As companies continue to release new generations of their smartwatches, one area consistently gets the most attention: fitness. Health and fitness features have become a major focus of smartwatches in recent years, and the trend shows no signs of slowing down.
As a result, I moved away from traditional smartwatches and started focusing on fitness trackers instead. While the hype surrounding smartwatches as a whole has died down, fitness-oriented wearables continue to gain momentum beyond just health tracking.
1
Battery life is much better
No need to refill daily
This is one of the complaints of many smartwatch users battery life is very short. No matter how you use it, the battery can seem to run out by the end of the day, which is especially problematic if you’re wearing it to track sleep.
Some smartwatches offer longer battery life, but they tend to be more expensive. Like the Apple Watch Ultra. If you choose a standard smartwatch model, you can use it for about 18 hours, but you don’t have to use it for a full 24 hours.
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Apple Watch Ultra 3 offers a new satellite feature that makes it easy to update friends and family.
However, this is not the case fitness trackers. They offer longer battery life, not just a full day, but often several days before needing to be recharged. This is because fitness trackers are more energy efficient than traditional smartwatches.
Instead of supporting multiple features running in the foreground and background, they use lighter software focused mainly on fitness and health tracking with more energy-efficient displays.
I really enjoyed the longer battery life, especially when I went on morning walks. I used to have a smart watch often battery drain until the end of the day, despite still having enough charge left to follow my dream.
However, this was not always the case on my morning walks. Instead of getting up and going out right away, I often have to wait for my watch to charge a bit before starting the workout.
Not so with a fitness tracker. I can go to sleep without worrying about whether I will have enough battery to walk the next morning. Instead, I can just wake up and start exercising without having to think about charging my device.
2
Less distraction on your wrist
Little or no screen means fewer distracting notifications
In the beginning, smartwatches were supposed to be revolutionary devices it can do almost anything your phone can do and put it on your wrist. While this is true to an extent, having everything available on your wrist often felt more annoying than helpful.
This is nowhere more obvious than notifications. It was like every few seconds my wrist would buzz with a new one from social media, a messaging app, or something else entirely.
You can do it Turn off notifications for individual appshowever, this requires digging through long settings menus to decide which apps can and cannot send alerts. The process takes a lot of time and quickly frustrates you you have to go through program after program.
Nathaniel Pangaro / How To
Fitness trackers keep you informed, but they do it in a simpler and less distracting way. This is due to their form factor and smaller screen size.
When alerting you, fitness trackers may simply beep your wrist or display a small portion of an email, text message, or app notification, but they don’t display the full message or pull you into the app. This makes it easy to dismiss notifications and stay focused in the moment rather than moving them from your wrist.
In addition, some fitness trackers don’t even have screens. Consider devices such as WHOOP or Fitbit Airit focuses on tracking your health without the distraction of a traditional smartwatch screen.
3
They don’t break the bank
Fitness trackers cost much less than smart watches
One of the main reasons I switched from smartwatches to fitness trackers is price. Fitness trackers are more affordable than traditional smartwatches, and that doesn’t seem to be changing anytime soon.
For everything you get with a fitness tracker, like longer battery life, it costs a lot less than getting the same benefits from a smartwatch like the Apple Watch. I have seen it first hand When I tried the $40 fitness band which lasts several days on a single charge compared to Apple Watch Ultralasting more than a day but not nearly as long and costing 20 times as much.
Smart watches have also become more expensive over the years, and prices have not returned to previous levels. Take the Apple Watch for example. Series 3 started at $329The Series 4 went on sale for $399, representing a price increase of about 22%.
Paying a lower price not only helps now, but also makes it easier for me to upgrade in the future. While I don’t plan on upgrading every year, it won’t strain my budget as much as upgrading to a new smartwatch when I decide it’s time.
In addition, it does not seem like the prices of smart watches Apple Watch-especially since it will drop soon to better compete with fitness trackers Apple has announced several price increases in response to the global shortage of memory and storage chips.
Fitness trackers obviously don’t do everything a smartwatch does, but that’s okay. For most people, having a smartphone on their wrist is no longer the main reason to buy a wearable device.
I can say the same for myself. I don’t want more distractions from notifications or paying high prices for features I rarely use. I’m happy to track my health, get longer battery life, and pay less with a fitness tracker.
