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Google just announced the Pixel Watch 2, which goes on sale October 12. We added details in What to look forward to. Smart Watch Home
You can answer calls, send and receive texts, and give commands to a voice-activated assistant on your phone, but sometimes it’s easier to do those things on your wrist—which is where a smartwatch comes in. While the Apple Watch is the gold standard for smartwatches, it works only with Apple's iPhones.
If you’re one of the billions of people using an Android phone, you have a lot more smartwatch options, but most of the watches we’ve encountered are too slow, bulky, or lacking in features to be worth buying. We’ve tested dozens of smartwatches for Android phones, including all the latest models, and the Samsung Galaxy Watch6 is the best option for most Android phone users.
The Galaxy Watch6 brings the latest Wear OS software to your wrist, offering speedy performance and ample app support, plus a sleek and comfortable design.
The Samsung Galaxy Watch6 runs the latest version of Google’s Wear OS software and has plenty of watch apps that you can download from the Google Play Store. The software looks and works like that of Samsung’s phones, because Samsung customized it with its One UI skin. The Galaxy Watch6 comes in 40 mm and 44 mm sizes to accommodate most wrists, and the OLED display looks fantastic. The Galaxy Watch6 can automatically detect and log your activity and health metrics, too. The understated design will work with almost any style, and the bands are a snap to change.
The Galaxy Watch6 Classic has everything that makes the Galaxy Watch6 great, plus a more durable stainless steel frame and a rotating bezel for faster navigation. However, it’s pricier and heavier.
The Samsung Galaxy Watch6 Classic has almost the same specs and features as the regular Galaxy Watch6, but it’s a bit larger (43 mm and 47 mm) and made from more durable stainless steel instead of aluminum. Samsung also brought back the rotating bezel for this watch after removing the feature in its 2022 smartwatches; this ring around the display makes navigating lists of apps or notifications much faster. However, even though the Galaxy Watch6 Classic is larger and heavier than the Galaxy Watch6, it has the same battery capacity, so you need to charge it daily.
Most smartwatches need charging every night, but the TicWatch Pro 5 can last several days longer even with heavy use, and it offers impressive performance thanks to the latest wearable processor.
The Mobvoi TicWatch Pro 5 has a compact and comfortable design, as well as a unique display technology that lets you use it for the better part of a week before recharging. Activating the watch’s Essential Mode can even help it run for weeks. However, the TicWatch Pro 5 uses an older version of Wear OS, its phone app is clunky, and Amazon Alexa is your only voice-assistant option.
The Galaxy Watch6 brings the latest Wear OS software to your wrist, offering speedy performance and ample app support, plus a sleek and comfortable design.
The Galaxy Watch6 Classic has everything that makes the Galaxy Watch6 great, plus a more durable stainless steel frame and a rotating bezel for faster navigation. However, it’s pricier and heavier.
Most smartwatches need charging every night, but the TicWatch Pro 5 can last several days longer even with heavy use, and it offers impressive performance thanks to the latest wearable processor.
Ryan Whitwam has been wearing and writing about smartwatches since the first Android-powered wearables debuted more than a decade ago. He has tested dozens of smartwatches in the intervening years, along with hundreds of smartphones, tablets, and other devices. He has covered these categories for multiple sites, including Wirecutter, Android Police, Android Authority, PCWorld, and more.
Just because you have a smartphone doesn’t mean you need a smartwatch. Though many smartwatches have separate mobile-data connectivity, a smartwatch is still most useful as an accessory for your phone. It allows you to check messages, dismiss notifications, and possibly even reply to them without ever touching your phone.
Smartwatches are also useful fitness trackers. The sensors in today's best smartwatches do much more than simply count steps. Most track your heart rate, automatically log workouts, monitor blood oxygen, and can even test heart rhythm (ECG)—your phone can’t do that. Some offer fall detection and can alert close contacts if you’re in an emergency. However, while smartwatches are steadily gaining fitness features, serious athletes may want to look first at running watches, which offer more advanced exercise metrics.
Smartwatches can be a convenient portal to the apps and services you already use on your phone. Apps such as Spotify and Google Maps are available in the Google Play Store for Wear OS wearables, but anything that takes more than a few taps is likely to be instantly frustrating on such a small screen. If you have to reach for your phone, the watch isn't doing its job. Voice interfaces such as Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa can help you get things done without opening an app or even looking at your watch, but only if you’re willing to go to the trouble of setting them up and connecting your various accounts and devices.
