With superior options reminiscent of voice assistants, crash detection, name and textual content help, and lengthy battery lives, trendy smartwatches are way over simply an adjunct. And due to highly effective sensors and intensive app suites, they’ve change into some of the in style well being and health trackers, too.
How can we check and consider these smartwatches at ZDNET? How nicely is the watch supported by a smartphone companion? What capabilities and options stand out for every smartwatch? Here is the complete breakdown.
In most cases, the smartwatches we consider right here on ZDNET are bought after being launched to the general public, so there is no such thing as a urgency in making an attempt to publish a assessment primarily based on a brief interval with the watch. Watches additionally require a minimum of a pair weeks of 24/7 put on to check battery life, well being and wellness monitoring, GPS positioning accuracy, coronary heart fee sensor reliability, and varied design options.
We’ve got relationships with most smartwatch manufacturers, so we are able to ship questions in regards to the watch as we consider it and search clarification on the {hardware}, software program, and different features. We additionally check a handful of third-party purposes, however with 1000’s of apps accessible on most of those watches, your private experiences will range from our testing.
Smartwatch efficiency additionally relies upon upon an individual’s physique geometry, the match of the band on the wrist, the precise smartphone that the watch connects with, mobile reception high quality (for linked fashions), and extra. We offer readers with our perspective from testing the watches with our large-size wrists and telephones.
Value and battery life are components in our suggestions however are much less vital as a result of most smartwatches solely final for a day or two between charging, until you’re contemplating extra fitness-focused smartwatches which have fewer third-party apps and battery life measured in days or perhaps weeks. Most trendy smartwatches additionally vary within the $300 to $500 vary so there is not a serious value component to think about.
What makes a smartwatch ZDNET really helpful?
A smartwatch serves as a companion to a smartphone and infrequently stands alone. Since we’ve excluded value and battery life above, the idea for whether or not a smartwatch is really helpful or not is decided by 5 different components. Your choice for these 5 components may differ from ours, however we began sporting smartwatches greater than 20 years in the past (Fossil Wrist PDA powered by Palm OS) and have refined our testing and analysis processes.
The 5 components we consider, so as of significance, are core performance and efficiency, construct high quality and sturdiness, well being and wellness, purposes, and superior options. The superior options are features of the smartwatch that set it aside from rivals and will goal particular kinds of customers.
How we check smartwatches in 2026
Core performance and efficiency
To justify occupying a spot in your wrist, a smartwatch has to offer core capabilities reliably. If the smartwatch creates any friction within the consumer expertise, it’s unlikely to be embraced as a each day wearable. At first, a watch ought to clearly present you the time with a fast look. Smartwatches have developed over time with customized watch faces that match your outfit and/or your character so every watch can stand aside from others with the identical mannequin.
Some watches make the watch face much more succesful, with varied issues or widgets displaying you glanceable info past the time and date. Watch faces with issues often additionally help responses to finger faucets, the place a show filled with superior metrics and traits will seem after your activation. Third-party apps usually add customized complication choices, so there are numerous methods to customise and optimize your watch face.
A method {that a} smartwatch distinguishes itself from a normal watch is that it serves as a distant in your telephone and gives an accessible means to triage your key notifications in order that your telephone can stay on the charger, in your pocket, or in your bag. The smartwatch permits you to look shortly at notifications with out absolutely eradicating you out of your present exercise. Voice-to-text has additionally improved considerably over the previous few years, so you’ll be able to shortly and simply reply to many notifications all out of your watch.
These core capabilities should additionally work reliably, with the time and notifications showing every time the consumer must see them. If a smartwatch gives inconsistent efficiency, it’s going to doubtless find yourself on the market or in a drawer. We do not want wearables demanding our consideration until they’re completely in sync with the linked telephone.
We join smartwatches to varied telephones, join them to mobile service, measure the consistency in receiving notifications, observe the reliability of launching issues, and maintain observe of inconsistent conduct once we consider every watch.
Construct high quality and sturdiness
Each smartwatch right this moment has a stage of water resistance that helps sporting your watch in most situations, though not all of them help submergence in water for prolonged intervals of time. The watch face is roofed by robust glass that’s resilient to scratching. The physique of most watches is constructed of polymer fiber, aluminum, titanium, or chrome steel, and buttons are constructed for urgent and/or rotating to navigate the consumer interface.
Default watch bands come along with your authentic buy, however most smartwatches help commonplace 20, 22, or 26 mm bands. Amazon has an virtually limitless number of watch bands, so you will discover a dependable band that can maintain the watch mounted in your wrist even throughout strenuous actions.
