The Best Smartwatches of 2026

Formerly the winner of our Best Smartwatch award before it got ousted by the 2025-released Series 11, the Apple Watch Series 9 is an excellent smartwatch. Unfortunately, it’s only compatible with Apple’s iPhone—Android users will have to look to one of our other Editor’s Choice Award winners for the smartwatch of their dreams. Available in 41mm and 45mm lug sizes, the Series 9 is designed to fit a wide variety of wrists. Its case is made from a number of different materials with a wide variety of colors and band choices, so you’re sure to find a style and price point for this smartwatch that’ll agree with your fashion and fiscal sensibilities.

Powered by Apple’s S9 SiP chip, the Series 9 is faster and more power-efficient than ever before. However, instead of pushing this power efficiency in the direction of improved battery life, it was decided that superior processing power, with the same all-day battery life as the previous generation Apple Watch enjoyed, was the way to go. Many of the tasks asked of Siri are now performed right on the watch, with no need for Internet connectivity. You’ll find that voice dictation thrown at the Series 9 is a little more accurate than it has been with past models of the wearable, too.

Like most smartwatches in this guide, the Apple Watch Series 9 comes packing a plethora of fitness-tracking features, the ability to relay notifications from your smartphone, take phone calls, and respond to messages. What sets the Series 9 apart, however, is watchOS: Apple’s smartwatch operating system. Constantly evolving, the latest version of watch OS makes it easier to find what you’re after intuitively, with as little fuss as possible.

And there’s a lot to find: no smartwatch offers more high-quality apps for download and customization of the user experience. If your use of Apple products goes beyond the Apple Watch and iPhone, you’ll find that the Series 9’s first-party apps like Music, Podcasts, Reminders, and Home will make accessing the content from Apple’s ecosystem easy; its smart home devices, like the HomePod or Apple TV, are controllable from your wrist. It will even help you find your iPhone if you misplace it with precision tracking.

That said, like most Apple products, the Series 9’s innovations only represent a small, incremental update over the capabilities of last year’s Apple Watch, the Series 8. If you own one, or even a Series 7, we don’t feel that you’ll notice much of a difference were you to upgrade. Those who own earlier iterations of the Apple Watch, however, will appreciate the Series 9’s larger display, speed, and understated good looks.

Read our full Apple Watch Series 9 review.

Our former Best Value winner is still a good deal for now, although Apple replaced this model in the fall of 2025 with the Apple Watch SE3.

If you’re an iPhone user, the Apple Watch SE is a great way to step into the world of smartwatches. This 2nd-generation SE model adds a faster processor, improved features, and a few new ones to the SE original—most notably crash detection, which can alert family members and emergency responders in the event of a car collision.

Available in 40mm and 44mm sizes in your choice of three colors, the Watch SE starts $30 below the previous model, a surprising but welcome move on Apple’s part. Like all other Apple smartwatches, the SE is a stylish, extremely versatile wrist companion. It links with your iPhone like no other smartwatch brand (including the otherwise impressive Fitbit Versa 3), allowing you to make and take phone calls, send and receive text messages, run countless apps, stream music, and much more.

It’s also an activity and lifestyle-tracking champ, able to log just about any exercise you can think of (everything from swimming to pickleball) and monitor your sleep. It’s less polished in automated activity-tracking than the Versa 3. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have nearly the same battery life: Expect about 24 hours from the SE, versus anywhere from 4-7 days on the Versa.

Apple still offers relatively few watch face options, but at least you can dress up the external look of the watch by choosing from hundreds of band styles and colors. However, if you want an always-on display, you’ll have to look to the pricier Watch Series 8, which also adds features like blood oxygen level, temperature-sensing, and advanced women’s cycle-tracking.

Otherwise, the Apple Watch SE will prove to be more than enough of a smartwatch, and the newly lowered price makes it even more compelling. Calling it a budget watch seems almost unfair because its price belies its capabilities. This is an easy choice as the best all-around smartwatch for sheer value.

Read our full Apple Watch SE review.

Addressing the criticisms of its predecessor, the OnePlus Watch 2 boasts a dual-chip architecture, featuring the BES 2700 ultra-low-power Bluetooth chipset and the Snapdragon W5 chipset. This innovative setup ensures seamless performance by efficiently managing tasks and conserving battery life, promising a lasting and responsive user experience throughout the day.

Available in Black Stainless Steel or Silver Radiant Steel finishes, with a 22mm interchangeable band, the smartwatch meets military-grade certification and boasts IP68 and 5ATM water-resistant ratings. This durability extends to its functionality, with features like an action button for quick access to workouts, ensuring versatility in various environments, from the gym to everyday wear.

The OnePlus Watch 2 shines in its functionality, equipped with Wear OS 4 and a range of Google apps pre-loaded for seamless integration with Android devices. Offering over 100 sports tracking modes, including auto workout detection and high-precision dual-frequency GPS, the smartwatch caters to fitness enthusiasts. Despite some minor drawbacks such as reduced battery life with the always-on display and the absence of certain health tracking features like ECG and menstrual cycle tracking, the OnePlus Watch 2 stands out as a compelling midrange option, delivering exceptional value for Android users seeking a reliable and feature-rich smartwatch experience.

Read our full OnePlus Watch 2 review.

