Smartwatches can be a handy thing that can help you with your fitness routines and activities, or allow you to stay in touch with friends and family, without using your smartphone.
As you may guess, finding the best smartwatch under $100 isn’t as easy as some people might think. However, a bit of advice from this guide should make everything much easier.
Therefore, pay attention to the following lines and find yourself the best fit.
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Last update on 2023-09-14 // The links above are affiliate // Images from Amazon
How to Choose the Best Smartwatch under $100
Finding the best smartwatch under $100 is no rocket science. Still, it requires you to pay attention to a few details that include the following:
Battery Life
One of the most important characteristics of any mobile device is definitely its battery life. To be honest, nobody likes to charge their devices on a daily basis. For that reason, choose the smartwatch with the biggest autonomy and give yourself as much freedom as you can.
Features
Features are genuinely important and can make a huge difference between the products.
However, you should choose them in accordance with your preferences. If you are like fitness training, make sure that the desired device can offer activity tracking and sport modes. On the other hand, if you like swimming, make sure that is waterproof, and so on.
In any case, choose the smartwatch that will give you the biggest flexibility and the most for your hard-earned money.
Screen
Since you will spend a lot of time staring at your smartwatch, its resolution, and its overall quality, are of utmost importance. Therefore, make sure you don’t forget about this little detail.
Best Smartwatches under $100
Fitbit Inspire 2
A No Frills Fitness Tracker
The Fitbit Inspire, now at its second iteration, makes for one hell of a fitness tracker, and it’s arguably one of the best gadgets of its kind under $100. The Inspire 2 offers solid sporting features as well as passive health tracking, unobtrusive design, solid battery life and overall, simplicity.
Basically, if you’re shopping for a high quality and easy to use multi-sport tracker, or something to push you towards a more active lifestyle, the Inspire 2 would fit the bill.
One of the most important things about the Fitbit Inspire 2 is the heart rate monitoring feature, which allows you to keep an eye on your ticker at all times. Obviously, the gadget also offers all the standard tracking features, making for a fantastic training tool. So, this fitness tool will comprehensively monitor your training sessions, tracking your heart rate, monitoring your breathing as well as your heart rate variability, even when you sleep.
Battery life has been improved compared to the previous generation, as the device is advertised to last 10 days on a single charge; also, the Inspire 2 is water resistant to 164 feet, which means it will survive a pool dip with flying colors. The display is tiny yet legible, even in sunlight, and the touchscreen is accurate and sensitive, doing a great job with taps and swipes.
The only downside is that it’s a monochrome variety, which may seem dated for 2021 standards. Setting up the device is fairly easy after you download the app, which is available for both Apple and Android users, but you’ll have to first create a Fitbit account, provided you don’t have one already.
The user interface is simple and intuitive, with new on-screen navigation controls; everything works via swiping the screen up and down, but you can also use the 2 touch panels available on each side of the tracker. Finally, the device comes with a freebie, i.e. 1 year of Fitbit Premium included (it usually costs 10 bucks a month).
- Simple and effective
- Solid app
- Fantastic battery life
- Stylish design
- Automatic Fitness Tracking
- Tracks heart rate
- 1 Year of Fitbit Premium
- No GPS
- Monochrome display
SAMSUNG Galaxy Fit 2
A Solid Entry-Level Fitness Tracker
Samsung is the daddy of wearables nowadays, and the Galaxy Fit 2 is one of the best budget fitness trackers out there by a long shot. Not only it comes from Samsung, but it costs way less than $100, looks great, and it makes for a solid upgrade of the original Galaxy Fit.
The Galaxy Fit 2 is clearly one of the best looking affordable fitness trackers on the market, and covers all the basic tracking features you’ll ever need if you’re not a pro athlete. If you’re happy with entry level smartwatch/fitness features, the Galaxy Fit 2 will not disappoint.
To begin with, the Galaxy Fit 2 is a glorified fitness tracker that has sleep and step tracking, as well as heart rate monitoring. The design is glorious considering how cheap this gadget is, and the same goes for build quality. Samsung upgraded the display of the old generation with a cool AMOLED touchscreen, their specialty actually, and also ditched the physical button for a more streamlined design.
