We may earn a commission from links on this page.

Rest is a crucial part of strength training. Depending on the exercise and your goals, you may find yourself resting 30 seconds, or one minute, or three to five minutes. So what do you actually do during that time? Let’s talk about your options, both in terms of training effectiveness and gym etiquette.

You can literally do nothing between sets

As awkward as it may feel at first, this is the best option for most people, most of the time. Actually rest. Don’t stretch, don’t work a different muscle; just allow your body to recover. 

Some gyms will have stools, benches, or folding chairs near the platforms where people are lifting heavy (and thus need the longest rests). I’m mostly thinking of powerlifting and weightlifting gyms, but I’ve been to big-box gyms like Crunch that provide seating as well. And impromptu seats are common in many other places—who hasn’t sat on a plyo box or some other convenient surface?

You can do these minor chores between sets

There are plenty of little actions that you take at the gym (or should take) that are not explicitly exercise. The rest between sets is the perfect time to do these little maintenance tasks. Things like: 

• Change the weights to what you’ll need for your next set.

• Write down what you just lifted in your notebook or lifting app. 

• If you took a video, watch it to give yourself feedback for the next set.

• Trim that video so that you (or your coach, or your friends) don’t have to watch all 20 seconds of you fumbling with the camera and adjusting your belt before you actually lift.

• Have a drink of water and, if needed, a snack.

• Clean up after yourself! Rack any plates and dumbbells you aren’t using.

Start warming up for your next exercise

During the last few sets of an exercise, it’s time to start thinking about what you’ll do next. This could mean grabbing the equipment you’ll need or changing your shoes, but it's also an excellent opportunity to start warming up—especially if it’s an exercise that can benefit from a little gentle mobility work.

Let’s say you have a few sets of squats left, but after that you’ll do some overhead press. You probably want to warm up your shoulders with some mobility work so that you won’t be so tight when you hit that nice stable overhead position. Or maybe it’s the other way around, and you’re pressing, but next you’ll do squats. It’s a great time to start doing some ankle mobility work so that you’ll be able to comfortably hit a deeper squat. 

Walk (or dance) between sets

When the weights are routine, I sit and chill. When they get heavy, I need to pace. (At weightlifting competitions, I not only stake out a warmup platform, I also pick out a walking path that I can pace between attempts.) 

Or if you’re more of a cheerful, high-energy person, maybe you just want to dance. You’ll see this most often from people who lift at home, or at a chummy small gym where an impromptu dance party might occur between friends. Alone in my garage gym, I’ve been known to put on some good karaoke songs and sing along, with or without dancing.

The idea is not to get some extra cardio or get your steps in, but just to stay busy and loose and have fun—or, if you’re nervous about a big lift, to keep your head. At a busy commercial gym, make sure not to walk too far away, and consider leaving your water bottle or gym bag on your equipment to let people know it’s still taken.

Read or scroll on your phone while you're waiting

I promise that it is actually OK to look at your phone between sets. You’re probably doing it anyway. There’s your lifting app, your videos that you took to check your squat form—and, yes, your usual texting and social media stuff. 

The risk you’re taking here is that you’ll get distracted and rest too long. Too much rest, say more than 10 minutes, can make you feel both mentally and physically unprepared. Long rests can also lengthen your workout. Sticking to the minimum necessary rest times will get you in and out of the gym a lot faster. 

From others’ perspective, a person who sits on a machine for 10 minutes scrolling is committing an unforgivable sin in gym etiquette. Don’t take longer rests than you need, if you’re holding up equipment. (That said, if you’re polite to others who approach, and you accept requests to “work in” (take turns) while you scroll, you’re morally in the clear.) 

For your own sake, set a timer when you do anything that might distract you between sets. I like how I can program rest times into a Garmin watch workout, but Hevy also has a timer, and you can always use the regular timer function on your watch or phone. 

Another tip: Be mindful about what you’re doing on your phone. Now is not the time to get into an argument on the internet, or check your work email and see what will be waiting for you back at the office. It is a good time to play little games on your phone, or read an ebook, or put together your next great workout playlist.

You can superset (sparingly) 

I’m leaving this option for last because I don’t want it to be your go-to. Just because you can do one exercise while resting for another, doesn’t mean you should. 

Why not? If you really want to give squats your full energy, for example, don’t do pull-ups on the squat rack in between. You’ll fatigue yourself more than you realize, and you won’t do your best on those squats. 

But supersets can be great if you’re willing to sacrifice a little weight for a lot of time. They’re best for exercises where the exact weight doesn’t matter—you can pair bicep curls with tricep extensions, or pull-ups with dips (so long as you’re a person who can bang out multiple reps of each with ease). 

To do a superset, you just do a set of the first exercise, then a set of the second, then rest a short time (if needed at all), and repeat. I have a list of the best superset pairs here—usually you’ll want to do opposing muscles, like a push exercise with a pull exercise.

We may earn a commission from links on this page.

Sadly, we did not manage to abolish Daylight Saving time changes during that brief, hopeful moment a few years back, so in just a few weeks we will all be going ahead with our usual ritual: Wake up early, forgetting that the time changed during the night, then get confused when the time on our phone doesn’t match the one on the microwave. Here’s how to be a little more prepared.

Know exactly when daylight saving time ends

Daylight saving time is what we call the time in summer, and yes, it’s daylight “saving” time, singular. This time actually gets its own time zone abbreviation: EDT (Eastern Daylight Time) instead of EST (Eastern Standard Time) on the east coast, with corresponding CDT, MDT, and PDT across the country. So in November we change from daylight time to standard time.

Specifically, daylight saving time ends at 2 a.m. on Sunday, Nov. 1, 2026. That’s when the clocks “fall back.” (In the spring, they "spring forward"—get it?) If you’re changing your clocks manually, 2 a.m. becomes 1 a.m. This means that if you’re used to waking up at 7 a.m., you’ll open your eyes after sleeping the usual amount of time to find that it is now 6 a.m.

Decide how to spend your “extra” hour

The fall time change is a great moment for me, a night owl. When I was younger I would be thrilled to stay up an extra hour and still not feel excessively tired in the morning. These days, I’m more likely to use the time change as an assist to my morning routine. I’ll be up at 6:30 (for example) instead of 7:30, and I can get in an early workout or do some journaling.

If you’re more of a morning person, this may be a bit less pleasant. You’re going to fall asleep watching TV in the evening—earlier than you usually do, anyway. Maybe you should try to stay up a bit, to get a head start on shifting your routine an hour later.

Start adjusting pets' and kids' schedules now

For the creatures in your house who are blissfully ignorant of the concept of standardized time, routines are about to get a little weird. Most importantly: They’ll get hungry (and everything else) an hour earlier than usual.

If you think ahead, you can start moving breakfast time later, before the time change arrives. Instead of feeding your dog at 7, start feeding him at 7:15 now, and you’ll be less likely to get a cold nose in the face at 6 a.m. (Since we have about two weeks from this writing, you can shift the time to 7:30 after a few days, and then 7:45. You get the idea.)