The Apple Watch Ultra 2 is the best wearable that the Cupertino-based company has ever made. But it costs far than most people need to pay for a smartwatch and is perhaps tougher than your average weekend warrior needs it to be. So, who’s it for? Well, anyone that takes their outdoor adventures seriously. With its ultra-durable build quality, up to three days of battery life between charges (in low power mode: around 32 hours with regular use), and an always-on Retina LTPO OLED display with a maximum of 3,000 nits of brightness, so that it can still easily be read in bright sunlight, this is a smartwatch for those who take their outdoor time seriously.

It comes packing 64GB of storage, perfect for keeping offline topographical maps handy, a Night Mode watch face to help those trekking under the stars to maintain their night vision and an incredibly loud alert siren to help rescue personnel locate you in the woods, or, if you’re very lucky, scare away a hungry bear.

It’s also for those anyone with large wrists or who prefer their timepieces to be large and in charge. Its 1.93 x 1.73 x 0.57-inch case has a 49mm lug and weighs 2.17 ounces. Thanks to its larger size, the Ultra 2 is able to pack in one more button than other Apple Watches currently offer. This button is programmable and can be customized to meet your needs. Heck, it can even do duty as a dive watch. Of course, it also does everything else that any current generation Apple Watch is capable of: body metrics tracking, exercise tracking, GPS route finding, messaging, access to Siri, providing notifications sent from your connected iPhone and the ability to load hundreds of apps on to it to make it the ultimate EDC tool.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with this device. If you can afford one, feel you need one for your outdoor endeavors or simply want it because of its chonky good looks, you won’t be sorry you purchased it. But because of how much it costs—and how capable its sibling, the Apple Watch Series 9 is at a much lower price—we’ve placed the Apple Watch Ultra 2 further down this list than you might expect.

Read our full review of the Apple Watch Ultra 2.

Along with being one of the best smartwatches, the Fitbit Versa 3 is our best fitness tracker upgrade as well. We were most impressed by how much this fitness-first watch has to offer for the price, especially against the likes of Apple and Samsung.

Unlike the Versa 2, Fitbit added a dedicated GPS to the Versa 3, so you won’t need to tap into your phone’s GPS to track where and how far you run or walk. The watch's automated fitness tracking is incredibly responsive, too, without any notable delays or issues with tracking the wrong type of workout.

The Fitbit Versa 3 also has a long battery life and comes with plenty of other features and apps, making this platform-agnostic smartwatch great for iPhone and Android owners alike (something we can’t say about watches from Apple or Samsung). But the Versa 3 is especially good for Android owners; while both iPhone and Android owners can answer calls (not place them) from the Versa 3, Android owners can also voice-dictate a reply to text messages.

One major downside to the Versa 3: unlocking premium features like in-depth health analytics, sleep data, Calm app meditations, and Fitbit workout videos costs $10 per month or $80 per year. (You can read more about it here). Compared to Apple Fitness+, which costs the same as Fitbit’s subscription, Fitbit doesn’t integrate its paywalled features as seamlessly, and as our health and fitness team noted, its workout videos feel a lot like watching workout videos on YouTube.

Things like in-depth sleep analytics are already part of Apple’s and Samsung’s watch ecosystems for no additional cost. Still, if you're looking for a device-agnostic smartwatch with plenty of features, this is among the best out there.

Read our full FitBit Versa 3 review.

With it’s dual-layered screen, the Mobvoi TicWatch Pro 5 is a bit of an oddity in the smartwatch universe: Its main OLED display does all of the things you’d expect a smartwatch to do: touch interactions, show off the device’s colorful OS interface and allow you to access its full range of capabilities, while the low-powered display laid over top of it takes care of basic tasks such as, well, telling you the time. During testing, we weren’t able to tell how its low-powered secondary display affected the Pro 5’s battery life. But we were able to go three days before the watch needed to be recharged, putting it in the same battery space as the Apple Watch Ultra 2.

At the time we reviewed the Pro 5, it was running on Google’s Wear OS 3.5 operating system. Thanks to the wearable’s relatively speedy Qualcomm Snapdragon W5+ Gen 1 chipset, it handled daily tasks such as notifications, navigating various widgets and apps with ease. The Pro 5 also proves to be an impressive fitness tracker, with over 100 different activities that users can choose to track.

Unfortunately, there’s no word on when or if this otherwise-solid smartwatch will receive any software updates, or for how long Mobvoi plans to support the device. We were also disappointed by the fact that, despite it being fast and running the latest Watch OS, the Pro 5 lacks support for Google Assistant.

Read our full review Mobvoi Ticwatch Pro 5.

Specifically tailored for adventurers, the Suunto Vertical Titanium Solar focuses on a robust toolset for enjoying and surviving in the outdoors, with smartwatch features taking a backseat. It's a device that emphasizes navigation, tracking metrics, and an impressive battery life that can last days or even weeks. Its 1.14-inch matrix display is clear in extreme conditions and its backlight ensures visibility in the dark. We liked how easy the Vertical was to navigate, using its well-spaced buttons and touchscreen even while wearing gloves.

As a fitness tracker, the Vertical is top-notch. Housing an array of health-tracking sensors, it’s adept at monitoring activities, from general fitness to specialized outdoor adventures. We love that it can store offline maps in its memory: a feature that makes it ideal for venturing into areas without cellular coverage.

That said, it lacks many of the niceties people expect from a premium smartwatch. It doesn't include offline music storage, tap-to-pay or cellular texting capabilities. We also noticed that there can sometimes be a very small amount of lag between when a UI element is chosen and when the watch takes action.

Read our full Suunto Vertical Titanium Solar review.