The Best Smartwatches for Men

The Apple Watch is the best smartwatch made, and it is useless with an Android phone. That single fact settles the decision for a lot of people before any spec sheet comes out.

Garmin, Fitbit and Withings all work with both iPhone and Android, which is why they are the sensible starting point for anyone not locked into Apple — or anyone who simply does not want a second screen buzzing on their wrist.

A watch you charge every night is a watch that never tracks your sleep. This is the quiet reason so many Apple Watches stop being worn after a few months.

Garmin runs for days rather than hours — up to two weeks on the Venu 3 and eleven days on the vivoactive 5. Withings, with no bright screen to feed, runs for weeks. If you want sleep and recovery data, buy battery life first.

Step counts are close to meaningless on their own. The metrics worth paying for are resting heart rate over time, heart rate variability, sleep stages and blood oxygen — the ones that show a trend rather than a moment.

Garmin leads on training data: Body Battery, sleep coaching and VO2 max estimates that adjust as your fitness changes. Fitbit leads on simplicity, presenting one readiness score you can act on before breakfast. Withings leads on medical-style measurement, with ECG, temperature and respiratory tracking.

Most smartwatches look like small screens strapped to a wrist, which is fine at the gym and awkward with a jacket. If that bothers you, the hybrid category exists precisely for you.

The Withings ScanWatch Nova keeps real hands, a sapphire crystal and a dive-style bezel, hiding its sensors behind the dial. It is the only watch here that would look at home beside a mechanical piece.

If you want a screen but not a plastic one, the titanium Apple Watch on a Milanese loop is the dressiest version of the format.

For most men: the Garmin vivoactive 5. It does the tracking that matters, lasts a working fortnight and costs a fraction of the flagships.

For iPhone owners who want one device for everything: the Apple Watch Series 11 in titanium. For anyone who wants the data but not the look: the Withings ScanWatch Nova. For a first tracker: the Fitbit Versa 4.

Every watch here has a downside, and we have named it on each page. Buy the trade-off you can live with rather than the longest feature list.