Best Heart Rate Watch - Top Picks 2017

Our guide of the best heart rate watch features a mixed selection of offerings from the top brands aiming to get your ticker in shape..

In no particular order, we’ve included a few smartwatches, a few all-round fitness watches, a few running watches, and a HR-enabled hybrid watch.

Best Heart Rate Watch 2017

Withings Steel HR

Starting with the hybrid smartwatch. The stylish Withings Steel HR uses an analog dial to tell the time, a sub dial to show your fitness goal progress, and a dynamic digital display to show your heart rate and other smart information.

Main Features

Heart rate monitor, steps, distance, calories, sleep tracking, active minutes, automatic activity detection for running, walking and swimming. It also and has a vibrating alarm and will buzz you for incoming call, text, email, and calendar notifications.

Battery Life

The rechargeable battery lasts up to 25 days between charges. There’s also a power transition feature which switches to power-saving mode giving you an extra 20 days worth of fitness tracking and time keeping.

Waterproof

5 ATM – safe for swimming – tracks calories in the pool.

App Compatibility

iOS and Android.

• Withings Steel HR

TomTom Spark 3 Cardio + Music

One of the most accurate wrist-based heart rate monitors and one of the best all-round fitness watches. The Spark 3 has a monochrome LCD display (not touchscreen) and is packed with features for indoor and outdoor activities.

Main Features

Heart rate monitor with voice prompts, built-in GPS, steps, distance, calories, speed, pace, elevation, sleep tracking, active minutes, activity modes for running, cycling, swimming, gym training, treadmill and more. It has a vibrating alarm but lacks smart notifications (calls, text, email, etc).

Making up for the lack of notifications, the TT Spark 3 Cardio + Music features a standalone music player with 3GB storage for your tunes.

Battery Life

Up to 3 weeks activity tracking, 11 hours GPS tracking, 5 hours activity tracking + GPS + music.

Waterproof

5 ATM – safe for swimming – offers advanced metrics to track swims.

App Compatibility

iOS and Android.

• TomTom Spark 3 Cardio + Music

Fitbit Blaze

The Fitbit Blaze is designed to look good along with offering an all-round fitness tracking solution (unless you’re a swimmer). It has a color LCD touchscreen and interchangeable straps to suit your style.

Main Features

Heart rate monitor, steps, distance, calories, floors climbed, sleep tracking, active minutes, automatic exercise recognition, 15 sports modes. It features a vibrating alarm and delivers call, text, and calendar notifications. You can use the Blaze to reject calls and remotely control your music.

Battery Life

Up to 5 days – full use.

Waterproof

Splash-proof only.

App Compatibility

iOS, Android, and Windows.

• Fitbit Blaze

Fitbit

Garmin Vivoactive HR

In addition to being a very decent heart rate watch, the Garmin Vivoactive HR basically has more features than Shakin Stevens has leather pants, and with its ultra-modern design and color touchscreen, it looks like something a Klingon might wear.

Main Features

Heart rate monitor, built-in GPS, steps, distance, calories, speed, pace, elevation, sleep tracking, active minutes, automatic exercise recognition and tons of sports modes including run, walk, golf, swim, ski, paddleboard, row, and cycle. It features a vibrating alarm and delivers call, text, email, calendar and app notifications. Also use the Vivoactive to remotely control your music.

Battery Life

Up to 8 days activity tracking + heart rate, 13 hours GPS tracking.

Waterproof

5 ATM – safe for swimming – offers advanced metrics to track swims.

App Compatibility

iOS, Android, and Windows.

• Garmin Vivoactive HR

Garmin Forerunner 735XT

Yes, another Garmin, and we haven’t even included the Fenix 3 HR. Garmin offer the world’s largest range of fitness wearables with feature sets to match – the high-end stuff, anyway.

The Forerunner 735XT is the firm’s most capable running watch yet. It’s also an all-round fitness tracker come smartwatch, but it doesn’t have a touchscreen like the Forerunner 630. Like the Vivoactive, the FR735XT has more features than Prince George’s Christmas list.