Same goes for kids: Expect them to wake up an hour before the clock says they should, and to get tired (and overtired) an hour earlier than they normally would. A gradual shifting of routines will help here as well, and you may want to explain the situation ahead of time to kids who are old enough to understand. And if you expect your own tummy to be grumbling on cue? Consider a gradual change in mealtimes for yourself, as well, or at least have a snack on hand in case you need it.

Expect a colder, darker evening

When daylight saving time ends, we stop “saving” that extra hour of sunlight in the evening. Your evening workout or your evening commute will be darker and colder than before. On the bright side, we’ll see light earlier in the morning, which can be a good excuse to take a morning walk you might not otherwise take. (Morning light and morning exercise both help to set your body clock and may put you in a better mood for the day to come.)

If you head outside for exercise in the evening, check out our guide to how to layer for an outdoor run, depending on the temperature. You may also want to bring a flashlight or wear a headlamp. Here's the one I use.

PETZL TIKKINA Headlamp - Compact, Easy-to-Use 300 Lumen Headlamp, Designed for Hiking, Climbing, Running, and Camping - Grey

$48.49 at Amazon

Shop Now

Shop Now

$48.49 at Amazon

Revisit your bedtime routine

It may be easier to wake up after the time change, but the flip side is that it may be harder to go to bed. This is a good time to take a look at your bedtime routine, or even to create a bedtime routine if you haven’t really had one.

I have a guide to good sleep hygiene here, but one of the most important tips is to give yourself a wind-down time in the evening—30 minutes minimum—where the lights are dim and you aren’t staring at a screen. It’s a good time to take a bath, read a book, or do something else you find relaxing. Soon you’ll be locked in to your new schedule—at least until our next time change in the spring.

We may earn a commission from links on this page.

I look forward to the fall time change every year, because I have plans for that extra morning hour. Turning back the clock is a perfect opportunity to kick-start a morning routine, since you can get up an hour early without it feeling like you're getting up an hour early.

We are, unfortunately, still doing clock changes twice a year. But I will take advantage of that fact while I can, because the fall time change gifts us with an extra hour in the morning, even if it is cruelly ripped from our evening routines. I'm not a morning person by nature, but my day always goes better when I get my workout in early, so I'm going to take that extra morning hour and use it for a workout instead of recalibrating my body clock to wake up later. I recommend all my fellow night owls do the same.

When to wake up if you're taking advantage of the time change

I mean, you could use your extra hour to sleep in—take it if you need it. But personally, I'm going to set my alarm an hour earlier than I get up, starting on Nov. 1, the first day of standard time for 2026. An hour is enough time for a simple strength workout or for a short run and a quick shower before officially starting your day. I reserve one day a week for sleeping in, which for me is Saturday. On days I'm resting from exercise, I'll still wake up on schedule but use my morning hour for something fun or relaxing, like reading a book.

If you want to fit a full workout in and need more time than the hour gives you, this is still a good way to soften the blow. For example, you can wake up 90 minutes earlier (according to the clock) with it only feeling 30 minutes earlier than usual (according to your circadian rhythms). I've been using my extra hour a little differently each year, depending on how committed I am to those morning workouts. This year, I may split it between extra sleep and a mini workout.

How to plan for morning workouts

On the first day you wake up "early," things will be much as they always are. But now that you're becoming a morning exerciser, you'll have to come to terms with the winter darkness. It will creep in, sunrise getting a few minutes later each day, until your morning jog is, most likely, fully in the dark.

If you are running in the early mornings, definitely get yourself a light to help you see and be seen. I have a Petzl Tikkina, which I bought a few years back because Petzl has a reputation for reliability, and the Tikkina is one of their more affordable models. It's worked so well that the second winter I used it, I sprang for the rechargeable battery that fits in place of its three AAA cells. The rechargeable is designed to work well even in cold conditions, which is a nice plus for winter runs. Also consider wearing bright colors, a reflective vest, or even something like the Noxgear Tracer to give you good visibility on the side of the road. I have a neon pink jacket that comes out on cold dark mornings.

PETZL TIKKINA Headlamp - Black | Compact, Easy-to-Use 300 Lumen Light, Designed for Hiking, Climbing, Running, & Camping

$19.95 at Amazon

Shop Now

Shop Now

$19.95 at Amazon

At the gym, be aware that the rhythm of the place will change. There will be a different group of regulars, and it may be more or less busy than you're used to. But even if everything is the same, there’s something luxurious about being able to take your time, when normally you have to squeeze your last few exercises together and rush to work. Savor that extra hour.

It will soon be time, once again, for our clocks to “fall back.” Nov. 1 is the date most places in the U.S. quit daylight saving time for 2026 and go back to standard time. We're still on this clock-changing treadmill, despite legislation that was supposed to eliminate it a few years ago, and despite medical professionals warning that these clock changes are bad for our health.

For example, a study out of the Stanford School of Medicine found that switching the time back and forth every year probably contributes to increased rates of stroke and obesity. Permanent daylight saving time would be an improvement on that, and permanent standard time would be even better, health-wise. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine published a position paper a few years ago stating that scientific evidence supports the idea "that the United States should eliminate seasonal time changes in favor of permanent standard time, which aligns best with human circadian biology."

But despite all this, we’ll still have to turn the clocks ahead again in spring. So whatever happened to those bills in Congress aiming to abolish the time changes?

The most recent attempt to eliminate clock changes failed

The Sunshine Protection Act was a federal bill that would have made Daylight Saving Time permanent. If enacted, it would have taken effect on Nov. 5, 2023, the date that we would otherwise have changed the clocks. The result would be that our winter mornings would stay dark an hour longer than they currently do, but we’d get an hour more of daylight in the winter evenings.

The bill passed the Senate in March of 2022, but it wasn't taken up by the House of Representatives. In July of 2026, a similar law passed the House of Representatives, and President Trump wrote on Truth Social this month that "Republicans in the Senate have to get moving on what I call the 'No More Changing of Clocks Act.'" The Senate Majority Leader said it doesn't have the support to pass, since it would mean dark mornings for commuters and for children waiting for morning buses.

Which time would we stay with if we stopped changing the clocks?

We operate on two different times throughout the year: "standard time" and "daylight saving time." These even get their own time zones! For example, if a time is marked as "EST," that means eastern standard time, which is different from eastern daylight time.

Standard time is the one we use in winter, and daylight saving time is the one we use in summer. The bill mentioned above would have done away with standard time and kept us on daylight saving time year-round. Meanwhile, the American Academy of Sleep Medicine has taken the position that we should stay on standard time (that is, winter time) year-round, since screwing with our circadian rhythms twice a year has detrimental effects on our health and safety. If they got their way, we would fall back some year and then never spring forward again.

What about state laws?

States have their own ideas about what time it should be. Currently, states are not allowed to switch to permanent daylight saving time, but they are allowed to stay on standard time year-round if they prefer. Two states do so: Hawaii and Arizona (minus the parts of Arizona in the Navajo nation).

