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Buying a smartwatch is usually no small investment. Watches themselves can be expensive items, and having one that connects to your smartphone can easily cost you several hundred dollars. This can be especially worrying considering that many users have opinions on how long they can last. Buying an affordable smartwatch certainly shouldn’t feel like you’re waiting for the day it stops working. (Although we do have some suggestions about what you can do with an old smartwatch if you don’t plan on using it anymore.) Luckily, certain brands offer higher quality choices — and we’ve gone through them to highlight which ones you should consider using, based on user reviews.

To do this, we’ve read reviews of several smartwatch brands, detailing the ones that strike a balance between being affordable, offering reliable features, and not having a tendency to break on you. Here are some of the models we came across, ranked worst to best.

8. GRV

GRV smartwatches are among the most affordable on the market. The GRV Smart Watch works with iOS and Android smartphones, and you can find it for only $26.99 on Amazon, where it has a 4.0-star rating from over 13,000 customer reviews. It’s marketed as a waterproof device that operates as a fitness tracker, heart rate and sleep monitor, and step counter, with a small touch screen you can use to flip through multiple screens of information.

However, there is a reason why this one lands on the lower end of our list. Customers who picked up the GRV smartwatch and shared their experiences online have a few criticisms to share, mostly concerning the product’s overall durability, the accuracy of the various monitors, and its ability to remain connected to a smartphone. A handful of users said that their wristband broke, the screen stopped working, or that the device shut down after using it in the pool. Others comment that it doesn’t accurately follow their steps, keep track of their sleep, or display their heart rate compared to other devices they use. Overall, while many reviewers appreciate how cheap this product is, you clearly get what you pay for: This $30 smartwatch comes with several negatives that may lead you to replace it after a few months.

7. Motorola

Motorola is known for its smartphones, but it also has a small range of smartwatches that you can purchase. Most of them are available for under $100, like the Motorola Moto Watch 120 or the Motorola Moto Watch 70. Between the two, though, the Motorola Moto Watch 120 is the option to pick. You can get it for a little less than $80 on Amazon, where it has a 4.2-star rating from around 700 customer reviews. It comes with an AMOLED display, a health monitor, and GPS. For many, it’s an aesthetically pleasing choice that works well as a sleek accessory.

Although it may look good, multiple customer reviews highlight some significant problems with the Moto Watch 120, and these issues also appear in other smartwatches made by Motorola. These include battery issues after months of use, trouble staying connected to a smartphone, heart rate and fitness trackers providing inaccurate information, and the watch struggling with durability. You’ll want to be careful while wearing this smartwatch to make sure it doesn’t get scratched, and you should stay on top of those fitness trackers to ensure they’re accurate.

6. Xiaomi

Xiaomi is another budget-friendly smartwatch brand, offering models that come with multiple features. Of the available choices, the Xiaomi Redmi Watch 5 Lite is the most popular, with a 4.5-star rating from around 3,700 customer reviews on Amazon; you can get it for $54.99. It comes with over 150 workout modes to track your progress and a GNSS chip that supports satellite positioning, allowing you to forgo having your smartphone on you while working out. It also features a heart rate monitor, Bluetooth calling with speakers, and compatibility with Android and iOS devices. You’ll find a range of features across many of Xiaomi’s products, in fact, although you should expect fewer with the cheaper models, like the Smart Band 9 Active.

Problems with this brand tend to crop up with the cheaper models, but they have been known to appear in the mid-range ones, too. These issues include connectivity problems with both iOS and Android smartphones, the Bluetooth not working effectively on the watch or causing problems with other Bluetooth devices, the exercise tracker causing a reboot after significant use, and even the device wiping out user settings every few days. If you do want to give Xiaomi smartwatches a go, try to purchase the mid-range ones — and stay away from those cheaper models.

5. FitBit

FitBit is a notable company with a range of smartwatches for you to pick from, with several of them being on the more expensive side. However, when you’re on a budget, there are a number of cheaper options that you can choose, such as the FitBit Versa 2 or the FitBit Inspire 3. Of the two, we’d recommend the Inspire 3, which you can get for slightly under $100 on Amazon, where it has a 4.3-star rating from around 23,000 customer reviews. This model has an all-day activity tracker, stress management, heart rate and sleep monitors, and a range of helpful insights for those who want to actively manage their fitness. The application insight program is an optional premium service that requires a subscription to use.

Some customers have encountered a handful of issues across multiple FitBit models. Some don’t like that the sync speed of the device is slow when attempting to get information to their smartphone, with a few claiming that it doesn’t work at all. Others find that these devices have problems staying connected to their smartphones, that the battery life is not the best, and that the sleep tracker needs some refining. The more expensive models, like the FitBit Sense 2, appear to have these same issues, meaning that the problem may come down to the software FitBit uses overall.

