Your guide to the best fitness watches on the market right now

When fitness trackers evolved into full-blown smartwatches and fitness watches in around 2012, pickings were slim, and Fitbit, Polar and Sony were leading the charge. But fast-forward a decade, and there are now plenty of other brands in the field with incredible options, meaning whatever your training goals, you should be able to find a watch that suits.

Need long-lasting battery life? You can now buy powerful wearables that can last 14 days or more before needing a charge, such as the Garmin Enduro 2 or Huawei Watch GT 3. If you want a fitness watch that can double up as a fine-looking timepiece for a black-tie dinner, the Huawei Watch GT 3 Pro is a stunningly designed, long-lasting digital wearable with classic styling.

For runners, triathletes and fitness enthusiasts, Garmin is the first watchmaker that springs to mind, and its Venu 2 Plus and Forerunner 955 will go the distance – both when it comes to battery life and fitness features. Of course, you can’t talk about smartwatches without mentioning Apple and Samsung. iPhone owners won’t do better than an Apple Watch when it comes to smarts. The standard Apple Watch Series 8 is a mini-computer on your wrist, while the Ultra’s more hardy design and longer-lasting battery make it ideally suited to endurance events. Android phone users looking for Apple-Watch Ultra battery life and durability can look to the Galaxy Watch 5 Pro.

BEST WATCH FOR ENDURANCE SPORT

PROS: Best-in-class battery life Complete training feature set

CONS: High price will put most off Bulky styling won’t appeal to all

Garmin Enduro 2

£929.99 / garmin.com

The Garmin Enduro 2 combines long-lasting battery life with top-tier fitness watch features. Designed with endurance trainers in mind, with solar charging, this thing can keep on keeping on for over a month in standard mode, and delivers up to 150 hours of GPS battery life – incredibly good.

With Garmin’s built-in mapping taking the brand’s heritage sat nav technology and tuning it for fitness, and Garmin’s smart UI, complete with wireless payment solution and app support, the Enduro 2 is a powerful fitness watch on paper, with plenty of smarts to boot.

When you first look at the Enduro 2, its Kindle-style display tech looks novel, but it helps the watch hit best-in-class battery life. The 1.4-inch display is touchsensitive and was extremely responsive in our time with it, and we loved the UltraFit band, which is a velcro strap that’s lightweight and comfortable – offsetting the watch’s bulk nicely.

The large touchscreen isn’t like a traditional smartwatch: it doesn’t flash on and off. It’s always on, always displaying the time, but isn’t always backlit. Tap the light button on the left to activate the backlight, so you can see it in any environment.

Smarts come in the form of the Garmin Connect app, which supplements Garmin’s robust fitness experience with a healthy ecosystem of third-party apps. Music apps, such as Amazon

Music, Deezer and Spotify; training apps; meditation apps; and plenty of watch faces all come together to flesh out the smartwatch capabilities, as well as mobile payment. That said, the Enduro 2’s smarts won’t best those of the Apple Watch.

The watch’s fitness features really are the reason you’d pick up the Garmin Enduro 2. Runners will love the Trail VO2 Max feature, along with ultrarun activity and Adventure Training. Garmin’s PacePro and Grade-adjusted Pace are just the thing for long-distance athletes, and performance metrics are accessible in the watch and the Garmin Connect app.

Accurate, wristbased heart rate tracking, Pulse Ox5, sleep tracking, breathing monitoring and more also help boost the experience, but it really is the Enduro 2’s battery life that helps it stand tall as the fitness watch to beat.