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Key Takeaways
- Cheaper smartwatches sometimes offer better battery life.
- Budget smartwatches still offer all essential features like notifications, music, and calls that fulfill most user needs.
- Inexpensive smartwatches provide adequate heart rate monitoring and step-counting accuracy for general fitness tracking.
If you never tried out a smartwatch because they're far too expensive, maybe it's time to check out one of the budget offerings. In fact, not only are they more affordable, but I firmly believe that cheap smartwatches can be superior to more expensive models. Here's why.
Cheaper Smartwatches Have Better Battery Life
The feature set and build quality of smartwatches only get better as you go up in price. Some smartwatches are so advanced that they let you answer calls, track all kinds of health data, and use NFC to pay for groceries. What's strange is that battery life seems to be inversely proportional—the cheaper the smartwatch, the better the battery life.
Of course, battery life highly depends on the exact model in question, but it seems that cheaper smartwatches tend to do a better job on that end. The hardware is more rudimentary, with less bright and sharp screens, slower onboard processors, limited apps, and fewer sensors, yet most smartwatches at any price point use similar battery sizes of about 300–500 mAh. I had a cheap fitness tracker, followed by a cheap smartwatch—the Amazfit GTR 2—and both devices had batteries that could last 10+ days of everyday use, even with sleep and heart rate monitoring.
Now compare that to the Apple Watch, which boasts a meager 18 hours of battery life. Apple thinks that an "all-day battery" is a thing to be proud of. While I must commend their excellent quality and best health and fitness tracking, their watches are not for me. WearOS smartwatches aren't much better, as they are more resource-heavy than proprietary operating systems from brands like Garmin, Huawei, and Amazfit.
I can't be bothered to charge my watch every evening. Also, I travel frequently and don't want to think about having to charge my watch away from home. I have been to Istanbul twice in the past couple of years, and I didn't bring my smartwatch charger with me. I still came back home after a week with battery life to spare both times.
You Still Get Most of the Features and Functionality
Although cheap smartwatches don't come with a ridiculous 64GB of storage and fancy neural processing cores like the Apple Watch Ultra 2, they do almost everything most people want. For example, I can't run Google Keep natively on my smartwatch because I don't have Wear OS, but I still get reminders from my phone on the smartwatch as standard notifications. I don't have AccuWeather to check the weather, but the built-in weather app is just as good.
I can't run games on my smartwatch, but I can't imagine ever doing that anyway. If I need to do something that requires precise input, like using a calculator, and I can't rely on my voice, I won't bother doing it on a tiny smartwatch screen. That's what smartphones are for. My watch tells the time and date, feels responsive, and doesn't miss a single notification, which is all I really need. Everything else is a bonus.
A few other things that my cheap smartwatch can do include sideloading custom watch faces, playing music directly from the smartwatch through the built-in speaker or Bluetooth earbuds, answering calls, setting alarms, responding to voice commands, and running Amazon Alexa. The only app that I really like but can't get is Google Wallet.
Heart Rate Monitoring and Step Counting Are Almost as Accurate
I'm sure that pricey smartwatches from brands like Apple, Samsung, and Google do a better job at heart rate monitoring, but I don't care whether my heart rate is 137 or 139 when I run; what matters is that I stay within the aerobic range for the duration of my goal. As long as it's within a few percent of my actual heart rate, I'm okay with it. My cheap smartwatch also has a 5 ATM water resistance rating, so I can take it with me to the pool and beach to track my swimming data.
The same is true for steps—it doesn't matter if your watch tells you that you took 9,000 steps in a day, but you "only" did 8,961. Cheap smartwatches are probably more accurate than smartphone apps, and many people rely on those because they're reasonably accurate. If you ask me, improvements in this area are completely superfluous.
Stop ignoring good deals on cheap smartwatches and fitness trackers—they might surprise you with their features and quality. If you end up liking the overall smartwatch experience and find yourself using it often, you can always upgrade to a nicer model.
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