Main Features

Heart Rate Monitor, built-in GPS, steps, distance, calories, speed, pace, elevation, sleep tracking, active minutes, tons of running dynamics including VO2 max, lactate threshold, stride length, ground contact time, recovery advisor, projected finish time. It’s well smart for cyclists and includes Strava Live Suffer Score. The super heart rate watch is also geared up for cross-country skiing, paddle sports, snow sports, swimming and more.

I almost forgot, the 735XT features a vibrating alarm and delivers call, text, email, calendar, and app notifications. It can also be used to remotely control your music.

Battery Life

Up to 11 days without GPS , 14 hours GPS tracking, 24 hours UltraTrac.

Waterproof

5 ATM – safe for swimming – offers advanced metrics to track swims.

App Compatibility

iOS, Android, and Windows.

• Garmin FR735XT

Suunto Sport Wrist HR

The successor to the Ambit3, the Suunto Sport Wrist HR is a chunky, premium mulitsport watch that comes pre-loaded with 80 sports and is built to survive the toughest conditions.

The heart rate watch keeps track of just about every activity under the Sun, and shows your stats on a color touchscreen with a wide viewing angle and optimized for sunlight. My brain would burn out before I could finish writing about everything the watch offers.

Main Features

Heart Rate Monitor, built-in GPS, steps, distance, calories, speed, altitude, recovery status, personal bests, navigation, heatmaps (Routes, tracks and trails), loads of advanced sports modes and dynamics for running, hiking, cycling, swimming, triathlon, snow sports, adventure racing and more. It also delivers smart notifications – calls, text, email, app alerts.

Battery Life

Up to 18 hours training /racing time with Full Power 1 second GPS fix rate; 26 hours of training/racing time with Power Save 1 second GPS fix rate; and up to 15 days in Time mode.

Waterproof

10 ATM – safe for visiting the Titanic – offers advanced metrics to track swims.

App Compatibility

iOS, Android.

• Suunto Sport Wrist HR

Polar M600

The Polar M600 is the sportiest of the Android Wear watches, plus the Finnish firm has plenty of pedigree in performance wearables.

Loads of sports profiles gives you the option to choose from over a hundred Polar sports, you can also choose to track your own favorite sports. With Android Wear onboard, the M600 works with a thousands of apps and it has a built-in mic with Google Now at the ready for voice commands. It also offers Wi Fi connectivity, 4GB of storage, and a color touchscreen protected by Gorilla Glass 3.

Main Features

Heart Rate Monitor, built-in GPS, steps, distance, calories, speed, altitude, HRmax estimate, swim tracking, training routes, navigation, map view, Google Now and all the delights offered by Android Wear such as compatibilty with thousands of apps and tons of watch faces. It also delivers smart notifications – calls, text, email, app alerts.

Battery Life

Up to 48 hours on Android. 24 hours on iOS. Around 8.5 hours GPS tracking.

Waterproof

IPX8 – safe for swimming – tracks swims.

App Compatibility

Android (full features). iOS (limited features).

• Polar M600

Apple Watch Series 2

Last but definitely not least. The Apple Watch 2 is the world’s best-selling smartwatch. It’s also the world’s best smartwatch and Apple’s WatchOS has the world’s largest selection of apps.

As well as stuff like Apple Pay, music streaming, voice recorder, Siri, shopping list, navigation and the very cool Digital Crown; the Apple Watch 2 is well equipped for sports and fitness and features a permanent Complication for launching the Nike+ Run Club app.

It has a second-gen AMOLED touchscreen with Force Touch technology and Sapphire Crystal and is twice as bright as the first Apple Watch.

Main Features

Heart Rate Monitor, built-in GPS, steps, distance, calories, speed, coaching, swim tracking, navigation, maps, Siri and many, many apps. It also delivers smart notifications – calls, text, email, app alerts.