GPS Running & Multisport Tested

October 2026: After testing sports watches on workouts and adventures throughout the summer, our testers named a Garmin as the best sports watch again, this time the new fenix 9 Pro that comes with solar charging and a full titanium build, plus inReach connectivity. We were also impressed with the new heart rate tracking and readiness software on the Apple Watch Ultra 4, which we named Best for Weekend Warriors. Amazfit still makes the best value for your money with the Cheetah 2 Ultra, the Suunto Run 2 delivers a lot in a small form factor, and we loved the accuracy of the Coros Pace 4 Pro. New this year is the Reckon, a hunting-focused watch from a Montana-based company called Bridger.

Today’s best sports watches are a lot like cars. There are so many high-quality models, choosing one really comes down to price range and feature preferences. For athletic watches, key features include battery life, screen brightness, size, activity tracking, satellite connectivity, durability, weight, analytics, mapping, and more. To help you sift through the options, we assembled a group of nitpicky watch nerds who scrutinized every detail of the best sports watches during more than 14,000 miles of testing. Whether you want running watches for road and trail or a multisport GPS smartwatch that also handles hiking, skiing, and swimming, the picks below cover every budget.

Best Sports Watches: At a Glance

The Garmin fenix 8 Pro won Best Sports Watch in our last update because it had inReach satellite connectivity plus a stout multi-day battery, on top of industry-leading workout tracking and analysis. Its upgrade, the 9 Pro, takes over that top spot because it has those same features plus solar battery charging and a nearly indestructible titanium case.

For comparison, the battery on the 8 Pro lasts up to 27 days with normal use and provides up to 78 hours of GPS tracking. Using solar, the 9 Pro provides up to 57 days of normal use and up to 211 hours when using GPS. Those kinds of numbers create a unique kind of confidence for backcountry users who don’t want to worry about the battery on weeklong trips, even while constantly tracking metrics, sending satellite messages, and reserving enough juice to send an SOS if needed.

Garmin says the watch needs three hours per-day outside in bright midday sunlight to achieve the full solar staying power. Not many people will take their watch off and let it charge for three hours per day, but we found that even 30 minutes to an hour in the sun provided a battery bump that kept the watch going for a multi-day adventure with a comfortable buffer.

The fenix 8 Pro had a titanium bezel and backing, but a polymer case—and it still stood up to all kinds of abuse over the full year we wore it. Given that durability, the full titanium case on the 9 Pro almost seems like overkill, but the all-metal build will help the watch last for years even if it’s regularly dunked, bashed, smashed, or run over.

Like the 8 Pro, the 9 Pro has tons of intuitive workout trackers with deep metrics, valuable training-readiness and health-monitoring analytics, a bright, ultra-useful LED flashlight, and easy-to-use mapping. Users need to subscribe to a Garmin inReach plan to send and receive messages over LTE and satellite, or to trigger an SOS, but plan prices have gone down, now starting at $7.99/month.

The only downside is that, with the titanium case, the watch is much shinier than previous versions and shouts “I’m wearing a big sports watch.” We hope Garmin launches a black titanium version soon, but despite the attention-grabbing case, we’re happy to use the watch every day thanks to its class-leading features.

Best Mid-Priced Sports Watch

Coros Pace 4 Pro

Weight: 1.8 oz without strap
Face Diameter: 37 mm

Pros and Cons
+ Superior battery life
+ Beautiful screen
+ Smart heart rate monitoring
– Music interface is primitive

We’re calling this the Goldilocks watch of the year because it balances a solid set of features, including a very healthy battery, new titanium bezel, and big, sharp screen, with a price tag under $500. This is a go-to watch for serious athletes who want dependability but don’t want to break the bank.

Our lead tester said the Pace 4 Pro’s heart rate accuracy stood out, allowing her to monitor the intensity of her running workouts with confidence, and even assess how many intervals she should perform. As a big swimmer, she also appreciated that, while some watches struggle to accurately measure strokes, the Pace 4 Pro was perfect.

The new 1.47-inch (37mm) screen is just as bright and beautiful as the Apple Watch Ultra 4’s screen, which made it easy for us to read workout metrics even in the noon-day sun. All that brightness pulls some juice, but we still got 45 hours of highly accurate GPS tracking even with the screen always on, and 60 hours with the screen set to wake when you raise your wrist.