The Galaxy Fit 2’s coolest feature is automatic exercise tracking, but truth be told, you’d be better off doing it manually. The thing is, this fitness tracker doesn’t have GPS, hence it relies on motion sensors to track exercise, i.e. it’s not very accurate on auto mode. Daily stats cover distance covered, steps and calories burned.
The Fit 2 also comes with an optical heart rate monitor to keep a close eye on your ticker during exercise, and on top of that, you get stress monitoring. The smartwatch features include music controls, notification support, weather forecast, and a myriad of watch faces that can be synced via Samsung’s Galaxy Wearable app.
The fitness tracker is compatible with both Apple and Android smartphones by the way. Battery life is solid at 15 days, and the Fit 2 is also water-resistant, being rated at 5 ATM.
Bottom line, the Galaxy Fit 2 is a solid fitness tracker for people on a budget looking for high quality gear and basic tracking features.
- Nice design
- Solid build quality
- Long battery life
- Easy to use
- Comfy to wear
- Solid app
- No GPS
Amazfit GTS 2 Mini
Sporty Smartwatch That Offers Great Value for Money
To begin with, the Amazfit GTS 2 Mini would make for a cool gift for a lady, because the new generation got smaller and cuter than ever, while still offering amazing value for money. Priced around 100 bucks, the GTS 2 Mini offers the same core experience as the GTS 2, but sacrifices a few smart watch features in the process, in order to keep the price down.
As the name suggests, the GTS 2 Mini is a smaller version of the highly popular GTS 2, which makes for the top square smart watch in Amazfit’s fashion watch category. The smart watch has a 40 mm case, which used to be the norm back in the day for elegant time pieces, and uses a titanium alloy/plastic mélange in the manufacturing process. The 1.55’’ AMOLED display is smaller than in the GTS 2, and also saw a resolution drop, but it still looks good and it’s large enough to provide you a satisfactory experience with features like weather updates and fitness stats.
Speaking of features, the GTS 2 Mini comes with Huami’s proprietary BioTracker health sensor that works great for continuous heart rate monitoring, and not so much for tracking your heart during high intensity exercise. The same sensor enables blood oxygen measurements by the way, and you also get 70+ sport modes, heart rate, stress level monitoring, and sleep monitoring.
The GTS 2 Mini works best for 24/7 fitness tracking, but it must be said that the smart features took a hit, whereas you no longer have GPS, Bluetooth or a built-in music player. You still have basic notifications support though, and music controls, plus a nice collection of customizable watch faces.
Bottom line, if you’re looking for a well built, great looking and relatively affordable smart watch, the GTS 2 Mini punches well above its weight, due to its refined design, solid build quality, good activity tracking, strong battery life (5 days heavy usage), which make it hard to resist.
- Good range of features
- 24/7 fitness tracking
- High quality screen
- Inexpensive
- Slim design
- Well built
- Basic notification support
AGPTEK LW11 Smartwatch
Great Value with Great Functionality
If you thing Apple Watches are overprices and you’re looking to get the best bang for the buck, the AGPTEK Smartwatch has your name on it. For less than $50, you’ll end up with a stylish round-face time piece, featuring IP68 rating (water/dust proof), activity tracking, a heart rate monitor, a pedometer, sleep monitoring and iOS/Android compatibility.
For that kind of money, it doesn’t get any better, trust us on that. The touchscreen display is 1.3’’ in diameter and it’s protected by an anti-scratch coating. Furthermore, the stylish aluminum alloy frame confers it shock protection, so you can take this baby basically anywhere, anytime.
There are five dials readily available plus thirty more from within the app. Another cool thing is that you can customize your watch faces, so you’ll never get bored. In terms of smart features, the watch comes with activity tracking (calories, pedometer, distance), various sport modes, heart rate monitoring, sleep monitoring, and all sorts of well-being/care for your healthy life stuff.
You also have notifications of SMS, call, and even app messages, though the watch doesn’t support text back or answer calls. However, you get remote control of music and cameras, call rejection, sedentary reminder, weather report, stopwatch, alarm clock, brightness adjustment, find phone, power-saving mode, and tons of other functions to meet your daily needs.