We doc any display scratches that seem, put on the watches within the rain and through bodily actions, and check out varied bands as a part of our analysis. You possibly can try a number of choices we like to make use of with our Apple Watch Extremely.
Well being and wellness
One of many largest enhancements in smartwatch expertise over the previous few years has been the combination of superior well being and wellness options that beforehand have been present in devoted well being units. A few of these devoted sports activities watches went the opposite means and have embraced the smartphone by integrating notifications, third-party purposes, messaging, and extra in order that we now see the convergence of those applied sciences within the smartwatch.
Apple continues to aggressively transfer ahead with integrating superior well being and wellness within the Apple Watch and not too long ago demonstrated a number of new options coming quickly in watchOS 11 that can problem its rivals. Well being and wellness monitoring make good sense in a smartwatch as battery life improves and ecosystems are constructed that present sensible insights and steerage to assist smartwatch customers enhance their well being and wellness.
Google’s newest Fitbit Premium service with AI teaching takes issues to the following stage, because of the intelligence offered by Gemini and essentially the most customizable coaching plan choices ever seen on a smartwatch. Samsung has additionally embraced AI, and gives a compelling customized teaching expertise with Samsung Well being. With the superior well being and wellness experiences offered by each of those corporations, Apple’s fundamental Apple Well being expertise is in want of a serious overhaul.
Smartwatches are not solely utilized by informal athletes, however skilled athletes are utilizing them to assist enhance their efficiency as detailed sleep monitoring, restoration metrics, and efficiency traits are precisely supplied with a smartwatch that additionally serves as the primary cell system that’s picked up within the morning.
Well being and wellness testing is my favourite side of evaluating smartwatches because it helps encourage me to run, bike, hike, row, stroll, sleep, and take part in actions to be able to check the accuracy of the placement monitoring, the guts fee monitoring, and extra. I pay for a subscription and use the DC Rainmaker Analyzer to check knowledge that I seize with varied smartwatches.
Functions
Within the early days of smartwatches, third-party purposes have been pretty restricted. As we speak, Google, Samsung, Apple, Garmin, and others have embraced builders by extending smartphone purposes to the watch type issue. Apple units the bar with the variety of purposes accessible, the intensive options of the purposes, and the interface optimized for the small display, however Google’s focus once more on Put on OS has resulted in critical competitors for the area in your wrist.
Google’s purposes have been revived with the main focus of the partnership with Samsung on the Galaxy Watch platform, however there are nonetheless many gaps that change into clear whenever you evaluate a Google Put on smartwatch to an Apple Watch.
After we check smartwatches, we’ve a core set of 10-15 purposes that work nicely on a smartwatch, and we check out which watches these purposes work with and the way nicely these purposes work. At present, Google carefully matches what is obtainable by Apple, however the depth of the performance is missing in lots of instances.
Superior options
This final issue is usually essentially the most attention-grabbing a part of my assessment course of since it’s the place I discover what a smartwatch can do above and past the usual fare. We noticed that 2025 was the yr of satellite tv for pc help on smartwatches, with Google, Apple, and Garmin offering connectivity to things in area with a various stage of communication help. All three of them present satellite tv for pc SOS help, so if you’re ever exterior of mobile vary and need assistance, you’ll be able to provoke emergency providers.
Garmin set the bar with its incredible LED flashlight functionality that I exploit each single day. We’ve got seen others (Suunto and Amazfit) launch sports activities watches with LED flashlights, and I count on we could quickly see Apple, Samsung, and Google provide this key performance.
Apple’s Watch Extremely 3 routinely launches a cool submerged water interface whenever you take your watch into the pool or lake to train. Some Samsung fashions have a rotating bodily bezel the place you’ll be able to spin the dial across the watch bezel to shortly scroll via lists.
Different widespread superior options embrace music controls, crash/incident detection and notification, navigation, hands-free voice help, and blood strain monitoring (with Apple’s new Hypertension Detection function, and on Samsung watches exterior of the US). There are nonetheless many different doable options and capabilities to come back on future watches, so keep tuned as we proceed to find these superior options and look to the way forward for hologram wearables.
I exploit reviewer guides and even crack open the manuals to attempt to discover these superior options on varied smartwatches. After spending time with the watches, I then additionally try evaluations from others testing the watches to search out superior options. Additionally it is useful to dive into the various ranges of settings in watches to find superior options. As we speak’s smartwatches are engineering marvels, and you may spend days and weeks diving into all the particulars, capabilities, and choices discovered inside them.