We do, however, wish that Coros would get its music act together. The only way to get music on the Pace 4 Pro is to connect it to your computer and download MP3s. Garmin, in comparison, pairs with Spotify to enable much more efficient downloads.

The new titanium bezel didn’t add bulk to this svelte watch that is noticeably lighter than many of the other watches we tested, and felt great on our wrists. The thin 11.8 mm height kept the watch from snagging on shirts or backpack straps—a problem we hate with thicker watch builds.

Best Value for Price

Amazfit Cheetah 2 Ultra

Weight: 1.83 oz without strap
Face Diameter: 44.8 mm

Pros and Cons
+ Indestructible
+ LED flashlight
+ Sleek build
– Auto detection too sensitive

Cheetah is a cheesy name for a watch, but we can see the resemblance. Like the animal, this watch is ultra sleek and built for going fast. There are no unnecessary buttons or do-dads, and it’s easy to customize preferences so you can head out the door and immediately start adventuring.

The Cheetah gets our best value tag because it also has high-end features like a full titanium case, LED flashlight, and high-resolution screen. The titanium case made the watch feel feathery on our lead tester’s wrist, and the LED flashlight is bright enough to help you get down a trail at dusk or find the bathroom in the middle of the night—all of the Outside testers are big fans of this as opposed to a white screen flashlight. The 1.5-inch AMOLED screen delivered workout metrics as well as or better than any other watch in the test.

Our lead tester, who often does four to five different activities in one day, said the watch accurately tracked everything she threw at it and, when paired with the app, smartly analyzed her workout stats and recovery metrics to deliver a useful readiness score similar to what Garmin and Apple provide.

Designed primarily as a running watch, our tester found that the Cheetah did a great job estimating lactate threshold, which helped her realize she was hitting her threshold too often and ultimately overtraining.

The only problem we found was that auto workout detection was too sensitive. After just a few steps in her house, the watch would automatically start tracking a walk workout and had to be shut off because she wasn’t actually working out.

It’s not often we comment on looks, but we have to mention that the Cheetah stood out as the most attractive of the bunch. Its sleek profile made it feel like a high-end timepiece instead of a fitness tracker, and we were happy to wear it to work or out to dinner. We didn’t love the nylon band, but it’s easy to replace.

Best Sports Watch for Multi-Sport Athletes

Garmin Enduro 3

​​Weight: 2.2 oz with elastic nylon strap
Face Diameter: 51 mm

Pros and Cons
+ Big and light
+ Phenomenal battery life
+ Feature rich
+ Strap is the most comfortable we’ve tried
– Pricey

The Garmin fenix Pro 9 ousted the Enduro 3 for the Best Sports Watch Overall spot in this update, but the Enduro 3 is still our favorite workout watch for a number of reasons. Controversially, maybe, we love the non-AMOLED screen. We have nothing against the bright colors offered by this technology, but the Enduro screen has a much lower power draw, giving Enduro 3 a mind-boggling battery life.

More specifically, the Enduro 3 allows for up to 36 days of smartwatch use (where you’re just using the watch for notifications and other non-workout features) and up to 120 hours of GPS use. Throw in some solar charging, and the watch will keep ticking for a reported 90 days of general smartwatch use and a staggering 320 hours (13+ days) of GPS tracking. One tester said he easily went over a month between charges (longer during the abundant summer sun) with 24/7 daily use and about an hour of activity tracking per day.

Inside the software, the Enduro 3 will track nearly every sport or exercise imaginable—as diverse as wakesurfing and rugby. It also comes with plenty of space for downloaded maps, and provides turn-by-turn directions so backcountry skiers or trail runners will never get lost. That memory also has space for downloading several hundred songs, which have helped me stay motivated on long, grueling road runs. Plus, the elastic nylon strap is the most comfortable we’ve ever used on a sports wrist watch; not once did testers get a rash, and they raved that the adjustability created the perfect fit.

The Enduro 3 only weighs .9 ounces less than the fenix Pro 8, but damn if we didn’t notice that it was the lightest 51-millimeter watch we’ve ever worn. This barely-there feel made a big difference, even if just mentally, when covering a lot of miles.

All top-end Garmin watches now come with an ultra-bright, LED flashlight on the bezel. Having it instantly on hand, its brightness, and the ease of directing the beam were as helpful when climbing out of my tent to pee at night as they were when I had to navigate a dark section of trail without a headlamp.

