Apple’s impact on technology is impossible to overstate; from home computing to wearables, Apple has trailblazed multiple paths, ushering in a new era for consumer tech with the perfection of the touchscreen.
The Apple Watch was another industry-disrupting innovation, and since the first timepiece, many have embraced the migration of essential smartphone elements from the pocket to the wrist.
Apple for thee, not for me
Apple is a closed system when it comes to tech. While third-party peripherals can work with iOS, Apple products do not like to play ball with other systems. Apple is incentivised to keep its users within that closed ecosystem, and hence the Apple Watch will only ever be a useful peripheral for the iPhone user.
While Apple has a cult following, there’s still a huge portion of the market that isn’t as enamoured – not to mention the population of iPhone users who may be fed up with the lack of choice.
Luckily, for this majority, a whole world of smartwatches beckons – but where on Earth do you start?
What to look for in an Apple Watch alternative
Practically every smartwatch has the same set of health-tracking features, including heart rate monitoring, step-counting and sleep tracking.
Some go further and can give EKG data, pulse ox data and more. If you’re a gym-obsessive, you may want an Apple Watch alternative with fitness at the fore – one which has dedicated fitness-tracking software for your sports, and a good GPS for route-tracking if you’re a runner.
On the other hand, if all you want is a day-to-day smartphone companion, look for something geared towards smartphone connectivity and control. A device with a microphone and speaker for voice-assistant compatibility and easy call-receiving functionality.
Best Apple Watch alternatives to buy at a glance
- Best overall: Samsung Galaxy Watch7 (44mm) - £289, John Lewis
- Best for an entry-level smartwatch: Xiaomi Redmi Watch 4 - £75.99, Amazon
- Best for runners: Garmin Forerunner 965 - £539, Amazon
- Best for endurance and adventure racing: Suunto Race Sports Watch - £445, Amazon
- Best for casual fitness: Garmin Venu 3 - £449, Currys
- Best for power and playfulness: Google Pixel Watch 3 (41mm) - £349, Argos
- Best for daily driving: Garmin Vivoactive 5 - £229, Argos
- Best for Fitbit fanatics: Fitbit Versa 4 - £179, Currys
- Best for chronograph adjacency: Huawei Watch GT 4 - £199, Currys
- Best for break-the-bank ostentation: TAG Heuer Connected Calibre E4 42mm - £1050, Goldsmiths
Whatever you’re after, there’ll be something for you in this edit of Apple Watch alternatives.
Whether hardcore sports smarts or executive functionality, shop the selection below.
Samsung Galaxy Watch7 (44mm)
Best: overall
Samsung’s Galaxy Watch7 is perhaps the leading Apple Watch alternative on the market at the moment, even with Google’s own smartwatch entrant threatening the crown. It’s a marvel of a wrist-worn device, with incredible hardware and even more impressive software.
This is the 44mm edition, with a larger face for better tactility – speaking of which, this watch is a tactile masterpiece, with great-feeling haptic feedback as you scroll and dial around the interface. Sweeping around the edge of the face lets you quickly and satisfyingly scroll through app tiles (for fitness, sleep tracking, and countless more functions); it’s snappy to use, too, with minimal thinking involved when switching tasks. A huge 32GB internal hard drive makes storing things like maps and music a cinch, and its AMOLED screen beats out most for resolution.
The Galaxy Watch7 is one of those devices that threatens to make your life better in every way; it’s a slick, smooth analogue for analogue watches that does it all, and a phenomenal Android-ecosystem alternative to the Apple Watch. And we haven’t even scratched the surface.
Buy now £289.00, John Lewis
Xiaomi Redmi Watch 4
Best for: an entry level smartwatch
Xiaomi’s Redmi Watch 4 is the cheapest smartwatch on our lineup, something you might not have figured out from its specification alone. This Apple watch alternative has a well-apportioned AMOLED screen, 20 days maximum battery life, all the trappings of a good fitness-tracking smartwatch and all the Bluetooth connectivity you could need in a daily wearer.
The Redmi Watch 4 is great to wear and to hold, with a digital-encoder crown for handily accessing its various apps. Built-in comms equipment makes receiving calls by wrist a breeze, and its more than 150 different sports modes mean it’ll never be caught short by an impromptu skiing session. This is a hugely impressive entry-level device, and a great starting point for those looking at their first Apple Watch alternative.
Buy now £75.99, Amazon
Garmin Forerunner 965
Best for: runners
The smartwatch industry attracts contributors from all manner of industries, thanks to the plurality of technologies the form has the potential to hold. With GPS-tracking being a crucial asset for fitness-minded smartwatch wearers, of course satnav heavyweights Garmin have gotten involved.
This, the Garmin Forerunner 965, is their premium smartwatch offering, and much more than an Apple watch alternative. This is crammed full of smart tech, from a byootiful AMOLED display to a powerful multi-band GPS system. With an impressive 23-day battery life (that shortens to a still-impressive 8.5 hours when in ‘everything-on’ mode), offline storage for your tunes and endlessly-helpful training data, this truly is a runner’s delight.
Buy now £539.00, Amazon
Suunto Race Sports Watch
Best for: endurance and adventure racing
Suunto’s Race sports watch is a suitably powerful Apple Watch alternative, steeped in the engineering smarts of the brand’s long history of developing precision equipment. This particular wrist adornment is squished full of sportsfolk-friendly features and has tracking modes for 95 different sports (as well as the option to curate your own modes).
One of the Suunto Race’s niftier attributes is the functional crown on its right-hand side, which conceals a sensitive digital encoder – enabling tactile navigation through the various apps and features in the Race’s menu. A massive, and bright, AMOLED screen makes it easy to see everything – particularly maps, which can be downloaded and viewed offline to make following your running/cycling/speed walking route that little bit easier.