Our favorite feature is automatic sleep tracking to monitor your sleep status (awakening, shallow sleep, deep sleep). Finally, battery life is pretty good, rated at 7 to 10 days, and truth be told, for fifty dollars, this watch makes for a solid alternative to the more expensive brand-name watches.
- Amazing value for money
- A plethora of features
- Looks great
- Solid build quality
- IP68 rating
- None really at this price
Virmee VT3 Lite
Solid Budget Fitness Tracker Smartwatch
Here comes another budget friendly option from a relatively unknown company. This Android compatible smartwatch is very interesting considering its price tag as in addition to tracking sleep health and heart rate, can also keep an eye on your stress levels and blood oxygen, which makes it stand out from the crowd.
The 1.3’’high res LCD display is impressive in its price range, and offers quick access at a glance to all your data, plus the watch arrives with 2 different band colors to help you customize your look.
There are also 18 exercise modes, 24/7 health tracking including blood oxygen, heart rate, stress status, and sleep stage, which make the watch the king of digital well-being. Exercise modes include workouts like fast walk, run, rope jump, swim, basketball, volleyball, soccer, cycle, climb, dance, yoga, aerobics and more.
Smart features include call and app notification, hang up call only (no reply to messages), plus you get a compass, and a stopwatch/timer.
Interestingly enough, the Virmee app can connect to the Health app and Google Fit. Battery life is rated at 7 days, and the watch comes with a magnetic charging USB cable.
Considering that the Virmee VT3 Lite retails for less than $40, it comes highly recommended.
- Amazing value for money
- Nice design
- Android/iOS compatibility
- Lots of fitness tracking features
- None really at this price
Amazfit Bip S Lite
A Toned Down Bip S
Here comes the Bip S Lite from Huami, another budget oriented smartwatch with fitness tracking capabilities from China. The Bip S Lite is basically a cheaper version of the Bip S, in such it doesn’t have a GPS sensor, skips swim tracking, and yet retains the fabulous transflective screen with amazing outdoor visibility, water-resistance up to 50 meters and a lot of comprehensive features for your average couch potato, including blood-oxygen level measurement, stress monitoring, and menstrual cycle tracker for women (makes for a cool gift for your GF).
Needless to say, the Bip S Lite is significantly cheaper than its sibling, while being identical in terms of looks and design, including build quality and materials. Speaking of which, the Bip S Lite is made entirely of plastic and is feather-light (30 grams), which makes it supremely comfortable on your wrist.
The display is a non-touch 1.28″, 176×176 pixel color transflective screen protected by 2.5 D Gorilla Glass, which makes it tougher than a coffin nail, and everything runs on Amazfit OS.
The main features worth mentioning include sleep tracking, real-time heart monitoring, step counter, sports tracking, idle alert, call and app notification alert, phone finder (!), music control, weather forecast and world clock.
Sports modes include jump rope, treadmill, outdoor running, indoor/outdoor cycling, walking, freestyle, elliptical trainer, cricket, ping pong, badminton, yoga, rowing machine, and basketball.
The Bip S Lite comes with a plethora of sensors, like PPG Bio-Tracking Optical Heart Rate Sensor, 3-axis accelerometer, 3-axis geomagnetic sensor, and features Bluetooth 5.0/BLE connectivity.
- Comfy and lightweight
- Tons of features
- Solid sport tracking
- Amazing battery life ( up to 30 days)
- 5 ATM water resistance
- Software needs polishing
Summary
Who wouldn’t want a great, yet affordable smartwatch these days? Well, now you have the best of the best in front of you when it comes to these tiny gizmos under $100. Make a pick and get going!
Dear, Please suggest me a smart watch under 100 USD, with always on display, IP68 and call attendance /rejection feature.
It’s a tough call for a smartwatch under $100. You may consider something like https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08BF8DFC7/ or https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08BZ6F4H6/. You can’t answer the phone calls but you can hang up them. The first model can be set to be always on (from what I understand) but it drains the battery quickly.