Garmin’s software interface is not as intuitive and convenient as Apple’s—and likely never will be—but it’s way better than what we’ve seen from other smart watch competitors. Tester Jonathan Beverly found the mobile app’s daily dashboard (which tracks both fitness progress and training readiness) to be intuitive, accurate, and valuable. “Whenever I ignored its recommendations to rest, I’d pay for it on subsequent days,” he said.

Best Sports Watch for Runners

Suunto Run 2

Weight: 1.2 ounces without strap
Face Diameter: 46 mm

Pros and Cons
+ Feathery
+ Affordable
+ Plenty of battery
– App/phone integration still needs work

You know a runner is serious when they show up to the group run with the simplest gear possible. Brooks shoes, a shirt they got from the local race, and oftentimes a watch like the Run 2, which is designed to do its work efficiently, not be a show piece.

At just 1.2 ounces and 11.7 millimeters thick, the Run 2 is the lightest and smallest watch we tested, and it disappeared on our wrists as soon as we started moving. But thanks to a 1.32-inch (46mm) display and bright screen, all our stats came through loud and clear even if we were working hard and our heart rate was close to maxed out.

Our lead tester said that new hardware made the heart-rate tracking ultra-accurate and helped her dial in her interval training by accurately tracking surges. She said the recovery measurements were also accurately calculated, making them a trusted, useful tool for daily workout planning.

Music still has to be downloaded by connecting the watch to your computer, but we were glad to see the Run 2 get offline maps that helped with route tracking when we were exploring new trails. Suunto says the battery will last up to 10 days in normal use and provide 24 hours of dual-band GPS tracking. Even with lots of training we only had to charge the watch once a week and would trust the battery to easily get us through a 50- or even 100-mile race.

Room for improvement: Our tester said the watch and phone app sometimes refused to sync so she had to make the app forget the watch and re-pair it in order to upload data. Also, the included band was fine, but we suggest upgrading to the athletic loop textile strap because it’s more comfortable and easier to adjust.

Because the watch is so thin and light, it fit particularly well on smaller wrists. But it also did fine on bigger wrists and didn’t look disproportionately small.

Best for Weekend Warriors

Apple Watch Ultra 4

Weight: 2.2 oz without strap
Face Diameter: 49 mm

Pros and Cons
+ Class-leading heart rate measurements
+ New Readiness score
+ Better battery
– Won’t get you through 100 miles
– Lousy flashlight

Apple redesigned the hardware on the Ultra 4 and Apple Watch 12 to make them the most accurate heart rate wearables (read: non-chest strap devices) on the market. Apple’s claim of “most accurate” is backed up by a study the company conducted against a host of competing wrist- or arm-based wearables. The new accuracy not only helps us monitor workout intensity with increased confidence, it also allows the watch to deliver two new health metrics: Heart Rate Variability (HRV) and a Readiness score.

Heart Rate Variability (HRV) tracks the slight changes in beat-to-beat timing of your pulse. A higher HRV indicates better health, good recovery, and overall fitness, while a lower HRV signals physical or mental stress, overtraining, or sickness. Readiness is a 1-10 score delivered by the watch each morning that analyzes vitals, activity, sleep data, heart rate, and HRV to tell you how prepared you are for the day. Other brands, most notably Garmin, have provided similar readiness scores for a long time, but Apple’s 1-10 rating and easy-to-interpret readiness language stood out to our tester for its simplicity.

Because Apple prioritizes features like notification delivery, music, and AI as well as the pleasure and functionality of a big beautiful screen, the battery life on the Ultra 4 doesn’t compare to what you can get on a Garmin, Suunto, Coros, or Amazfit. But we saw improvement in this year’s models’ battery life, particularly in the Ultra 4, which led us to choose it over the Apple Watch 12. You can now get up to 50 hours of normal use or 18 hours of full-power workout tracking. A feature called Max Extended Workout will let you track outdoor runs, walks, and hikes for up to 45 hours by only taking GPS readings, and taking those less often.

Paired with new rapid charging that adds 18 hours of battery time in 15 minutes, our tester felt like the Ultra 4 was the first Apple Watch where the battery wasn’t a liability. With just an hour or so of charging each morning, he could track exercise as much as he wanted during the day and track sleep all night, enabling accurate readiness scores.

