The Best Smartwatches of 2026

Like clockwork (pun intended), Apple has launched its latest flagship Apple Watch, the Series 11, which boasts improved battery life, enhanced durability, and advanced health features compared to the Series 9 and 10.

Since Apple debuted Sleep Score, which analyzes the quantity and quality of your sleep, it's fitting that the Apple Watch Series 11 now lasts up to 24 hours between charges, compared to up to 18 hours on previous models. Our hands-on testing (wrist-on testing?) confirmed this.

Another upgrade is fast charging: Just 15 minutes on the charger yields up to 8 hours of battery life.

FDA-cleared hypertension monitoring can alert you to possible high blood pressure—after you've enabled the feature in the Health app on iPhone and worn the watch for 30 days. (If Apple Watch suspects you have hypertension, consult your physician, of course.) This adds to the bevy of health features found on previous Apple Watch models, such as an integrated ECG, blood oxygen metrics, sleep apnea notifications, and more.

The Apple Watch Series 11 looks and feels like its predecessor, which isn't a bad thing, but Apple strengthened the proprietary cover glass on the aluminum models to offer twice the scratch resistance (titanium models already boast a tough sapphire front crystal). All models are water- and dust-resistant.

Although the Apple Watch Series 11 shares the same processor as the Apple Watch Series 10 and lacks the satellite feature of the Apple Watch Ultra 3, we still highly recommend it as your first or next smartwatch.

Those who prefer a larger, more ruggedized smartwatch in the Apple family tend to gravitate toward the Apple Watch Ultra series, as long as the budget permits. This third-gen offering doesn't disappoint, if our time with this techy timepiece is any indication.

As with its predecessors, this larger, 49mm titanium Apple Watch offers a slew of health, fitness, safety, and connectivity features, and Apple upgraded it in a few key areas.

Despite its larger, brighter 3,000-nit display with narrower bezels, the adventure-ready Apple Watch Ultra 3 gets a battery boost to up to 42 hours (or, in a pinch, up to 72 hours in Low Power Mode). With fast charging, just 15 minutes of juicing up gets you up to 12 hours of battery life.

Like the Apple Watch Series 11, the Ultra 3 adds hypertension monitoring to its health features. That is, after you've worn the watch for 30 days, it can notify you of possible high blood pressure. While the Apple Watch Ultra 3 is too bulky to wear to bed, it also supports Sleep Score (through the Health app on iPhone), which analyzes the duration and quality of your sleep.

If you find yourself off the grid (while, say, camping), the Apple Watch Ultra 3 now has built-in satellite support, allowing you to text emergency services, message friends and family, and share your location, even if there's no cellular or Wi-Fi in your part of the woods. The service is currently free.

If you believe bigger and brighter is better, the Apple Watch Ultra 3 is your best bet, especially for sports enthusiasts and adventurers.

Formerly the winner of our Best Smartwatch award before the 2025-released Series 11 ousted it, 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 Editors' 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 range of wrist sizes. Its case comes in several materials, with plenty of color and band options, so you're sure to find a style and price point for this smartwatch that'll suit 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 toward improved battery life, Apple opted for superior processing power, with the same all-day battery life the previous-generation Apple Watch enjoyed. Siri now handles many tasks right on the watch, with no need for an internet connection. You'll find that voice dictation is slightly more accurate on the Series 9 than on 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 and 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 watchOS 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 make accessing content from Apple's ecosystem easy; Apple's smart home devices, like the HomePod or Apple TV, are controllable from your wrist. With precision tracking, it can even help you find a misplaced iPhone.

That said, like most Apple products, the Series 9's innovations represent a small, incremental update over its predecessor, the Series 8. If you own one, or even a Series 7, we doubt you'll notice much of a difference if you 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 fall 2025 with the Apple Watch SE 3.

If you're an iPhone user, the Apple Watch SE is a great way to step into the world of smartwatches. This second-generation SE model adds a faster processor, improved features, and a few new ones to the original SE—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 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 smartwatch, and the lower price makes it even more compelling. Calling it a budget watch seems almost unfair because its price belies its capabilities. This was an easy choice for 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 setup manages tasks efficiently and conserves battery life, keeping the watch responsive throughout the day.

Available in Black Stainless Steel or Silver Radiant Steel finishes with a 22mm interchangeable band, the smartwatch is military-grade certified and boasts IP68 and 5ATM water-resistance ratings. It's versatile, too, with an action button for quick access to workouts, whether you're at the gym or on the go.

The OnePlus Watch 2 runs Wear OS 4 and comes preloaded with a range of Google apps for seamless integration with Android devices. With more than 100 sport 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 is a compelling midrange option for Android users who want a reliable, feature-rich smartwatch.

Read our full OnePlus Watch 2 review.

The Apple Watch Ultra 2 is the best wearable the Cupertino-based company has ever made. But it costs far more than most people need to pay for a smartwatch and is perhaps tougher than your average weekend warrior needs. So, who's it for? Well, anyone who 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 you can easily read it in bright sunlight, this smartwatch is ready for serious outdoor time.

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 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 anyone with large wrists or who prefers their timepieces 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 packs in one more button than other Apple Watches currently offer. This button is programmable, so you can customize it to meet your needs. Heck, it can even do duty as a dive watch. Of course, it also does everything else any current-generation Apple Watch is capable of: body-metric tracking, exercise tracking, GPS route-finding, messaging, access to Siri, notifications from your connected iPhone, and the ability to install hundreds of apps to make it the ultimate EDC tool.

There's nothing wrong with this device. If you can afford one, feel you need one for your outdoor endeavors, or simply want it for 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 farther down this list than you might expect.

Read our full review of the Apple Watch Ultra 2.

In addition to 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 offers for the price, especially compared to the likes of Apple and Samsung.

Unlike the Versa 2, the Versa 3 has dedicated GPS, 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, with no notable delays or issues tracking the wrong type of workout.

The Fitbit Versa 3 also has 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 replies 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 those on YouTube.

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

Read our full Fitbit Versa 3 review.

With its dual-layered screen, the Mobvoi TicWatch Pro 5 is a bit of an oddity in the smartwatch universe. Its main OLED display does all the things you'd expect a smartwatch to do—handles touch interactions, shows off the device's colorful OS interface, and gives you access to 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 couldn't tell how the low-powered secondary display affected the Pro 5's battery life. But we were able to go three days before the watch needed a recharge, putting it in the same battery space as the Apple Watch Ultra 2.

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

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

Read our full Mobvoi TicWatch Pro 5 review.

Tailored for adventurers, the Suunto Vertical Titanium Solar focuses on a robust toolset for enjoying and surviving the outdoors, with smartwatch features taking a back seat. It's a device that emphasizes navigation, tracking metrics, and an impressive battery life lasting 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, thanks to its well-spaced buttons and touchscreen, even while wearing gloves.

As a fitness tracker, the Vertical is top-notch. Equipped with an array of health-tracking sensors, it's adept at monitoring activities ranging from general fitness to specialized outdoor adventures. We love that it can store offline maps in its memory, making 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 occasional slight lag between selecting a UI element and the watch taking action.

Read our full Suunto Vertical Titanium Solar review.