4. Huawei

Huawei smartwatch models can be tricky to track down, but, if you can, there are plenty available that are decent and generally affordable. They’re not the most budget-friendly products, as they still range close to $100, but customers have positive things to say about the cheaper options. For example, many who purchased the Huawei Band 8 for $59.99 like it quite a bit, giving it 4.7-star rating from over 3,000 customer reviews. This model comes with a sleep tracker program, fast charger, an AI algorithm that tracks your heart rate and compares your previous information to report any problems, and the ability to sync notifications from your smartphone to the device.

Customers’ reviews praise the product’s overall battery life, wristband, and overall comfort while wearing the smartwatch, while others appreciate the value of the item given its number of features. Some users do report connection issues and that the watch sometimes resets their information, however, forcing them to rebuild it from scratch. 

3. CMF By Nothing

One of the all-round better and cheaper smartwatch brands out there is CMF by Nothing. The company has several smartwatches for sale, all priced lower than $100. If you were to go with the option right in the middle, it’d be the CMF Watch Pro 2, a sleek watch that clearly displays the current temperature, date, your steps, calories burned, and time, all on the watch face without having to swipe screens. Prime members can get it from Amazon for $55, where it has a 4.3-star rating from around 1,500 customer reviews. It comes with a fitness tracker to monitor your progress and connects to your iOS or Android smartphone. It also comes with a heart rate monitor, GPS tracking, AI noise reduction, and waterproofing.

Customer reviews praise the CMF Watch Pro 2’s overall design, how smooth it is, the quality of the watch, its features, and how much they get for the amount they paid. There are reports that the smartwatch has connection issues with the application and has trouble with the fitness tracker, however. For less than $50, though, there’s a reason customers recommend CMF by Nothing and its range of smartwatches.

2. Samsung

Samsung is one of the larger brands on the market when it comes to smartwatches. Many of its models are notably expensive, like the Galaxy Watch 8 Classic, which our review found to be a quality watch even if it was a bit pricey. However, there are cheaper choices, like the Samsung Galaxy Fit 3. You can get this one on Amazon for about $50, where it has a 4.4-star rating from over 2,700 customers, who enjoy its simple, smooth design. It has an AMOLED, touch screen display, water-resistant exterior, 101 workout modes, sleep monitor, heart monitor, and GPS to help with accurately tracking workouts. There’s a lot packed into this watch, and it’s reflective of what you can expect from other Samsung smartwatches, like the Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 and 5 Pro, or the Galaxy Watch Active 2.

The reviews share that the quality of the smartwatch is a huge plus, given how easy it is to use. Customers appreciate how you can customize the options of the notifications, making it work for you. Because of how cheap it is, others believe it’s a good purchase if you haven’t had a smartwatch before and want to try one out before committing to a more expensive choice. There are some problems with these more affordable models from Samsung, such as having connection issues and the overall accuracy of the trackers, but these issues are few and far between.

1. Amazfit

If you’re looking for the ideal balance of affordability, good features, and a high-quality package, Amazfit is one of the best brands out there. Amazfit offers a range of smartwatch products that you can pick up from Amazon, and, like Samsung, they have several expensive choices. However, they have a great deal when it comes to the Amazfit Bip 6, available for $79, as it has a 4.4-star rating from around 4,500 customer reviews. There’s a reason we recommend it as one of the best Fitbit alternatives and consider it a cheaper alternative to buying the Apple Watch Ultra. It’s made from lightweight aluminum and has an AMOLED display, a water-resistant design, and an AI coach that you can use while tracking any exercise activity you’re doing. There’s also a GPS tracker designed to accurately keep track of your progress.

The customer reviews for the Amazfit Bip 6 praise the smartwatch’s design quality, the price they paid, the breadth of features, the battery life, and how easily it syncs to their smartphones. From customer experiences, it has a good record of accurately tracking the user’s fitness progress and making sure that it goes to their smartphone quickly. There are only a handful of issues with the smartwatch suddenly not working, but not from too many customers — and that’s a reliable sign, given how many recommend this smartwatch.

Methodology

When picking out the smartwatches, we went through the various brands featured on Amazon to find the ones frequently purchased by customers. We also wanted to find ones that were budget friendly, picking brands that had a good range of products for $100 or less. After choosing the brands we wanted to feature on our list, we then looked through customer reviews across several products, narrowing down our focus on a single option from each brand to serve as the “best” option.

We then used user reviews submitted on Amazon to compare the overall star rating to review their experience with these devices, how effective these features were, the overall quality of the device, and how durable it was, along with fitness tracking and smartphone syncing. After reviewing the user experiences, we then compared those with the overall price point of the products. Above all, we wanted to recommend brands that offered affordable smartwatches, ranking them higher on our list if they didn’t sacrifice quality for that lower price point.