Best Fitbit 2024: Track steps, stress, sleep and more

Fitbit offers a range of fitness trackers and smartwatches that are stylish, durable, and packed with useful features ― but which model takes the crown of the best Fitbit out there?  

The answer to this question may depend on your budget, personal preferences, and specific Health and fitness goals. For example, a beginner may appreciate the low cost and simplicity of the Fitbit Inspire 3, but a tech-savvy athlete may be disappointed by its limited functionality. 

To help you pick the right model, we have tried and tested some of the best Fitbits on the market. We've looked into their price, design, battery life, features and accuracy, as well as ease of use and comfort. Read on for our ultimate roundup of the best Fitbit fitness trackers and smartwatches. 

But if you you are not a Fitbit fan, check out our general guide to the best fitness trackers. Whether you are considering one of the best Garmin watches to keep track of your outdoor adventures, or one of the best running watches to rack up the miles with, we have a fitness tracker for you. 

The best Fitbit overall

The Fitbit Charge 5 is our all-time favorite ― for many reasons. 

To start with, this fitness tracker is exceptionally well designed for its price point. The Charge 5 looks like a modern version of the classic Fitbit design. Its display is bright, its strap is comfortable and it feels like the Swiss Army Knife of fitness trackers when it comes to features, including an ECG and EDA for measuring atrial fibrillation and stress respectively.

All of that is in a slimline design that offers a gorgeous display, although the column-based user interface may take some adjustment for new users.

Still, if you’re looking to track a run, a hike, a bike ride or even a swim, this is the best Fitbit overall because it comes with built-in GPS. We wore the Fitbit Sense 5 and an Apple Watch for our workouts, and found that both clocked in at roughly the same distance, bar a few metres one way or the other. This is pretty great considering the Fitbit is much smaller and lighter than Apple’s offering. It also includes six months of Fitbit Premium.

The Fitbit Charge 5 is also easy to set up and use, comes with 5ATM water resistance rating, and its battery can last more than a week on a single charge. For such a small, discreet-looking device, the Charge 5 punches way above its weight. 

Cherry on top? The Fitbit Charge 5 is often heavily discounted on Amazon and other major online retailers. 

• Read our full Fitbit Charge 5 review

Best budget Fitbit

Looking for your first fitness tracker? You may have found it with the Fitbit Inspire 3. This small, unobtrusive tracker is ideal for monitoring heart rate, steps and calories burned to get you started on your fitness journey. It is also very affordable — the retail price of Inspire 3 stands at $99.95, and it often gets discounted to approximately $60.  

The display is small but the Inspire 3 has seen an upgrade from its predecessor and now boasts a full color OLED glass screen. The 10-day battery life means you won’t need to charge it often either — and that includes excellent sleep tracking.

Mind you, if you’re looking to shave time off your running route you’ll want to take your phone with you since there’s no GPS tracking. We went on a 50 minute run with the Inspire 3 and Garmin Fenix 7 Sapphire Solar and their total distance readings were unnervingly close — within 100 meters of each other. However, our second workout brought out an issue we had with the Inspire 3: It didn't connect to the phone's GPS, leaving it to use its motion sensors to judge distance and pace. This time the stats were way off the Garmin. What you do get, though, is a year of Fitbit Premium.

• Read our full Fitbit Inspire 3 review

Best Apple Watch alternative

If you're trying to draw comparisons between Fitbit vs Apple watch, this is the model which comes closes to Apple's premium wearable.

It has a big, beautiful display, a slimline design and battery life that’ll make an Apple Watch weep – up to six days of use (and sleep tracking) on a single charge. However, we did find that the "always on" display mode drains the battery life significantly.

It comes with six months of Fitbit Premium to help users embrace activity and rest in equal measure, and offers options like a stress tracker that measures your stress levels through the sweat of your palm. Heart rate readings during exercise were quite flaky for our tester, though.

There’s no third-party App Store alternative as you’d find with the similarly priced Apple Watch, which is a shame – especially since for the price we’d have liked to have used the onboard storage for a Spotify playlist or a podcast so we can leave our phone at home. 

Still, it's a solid watch for those who want everyday exercise tracking and don't mind missing the sort of smart apps on offer in an Apple Watch. 

• Read our full Fitbit Sense 2 review

Best all-rounder

In many ways, the Fitbit Versa 4 is a cut-down version of the Fitbit Sense 2, with an almost identical design but losing the Sense 2's EDA stress sensor and the ECG heart health tech. However, for everyday fitness tracking, we think the Versa 4 is every bit as good. If you do want to track stress, you can do so through other data-collection methods, such as a brief questionnaire or by analyzing heart rate.

The Versa 4 has an excellent display, comfortable feel, and impressive battery life, however there’s no music playback. The watch also has 40 activity modes — a very conspicuous increase over the 20 of the Versa 3.

When it comes to performance, maximum and average heart rate figures were closely aligned with those of the Garmin Fenix 7 and Apple Watch Series 8 when we wore two wearables on a single workout. GPS caused a few headaches, however, as we found the Versa 4 took some time to triangulate. As with any wearable, this speeds up if you consistently track runs or walk in the same location. Daily step counts were much more reasonable though. Plus, six months of Fitbit Premium are included.

• Read our full Versa 4 review here

The smallest Fitbit

The Fitbit Luxe is a more premium counterpart to the Inspire and is possibly the most fashion-conscious tracker in the range.

It’s small and thin, so much so it’s easy to forget it’s on your wrist. It offers six days of battery and while the smaller display will take some getting used to, it’s bright enough to be legible in sunlight.

You’ll also find the excellent sleep, heart rate, distance, and calorie tracking you’ve come to expect from Fitbit, though it’s wrapped up in a slender, more jewelry-like design.

There’s no GPS, so you’ll want to take a phone with you if you’re planning to track workout routes while out. Step tracking is accurate enough, however. We compared it to an Apple Watch Series 7, which costs more than twice the Fitbit Luxe’s price tag, and the two offered comparable results. You get six months of Fitbit Premium, too.

• Read our full Fitbit Luxe review

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Nathan Kennedy

Nathan Kennedy is a fully qualified personal trainer, online coach and fitness expert. He has been part of the fitness industry since 2005, going to the gym and competing in bodybuilding shows. Kennedy has been a personal trainer for 6 years. He is also a representative for sports nutrition brand Bio-Synergy