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Home » Fitness » Fitness Trackers and Smartwatches: What to Look for When Shopping for a Workout Tracker – Self

There are so many fitness trackers out there that finding the right one can be hard, especially since all have different features and pros and conswhat works for you will differ from what works for someone else. This is important to keep in mind when youre shopping for a fitness tracker, notes Shuana Harrison, CPT, PhD, creator of Muscle + Flow and adjunct associate professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. None of them are perfect at tracking, let's just get that out of the way, she says. So how to know what kind of tracker to look for? First think of what your needs and priorities are, Harrison says. If a tracker is going to help you bring more activity to your life, it's useful to look for the type of measures that best resonate with your lifestyle. The type of features will depend on your goals. Is that to get out and walk around more? Is it to monitor your heart rate during a workout, keep track of the frequency of workouts, help you know how well your body is recovering?

If youre in the market for an activity or fitness tracker, your first step is to evaluate these types of goals to figure out what you need, agrees Rozalynn Frazier, CPT. If you just want something to track your steps then you don't need anything fancy and you definitely don't need to shell out a lot of money, she says. But if you want it to do moresomething stylish, perhaps, or something that can track laps in a pool that you can also take to the gymthen youll want to keep that in mind.

That being said, for SELF's product reviews, where we rigorously test and evaluate all kinds of wellness products to help you decide what's worth buying, we wanted to know: what criteria do experts actually think are must haves when evaluating an activity tracker? We talked to trainers Frazier and Harrison and also used expert feedback we gathered from coaches and professional athletes for our 2017 Healthy Living Awards to help inform our criteria when evaluating fitness trackers and smartwatches. Here are the expert-suggested criteria we use when testing activity trackers and workout smartwatches, and what to keep in mind if you're shopping for a new device yourself.

Reliability and Ease of Use

Experts routinely said that reliability was an important factor to look for in an activity tracker. A devices best assets should be reliability and ease of use, running coach and member of Strava Track Club, Dena Evans, previously told SELF. We evaluated our fitness trackers for reliability by testing: Does it do the things its supposed to do? Is it easy to understand? Is it not too complicated to use? Does it show data in a clear and easy to read way? How easy was it to set up out of the box?

Accuracy

Whatever data your activity tracker tracks, it should be accurate and clear to understand. I like fitness trackers that are like the way we historically think about the Postal Service. It works no matter where you live, no matter what the weather, and you can count on it every day, Evans says. To evaluate accuracy, we employed any of the following tests:

Battery Life

For those who wear activity trackers all day or who use fitness trackers during long workouts, a long battery life is key. Frazier notes that time to charge is an important feature to look for as well, because if youve forgotten to charge it one night and you are heading out to workout, can you get a decent charge in 10-15 minutes? To evaluate battery life, we charge each tracker to full, and then do the following:

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Fitness Trackers and Smartwatches: What to Look for When Shopping for a Workout Tracker - Self

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Home » Fitness » Fitness Trackers and Smartwatches: What to Look for When Shopping for a Workout Tracker – Self