The key to hitting peak performance?聽As in life, so in fitness: know thyself. Play hard and study聽your stats with these four fitness trackers.
Garmin Vivoactive
Best For: Ditching Your Phone
t has sport-specific functions for activity tracking and an onboard GPS to measure distance and elevation. It works with both Bluetooth and ANT+ devices鈥攍ike a heart-rate monitor ($50) or cadence sensor鈥攁nd (swimmers, take note) is water-resistant down to 164 feet. The Garmin Connect Mobile app archives your data and can sync with various health platforms, including Garmin Connect and Apple Health. 聽
Price $250
Pebble Time
Best For: Playing Nice with Everything
Meet the best Pebble yet. The is 20 percent thinner than the original, can go swimming, lasts seven days between charges, and works with every fitness app we鈥檝e ever used. Like the Apple Watch, it comes with an accelerometer (but no heart-rate monitor) to gather data like speed and calories burned. Our main complaint: it has only 64 kilobytes of memory, which translates to fewer onboard features.聽
Price $199
Apple Watch
Best For: Wearing All Day, Every Day
This is the only wearable we actually want to put on each morning. It鈥檚 comfortable, looks great, and nails tracking basics with an accelerometer and a built-in heart-rate monitor that measures your pulse at your wrist. During training it gives heart rate and calories burned and, after a couple of runs with your iPhone, learns how to calculate pace and distance. (The doesn鈥檛 have a GPS.) When you鈥檙e at work, a gentle buzz reminds you to stand if you鈥檝e been idle too long. Note: it needs an iPhone to run third-party fitness apps.聽
Price $349
Magellan Echo Fit
Best For:听惭耻濒迟颈蝉辫辞谤迟听础迟丑濒别迟别蝉
Lightweight and inexpensive, the playful essentially acts as a wrist-based shell for 14 popular fitness apps, including MapMyRun, RunKeeper, Strava, and Wahoo Fitness. Paired with a smartphone, the watch displays metrics like speed, distance, calories burned, and heart rate. It tracks sleep patterns, too, and unlike the Apple and the Pebble, it takes a standard coin-cell battery, so it doesn鈥檛 need constant recharging. Downsides: there鈥檚 no GPS, and a heart-rate monitor isn鈥檛 included (though you can get a chest strap for an extra $50).聽
Price $130