Nineteen states have passed laws or resolutions that would allow them to switch to permanent daylight saving time if the federal government ever allows them to do so. Those states, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, are Alabama, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana, Maine, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming. Three other states have made attempts to join the list: Similar bills made it partway through the Kentucky and Ohio legislatures but were not signed into law. California voters have authorized a law that isn’t yet officially on the books.

Until a federal law passes, those states are stuck with their current time zones. Current federal law, as passed in 1966, allows states to opt out of daylight saving time (as Hawaii and Arizona have) but does not offer a way for states to make daylight saving time permanent or to choose their own dates for changing the clocks. If you’re sick of time changes, you can always move to one of the territories that don’t observe daylight saving, which include the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.

We may earn a commission from links on this page.

The market for smart bands is getting pretty crowded. It’s hard to beat the Fitbit Air on value or the Whoop on performance analytics, and anything in between struggles to make itself stand out. But the Speediance strap caught my eye for an unusual feature it includes: a sensor that claims to measure your core body temperature during workouts.

Speediance Strap

$159.00 at Speediance

Shop Now

Shop Now

$159.00 at Speediance

Does the Speediance Strap really measure core temperature?

The only other device I’ve seen make a similar claim is the Core 2 thermal sensor, which I wore for a summer’s heat training and found it valuable and useful (though not without a few caveats). A Speediance rep told me their device works the same way as the Core 2: It has a sensor for skin temperature, and another for heat flux, which can estimate how much you’re warming up over the course of a workout. 

Core 2 requires that you pair its device to a chest strap heart rate monitor because its algorithm can only relate data from the sensors to your core temperature if it knows how your heart rate is responding. It also asks you to wear the sensor on the chest strap, so that it’s as close as possible to your actual core temperature. Speediance doesn’t have those requirements; you can get temperature estimates while wearing the device on your wrist and without any extra equipment. 

To test Speediance’s claims, I wore both devices together for several workouts and compared the heat strain each device says I was under. While the Core 2 device is geared toward heat adaptation, Speediance uses heat data mostly to tell you when you’re done warming up and when your performance may be suffering due to heat. 

How I tested the core temperature features of the Speediance band

Credit: Beth Skwarecki

The Speediance app shows your “heat load” during workouts, right on the same screen that shows your heart rate, time, and running mileage. At the beginning of a workout, you’ll see a label that says you’re insufficiently warmed up. Once your body temperature rises by about 0.5 to 1 degree Celsius (about 1 to 2 degrees Fahrenheit), you’re deemed to be in the “optimal performance” zone. A numerical strain index increases as you get warmer; above 5.0, you’re told you’re in “performance decline,” and above 7.0, you’re in “heat overload.” 

For comparison, the Core 2 sensor uses a slightly different scale, or at least has different cutoffs: Between 1.0 and 2.9, you’re increasing your heat training load, and from 3.0 to 6.9 you’re more effectively increasing that load. Above 7, you’re not recommended to train because risks of overheating are too high. 

It’s fall as I was testing the Speediance strap, and the weather was beautiful, so I wasn’t able to test this feature in any extreme temperatures. I did notice that, in a strength workout in my garage, my warmup was supposedly over before I had barely done any work. And I hit the “performance decline” level of heat load toward the end of several relatively cool runs. 

To get a better sense of how the Speediance band does at measuring temperatures, I took it out alongside the Core 2 for an hour-long trail run on an unseasonably warm day (it was in the high 70s), and compared the heat load readings at various points during the run. 

Credit: Beth Skwarecki

The numbers didn’t match up directly; the Speediance band always read several points higher than the Core 2 sensor, and seemed to show more ups and downs. But both climbed more or less together. I don’t think I’d say the Speediance band is as accurate—and in any sense, I don’t have a gold standard to compare to—but it seems like it could certainly be useful in monitoring how your performance varies with temperature in hot weather. 

How the Speediance band performs for activity and sleep

Credit: Beth Skwarecki

If you’re going to get a Speediance band for its temperature features, you’re probably also going to use it for general activity and sleep tracking. On that front, I have plenty of good news. It’s comfortable to wear, with a soft band that feels a bit nicer than Whoop’s. I often completely forgot I was wearing it. 

The app has a lot of nice little features. You get a circular visual of your day, showing when you slept versus when you exercised. My only complaint here is that the background is a generic visual that suggests you’re looking at a graph of daytime and nighttime, but it’s not lined up with the actual times of sunrise and sunset. Aligning those times with the visual would do a much better job of showing how your habits are (or aren’t) matching up with your circadian rhythms. 

The band and app measure all the usual things, and display the data well: My HRV, skin temperature, and resting heart rate are all reported as vital signs, and I can easily see how they’ve changed over the past week, month, and year. A “TRIMP” number shows up among my daily metrics, which I know refers to the same thing that other apps call cardio load. A little obscure in the naming, but a good metric to track. The app suggests a bedtime, and its sleep tracking seems relatively accurate (not counting the time it read a dentist appointment as a nap—although, to be fair, I was lying still for half an hour). 

But I’m disappointed by a few things. One annoyance is that, since Speediance is primarily a home gym company, you can’t log a strength workout without creating an exercise routine. (I ended up logging my strength sessions as “mixed cardio” instead.) If you want to share your exercise data on a graphic, you get stock images of Speediance equipment for backgrounds. 

And I was never able to properly sync my workouts to Strava. I got a message in Chinese after attempting the connection, which a translation app told me means “the binding is successfull!” and the settings in my app told me in English that Strava was connected. Still, nothing ever showed up on my Strava page. That’s a bummer, both for everyday use if you use Strava, and for me personally since I could have used Strava to download more specific data from my workouts than I can get from just viewing workouts in the Speediance app. 

Is the Speediance strap worth the money? 

At $159, I’m on the fence. The temperature features of the Speediance strap could be useful for anyone who wants to keep track of how heat affects their workouts, especially in the summer. It doesn’t track heat adaptation, so it can’t replace the Core 2 sensor, but I do appreciate that Speediance is offering something more than just another heart rate measurement. 

But the glitches (especially the lack of Strava connection) are a dealbreaker for now, and I wasn’t able to get as much information as I’d like about how well it measures heart rate. If I could overlook those, I don’t think this band is particularly worse than the Polar Loop or the Garmin Cirqa, which both cost a bit more. But I certainly can’t say it’s better than the Fitbit Air or the Whoop. Perhaps with time, this will be a better device, but at this point, I’m more inclined to watch for improvements than to recommend it as is. 

We may earn a commission from links on this page.

The Fitbit brand has long been defined by fitness trackers with tiny screens, yet it's been three years since it released a new one. Now that the Fitbit Edge has been announced (and pre-orders have opened), longtime Fitbit users are probably wondering how it compares to the last Fitbit release with a screen, the Charge 6.

The design is the first clear difference: The Edge fits in perfectly between the screenless Fitbit Air and the smooth, curved screen of the Pixel Watch. It runs on the same operating system as the Fitbit Air, which is slightly different from the OS that runs on Pixel watches. Like other Fitbits, the Edge pairs with both iPhones and Android devices. Now, let's look at what Google has added since the Charge 6—and what it took away.

