The 23 best smartwatches: Apple, Samsung, Huawei, Fitbit, Garmin

Well here we are. You want us to recommend a good smartwatch, if possible the best of 2022 and you want to know about it for Christmas shopping. And this year it’s not easy because there are some very good products at finally reasonable prices. If you have an iPhone, we have a very clear recommendation, whether you’re going by price (no, it’s not the Apple Watch 3… sorry, even if you’ve seen it cheap) or if you’re hesitating between buying the Apple Watch 7 or the Apple Watch 8. And if you have an Android, depending on tastes, needs and budget, the truth is that too. As if you want it to play sports seriously. It’s not very complicated. In the end, what exactly do you have to ask of a smart watch? The first thing is that notifications are easy to read, respond to, dismiss, whether it is by touching the screen or with voice commands. Also easy to manage. Then, closely linked, is performance.

Not long ago we would have told you that performance is measured based on how quickly it offers information that you already have on your mobile. But now, with all the advances in health measurement, things have changed. Let’s see, one way to know if you’ve bought a chestnut is to see how the smartwatch behaves with the most basic things: simpler notifications, basic exercise monitoring screen… If a smartwatch fails in notifications, you won’t even care. I count on the rest. You also have to see the usefulness of the voice functions (there it will depend a lot on the digital assistant). That is why you should always first choose the model you want and then buy if the price suits you, instead of buying the cheapest watch. That is throwing money away. Same with the battery. At a minimum, with heavy use it should last 16 hours.

And if you use it intensively, you should see not only the applications it comes with as standard (from a good timer, which I, for example, use daily on my smartwatch, to apps for smart home control) but also if there are a good selection of third-party apps. Not to mention watch faces, which in the end seems silly and influences. There Apple and Samsung win by a landslide, things as they are.

Then it should have some decent fitness basics: step tracking, reminders not to shy away from a sedentary lifestyle, and reasonably accurate tracking of long walks, running, and cycling (which is what most of us use it for). And then we talk about the design, which is particular, obviously, but it also has to do, and a lot, with the build quality: how the buttons, the rotating crown, the bezel and the touch screen of a watch work, giving them a good tute throughout the day.

Have you missed something on Black Friday 2022? We have found very good offers on Garmin sports smartwatches, we have verified that the Apple Watch 7 (41mm) can still put an interesting discount on the table if you do not have a predilection for a specific color, and we have found the Galaxy Watch5 Pro at a very good price both during the week of Black Friday and in the subsequent offers.

If you’re looking for tech gift ideas this holiday season, here are 15 cool little cell phones that don’t take up space, the 7 best foldable cell phones on the market, and 12 cheap and durable power banks for your phone.

 1. 2nd Generation Apple Watch SE (GPS, 40mm)