Toss in a stylish and comfortable design and you’ve got the best smartwatch for fitness. Strava is one of the best fitness apps for outdoor adventurers, cyclists, runners, and hikers. With its leaderboards, maps, and more, it’s one of the most popular workout apps in the world. The Apple Watch companion lets you quickly start recording your workouts, with at-a-glance data on your splits, time, heart rate, and madmuscles app review more. Use your Apple Watch to track your movement, journey, and energy expenditure as you run, then upload your efforts for the world to see.
Best Apps for Outdoor Activities
Your Apple Watch works seamlessly with Welltory to display regularly updated values for Wellness, Battery, and Pressure. This gives you a quick glance at your health status whenever you need it. For those interested in scientific validation, AutoSleep is the only Apple Watch sleep app with built-in actigraphy export for sleep studies. When you’re grocery shopping, simply scan product barcodes with your iPhone or Apple Watch. Yuka immediately analyzes the ingredients and provides easy-to-understand ratings.
The free app will let you create and track swim workouts (instead of just tracking how many lengths you’ve swum). If you’re actually trying to train rather than just get some exercise in, this makes a big difference. The classes are designed around home workouts so you won’t have to worry about investing in a lot of equipment. However, Beachbody does pair with the MYX bike to provide a more intense and immersive home cycling class. Having the app on your Apple Watch allows you to access your workouts more conveniently and helps hold you accountable. Whichever full-featured smartwatch model you choose, springing for the latest version will likely mean you’re getting the brightest display, fastest processor, and newest health tech.
- And after each individual shot, we could see specific details about my swing.
- If you’re new to running, the dynamic goal-setting experience is worth a little bit of frustration.
- Before you go to bed, the Sleep Cycle app asks you to set a 30-minute window in which it can wake you up.
- GMTA’s flexible approach and prompt replies to client enquiries are among their business’s assets.
- If you’re looking for a more vigorous workout, Apple Watch apps have you covered there too.
- Subscriptions allow access to unlimited routines, histories, measurements, and a premium account that syncs all data to the cloud.
Easy to track changes when you train to failure
MyFitnessPal is great for those looking to combine calorie tracking and workout plans into one app. In addition to logging your food, this app allows you to track your training sessions, including weights, sets, and reps. Furthermore, MyFitnessPal offers self-guided workouts. Some smartwatch models offer additional health and workout training features for a monthly fee. While Apple, Garmin and Samsung offer free wellness and fitness metrics and tools — for now — Google paywalls advanced training features and insights via Fitbit Premium ($10/month or $80/year). The newest Apple Watch is thinner than its predecessor making it one of Apple’s comfiest wearables yet.
Sustainability features
To truly leave your phone at home, you’ll want to opt for a smartwatch model with cellular LTE connectivity, which comes with a monthly fee. The tradeoff is that you can make calls, stream music and videos, pay for items, use maps and more, all without your handset nearby. Samsung’s smartwatches are some of the most versatile for Android owners, as they’ll work with most Android phones, although certain features are locked exclusively to the latest Samsung smartphones.
Streaks Workout ($
There are calming sleep noises and bedtime stories, as well insights giving an idea of how certain weather or behaviors (like drinking coffee) could be affecting your sleep. Still, the devs must be doing something right; the app has 4.9 out of 5 stars and supports the same platforms as Mindllama. What does Breathe Sleep Focus Mindllama bring to the table that the others do not? Those who love the cartoon appeal of language learning apps like Duolingo will feel right at home with a Llama teaching you how to breathe — or any one of its various animals.
It’s particularly geared toward workout analysis and recovery, and, like Whoop, it offers exertion scores based on your workouts. It’s not as holistic as Whoop, which includes non-tracked workouts and general activity in the score. The only downside is that the insights are spread across multiple apps. However, https://gymstogo.com/5-components-of-health-related-fitness-why-is-it-important/ if you’re looking to consolidate your devices or cancel your Whoop subscription and switch to Apple, this guide is your key to a well-rounded experience. One of the best Apple Watch apps in store — Citymapper — makes the use of public transportation easier by giving you hands-free use, real-time updates on bus and train timetables and routes.
Do smartwatches require a monthly subscription?
With the Apple Watch, it tracks not only the standard onboard biometrics but also variables like stroke rate and strokes per lap. You can also track an entirely unguided workout, whether it takes place in the pool or, for the more adventurous, open water. Wrist-based heart rate tracking, like you get with an Apple Watch, isn’t as accurate as chest straps, and it gets worse the harder you’re training. If you want your Apple Watch to be able to log your heart rate when you’re deep in the pain cave, an external heart rate monitor will go a long way. Strong allows you to log your full workouts, including all your exercises, reps, and sets, without your phone.
Free typing apps that will help your fingers move faster
Things 3 is an award-winning productivity manager that can help you build to-do lists, manage projects, and organize your life into areas such as work, family, and finance. It’s a beloved iPhone app with a ton of features and an Apple Watch app that gives you at-a-glance views of your Today list, letting you check off things as you go and dictate new ones on the fly. I’ve been using the Apple Watch for 10 years, covering and using great apps for fitness, and productivity, and even passing the time with a quick game on the wrist. If you spend a lot of time in hotel gyms—or in your home-office-that’s-also-sometimes-a-workout-space—you know what a struggle it can be to stick to a routine when you have limited access to facilities.
Best Apple Watch apps: Entertainment
Connect to your AirPods or a Bluetooth speaker, and you can work your way through a range of different activities. Even being able to leave your iPhone in another room whilst you use Headspace feels like it washes away some of your stress. The app provides general air quality information such as an air quality index (AQI) score and the current temperature and humidity. For allergy sufferers, however, the key information is the pollen data. You get scores for some of the most common allergy-inducing pollens, and an overall allergy risk score.
Best fitness app for running beginners
Healthcare professionals increasingly use this data to support better treatment decisions. You can share relevant metrics with your doctor to enable more informed discussions about your health management strategies. Your watch becomes a gentle health coach, nudging you toward better habits without disrupting your schedule. The consistent feedback creates sustainable behavior changes over time.
You’ll find everything from strength training and HIIT to outdoor running and yoga. Renowned for its cyclist and runner-friendly interface, Strava is more than a fitness app — it’s a social network for endurance athletes. Compete in local or global challenges, track your performance on mapped routes, and analyze your training session down to the last beat. When on your wristwatch, Strava becomes a checkpoint for your ambitions; it’s the herald that signals when you’ve conquered a new peak or achieved a personal record.
The 9 best fitness apps of 2025
It can feel oddly antisocial to whip out your phone to launch the Shazam app to identify a song on the radio in a public place like a coffee shop or restaurant. There are the odd niggles when downloading podcasts or songs, but the experience is still far superior to what we’ve tested on Garmin and others. However, you can also now sync Apple Workout sessions with Strava and use the superior app, making it somewhat redundant. Check out our guide on syncing your Apple Watch with Strava for all the details—and our verdict on whether the paid-for Strava tier is worth it.
Plus, a familiar user interface, reliable wellness tech and loads of useful apps all add up to the Apple Watch 11 being the best smartwatch for iPhone users in 2025. Lipski, our product analysts in the Tech Lab, our pros in the Health and Wellness Lab, and I have each used a handful of fitness trackers and smart watches. I tried four fitness trackers at home (one of which I used for more than a year), and I am currently evaluating a fifth one. Lipski has tested all of the most recent Apple Watch series, including the Series 10 and 11. You can design and monitor personalized exercises according https://wakeuptaylor.boardhost.com/viewtopic.php?id=3451 to your heart rate zone, time or distance intervals, or both.