Google Fitbit Edge

$179.99 at Amazon

Pre-order Here

Pre-order Here

$179.99 at Amazon

Google Fitbit Charge 6

$132.50 at Amazon

$159.95 Save $27.45

Get Deal

Get Deal

$132.50 at Amazon

$159.95 Save $27.45

SEE -1 MORE

The Fitbit Edge has a real side button

I just unboxed the Fitbit Edge that Google sent me to review, and can confirm: There is a physical button on the right side of the casing. It makes an audible click when you press it in, even when the device is turned off. The Charge 6 has a "button" that is just a haptic nub—squeeze it, and if you're lucky it might recognize your touch and buzz in response. (Sadly, I found it often didn't work.)

The Fitbit Edge has an altimeter and an allegedly better GPS chipset

The altimeter is a brand-new bit of hardware in the Fitbit Edge. You have to go back to the Charge 4 to find a Fitbit tracker with an altimeter. This is the sensor that tells you your altitude and enables a measurement of how many "floors" you have climbed throughout the day. It also allows for more accurate tracking of hills on your hikes and hilly runs.

The Charge 6 and the Edge both have GPS capabilities, allowing the device to know where you are in the world, even if you left your phone at home. (The Fitbit Air, by contrast. does not have its own GPS and has to pester your phone to find out where you are and how fast you're running.) The Charge 6's GPS has some serious flaws, the main one being that tightening the wristband too much could strain the GPS antenna, leading to comically distorted maps, as you can see from my testing. Google says the Fitbit Edge has better GPS hardware. I believe them, but mainly because it would be hard for it to be worse.

The Fitbit Edge does not have Google Pay or NFC capabilities

This is the biggest downgrade: With the Charge 6, you could set up Google Wallet and be able to tap your Fitbit to pay for things at stores. That's a convenient feature if you like to run or walk without your phone and still be able to buy a drink at a convenience store. But the Fitbit Edge dropped this capability, probably to make room for other internal components. If you loved Google Pay on your older Fitbit, you'll miss it if you upgrade to the Edge.

The Fitbit Edge will be able to play music from any app, not just Youtube Music

The Charge 6's music player is one of the most frustrating things about it. The music controls only work for Youtube Music. That's a premium service, meaning you need to pay a monthly subscription fee just to be able to control music playing on your phone, and it has to be a subscription to Youtube Music—Spotify or Apple Music users are out of luck.

Fortunately, that's been fixed in the Fitbit Edge. Google says it will be able to control whatever is playing on your phone (like pretty much every other watch in existence) rather than relying on a specific app.

Google Maps directions are unsupported on the Edge—but "coming soon"

At launch, the Fitbit Edge doesn't support Google Maps directions—but Google's spec sheets say it's "coming soon." To be fair, Google Maps directions were never particularly useful. They lived in their own little app, and only gave you turn-by-turn directions, not a map view showing where you are. In the long run, this isn't likely a difference that matters, since Google plans to bring this feature to the Edge. But if you enjoy it on your Charge 6, you should know it's not going to be available right away on the Fitbit Edge.

We may earn a commission from links on this page.

Google announced the Fitbit Edge earlier this week, making it the company's first Fitbit with a screen since the Charge 6 was released in 2023. Pre-orders are open now, and the devices are expected to start shipping on Oct. 27.

Google Fitbit Edge

$179.99 at Amazon

Pre-order Here

Pre-order Here

$179.99 at Amazon

The Fitbit Edge ($179.99) has features and a price that are right in between the Fitbit Air, which has no screen and retails for $99.99, and the Pixel Watch 5, a full-featured smartwatch that starts at $399.99.

You can pre-order the Fitbit Edge here. It comes in black with a black band, silver with a "fog" (gray) band, "champagne gold" with a salmon-pink band, and a metallic color they're calling "satin pyrite" with an olive green band. There's also a Steph Curry edition for $219.99 in gray and orange. The standard packages come with two bands, a small/medium that fits wrists 130 to 170 millimeters around, and a medium/large for wrists 170 to 210 millimeters. There are a few other bands available for an extra fee: an "active sport" band with larger holes for ventilation ($39.99), a magnetic band ($49.99), and a band with metal links ($149.99).

What's new in the Fitbit Edge

Unlike the screenless Fitbit Air, the Fitbit Edge adds its own GPS chipset, so you can track distance without bringing your phone, and an altimeter to detect elevation changes like hills. The latter also enables a "floors climbed" metric each day. The Fitbit Edge also has an ECG app, a morning report, and can control music playing on your phone no matter what app is playing it.

If you're upgrading from a Fitbit Charge 6, the Edge adds an altimeter and a morning report, and you'll be glad to see the music controls work for any music app, not just Youtube Music. The Edge is missing some features, though: With no NFC, it can't do tap-to-pay with Google Wallet. The Edge also does not have Google Maps directions at launch, although Google says these are coming soon. The EDA scan and stress tracking are also gone. (Personally, I'm glad about that. Stress tracking isn't accurate enough to be useful.)

We may earn a commission from links on this page.

You just finished running a race, but your watch disagrees with the official distance and timing. Which should you trust? While race organizers can screw up their distance or timing, they usually don't. Let's look at how races are measured and why they may disagree with your watch—which happens more often than you might realize.

How races measure your time

Before we compare a watch time to an official race time, we need to know what kind of official race time we're looking at. There are two different numbers you might see from a race: gun time and chip time. They may differ from each other and from your watch. Here's where each comes from:

Chip time 

Chip time, also sometimes called net time, is the time from when you personally cross the start line until you personally cross the finish line. This is the time that matters for most of us.

Chips measure your personal start and finish because big races often have a crowd at the start line. If you’re running a big-city marathon, it could be 10 minutes or more of waiting and then slowly moseying forward with the crowd before you are able to cross the start line. In that case, your marathon could have a 4:40:00 gun time and a 4:30:00 chip time.

The “chip” in the name refers to a computer chip that is usually embedded in your racing bib (the numbers you pin to your shirt). The timing system registers a data point whenever you cross a timing mat on the ground. There is a timing mat at the start and another at the end of the race. (Longer races like marathons and half-marathons may also have timing mats at a few checkpoints along the way, such as the halfway point.)

Gun time

Gun time is the time from when the race starts (often signaled by a starting pistol, hence “gun”) until you cross the finish line. This is also sometimes called clock time.

If you are trying to actually win the race, you may need to care about gun time. Sometimes the rules specify that the person who wins the race is the person who crosses the finish line first, regardless of when they crossed the start line. If you are an elite athlete who is in the running to win a big race, you’ll generally work out arrangements with the race organizer to be at the actual start line when the race starts, so that the gun time accurately reflects how long it took you to run the race.

But for the rest of us, gun time doesn’t matter at all. The exception is if you are in a very small local race that doesn’t use chip timing, or that only has one mat at the finish line (no mat at the start). In that case, only a gun time will be reported, and no chip time.

Watch time

Watch time is the name I’m using here for the time you see on your wristwatch, or in your running app after the fact. If you start and end the timer exactly when you cross the start and finish lines, and never pause it in between, in theory, it should be the same as the chip time. All the major brands of running watches and smartwatches do an accurate-enough job in most situations. But you shouldn't trust it too much—let me explain why.