The earliest Android smartwatches, which predated the Apple Watch, were clunky, unattractive devices that looked more like wrist computers than fashion accessories. But Android watches have become sleeker and more attractive over the years, and today you can wear one in most settings without standing out. Most of the watches we test for this guide are still on the large side, with cases between 40 mm and 50 mm in diameter; people with smaller wrists have fewer options. Some smartwatches, like those in Samsung’s Galaxy Watch lineup, come in more than one size, but the smaller watches usually suffer from shorter battery life. It’s a trade-off, and one that you should be prepared to make—most smartwatches need to be on their charger every night.
For people who prefer the Apple ecosystem, the Apple Watch is the best option, and we have everything you need to know about Apple’s wearable in our Apple Watch guide.
Here's what we look for when testing a smartwatch with Android phones.
Though we don’t limit ourselves to testing watches that run Android (Wear OS), most of the smartwatches for Android phones worth considering right now do run Google’s software. Samsung used to make watches with its custom Tizen OS, but its latest watches run on Wear OS.
The Galaxy Watch6 brings the latest Wear OS software to your wrist, offering speedy performance and ample app support, plus a sleek and comfortable design.
The Samsung Galaxy Watch6 is the best smartwatch for your Android phone, whether it’s a Samsung phone or not. The Galaxy Watch6 runs Google’s latest version of Wear OS with Samsung’s familiar One UI interface. The software is fast, and the interface is well organized, which makes managing notifications a breeze. The watch has a sharp, bright OLED screen and health-tracking sensors, too. It comes in 40 mm and 44 mm sizes, with two color options and a plethora of strap choices—if you don’t like Samsung’s straps, the watch uses a standard connector, so you can bring your own. The battery life on the smaller Galaxy Watch6 is on the shorter side, so the 44 mm version is a better option if it fits your wrist.
It runs the latest, Android-based Wear OS 4 software. Samsung overlays the software with its One UI interface, which will be familiar to anyone who has used the company’s smartphones. The alterations make it much easier to wrangle long lists of messages and notifications, and you get access to all the apps and watch faces in the Google Play Store. Lifting the watch to wake it up, swiping through the info tiles, and even issuing voice commands are all lag-free thanks to the new Exynos W930 processor. And unlike most wearable makers, Samsung promises to keep its smartwatches updated for four years—through 2027 in the case of the Galaxy Watch6.
It comes in two sizes, but larger is better. The 40 mm version is more comfortable for smaller wrists, but the 44 mm watch isn’t too large or heavy, and it has a noticeably bigger battery (425 mAh versus 300 mAh). In our testing, the 44 mm watch lasted comfortably through the day, allowing us to put our phone and watch on the charger at bedtime.
It has an impressive list of health features. The Galaxy Watch6 offers basics such as heart-rate and sleep tracking, but it can also check your blood-oxygen level, measure your skin temperature, and send a notification if it detects an irregular heart rhythm via the integrated ECG. With the Samsung Health app, you can track your workouts; the watch is smart enough to detect and automatically log more than a dozen types of exercise. We found that this feature worked more reliably on the Galaxy Watch6 than on Mobvoi’s and Google’s watches.
Its design isn’t flashy, which is a good thing. The Galaxy Watch6’s flat sides and smooth lines are understated, and unlike some watches, it has no prominent dials or buttons. It comes in black or gold, and currently you have 22 band options to choose from when you buy directly from Samsung. The included bands are comfortable and high-quality, and the quick-release button makes swapping them a snap. You don’t have to buy additional bands from Samsung, though, as the Galaxy Watch6 has standard 20 mm lugs, so any properly sized watch band will fit. That makes it easy to style the watch however you want.
It’s more durable than competing watches. Samsung’s custom Armor Aluminum alloy is harder than the aluminum used on most devices, and the screen has a sapphire-glass cover. That material is much more resistant to scratching than the Gorilla Glass on the Google Pixel Watch or the Mobvoi TicWatch 5 Pro. It’s also water and dust resistant.
The Galaxy Watch6 works with all Android phones, but it works better with Samsung devices. If you don’t have a Samsung phone, setup is more frustrating, as you have to install several Samsung apps to access all the features, whereas Samsung phones already have the necessary apps installed. You also miss out on the watch’s ECG-sensor functions, which work only with Samsung phones.
Bixby is the default voice assistant, and Samsung doesn’t make it easy to change. The Galaxy Watch6 supports Google Assistant, but the option to switch doesn’t appear in the interface until you install the Google Assistant app from the Google Play Store on your watch. The process is unintuitive, but you’ll probably want to make the effort, because Bixby is by far the worst voice assistant we’ve tried on wearables.
