives on your arm at 100-pence under £200. Let’s be brutally honest, has got to be a real concern for the competition when the Xiaomi Watch S1 can offer the same level of wearable tech, combined with undeniable style at a price which massively undercuts most other comers. Smart-watch this space.
Buy now £199.00, Currys
Huawei Watch GT 3 Pro
Best for: Seriously smart features and sartorial style
There can be little denying the waves that have been made within the smart domain by Huawei over the past handful of years, not least because of the company’s very public sales ban in the US due to some niggling corporate espionage skirmish, but also because Huawei makes some pretty impressive smartphones and, indeed, some of the camera phones on the market. But whilst that is a given, are the firm’s smartwatches up to similar scratch?
I reviewed the original Huawei Watch GT 3 for this very online organ earlier this year and was suitably impressed with all it had to offer, so what does the addition of the word ‘Pro’ to this updated iteration bring to the smart table? Well, let’s start with the blisteringly obvious: it’s beautiful. While the original GT 3 was scrumptious in its own slick, black, solidly built way, the GT3 Pro instantly sets out its smart stall like something else entirely first feel out of the box.
The case is available in either a seamless brushed titanium or a solid and equally smooth ceramic, and there’s a two-button configuration with one acting a rotatable crown to allow ease of access to apps, as does the 46.6mm Sapphire glass touchscreen display. This, married with the option of Black Fluoroelastomer, Titanium bracelet or – as with the review model – a Grey Leather strap with metal clasp elevates the Huawei Watch GT 3 Pro beyond ‘elegant’ to the dizzying heights of ‘exquisite’.
You’ll also be pleased to have the built-in speaker and microphone to take and make calls off the cuff, naturally, text to-and-fro, plus app notifications are available once hooked up to your phone over Bluetooth. It also comes packing an accelerometer sensor, gyroscope sensor, magnetometer sensor, optical heart rate sensor, barometer sensor, and a temperature sensor, so if there is anything out there in the world of health metrics and sports activity tracking that it doesn’t have a sensor for, well, frankly, it ain’t worth sensing.
Running on Huawei’s HarmonyOS, whether you’re paying via NFC, taking advantage of its 30m water resistance for a deep dive – with built-in apps recording all data of said dive, of course – indulging in any of the 100+ workout modes or keeping a keen eye on your heart rate, SpO2, sleep, and stress levels, the Huawei Watch GT 3 Pro does it all with considerable aplomb while always looking the epitome of urbane. Bravo, Huawei, Bravo.
Buy now £300.00, Huawei
BONISM ID205G
Best for: Those starting out in smartwatches
Sometimes it’s better to keep smart simple. And cheap. Which is where the BONISM ID205G perfectly positions itself. It costs just over 50 of your Earth pounds and frees sporting types from all unnecessary distractions. The watch comes fully featured with a splendidly sized 1.3-inch colour touchscreen, a waterproof rating of up to 5ATM (50m), Bluetooth so that it can play nice with your phone for call/text/app notifications, built-in GPS and the ability to track a wide range of sports, including running, swimming (both pool and open water), walking, yoga, cycling, rowing, cricket, treadmill running, strength training and hiking, alongside monitoring your daily steps, calories, distance covered, heart rate and sleep patterns.
Available here in stylish Blue or Pink finishes for people who like either the colour blue or pink, you might be asking yourself what more you could possibly need from a smartwatch; and if you are asking yourself that question, then the BONISM ID205G is definitely the workout wearable for you.
Buy now £55.00, Decathlon
Apple Watch 7
Best for: iPhone owners and general Apple enthusiasts
Although most smartwatches are designed to work in conjunction with both Apple and Android OS platforms (I mean, it’d be pretty pointless, bordering business suicide, not to cover both bases), you’re always going to get more ‘smart’ out of your watch/phone pairing if each has been made by the same manufacturer. And nowhere is this more evident than with the iPhone and Apple Watch, which pair-up and play together without a single problem and – important to impatient types – within seconds free from the need to watch instructional YouTube videos.
Sharp-looking and now with a whoppingly proportioned Always-On Retina display, the Apple Watch 7 is available in 41- or 45mm sizes, with a stainless steel or aluminium case in a wide arrange of colours and more strap options than you could shake a smart-stick at, is compatible with watchOS 9 and can keep an exacting eye on your Blood Oxygen rate, run an ECG with high and low heart rate and irregular rhythm notifications, fire out emergency SOS messages if you run into trouble, and also features Fall Detection in case you take a consciousness-robbing tumble while out and about putting all these metrics to the test.
