Best smartwatches in 2025, tried and tested

The Apple Watch remains the only real smartwatch for iPhone users, but the complete lack of competition hasn’t stopped Apple from innovating and improving its wearable year after year. Less an optional accessory for the iPhone, the perennially impressive Apple Watch is designed to convince you to go all in on the entire Apple ecosystem.

The Apple Watch series 10 introduced a modest suite of upgrades over the previous model, namely an all-new OLED display that’s brighter and easier to read in direct sunlight. It also has a new health feature in the form of sleep apnoea detection, plus faster charging and a refreshed design with a larger screen and thinner profile.

Otherwise, the series 10 builds on a decade of Apple’s industry-leading smartwatch design. It has a full set of fitness tracking features, health sensors, fall detection, sleep tracking and blood oxygen monitoring. It works with Apple Pay, puts Siri and Apple Maps on your wrist, can be worn underwater and can even lead you back to your lost phone.

Read the full Apple Watch series 10 review

Building on everything that made the OnePlus Watch 2 one of the best Android smartwatches, the third-generation watch impresses with a frankly improbable three-day battery life – even lasting up to five days in “smart mode”, which disables certain features like the always-on display.

With its default analogue watchface, stainless steel case, rotating titanium bezel and thick lugs, the OnePlus Watch 3 is designed to look like a classic watch rather than a piece of tech. It’s only available in 47mm though, which is a little too chunky for smaller wrists, but that makes room for an impressively bright and responsive 1.5in OLED display.

The OnePlus Watch 3 runs on Wear OS5 – the same Google-made operating system found on most Android smartwatches – giving you access the Google Play Store’s wide selection of apps and functionality. That includes Google Wallet for payments, the Google Assistant for voice commands and Google Maps for directions.

On top of the expected smartwatch features like wrist-based calls and notifications, the OnePlus Watch 3 is a comprehensive fitness and health tracker. The OHealth app delivers an overall wellness score based on your recent activity levels and sleep quality, as well as accurate workout tracking thanks to improved optical heart rate sensors and better GPS tracking.

Originally meant to launch in February, the OnePlus Watch 3 was delayed because of a printing error on the back of the watch that read “Meda in China”. Finally on the shelves at £269 (and typo-free) it’s one of the best bargains in smartwatches today.

Read the full OnePlus Watch 3 review

The Galaxy Watch 7 is only a very slight improvement over the already-excellent Galaxy Watch 6, getting a small performance boost, some dubiously useful Galaxy AI features and better sleep tracking. Otherwise, even their own mother would struggle to tell the difference between them.

Samsung hasn’t raised prices however, so while it’s not worth upgrading from the Watch 6 or Watch 5, it’s easy to recommend the Watch 7 to Galaxy users with presently naked wrists – though you should be on the lookout for discounts on the older watch, if you can find them.

The Galaxy Watch 7 is the go-to smartwatch for Samsung users and Samsung users alone, because certain features – namely some health tracking and AI features – will only work when paired with a Galaxy phone. If you’re happy to go all in on Samsung, you’re getting an elegant-looking watch that integrates seamlessly with the brand’s excellent and wide range of phones, tablets and earbuds, as well as the health-tracking Galaxy ring.

The OLED screen is bright and smooth-scrolling, and a wide selection of watch faces and straps allows for plenty of customisation. Samsung Health is one of the best all-round fitness apps we’ve used, letting you drill down into your overall wellness in plenty of detail. Sleep monitoring is comprehensive, and includes sleep apnoea detection, while workout tracking is accurate and integrates nicely with Strava.

Read more: Samsung Galaxy Watch 7 vs Pixel Watch 3

Google might have arrived late to the smartwatch scene, but the tech giant blasted out of the gates with a device that does for Pixel owners what the Apple Watch does for the iPhone.

Designed around the latest version of the Fitbit app, the Pixel Watch 3 is a brilliant smartwatch for runners and fitness fans – it has accurate, per-second heart rate monitoring around the clock. The app can analyse your form during workouts, suggest when to push yourself harder and when to rest, and the sleep tracking gives you a holistic overview of your improving fitness levels over time.