COROS PACE 4 Ultralight Sport GPS Watch (Black Crystal, Aluminum)

$279.00 at Amazon

Get Deal

Get Deal

$279.00 at Amazon

Chip time is the one that counts (for most of us)

As I mentioned above, gun time only matters if there is no chip time, if you’re trying to win an award in a race that uses gun times for awards, or if you’re trying to qualify for the Olympics. 

Use the chip time anytime you’re telling someone what you ran, or when you’re keeping track of your personal bests (PBs). (Only use a watch time if you ran a race with no chip time, and even then make sure to use your actual total time between the start and finish lines, no pausing. In that case, you're not trusting the watch over the chip time; you're just using it to estimate a missing chip time.)

Watch time should be the same as chip time if you started and stopped your watch at the start and finish lines. But it’s often not. Some of the reasons your watch time might be wrong: 

• Your watch auto-pauses. This is a convenient setting on training runs, if you often stop for a water break or to wait to cross a street. Your watch will pause your run when you stop, and resume recording when you move again. But during a race, stops aren’t free! If you stop to spend two minutes in a porta-potty, that’s still part of your race time.

• Your app (such as Strava) might report a “moving” time. Same idea as above, but it happens even if your watch recorded the whole thing. For example, on one longish run I did, I remember stopping to tie my shoe. Strava shows this run as taking 1:17:02. But if I scroll down through the numbers it gives, I can also see an elapsed time of 1:17:28. I guess it took me 26 seconds to tie my shoe.

On Strava, you can make your elapsed time show up first by selecting Edit Activity and then changing Type of Run to Race. If I do that on my shoe-tying run, the elapsed time with the extra 26 seconds shows up on that Strava activity.

There is one other reason why your official race result might not make sense, even if it’s a chip time and it’s showing the same as your watch’s elapsed time: Every now and then, a race organizer fucks up. 

One time, I was running a 2K race (1.2 miles) and was expecting a finish time somewhere between nine and 10 minutes. My watch registered a number in that range, but I knew it was probably off by a few seconds. When I checked the official results shortly after crossing the finish line, I had a time of 12:29, about three minutes longer than I was expecting! And in this case, I had started near the start line (it was a small, local race), so I couldn’t blame a gun/chip time difference. Turns out the timing service had accidentally added three minutes to everyone’s times. They noticed the error pretty quickly, though, and my official time was soon updated to 9:29. (I got an age group medal that day, and wrote my time on the back, which is why I remember it all these years later.)

So if your official race result is way off, consider speaking to the race organizer. There may have been an error that affects everybody, or they may only have a gun time and not a chip time.

How races measure distance

There’s one other consideration here: not just the time on your watch, but the distance. You may find that your watch’s time was within a few seconds of your chip time, but the distance seems wrong—usually too long. Or if you upload your run to Strava, you may find that the notorious "Strava tax" has been applied, appearing to shave off a bit of distance. (My best 5K in the last few years was recorded on Strava as 4.99 kilometers and thus didn't update my 5K PR. Am I mad? OK, yes.)

The first thing to check is whether the race course was certified. (Most are.) The process of certifying a race course ensures that the course has been measured to be the correct distance. And that distance is nearly guaranteed to be shorter than most runners actually run. So, yes, you will probably run a smidge longer than 3.1 miles in a 5K (3.1 mile) race! 

You can read the USATF course certification guidelines here. Of particular interest is this part: "A race course is defined by the shortest possible route that a runner could take and not be disqualified. A given runner might not follow the shortest possible route…[t]he actual path of any given runner is irrelevant. The shortest possible route is a reasonably well-defined and unambiguous route that ensures all runners will run at least the stated race distance." (Emphasis theirs.)

How does one find the shortest possible route? "You might envision the shortest possible route as a string, stretched tightly along the course so that it comes within 30 cm (one foot) of all corners, straight through S-turns, and diagonally between corners when crossing a street. You should measure the course following the same route as that hypothetical string." In addition, there is a 0.1% correction factor added to the measured distance, to ensure “that your course will not be short, even if you make small errors in following the shortest possible route.”

The only time your smartwatch’s distance should make you doubt the course measurement is if your watch thinks you covered a significantly shorter distance than the advertised length of the race. In that case, check your map to see if the GPS route looks like the route you actually ran. If you had poor GPS accuracy, your watch (or phone) might draw a line that cuts a corner that you did not actually cut. 

If your map looks correct, but your distance is still short, it’s worth checking with other runners to see if they had a short distance as well. Mistakes in course measurement or signage are rare, but they happen! The San Francisco Marathon accidentally shaved half a mile off its half-marathon course once. If you think your race course was short, contact the race organizer.

What counts as my PB?

Your PB, or personal best, can be whatever you want it to be in your heart. But if you want to brag about your times or compare them with other runners, you'll want to talk about chip time.

This is where the distance issue comes up. Maybe you finished your first 5K in 30:03 chip time, but your watch congratulated you on a 5K PR of 28:59. What gives? Check the distance, and you might see that your total race distance was 3.22 miles, with 28:59 being the time it took you to hit 3.1 (at which point the finish line was in sight, but you weren't actually done with the race). Sorry, but you didn't officially run a sub-30 5K.

This is why we distinguish race PBs from training PBs. The race course's timing is more accurate, and its certified distance is more accurate than your GPS even though the actual route that you personally run may be a bit longer than the certified distance. People tend to hit PBs at races because that's when you're the best prepared for a big effort and you have a crowd cheering you on. But the distance being potentially longer than advertised means that it is more of an accomplishment to run a "5K" race in a certain time than to run exactly five kilometers in that time.

So when another runner asks for your 5K time, they mean a race. You can proudly and accurately cite your chip time—in our example, 30:03. But you could also add: "My best training PB for that distance is 28:59, so I know I'm going to break 30 minutes officially soon." You will. I believe in you.

We may earn a commission from links on this page.

Is the treadmill harder or easier than running outdoors? Survey runners, and you’ll get plenty of different opinions on which feels harder or easier, but the basic physics of running are the same on both. (I promise.) So why do people who are used to treadmills find that they’re suddenly slower when they run outdoors? I’m going to run through the factors that are at play here, and talk about how to adapt if you want to be able to enjoy both. 

NordicTrack T Series Treadmill

$744.90 at Amazon

$799.00 Save $54.10

Get Deal

Get Deal

$744.90 at Amazon

$799.00 Save $54.10

Why treadmills sometimes feel harder than running outside

If you find treadmill running harder, you probably already know the reason: It’s boring. You have nothing to distract you from your own effort and the glowing numbers telling you how little progress you’ve made. This is a problem that we can train our brains to solve for us over time, whether with distractions, mindfulness, or simply being grateful that we’re not outdoors in the bad weather. 

