The Best Fitness Trackers You Can Buy in 2026

Google's Fitbit Air is a screenless smart band that tracks the basics—steps, heart rate, movement, sleep—for only $99.99. It's thin and lightweight, making it easy to wear whether it's your only tracker or if you'd like to also wear a watch. And its app, Google Health, can pull in the rest of your data into one convenient place. I'd say it's the best fitness tracker for most people.

That said, there's a lot it doesn't do. If you want to see your heart rate or distance during a workout, you'll need to bring your phone and look at its screen. Some of the more sophisticated features are tucked behind a premium subscription, including the AI coach (which you may feel you're better off without, but that's a matter of opinion).

The Fitbit Air is one of Lifehacker's 2026 Gift of the Year award winners.

It pains me to have to award the best not-a-watch title to the Whoop band, when I myself am a dedicated Oura ring user, but the Oura just cannot fill the job description of a fitness tracker. The Oura ring isn't great at tracking exercise, and you'll need to take it off when lifting weights. By contrast, the Whoop can be worn off-wrist with a bicep band or in a variety of specially designed clothing items (including underwear). The bicep band keeps the device off your wrist and is comfortable enough you'll quickly forget you're wearing it.

The Whoop device measures your activity throughout the day, without showing you anything on a screen. (We have a breakdown here of the pros and cons of a Whoop versus a smartwatch.) You can open up the Whoop app on your phone, though, and see how things are going—or even start a workout and monitor how it's going from your phone. Keep the device on at night, and it will measure your sleep. Whoop's strength is in balancing your exercise and sleep, and it can give you advice on how much sleep to get based on your "strain" (exercise and stress) and vice versa.

The other important thing to know about Whoop is that it's subscription-based. And I don't mean that you can pay extra for a premium tier, but literally to use the Whoop at all you'll need to pay $30/month (or go for a package, like the $239 annual membership). Technically, the device itself is free.

I've tried plenty of smart rings, and I've worn an Oura for years, but the Oura Ring 5 is hands down my favorite. It's smaller and more comfortable to wear than any other smart ring, including the Oura Ring 4.

The biggest downside to this ring is that it requires a subscription. For $5.99/month you get all the functionality of the ring; without it, Oura still gathers your data, but doesn't show you the most useful metrics.

The upsides, though, are many. The ring tracks sleep well, and does a reasonably good job of tracking steps, exercise minutes, and recovery metrics like HRV. The temperature sensor makes it useful for cycle tracking, and the Health Radar (formerly Symptom Radar) is nice for telling when you're sick—although, for me, it only ever detects signs of illness after I feel symptoms.

You honestly can't go wrong with anything in Garmin's Forerunner line. Personally I fell in love with the Forerunner 265 and enjoyed testing its upgrade the Forerunner 570. But if you want the best watch in this line, that's going to be the top-of-the-line Forerunner 970.

Besides everything the other Forerunners have, the 970 has on-screen maps instead of just breadcrumb navigation. It also has an LED flashlight built in—not a flashlight app to turn the screen white, but an actual light that shines forward from your wrist. The 970 has the same heart rate sensor as the 570 I tested, and it's the most accurate wrist-based heart rate sensor I've ever tested. I was truly impressed.

As with any Forerunner, the heart rate and location tracking are excellent, and it's got a strength training mode that can time your rests and count your reps. The analytics in the Garmin Connect app are arguably more useful than anything the other major brands have to offer.

You know I love a Garmin, but they seem to be getting more expensive every year. If you want an affordable running watch, I'd suggest looking at Suunto and Coros. After careful consideration, I'm changing my pick for 2026, and giving this crown to the Suunto Run.

I had previously considered the Coros Pace 3 to be the best budget running watch. I still love it, so nothing has changed there. But the Pace 3 has been discontinued. Its replacement, the $249 Pace 4, is an excellent watch—but if you're looking for the best balance of cost and features, I have to give the crown to Suunto.

The Suunto Run is under $200, and it does just about everything more expensive running watches do. It has a big, bright screen, it's lightweight, it has dual-band GPS, and its heart rate sensor is accurate. You can read more here in my review. If you only have 200 bucks to spend on a running watch, you'll be very happy with this one.

If you're migrating from the Fitbit Sense or Versa lines, this is a nice soft landing place for you. While Google is urging those customers to get a Pixel Watch, most Fitbit users themselves seem to be heading for the Garmin product lines.

I also just think it's a nice watch, and I've always said the Vivoactive line is Garmin's most underrated.

It does most of what the more expensive Forerunners can do, in a lightweight and easy-to-use package. The Vivoactive 6 is the newest in that line, and I really liked it when I reviewed it. The older Vivoactive 5 is very similar, and a great buy if you want to save a few bucks.