It’s not much different from the Galaxy Watch5. Anyone who bought last year’s Samsung smartwatch doesn’t need to worry about an upgrade yet. The Galaxy Watch6 is slightly faster, and its screen has a narrower bezel, but it otherwise offers the same experience. The Galaxy Watch5 still has three years of software support ahead of it.
The Galaxy Watch6 Classic has everything that makes the Galaxy Watch6 great, plus a more durable stainless steel frame and a rotating bezel for faster navigation. However, it’s pricier and heavier.
The Samsung Galaxy Watch6 Classic has a lot in common with the regular Galaxy Watch6, although it may not look like it at first. It has a more traditional watch design with a raised bezel around the screen; the bezel rotates, giving you a quick way to navigate the interface. The Galaxy Watch6 Classic is also made with a stainless steel chassis, which is stronger than the aluminum casing of the Galaxy Watch6. But it has the same battery, processor, and sensors, so paying its higher, $400 starting price makes sense only if you need the navigation wheel and the stronger frame.
It’s more durable but also bigger and heavier. The Galaxy Watch6 Classic comes in two sizes: 43 mm and 47 mm. The larger version is one of the biggest smartwatches you can buy—even large mechanical watches are a few millimeters narrower. The large and small Galaxy Watch6 Classic versions weigh more than twice as much as the corresponding Galaxy Watch6 models, but the Classic design’s steel frame will hold up better if you’re planning to wear your watch for a few years.
The rotating bezel is back. Samsung dropped the rotating bezel from its smartwatch lineup in 2022, but it brought the feature back with the Galaxy Watch6 Classic. This clicky scroll wheel lets you zip through tiles and long lists of notifications, which is much easier than swiping on the tiny screen over and over to get through them. The raised ridge also helps to protect your watch’s display from bumps.
It offers no internal upgrades over the basic Galaxy Watch6. Unlike in past years, you don’t get any spec improvements in Samsung’s upgraded smartwatch model, as the Galaxy Watch6 Classic has the same processor, storage, RAM, battery capacity, and even display size as the regular Galaxy Watch6. The upgrade is all about the materials, the size, and the navigation ring. Despite its larger case, however, the Galaxy Watch6 Classic has the same 20 mm band size and standard lugs, so you can bring your own bands.
It’s less comfortable to wear while you’re working out. The Classic offers the same, full array of health sensors for heart rate, temperature, step counting, blood-oxygen measurements, and ECG as in the base-model Galaxy Watch6, but you might not use them as much with the Classic because of this watch’s size. It offers sleep tracking, too, but it’s awfully large and clunky, and not as comfortable to wear overnight.
Most smartwatches need charging every night, but the TicWatch Pro 5 can last several days longer even with heavy use, and it offers impressive performance thanks to the latest wearable processor.
Smartwatches from Apple, Samsung, and Google last a full day on a charge. Try to eke out a second day, however, and you’ll have a dead watch by lunch (unless you splurge on the expensive Apple Watch Ultra). The Mobvoi TicWatch Pro 5 has a dual-layer display that looks fantastic and offers multiple power-saving options you won’t find on other wearables. The TicWatch Pro 5 lasts most of a week without a recharge, and it has a low-power mode that maintains basic functionality for multiple weeks. It doesn’t come with the latest version of Wear OS, and Mobvoi’s phone app could use some work, but this model still represents a big step up from Mobvoi’s older TicWatches.
It has two round displays in one. A monochrome LCD screen sits atop a full-color OLED like that of other smartwatches, but instead of using the OLED for always-on display mode, the TicWatch Pro 5 displays the time and basic stats on the block-style digital LCD. You can choose from multiple colors for the backlight, which turns on when you raise your wrist. To activate the OLED, you can tap the screen, press a button, or simply look at the watch after receiving a notification. The LCD screen is perfectly readable outside, but the OLED display isn’t as bright as the one on the Samsung Galaxy Watch6 and Galaxy Watch6 Classic.
It can run for weeks on a charge. If you’ll be away from power, you can turn on Essential Mode, which disables the OLED and most of the smart features. In Essential Mode, the TicWatch Pro 5 can still tell you the time, track steps, show your heart rate, monitor your sleep, and display a compass. The watch also flips over to Essential Mode automatically when you’re sleeping or when you simply leave the watch sitting someplace, which ensures that you’ll never wake up to a dead wearable. Your health data syncs to the phone when you deactivate Essential Mode.