The treadmill does not move your feet

Physics-wise, running on a treadmill is pretty much identical to running outdoors in identical conditions. It is not true that the treadmill "moves your feet," as I have seen runners claim. Running is the action of pushing off the ground to move yourself forward relative to the ground. If the “treadmill moves your feet” theory were correct, would we not have to consider the rotating Earth its own sort of treadmill? And thus it would be 2,000 times harder to run west than to run east?

In reality, you have to spend just as much effort to stay in place on a treadmill going 6.5 miles per hour, as you do to move forward at 6.5 miles per hour on flat, steady ground. In other words: in both scenarios, you are asking your muscles to push off with a force that will keep you moving 6.5 mph faster than the ground. Physics is not the reason why the treadmill feels different.

You only need to add a 1% incline if you are running very fast

Then there’s the issue of wind resistance. Some runners will say you need to set the treadmill’s incline to 0.5% or 1% to mimic outdoor air resistance. Even on a calm day, your body has to push into the air to keep moving. Adding a small incline to the treadmill is supposed to mimic that extra effort.

But that is only true if you run at a pace of 7:30 per mile (8.0 mph) or faster. Below that, “the difference is so small as to be meaningless,” a scientist who studied the question told Runner’s World. So if you’re jogging at 6 mph, you don’t have to worry about accounting for wind resistance. Now that we understand the physics, let’s talk about why treadmill runs often feel easier than outdoor runs. 

The treadmill may feel easier because it handles the pacing

Pacing is probably the biggest factor (aside from weather) in why outdoor running feels harder for a person who is used to treadmill running. On the treadmill, you decide on a pace, punch it in to the treadmill, and then you'll keep going at that pace whether you're thinking about it or not. 

But outdoors, you don't know when you start what pace you're running. Even if you're relying on a watch to tell you your current pace, it can take a moment to catch up and give you the correct numbers. It's easy to take off a little too fast, especially if you have a good song playing or you're excited to get the workout going (or over with).

So you, the treadmill runner, head off on an outdoor run without a good sense of how fast you’re going, and maybe you find yourself tired out a few minutes in. Meanwhile, outdoor runners learn to develop a sense of pace out of necessity. They know you have to listen to your body, not just look at a number, to know whether you're running at a pace you can sustain for the whole workout. Fortunately, you can learn this skill! Just run outdoors at least some of the time, and pay attention to your breathing and effort level.

The treadmill has no weather

If all your treadmill runs are inside of a 68-degree gym, they’ll all feel pretty similar. But the great outdoors is fond of blessing us with heat, wind, humidity, rain, snow, ice, and similar complications. 

Heat slows us down a lot, especially if we aren’t used to it. (You do build up some heat adaptation throughout the summer.) Humidity, in combination with heat, makes this even worse. Your body can’t cool itself as well through sweating, so you get hot and stay hot. It’s normal for your pace on a hot day to be anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes slower each mile. 

Heavy winds can also slow you down (when you’re running into the wind) or speed you up (when you’re running with the wind at your back). Ice can make you slow down to watch your footing. Snow can make you work harder as your feet sink into the ground and you have to fight to pull them back up again. 

On the other hand, a cool, dry day is better for your performance than the conditions inside a sweaty gym. Perfect running weather is (in my opinion) around 50 degrees, calm, and overcast. Most people will run a lot faster and feel better in those conditions than on a treadmill at room temperature.

The treadmill has no unexpected hills

If you live in a pancake-flat part of the country, you can skip this section. But many of us live where there are hills. Big ones, little ones, maybe some mountains. On the treadmill, you get to choose what incline to run with. Outdoors, your choices may be limited. 

I live in a hilly place, so even my “flat” outdoor routes aren’t entirely flat. A regulation running track is my only truly flat option. Even gently rolling hills can add up over the course of a long run, making you work harder on the uphills without ever fully giving you that speed back on the downhills. 

The treadmill has a more predictable surface

A treadmill only has one surface. Every step meets flat ground. Every step is the same softness or hardness. Outdoors, there’s so much more variation. 

Even on a simple city run, you’ll find yourself traversing curbs, slightly tilted sidewalk slabs, cambered edges of roads, pebbles, stray garbage, and occasional patches of grass or dirt. Take your run to the trails and you’ll also hit packed dirt, mud, soft grass, leaf litter, rocks, sticks, logs, little streams you have to hop over, ruts carved by mountain bike wheels—you get the idea. Your feet have to land and push off just a little differently for each of these. 

The variety in outdoor running is good for your feet, but it can be fatiguing on the small muscles of your feet and lower legs if you’re not used to it. 

How to train for an outdoor race if you prefer to run on the treadmill

It’s OK to do plenty of your training on a treadmill, even if you're training for an outdoor race, and in some situations it may be necessary. The treadmill can let you get your training in when the weather is bad, when you can’t line up child care at your running times, or any number of other reasons. 

The important thing is to still run outdoors at least sometimes. If you’re training for a marathon, try to do your long runs outdoors, even if some of your shorter runs and speedwork have to be on the treadmill. Get outside when you can. That way, you’re adapting to the weather, training your feet on different surfaces, and building the muscles and mindset necessary to tackle hills. 

We may earn a commission from links on this page.

The rumors are true: Google has announced a new device, the Fitbit Edge. It’s a band with a narrow screen, much like the old Charge 6, but updated to match the look and some of the functionality of the Fitbit Air. 

Google Fitbit Edge - Activity Tracker - Pyrite/Olive - Small & Large Band

$179.99 at Amazon

Get Deal

Get Deal

$179.99 at Amazon

Before the Fitbit Air, which came out earlier this year, Google hadn’t come out with any new Fitbits since the Charge 6 in 2023. In the meantime, the Pixel Watch has gotten up to its fifth generation, and the Fitbit app became the Google Health app. I was worried the idea of a small-screen fitness tracker might have been lost for good. Fortunately, I was wrong. 

What’s new in the Fitbit Edge

Google says that the new Fitbit has: 

• A physical button on the side, unlike the Charge 6’s haptic nub

• Its own GPS chipset, instead of relying on your phone.

• An altimeter, which the Fitbit Charge 6 did not have (but many fitness watches do)

• A seven-day battery life, or about two days if you enable the always-on display

• The same charger as the Fitbit Air

• A replaceable battery

• Music controls that work with anything your phone is playing

Pre-orders open today, and the Fitbit Edge is expected to start shipping on Oct. 27. The retail price is $179.99, making it $20 more than the Charge 6’s regular price. For comparison, the Fitbit Air is $99.99, and the Pixel Watch 5 starts at $349.99. The Fitbit Edge’s price, size, and functionality put it right in between those two devices, and honestly it’s a well-rounded lineup. 

Google representatives said in a briefing that it will be possible to connect both a Fitbit Air and Fitbit Edge to your phone, so that you can switch between them at will. (Previously, you could pair a Fitbit and a Pixel Watch, but not two Fitbits.) 

Compared to the Charge 6, the Fitbit Edge gains an altimeter and more useful music controls; the Charge 6 could only control music playing on Youtube Music, which required a subscription. However, the Fitbit Edge will not have a tap-to-pay option like the Charge 6 did; it does not have NFC capabilities. Google says GPS tracking is more accurate on the Edge than the Charge 6, which isn’t surprising since that was a major weak point of the Charge 6. I’m looking forward to testing out the Fitbit Edge and reporting back on how well it performs in real-life use.