It’s the battery life where the Pixel Watch has seen the most improvement year on year, and the Pixel Watch 3 impresses by reliably lasting at least a full day between charges, even with 24/7 heart rate tracking and sleep monitoring turned on. Charging is quick too – pop it on the charger when showering in the morning or when getting ready for bed and it will go forever.

You get all of the smartwatch features you’d expect in 2025. Google Wallet lets you pop credit and debit cards on your wrist, integration with Google Home means you can view your Nest doorbell camera, and Google Maps can give you directions without having to take your phone out of your pocket. The classic round design looks smart too, and less techy than the Apple Watch – pair it with the right strap and it’s easily the best looking smartwatch you can buy.

Whether you’re getting ready for your first marathon or are a regular at your local Park Run, the Garmin Forerunner 265 is the absolute best running companion. As well as performing brilliantly when it came to tracking our stress levels, sleep and even our strength training classes, the Forerunner has detailed running stats and running-focused features that aren’t available to us on any other smartwatch.

The 265 features a beautiful AMOLED touch screen display and a big start/stop button that makes it easy to hit when out paving the street, quickly starting and stopping our runs (even with gloves on). It gave us feedback on our cadence, ground contact time, balance, stride length and even how our running dynamics matched up against other runners.

The latest Forerunner also features that fancy training readiness score, which considered all our metrics (sleep, stress and previous workouts) to quantify whether our body was ready to go again, or it needed a break. If you’re a keen runner, the Forerunner 265 will keep you on track, especially with its daily workout plans and live track feature, which lets your fans (read: significant others) watch where you go when you run, and cheer you on with encouraging messages to your smartwatch.

Despite launching 2022, the Sense 2 is still our favourite smartwatch out of Fitbit’s entire portfolio. Fitbit was acquired by Google in 2019, but the Sense 2 still runs on FitbitOS, which is great news for us, because we love how clean the system is.

As well as being able to track our recovery and readiness to take on the day, based on activity; how well we’d slept and our sleep cycles; SpO2, heart rate and skin temperature, the Fitbit Sense 2 is also the best smartwatch out there for those who want class-leading stress tracking features.

What continues to set the Fitbit Sense series apart from the competition is its focus on mindfulness. Just like the first Sense, the Sense 2 can monitor your stress levels, but the second-generation model has upgraded this sensor so that it’s now continuous. It told us whenever our emotions were heightened, and it was very accurate. It made us more mindful about how we were feeling – whether anxious, angry or excited. It then sends us a notification telling us that we might be feeling stressed, and we can take one of the breathing sessions on the app.

The downside is the Sense line of smartwatches no longer supports third-party apps, making it feel more like a fitness tracker, despite being a smartwatch. There’s no music playback controls anymore, which is a real shame. It does have an in-built GPS, however. The best part about the Fitbit Sense 2 remains its battery life – we easily get six days of use wearing the Fitbit Sense 2, and the stress-tracking features are worth it alone.

Looking for a Garmin smartwatch that can do it all? The Garmin Venu 3 is a brilliant smartwatch that mixes everything we love about its more sporty, adventure watches with some really fantastic lifestyle-focused, wellness features. A great all-rounder, the Garmin Venu 3 has a big, bright and colourful 1.4in AMOLED screen that always displayed our metrics in even the harshest of lighting conditions. The UI is a little bit messy and cluttered, but it’s kitted out with every sensor for tracking sleep, exercise and wellbeing, as well as navigation with its in-built GPS.

We were able to track our heart rate, measure heart rate variability, see stress scores and track our sleep stages automatically as we slept through the night. There are a huge number of exercises onboard too, including swimming and strength training.

We loved that it took a more holistic view at overall health, giving us a score based on sleep (and naps), previous workouts and stress, letting us know when we should take it easy and when we could push a bit harder. The Venu 3 also features a speaker and microphone, meaning we could take calls from our wrist, but it also enabled us to take guided yoga and meditation classes, without having to take out our smartphone. The screen even showed us our respiration rate and heart rate as we breathed in and out.

Another clever little feature of the Venu 3 was that we could connect it to our Ring doorbell, sending us a picture of who was at the door, though we couldn’t speak to them when they rang. And lastly, there are loads of great features on the Venu 3 for wheelchair users, whether it’s tracking the effort exerted by pushing a wheelchair or wheelchair-specific sports. It’s a great all-rounder smartwatch.