For the purposes of this story, I tried to stick to true fitness trackers (as opposed to running watches or other fitness-related devices you can wear on your wrist) with two big exceptions: the Apple watch and the Moto 360, one of several Android Wear options on the market. (I had to see if all the buzz is deserved because. . . journalism.) All of the options have the capability to track steps, distance, and calories burned — and some came with other features, too. Here’s a quick rundown of what you can expect from each watch.
Setup was pretty seamless with most of the devices with one big exception: I couldn’t get the Withings Activité POP to sync with the phone. Granted, the watch has great reviews on Amazon.com (four out of five stars, on average, from 271 customer reviews) so my experience may be an anomaly. But while I had one false alarm when the hands on the watch started moving and I’d thought I succeeded, I couldn’t ever manage to sync successfully. An interesting thing about this watch, though, is that you’re instructed to keep your smartphone nearby at all times — it seems like your phone is what actually does all of the tracking and it just communicates that information to your watch to control where the hands are. So I decided to keep the watch (and coinciding app) in the test.