We may earn a commission from links on this page.

Ever since the Fitbit app became the Google Health app, the app’s AI features became impossible to avoid for Premium users—or at least it may seem that way. There are two ways to avoid the long-winded, sometimes judgy insights that pop up on your screen multiple times a day. I'll show you both: a way to turn off the AI entirely, and a way to get those insights to go away without turning off all the AI-enabled features.  

Google Fitbit Air - Obsidian

$99.99 at Amazon

Shop Now

Shop Now

$99.99 at Amazon

Why you may want to turn off the Google Health Coach

The AI-based Health Coach is the centerpiece of the Google Health app, at least if you have a premium subscription. You may have accepted a three-month free trial of Google Health Premium when you connected a new device, or you may pay for Google AI Pro or Ultra, which includes the Health Coach. 

When the Coach is enabled, it updates the main screen of the app with a few paragraphs of text several times a day. (You’ll also get a notification with each of these updates). The Coach will tell you how well you slept, congratulate you on a hard workout, or suggest workouts for the day given how recovered you seem to be. 

But, as I wrote in my Fitbit Air review, the Coach hallucinates pretty often, misreporting your workout data or misunderstanding what you’ve told it are your goals. One user, returning to their normal routine after surgery, posted to Reddit that the Coach keeps trying to talk them out of doing workouts. They called it a “Demotivation Coach.” Others have pointed out that the Coach doesn’t seem to be reading its own data correctly. On a more personal note, the Coach uses a tone that I find insufferable: arrogant and excessively positive, except when it’s being unnecessarily negative. I’d prefer neutral, factual feedback or none at all.

To be fair to Google, the team has been hard at work on the Coach, and I've noticed its insights become a little more readable and a little less random since the feature first launched. But I'm still not always in the mood to see the Coach's chipper little pep talks.

How to turn off the Coach "insights" without losing other AI features

Left: the Today screen with no insights. Right: asking the Coach for an insight on-demand still works. Credit: Beth Skwarecki

Those unprompted pep talks are what the Google Health app calls "insights." Google quietly added a setting to turn them off in the August 2026 feature update. Tap on your profile picture, then Google Health Settings, then Coaching, and select No Coach Insights.

Once I turned off the feature, the insights stopped, as promised. But if I miss them, I can still tap Ask Coach in the bottom right corner of the screen, and ask the Coach how my day is going. All other features still work, including the AI-powered ones, like logging nutrition and workouts from the chat interface.

How to turn off the Google Health Coach entirely

Credit: Beth Skwarecki

If you're sick of the entire Google Health Coach, you can disable it: The same August update that gave us the "no insights" switch also made the Health Coach easier to turn off. To reach it, tap on your profile picture, then Google Health Settings, then Coaching. Then you can tap Turn off Google Health Coach. As the next screen explains, "your app will stop providing tailored guidance like fitness plans, recommendations, and proactive summaries of your sleep, fitness, and health trends. You also won't be able to ask questions or log your progress by chatting with the coach. You can turn this back on anytime."

Confirm your decision, and the AI will be gone. When you return to the Google Health app, you’ll still see the paragraphs of text that the Health Coach previously wrote, but you won’t get any new ones. There will be a card inviting you to re-enable the Health Coach, but you can tap “not now.” You can re-enable the Coach at any time by hitting the “Ask Coach” button in the corner (it does not go away) and following the prompts to turn it back on. 

If I ever skip my flu shot, or fail to get one for my kids, it's because I didn't find time to get to the pharmacy during flu shot season. But that changed with FluMist at Home, a mail order flu vaccine (covered by insurance!) that I've used two years running. The vaccine comes in the form of a nasal spray, so you don't have to inject anything.

The at-home version of the vaccine was approved in 2024, and became available for the first time in 2025. I used it then, and the process was so painless I did it again this year. I placed an order online, and one day a refrigerated box of vaccines showed up at my doorstep, one for each member of the family. We administered them in minutes, and could check "get flu shot" off our to-do lists.

How to get the at-home flu vaccine

The nasal spray vaccine, called FluMist, still needs to be prescribed by a medical provider. But since nearly everyone aged 2 through 49 is eligible, FluMist’s maker (AstraZeneca) has a created a telehealth website that bundles the provider's approval with an order to an online pharmacy. The process takes about five minutes on average, the company says, and I found that to be accurate.

The first time I ordered, last year, I had already gotten a flu shot, so I ordered just for my kids. The website allowed me to add multiple people to the same order, so I filled out the questionnaire for each child, giving their names, ages, allergies, and so on.

The website then reached into some big data cloud out there and told me it already knew their insurance information (existentially frightening, yet convenient!) and presented me with my bill: an $8.99 fee, which included $2.50 for physician evaluation and $6.49 for shipping and processing. Insurance covers the cost of the vaccine itself.

This year was similar, except that I ordered the vaccine for five people in total, one of whom had a different insurance plan than the rest. It took some extra time to manually enter that person's info, but otherwise the process was the same. The $8.99 fee only covers up to four vaccines, so in total I had to pay $17.98 for all five.

Who can use the at-home flu vaccine? 

The at-home vaccine is the same as regular FluMist, which is approved for ages 2 through 49. That means babies and older adults will still need to visit a provider for the regular, injectable flu vaccine. Children can get flu shots starting at the age of six months.

FluMist uses a live, weakened virus. It can't give you the actual flu, but it can cause some respiratory symptoms in people with weakened immune systems. So it's not recommended for people who are pregnant, have certain medical conditions, or are immunocompromised or have close contact with an immunocompromised person. If that's you, talk to a provider about your best options. You may be advised to get the regular injectable type, which doesn't include any live virus.

What happens when the at-home flu vaccine arrives

When I placed the first order, I had to choose a delivery date (to be sure I'd be home and ready to receive it). This year, there was no option to choose the date, but perhaps that's because I ordered it in mid-September, a few weeks before it actually shipped. Each time the box arrived via FedEx, with multiple texts ahead of time letting me know it was on its way. The vaccine needs to stay at refrigerator temperature, so you don't want it sitting out on your porch all weekend. I thought I would have to refrigerate it immediately—the instructions say as much—but it can actually be unrefrigerated for up to 12 hours before administration.

So the box arrives, insulated and with the vaccine packages surrounded by cold packs. There is a "TiveTag" sticker on the interior box, so when I received my first order I followed the instructions to download the TiveTag app from a QR code on the package. (This year, I had the app installed already.) It installed quickly, and then I just had to hold the top of my phone up to the RFID sticker on the box while my daughter said "now kith." I felt a buzz and a green checkmark appeared, telling me that the box had stayed at an appropriate temperature the whole time. We were good to go.

How to give yourself the at-home flu vaccine

Giving the vaccine to yourself or a child takes seconds, with no special preparation. All you have to do is remove the rubber cap, squirt the vaccine into one nostril, then take off the little spacer around the plunger and squirt into the second nostril. (The spacer makes sure that you get half the vaccine into each nostril.)