The features seem never-ending; pinpoint GPS thanks to links with multiple satellites, an always-on altimeter, an accelerometer, gyroscope, ambient light sensor, built-in speaker and microphone for phone calls. There’s also Apple Pay to wireless throw your money around, countless workout activities, plus text and app notifications and the ability to enjoy music and podcasts with or without your iPhone. All of that and it’s easy to see why the Apple is still the world’s best-selling smartwatch, despite furious competition from the Samsung Galaxy Watch4, but you do have to be Apple kit committed to the – ahem – core to eke out the absolute most and that can be costly. However, if your pockets run deep enough and you want all the smarts but none of the hassle, the Apple Watch 7 awaits.
Buy now £369.00, Currys
Samsung Galaxy Watch4
Best for: Samsung smartphone
If Apple’s undeniably proprietary approach to smart tech (and charging cables) is not for you and you’d like to enjoy a bit more flexibility with the apps and accessories you use with your smartwatch, then we arrive – perhaps inevitably – at the option I, myself, have on hand each day to handle my smart-affairs: the Samsung Galaxy Watch4.
Am I a Samsung Galaxy phone user? Yes, I am. Do I find the two perform in tandem with all the effortless grace of synchronised swimmers? Yes, I do. Do I find Google’s Android Wear OS platform pleasing simple use? Yes, I do. Am I cock-a-hoop that the Samsung Galaxy Watch4 was recently updated so that it now runs Google as its virtual voice assistant? You bet your sweet “I’m sorry, I didn’t understand that” I am!
So, it’s slick looking, with a round super AMOLED, super-responsive touchscreen display measuring 1.4-inches, it comes Bluetooth and Wi-Fi enabled to keep in constant contact with your smartphone (whether that smartphone is Android, iOS or FireOS) for phone calls (make and receive, texts - read and send) and all the updates from any of the apps you choose to download from the Google Play store.
On the fitness side of the coin, the Watch4 features an accelerometer, a barometer, gyro, and geomagnetic, optical heart rate, electrical heart, bioelectrical impedance analysis, light and optical sensors to track your incredible athleticism and keep tabs on your vitals at the same time.
With countless workouts and challenges available over on your smartphone-situated Samsung Health app for pretty much all the sports you can think of, you’re not going to struggle to stay in shape, alongside sleep tracking and coaching, Google Pay to let you leave the cash card at home, music in abundance and myriad watch face options to give you a fresh look every day of the year for many years, the Samsung Galaxy Watch4 just keeps on giving.
Buy now £249.00, AO
Kiprun GPS 500 by Coros
Best for: Those training for a triathlon
A stripped back smart multisports watch that has been designed and built between Decathlon’s own team and the brains at COROS Wearables (endorsed by none other than twice Olympic marathon winner Eliud Kipchoge), and yet you may never have heard of Kiprun before.
However, when you have an Olympian in your corner, you’re off to a good start. What’s more the smartwatch is priced at well under £150, and still comes packed with painstakingly accurate GPS. The latter has been created specifically for those into running, swimming, cycling and, well, the general torture of the triathlon, to the point that it even boasts a virtual coach to help owners train both harder and smarter.
Add into that marathon-running mix Bluetooth access to your phone for checking call, text and app notifications, full-on tracing recorded onto the smartphone COROS app, compliance with third party health apps such as Strava, Decathlon or Apple Health, plus waterproofing down to 5ATM, the Kiprun GPS 500 is a serious wadge of smartwatch or those wishing to follow in Eliud Kipchoge’s relentless footsteps.
You can’t pay for stuff wirelessly or some of the other smart applications that serious sports tech fanciers may sneer at.
Buy now £120.00, Decathlon
Fitbit Versa 3
Best for: Achieving fitness goals on the go
Small, stylish and unquestionably smacking of smart, Fitbit make a staggering number of a premium health tracking wrist wearables all with a staggering array of abilities and across an absolute spectrum of prices. But for a smartwatch with sports tracking at its heart and the aesthetics to also make it acceptable in fancy French restaurants, it has to be the Fitbit Versa 3.
It boasts built-in GPS, 24/7 hear rate monitoring, complete control over your Spotify and Deezer account for music on the move, sleep monitoring, Google Assistant a word away, the ability to make and take calls from your wrist along with call, text and app notifications, blood/oxygen saturation checks, Fitbit Pay and 20 goal-based exercise modes built-in. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are good-to-go with a built-in mic and speaker and it’s water-resistant down to 50m,
The Fitbit Versa 3 is a handsome, go anywhere, do anything, low-cost smartwatch option that comes from a stable famed for its fitness tech.
Buy now £150.00, John Lews