Best for Hunters

Bridger Reckon

Weight: TK
Face Height: 49.8 mm

Pros and Cons
+ Best-in-class mapping
+ onX integration
+ LED flashlight
– Software is still being tweaked

Hats off to Bridger for having the courage to launch a new sports watch in 2026, going up against brands as dominant as Garmin and Apple. The new company’s first watch, the Reckon, immediately found a spot on our list because it does one thing better than all the other watches we tested: mapping. Aimed specifically at hunters, the Reckon has a huge, nearly two-inch-tall rectangular AMOLED screen design to display and navigate high-quality, easy-to-read offline topo maps with buttery-smooth scrolling.

Founder Cody Rich told us the rectangular design was intentional because it’s much easier to follow a map on a rectangular screen than on a round one. Our testing confirmed this.

Because most hunters live and die by onX, the best mapping app on the market, Bridger made it easy to port onX waypoints onto the watch. Hunters will still use the onX map on their phones, but the watch lets them check their location quickly and easily. And, since the watch battery lasts up to 20 days, it’s the perfect backup. If your phone dies two hours from the pin where your truck is parked, for example, that pin will be on the watch and you can navigate your way home safely.

The Reckon also has plenty of fitness tracking options so you can use it for daily workouts. The built-in LED flashlight is as bright as what you get on other high-end watches. We found the watch easy to use and mostly bug-free. The $1,100 price tag is a lot, but the mapping feature will be worth that price for people who really love to explore off-grid locations.

How to Choose a Sports Watch

When buying a sports watch you need to decide who you really are. That sounds like some kind of spiritual question you’d ponder at a retreat, but it’s absolutely the best way to sort out what you need. Can you admit to yourself that you’re a weekend warrior because you have a job and family? Or are you totally in and going to the top as an athlete? Maybe you disappear into the backcountry for a week whenever you get the chance.

It’s necessary to categorize yourself because this will help you pick the sport watch that meets your goals. If your workouts are squeezed into lunch-hour work breaks, you don’t need a athletic watch that lasts for weeks on end without charging. If you’re dedicated to really improving in your chosen sport, a higher-end watch with complex training options can be a real aid in achieving your goal. If you dabble in a variety of sports, you’ll need a sports wrist watch with a robust workout menu. And if you’re an adventurer who regularly returns from trips with torn apparel and broken equipment, you need to prioritize a bullet-proof build.

Next, make sure you play with the sport watch you think you want—at a local retailer, if possible, or borrow one from a friend—before making a purchase. Spend time pressing buttons, and see how much effort it takes to find features and customize the watch to your preferences. All the top-end sports watches have menus that are fairly well organized, but each one is different. Little tweaks in how a watch allows you to access a workout or track data can be big motivators—or frustrations—when you’re using the thing all day every day. Note: The menus used across a specific watch brand’s line tend to be similar, so even if you don’t find the exact model you want at your local retailer, you can still get a sense of how a brand organizes its software by playing with a different sports wrist watch.

FAQs

How Much Should I Expect to Spend on a Sports Watch?

For $400 to $600 you can get a great sports watch with a long-lasting battery that’s built from high-quality materials and accurately tracks all the workouts you can imagine. The only reason to spend more is if you want specialized features like a larger screen, extra-powerful battery, or satellite communication capabilities.

How Long Should a Sports Watch Battery Charge Last?

Most watches we reviewed this year have a battery that can power at least 10 days with normal use. That’s convenient because you can get through a full week’s worth of notifications and workouts and not have to worry about charging. These watches also provide somewhere between 24 to 48 hours of GPS use (if not more) so the average person can run a 100-mile race and not worry. Apple is the exception, with a battery that lasts just two days. We forgive them because the Ultra 4 is so good for daily notifications, music, and communication, and the power-hungry screen is big and bright.

Is an LED Flashlight on My Watch Actually That Useful?

We think an LED flashlight is a useful upgrade because it provides significantly more light than flashlights that are just whited-out watch screens. We regularly use the LED light to navigate darkening trails in the evening, find the bathroom in the middle of the night, and locate things buried in dark places like the closet or the shed.

What’s the Best Watch Face Size for Athletes?

Runners tend to prefer smaller watches that disappear on their wrists and we agree that a smaller watch is best for putting in a lot of miles. The Apple Watch Ultra 4 and Bridger Reckon both have extra large watch faces because they specialize in delivering information and need a lot of real estate. A watch like the Garmin fenix Pro 9 comes in several sizes so you can buy the one that fits your wrist.

How We Test Sports Watches

• Number of Testers: 11
• Number of Products Tested: 39
• Number of Miles: 14,000+