7 Best Smart Watches for Women, Tested by Experts

This stylish rose gold option from Fossil is adorned with stones surrounding the face, and the swappable watch straps allow for versatility when pairing with your wardrobe. The 42mm smart watch features a touchscreen and tracks sleep, heart rate and activity — and it's compatible with both Android and iOS.

You can also control your music and phone notifications by downloading the relevant apps to your phone, such as Spotify or Wear OS, and then syncing them to your smart watch. The contactless payment option makes shopping a breeze. According to the brand, the Gen 5E has a multi-day battery mode which can give you 24+ hours of battery life; in our testing, we found it lasted the full day with no issues.

Plus, you don't have to worry about taking off your watch while taking a dip in the pool since it's water-resistant up to 50 meters.

Fitbit’s top-of-the-line smart watch earned solid marks in our tests, combining intuitive setup and controls with a sleek design. “We found the app to be particularly straightforward, guiding users through the step-by-step set-up and providing instructions on how to wear the watch,” says Jamie Kim, Contributing Writer and Analyst at Good Housekeeping. That makes the Sense 2 an especially good fit if this is your first smart watch. Another user-friendly feature is the built-in voice command. With Amazon Alexa, you can quickly check the weather or news and control other connected devices in the home.

The Sense 2 offers many health and wellness features, including basic insights into activity, sleep and nutrition, a temperature sensor and feedback on your stress levels. For the full experience, you'll want to consider a Premium membership (three-month free trial and $9.99 a month thereafter), with enhancements like a stress management score, a detailed breakdown of your sleep and access to more than 200 workouts and meditations.

Serious athletes need a smart watch that can keep pace, and the Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 is up to the challenge. Not only is this smart watch perfect for Samsung phone owners (it’s both Android- and IOS-compatible), but it impressed our engineers with its ability to track a range of exercises including running, cycling, rowing and up to 90 other types of exercise — and its fall detection provides peace of mind.

In tests on previous iterations of the Galaxy Watch, our Lab experts found Samsung’s heart monitor to be more accurate than other watches when tested against a third-party heart rate monitor. Be aware it's not a medical device, but if you’re looking to improve athletic performance or manage stress throughout the day, that level of accuracy might be useful. Also notable is that the watch face is constructed from Sapphire crystal, making it stronger and more scratch-resistant than previous models. In terms of overall aesthetics, you can definitely keep your Samsung smart watch on when you’re out on the town, thanks to its rich offering of case finishes and straps.

Fitbit is the original fitness tracker that started the entire wearable craze over a decade ago, so it's no surprise that the Fitbit Versa 3 is packed with fitness and wellness features.

It has built-in GPS, menstrual health tracking and a daily Sleep Score feature through the Fitbit app, which our testers found incredibly intuitive and easy to use. “The sleep scores were convenient and it was especially useful to see how many hours I slept each night,” says Senior Textiles Analyst Emma Seymour. Other testers like the Versa 3’s design and ease of use. “It looks nice and sleek on the wrist,” says one tester. “It helps you track your activity and sleep while holding you more accountable to be more active. It’s also extremely easy to set up and use for basic features.”

Like most Fitbit models, this smart watch tracks your steps and heart rate which we found accurate in testing. It also has features such as voice assistant (Google and Alexa), weather, wallet, calendar, find my phone, music subscriptions and more but some of these do require a subscription to access. It lacks some of the advanced features you’ll find in the Sense 2 (reviewed above), like ECG readings, a skin temperature sensor and stress monitoring, but if you’re willing to make that sacrifice to save a few bucks this is a great smart watch to have.

Though this is Apple's entry-level watch, it's comparable to many top-of-the-line smart watches. Unlike other smart watches, it offers a unique feature called Family Setup, which enables younger kids or older family members to benefit from an Apple Watch without owning an iPhone (you’ll pair their watch to your phone).

iPhone users will also appreciate its competitive price and that it comes with the same large display as the Apple Watch Series 6 and the latest WatchOS9 features such as water resistance, optical heart sensor, fall and crash detection and available WiFi/cellular options (for $50 more). You can also expect 20 percent faster performance over the Gen 1 model, according to Apple.

Some of the latest Apple health features are missing like blood oxygen and ECG apps. If you care about the finish, aluminum is the only option (no stainless steel or titanium). Perhaps the most important trade-off: there's no always-on display, so you have to decide if the black box on your wrist is worth saving $100.