This is a powerful and precise sports-training tool, especially for its 40-hour battery life and comprehensive vital sign coverage. It doesn’t look half-bad, either.
Buy now £445.00, Amazon
Garmin Venu 3
Best for: casual fitness
The Venu 3 is a distinctly less hardcore Apple watch alternative than others on the brand’s roster. Geared a little more towards daily life and casual fitness than the Forerunner series, the Venu 3 is a great smartwatch for keeping on top of yourself as well as your inbox.
The Venu 3 is a smart looking thing, with a swanky case body and an easy-to-read AMOLED screen. It’s got everything you could want for day-to-day dealings, with WiFi, Bluetooth and NFC connections for receiving notifications, controlling your devices and paying contactless-ly for bits and bobs; it’s also got all the fitness stuff you’d hope for in something that can track your steps, heart rate, pulse ox and more. Plus, it’s got that industry-topping Garmin GPS capability, so you can track your routes with precision and ease.
Buy now £449.00, Currys
Google Pixel Watch 3 (41mm)
Best for: power and playfulness
It’s hard to talk about Apple Watch alternatives without looking at another heavyweight from Silicon Valley. Google’s Pixel Watches have enjoyed rightful acclaim since their first appearance on the market, and the Pixel Watch 3 has been the most anticipated of them all.
The first thing that strikes us about the Pixel Watch 3 (at least, against the majority of other smartwatches on the market) is its blobject-i-ness. For the young enough, blobjects are devices with no sharp edges, a throwback to post-Millennium tech optimism and bedrooms stacked with see-through blow-up furniture. Immediately, the Pixel Watch 3 is a charmer.
Lucky that it’s also a powerful little thing, with everything you’d expect from a Google device – easy access to Google Maps and the option to use them offline; NFC and Bluetooth connectivity; 32GB storage; and a shedload of health monitoring equipment to boot. This is a lifestyle watch that does it all!
Buy now £349.00, Argos
Garmin Vivoactive 5
Best for: daily driving
The Garmin Vivoactive 5 is a hugely accessible fitness-friendly Apple Watch alternative, that trades a slightly less-extensive battery life for a friendly price point. This smartwatch is a bubbly joy to behold, and ergonomically pleasing to operate both because of and despite its smaller 30.4mm OLED face.
As a fitness-coaching companion, the Vivoactive 5 has all the basics – from essentials like heart rate monitoring and pedometry to Garmin’s trademark GPS precision, and includes several useful tracker apps for various fitness undertakings. For day-to-day life, there’s phone connectivity for reading emails and sending texts, as well as NFC for contactless shenanigans. Ultimately, it’s a well-built daily driver that doesn’t cost the earth.
Buy now £229.00, Argos
Fitbit Versa 4
Best for: Fitbit fanatics
Fitbit arguably catalysed today’s ubiquity of wrist-worn health tech well before Apple’s first forays into the space. It stands to reason that Fitbit hasn’t rested on its health-tracking laurels – the Versa 4 being the latest of Fitbit’s touchscreen smartwatches.
The Fitbit Versa 4 is a lightweight fitness companion-cum-smartwatch, that’s Google-app-supportive and which also offers Amazon Alexa utility – a nifty voice-activated utility that succeeds where many other Apple Watch alternatives fall short. You get a day’s battery from just 10-ish minutes of charging, and it’ll do most everything you want a smartwatch to do day-to-day – with added Fitbit fitness friendliness. If you’re already a Fitbit fanatic, fink about festooning yourself with this.
Buy now £179.00, Currys
Huawei Watch GT 4
Best for: chronograph adjacency
The Huawei Watch GT 4 is, in so many words, huge. A massive 46mm AMOLED display sits within a chunky and robust case, with a dynamically-designed bezel and an artfully placed digital controller crown. This is the closest to a chronograph-style watch that you’ll find in the smartwatch market under £500 and boasts all the features you’d hope to find in such a practical item.
The Watch GT 4’s robustness is echoed by its IP68 water and dust resistance, enough to keep it happy in wet conditions for a while. Its versatility is notable too, with hardcore fitness-based and GPS tracking and voice assistance from Huawei’s Celia and a cavalcade of life-assisting standard features.
Add in an impressive 14-day battery life and you’ve got a winner – at least, for converting analogue watch-wearers to the digital fold.
Buy now £199.00, Currys
TAG Heuer Connected Calibre E4 42mm
Best for: break-the-bank ostentation
Here, an unconventional entrant from a brand best-known for its high-value analogue timepieces. TAG Heuer has its smartwatch in the Connected Calibre E4; this Apple Watch alternative is a practical smartwatch that’s also a different kind of ‘smart’.
The Connected Calibre E4 pitches itself sportsward, with numerous official TAG Heuer apps pre-installed for different sporting endeavours. It also purports to be a flashy new method for displaying your NFTs; if you are the kind of person who finds value in owning the link to a jpeg, you can now display those in your ownership on your wrist, in much the same way that the glitterati wear their watches as status symbols. Quelle bourgeoisie!
Expect typical TAG Heuer attention to detail in this well-manufactured, otherwise-understated piece of Apple-watch-alternative luxury.
If you’ve four figures to spare in the first place, this is probably what you’re looking for.
Buy now £1050.00, Goldsmiths
Verdict
It’s hard to overlook Xiaomi’s Redmi Watch 4. It has a great deal of the Apple Watch SE’s core features - and at a fraction of the price.
However, our testing found the Samsung Galaxy Watch7 to be the most capable of the bunch, for its practical day-to-day utility, the smart AI-assisted features and its agreeable price.