It has the fastest wearable chip. The Snapdragon W5+ Gen 1 is the most powerful processor you can find in a smartwatch, and the TicWatch Pro 5 uses it to great effect. Everything on this watch is lightning fast, and the Snapdragon chip is tuned to operate in low-power mode with the dual-layer display, which makes switching between low-power mode and full functionality quick. Leaving Essential Mode takes a couple of seconds, though.
It runs Wear OS, but not the same version you get on Samsung or Google watches. Google has been slow to add Wear OS support for the latest Snapdragon wearable chips, focusing instead on the Samsung chips inside the Google Pixel Watch and the Samsung Galaxy Watch6. The TicWatch Pro 5 comes with Wear OS 3, but you’re not missing out on any must-have features, and Mobvoi will update the watch to Wear OS 4 down the road. This watch has no interface skin like One UI on Samsung’s watches—it’s stock Wear OS with some preloaded apps. The TicWatch Pro 5 has access to the apps and watch faces in the Google Play Store but no support for Google Assistant (again, this is all on Google). Instead, you get Amazon Alexa support.
It doesn’t feel as high-end as Samsung’s watches. Past versions of this watch were larger and heavier—the TicWatch Pro 5 is relatively understated and much more comfortable. However, it doesn’t have Samsung’s harder custom aluminum, and the bottom is plastic. The included silicone band looks and feels cheaper than Samsung’s stock options, but like the Galaxy Watch6, the TicWatch Pro 5 has standard watch lugs (24 mm), so you can swap in whatever band you want. The band has a latch to disconnect from the watch body, but it’s not as easy to work with as Samsung’s quick-release button.
It provides basic health tracking. This watch can monitor steps, heart rate, sleep, and blood oxygen. More advanced features such as ECG, fall detection, and emergency calling are not supported. The Mobvoi Health app, which connects the watch to your phone, is also more confusing and buggy than Samsung Health or Google’s Fitbit app.
Google just announced its $349 Pixel Watch 2 smartwatch, which appears to be an incremental update.
The original Pixel Watch, which was released last fall, was good, and the second-gen model has some hardware and software improvements. The Pixel Watch 2 swaps out the previous version’s recycled stainless steel design for a more lightweight recycled aluminum case. Inside, the new watch gets a new Qualcomm SW5100 processor and a slightly larger battery, which could potentially fix the poor battery life we experienced with the original model. The Pixel Watch 2 also supports slightly faster charging, which promises to charge from dead to 100% in 75 minutes. Google also added new hardware to enable health features like more accurate heart rate data, and a continuous electrodermal activity sensor to measure skin temperature. That will enable a feature that promises to measure stress levels.
The Pixel Watch 2 will gain dedicated Gmail and Google Calendar watch apps, as well as a new Safety Check with Emergency Sharing feature, which lets your loved ones know your whereabouts when you’re away from home. The Pixel Watch 2 goes on sale on October 12 with preorders available now. On its face, it looks very similar to the original watch, but we’ll put it to the test soon to see if its improvements are worth the upgrade.
We previously recommended Google’s Pixel Watch, and it’s still a very good wearable. If you have one and like it, you don’t need to pick up a new smartwatch yet. However, you shouldn’t buy one now, as Google’s second-generation Pixel Watch will debut alongside the company’s new phones on October 4. Google is still asking the full $350 for the first-gen Pixel Watch, a price that was tough to justify in 2022 and is even more so now. A year-old device is not worth buying at full price when its successor is right around the corner.
Fossil is one of the few companies that have been committed to Android on wearables since the beginning, but it has been slow to update its smartwatches’ software and features in recent years. The 2021 Fossil Gen 6 received tweaks in 2022 and was rebranded as the Fossil Gen 6 Wellness Edition. It runs on the same outdated Snapdragon 4100+ chip, however, and Fossil’s version of Wear OS 3 has numerous bugs. Like the TicWatch Pro 5, this model is limited to Amazon Alexa voice support. Unlike the TicWatch Pro 5, it does not offer good battery life.
This article was edited by Caitlin McGarry and Arthur Gies.
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Smart Watch Health Risks Wirecutter is the product recommendation service from The New York Times. Our journalists combine independent research with (occasionally) over-the-top testing so you can make quick and confident buying decisions. Whether it’s finding great products or discovering helpful advice, we’ll help you get it right (the first time).