Best 7 fitness trackers to buy as Christmas gifts
These top fitness devices offer more than just health-related features
Text: Charissa Guan & Hui Yi Phua
Fitness tracker (credit: Torsten Dettlaff)
Looking for the perfect Christmas gift? Whether it’s for your fitness-enthusiast of a friend, or a family member looking to lead a healthier lifestyle, we’ve never seen anyone disappointed with a fitness tracker — it’s a practical but fun way to keep your health in check. What’s better than the gift of good health, right?
Choosing the right tracker could be daunting. There are plenty of models and brands to choose from, each with their individual merits. To better help you with the process of picking a suitable gift, we’ve done the hard work for you and rounded up 7 of the Internet’s best-reviewed fitness trackers below:
SGD 288
Fitbit (credit: Fitbit)
SGD 388
Garmin (credit: PCMag)
Built for the true sports-enthusiast, the Garmin Vivoactive 4 is a bit more multisport watch than fitness tracker. Some of its top attributes include its wide range of fitness activity modes, its built-in GPS and storage, and the access to free customisable race-training programs via the Garmin apps. Other features of the Vivoactive 4 are a full-time heart rate monitor, respiration tracker, SpO2 sensor and integrated sleep and menstrual tracking. This watch is able to last for a formidable eight days, much longer than most other fitness trackers or smartwatches.
3. Whoop 4.0
EUR 18-30 monthly
Whoop (credit: Whoop)
A different approach to tracking fitness, the Whoop band isn’t a fitness band so much as it is a lifestyle. For starters, the band is free and what you’ll actually pay for is the 6 to 12-month subscription service that takes the band’s data, analyses it and provides you with data-rich training metrics on your strain (a measure of your daily cardio load), recovery (how well your body adapts to the load) and sleep. This band is great for those who aren’t bothered about checking your stats on your wrist, are looking for more accurate tracking of your workouts with resting heart rate, heart rate variability and respiratory rate, and/or want to get personalised, comprehensive coaching from a professional software.
Whoop isn’t currently available in Singapore/Asia but if you’re looking for a gift for friends and family outside of Asia — go for it!
4. Oura Ring
USD 299
Oura Ring (credit: Oura Ring)
Let’s be real, we love a stylish gadget, and the Oura Ring fits the bill. Although its ability to track workouts is pretty basic compared to other wrist devices, the pros of the Oura Ring is that it’s more about holistic wellness — it measures deviations from your two-week baseline (which induces much less anxiety) and summarises them into 3 easy metrics on the companion app – your activity goal progress, your sleep score, and your readiness. It takes into account your heart rate, breathing, body temperature, and also watches for movement while you sleep to detect sleep stages, duration, quality and other stats. The overall goal of this sensitive and convenient unique device is to ensure that wearers are able to strike a good balance of their activities.
Note that the Oura Ring only ships to certain countries.
From SGD 599
Apple Watch (credit: Apple)
Often hailed as the “best smartwatch” on the market, the Apple Watch Series 7 has 14 different quick-start workout modes, including running, cycling, walking, and strength training. It also has health-focused features such as heart rate monitoring, the ability to perform an ECG (electrocardiogram), SpO2 sensor, and an excellent sleep tracker. Apple Watches are best-known for being the most usable smartwatch, which the Series 7 delivers with its seamless integration with iPhones, access to a plethora of apps, QWERTY keyboard for messaging, ApplePay, and large screen display. Some cool additional features include its water- and dust-resistant material, highly customisable straps and faces as well as fast charging. The one drawback is the watch’s battery life — a relatively short 18-hours — which means you might want to make it a habit to charge it nightly, probably next to your iPhone.
Samsung Galaxy Watch (credit: Samsung)
The Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 is one of the best Android-compatible smartwatch with a competitive price to match. It is the first major smartwatch that enables body composition analysis, providing information on your body fat percentage, skeletal muscles, body water and more using Samsung’s new BioActive Sensor and allowing you to better manage your health goals on-the-go. The Samsung BioActive Sensor also measures basic health data, including ECG and blood pressure, which you can send straight to your phone hassle-free. Activity tracking-wise, the Watch 4 auto-detects workouts and supports more than 90 different exercises. It also allows you to use a number of apps, including Google Maps and Spotify. Similar to the Apple Watch, the only downside to this watch is its battery life, which is reviewed to only last a day.
