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Smartwatches let you see who’s calling, read a text, or review any of the other dozens of kinds of notifications you might get every day without pulling out your phone. The Apple Watch has set the standard for what a smartwatch can do, but it only works with Apple’s iPhones. Android users have a plethora of other wearable options, but most of them have been too heavy, slow, or poorly supported, or some combination of those, to recommend. The past few years have seen improvements, though. After researching and testing dozens of Android-compatible smartwatches, we recommend the Samsung Galaxy Watch5. It’s one of the fastest and most helpful wearables we’ve tested, with robust support for voice commands, mobile payments, and fitness tracking.
Samsung’s Galaxy Watch5, available in 40 mm and 44 mm sizes, is the best smartwatch for Android phones because it has Google’s latest Wear OS 3 software paired with the best of Google and Samsung features. It uses Samsung’s One UI interface, but you also get access to all the apps and watch faces in the Google Play Store. The Galaxy Watch5 offers impressive health tracking with automatic workout detection, ECG, SpO2, and stress analysis. However, the Watch5 lacks the rotating bezel of the older Watch4 Classic, and it comes in just one, minimalist style that may or may not match your aesthetic preferences. You can always swap out the bands to customize the Watch5’s look, but that’s it.
Samsung’s Galaxy Watch5 Pro has the same specs and features as the Watch5, but it comes in a larger 45 mm size. It has a durable stainless steel case (the Watch5 is aluminum), but this makes it a bit heavy for a smartwatch. If you don’t mind the added bulk, the Pro will track your exercise, sleep, and vital stats just as well as the Watch5, and its larger battery can last for up to three or four days—much longer than the Watch5 or Pixel Watch.
Samsung Galaxy Watch 4
The Pixel Watch offers a stylish design and refined, fast software, but the price is higher than the more capable Galaxy Watch5.
Android smartwatches have existed for almost a decade, but Google never made its own—until now. The Google Pixel Watch, Google’s first wearable, has a stainless steel case like Samsung’s more expensive Galaxy Watch5 Pro, but it’s more compact and attractive. It’s the best-feeling smartwatch that isn’t made by Apple. But its smaller size means it has a smaller battery, and as a result it will die hours before either of Samsung’s watches. The Pixel Watch runs Wear OS like Samsung’s watches, but the interface is simpler and easier to use for quick interactions and managing notifications. It connects to the Fitbit app for health tracking, but the Pixel Watch doesn’t have as many sensors or features as the Watch5 and Watch5 Pro. We also don’t love Google’s proprietary band connector, because Google’s accessory support hasn’t been good in the past.
Wirecutter writers have been researching, testing, and writing about smartwatches since early 2013, just after the first Pebble watches shipped to Kickstarter backers. Ryan Whitwam has worn smartwatches nearly daily for the past decade and has written about them for a number of publications, including Android Police and ExtremeTech. He also maintains Wirecutter’s guides to the best Android phones, the best budget Android phones, and the best Android tablets.
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If you have a smartphone, you probably don’t need a smartwatch, but the added convenience can often justify the cost (and the hassle of charging yet another device). For most people, smartwatches are most useful at relaying notifications to your wrist so you can check them without having to pull out and wake up your phone. That’s helpful for people who can’t have their phones out in a professional setting but still want to be alerted to important calls or to see messages at a glance. A smartwatch can still be a distraction, but it’s easier to quickly see whether whatever is buzzing you is important. Most smartwatches also allow acknowledging, dismissing, or replying to notifications from the watch, and also provide the means to control smart devices throughout your home.
The majority of smartwatches count steps, encourage activity, and track workouts like hiking, running, cycling, and even swimming (and if you have health insurance, you may get a discount or incentives to use one). But serious athletes may want to look at running watches and fitness trackers that focus even more heavily on exercise and fitness and offer more advanced metrics.
Android smartwatches have become more stylish over the years. Most models could be confused with traditional watches from a distance, and often have round displays and are available in many styles. However, smartwatches are still thicker and wider than most traditional watches, which can make them feel awkward on the wrist. Some models come in more than one size, but smaller smartwatches often have less battery capacity than larger versions and are still usually much larger than traditional “women’s” watches.
Tarot Apple Watch Scrunchie Band Halloween Mystical Tarot
Some smartwatches offer plenty of apps, either preinstalled on the watch or available for download in an app store. These apps can be as simple as a timer or a stopwatch, or they can control your smart-home devices, switch up your music, or provide turn-by-turn directions for walking or driving. Some apps we’ve tested have provided a good experience, including some fitness apps and those that track things like water or food intake, but the selection of good apps for Android watches is still limited.
For people who prefer the Apple ecosystem, the Apple Watch is the best option, and we go into detail about that in our guide to the Apple Watch.
Since the early days of smartwatches, we’ve sought to test as many relevant models as we could and to recommend the smartwatches that are the most convenient and useful.
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We test watches that run Wear OS, Tizen, and other operating systems by wearing them while they’re connected to Android phones. Whenever possible, we ask other people to try out our potential picks to get an idea of how various wearers react to a watch’s size, style, interface, and features.
The Samsung Galaxy Watch5 is the best smartwatch to pair with an Android phone—whether Samsung made that phone or not. The Watch5 runs the Android-based Wear OS, which means you get access to the Play Store and Google services, along with Samsung’s familiar One UI interface. The Galaxy Watch5 has ample fitness sensors, as well as automatic workout detection and tracking capabilities. However, the setup process can be clunky on non-Samsung phones, and battery life on the smaller 40 mm model is barely acceptable; you should get the 44 mm unless you need a smaller, more comfortable smartwatch. If you need a smaller watch, you might consider the 41 mm Pixel Watch instead.
The Galaxy Watch5 looks like a traditional watch with a simple aluminum case that surrounds a round OLED touchscreen under scratch-resistant sapphire crystal glass. The screen looks crisp with a 450×450 resolution for the 44 mm and 396×396 for the 40 mm, and the brightness level is high enough to make it completely readable outdoors. The bezel around the screen can act as a touch scroll wheel for zipping through long lists, replacing the physical rotating bezel on older Samsung watches. The 40 mm Watch5 is priced at $250, which is $100 less than the Pixel Watch, and the 44 mm is just a little more expensive at $280. If you want LTE in addition to Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, that adds another $40 to the price.
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Nothing rattles when the Galaxy Watch5’s powerful vibration motor goes off to alert you to calls and notifications, and the buttons are tight and tactile. Vibration is not as powerful or precise as the Apple Watch or Pixel Watch, but it’s much better than Fossil’s.
The watch comes with a good quality (but boring) black silicone band when purchased from most retailers, but buying directly from Samsung will let you customize the watch with one of its other band options. The Watch5 has standard lugs protruding from the curved aluminum body. Samsung’s accessories are molded to the watch’s body to look streamlined, but if that’s not important, you have a whole world of fancy watch bands from which to choose.
Wear OS used to look the same on every watch, but Google is now allowing companies to modify it much like Android phone software. Wear OS on the Watch5 has Samsung’s One UI interface, so you’ll be right at home if you have or have had a Samsung phone recently. Even if you haven’t, you only have to learn a few navigation gestures to get started. One UI for Wear OS keeps many of the things we liked from Samsung’s Tizen-based software, such as bundled notifications like you’d see on your phone and quicker access to apps. This is useful if you get a lot of messages and want to be able to triage them on your wrist.
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Because this is the latest version of Wear OS, it includes Google features like turn-by-turn in Maps, offline downloads