I hate having things in my nose, but this wasn't bad even for me. It isn't much liquid, and you don't have to inhale or do anything special. Just squirt and you're done. If you've gotten a FluMist at a pharmacy, it's the same idea.

Adults can administer it to themselves, and children will need an adult to do it for them. Instructions are, of course, provided. After I gave it to my kids, I clicked a link in a text message to "report vaccination," which supposedly updates their health records in, again, some big ol' data cloud. That cloud didn't convey the message to their pediatrician, though, so I just made sure to tell them at the next appointment.

After you administer the vaccine, there is a prepaid envelope you can use to return the sprayers for disposal. The paper packages and inserts obviously could be recycled. That left me with a cardboard box from each shipment, its insulated foam liner, and six liquid cold packs that the FluMist site says are filled with "non-toxic water" and can be either poured out and recycled, or reused as ice packs if I'd like.

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication.

The heart rate sensors on smartwatches are usually good enough for casual training (and some of them are really good), but to get the best possible accuracy, you want a separate heart rate monitor—ideally a chest strap. Fortunately, these wearables are still on sale even after the end of October Prime Day. Heart rate monitors from Polar, Coospo, and more were available at discounts, and two of my favorite models are still discounted.

The Polar H10 chest strap is $20 off

All electrical chest straps are good, but the consensus in the fitness world is that if you want the best, you get the Polar H10. It’s the chest strap that Apple used in its own heart-rate accuracy testing; it’s also the one I recall being put on me when I did a VO2max test in a lab. It retails for $104.95 but goes on sale from time to time, and now is one of those times: You can pick up a Polar H10 for $84.74.

Polar H10 Heart Rate Monitor

$104.95 at Amazon

Get Deal

Get Deal

$104.95 at Amazon

My favorite budget brand, Coospo, is 29% off

I love when a budget option works as well as the top-of-the-line model, and that’s why I swear by my Coospo heart rate monitor. Full disclosure, the H6 model I used for over four years finally gave up its ghost, so I’ve moved on to a newer model, the H808S. Both are on sale: the H6 for $23.99, down from $29.99, and the H808S is $26.26, down from $36.99. 

COOSPO Bluetooth Heart Rate Monitor Chest Strap H808S, ANT+ BLE HR Monitor Chest, HRM IP67 Waterproof, Use for Running Cycling Gym and Other Sports

$26.26 at Amazon

$36.99 Save $10.73

Get Deal

Get Deal

$26.26 at Amazon

$36.99 Save $10.73

How to use a heart rate monitor

Heart rate monitors connect to your watch or to gym equipment wirelessly, usually with Bluetooth and sometimes with an older protocol called ANT+. (Many heart rate monitors can do both.) 

You’ll need to set up the heart rate monitor to either broadcast your heart rate or to pair to another device. (Usually you broadcast to gym equipment, but pair to a watch or phone.) The specifics vary by brand, but it’s usually pretty straightforward. If you have a fitness watch like a Garmin, an Apple Watch, or a Samsung Galaxy Watch, pairing a chest strap is a simple job. Pixel Watches, unfortunately, can’t pair a heart rate sensor. 

But even without a watch, you can use a sensor with your phone. I like the Polar Beat app as a simple heart rate tracker, but there are plenty of other options. The Apple Fitness app can use third-party heart rate sensors, and so can Strava.

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication.

The October Prime Day sale is proving to be a good time to pick up fitness equipment at a discount—for proof, look no further than this list of the best fitness equipment deals. But if you're looking specifically for Peloton equipment, there's more good news: one model of the Peloton Tread is on sale for $1,000 off, and several Bike models are deeply discounted as well.

The Cross-Training Tread is $1,000 off

Peloton Cross Training Tread Treadmill with 24" Touchscreen Display

$2,295.00 at Amazon

$3,295.00 Save $1,000.00

Get Deal

Get Deal

$2,295.00 at Amazon

$3,295.00 Save $1,000.00

Peloton's Cross-Training Tread (that's a treadmill, obviously) is $2,295, down from the regular price of $3,295. This is Peloton's standard treadmill, currently in its second generation. It has a swiveling screen and upgraded hardware compared to the original Tread. Peloton offers running classes you can do on the Tread, and as with all its equipment, you'll need a $49.99/month subscription to use it and get all the streaming content.

The Cross-Training Bike and Bike+ are both deeply discounted

Peloton Cross Training Bike+

$1,795.00 at Amazon

$2,695.00 Save $900.00

Get Deal

Get Deal

$1,795.00 at Amazon

$2,695.00 Save $900.00

If you're looking for one of Peloton's signature Bikes, they're on sale today as well. The Cross-Training Bike is $1,295, down from a regular price of $1,695 (that's $400 off). And the Cross-Training Bike+, which applies resistance automatically as you follow a class, is $1,795, down from a regular price of $2,695.

For a budget option, there is also an original Bike, available refurbished for just $995. This Bike is still a solid pick (I have one myself!) and gets the same content as the more expensive bikes. It normally goes for $1,395 as a refurbished model, and was $1,695 when it was new.

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication.

October Prime Day has officially ended, but some of the deals are still going. Most of the deals I covered yesterday are still live, including on one of the cheapest good smart rings you're likely to find, as well as several on Garmins, and even a Fitbit or two.

The RingConn Gen 2 Air smart ring is $159.20

RingConn makes some of the better subscription-free smart rings out there. I tested the Gen 2 and Gen 3 rings and found them to be decently good at sleep and lifestyle tracking, although not always great at workout tracking. (Add my standard disclaimer that rings are never good workout trackers.) In any case, the Gen 2 Air is on sale right now. This is a pared-down version of the Gen 2 ring, but honestly, you don't lose much—just sleep apnea monitoring and a few days of battery life. That still leaves the Air with a 10-day battery life, so it's a tradeoff that's well worth it if you want an affordable smart ring.

RingConn Gen 2 Air (Size 8, Dune Gold)

$159.20 at Amazon

$199.00 Save $39.80

Get Deal

Get Deal

$159.20 at Amazon

$199.00 Save $39.80

The Garmin Forerunner 165 is $50 off

If you mainly want a general fitness tracker during the day, but would appreciate a precise and full-featured watch for workouts, something on the lower end of the Forerunner line can do both at a good price. Right now, the Forerunner 165 is $199.99, down from $249.99. This is an entry-level Forerunner from the previous generation (they're up to the 170 now), but I wouldn't call it out of date. Garmins age well, and the 165 is a solid pick that will give you many years of use.

Garmin Forerunner 165

$199.99 at Amazon

$249.99 Save $50.00

Get Deal

Get Deal

$199.99 at Amazon

$249.99 Save $50.00

The Polar Loop smart band is $30 off

Polar makes a screen-free smart band called the Loop that normally retails for $199.99, but right now it's on sale for $169.99 (and some colors are $161.99). The Polar Loop looks like a slightly more stylish Whoop. In my testing, I enjoyed the physical design, but was underwhelmed by the app (it's pretty barebones). Still, it has no subscription, and may be just the minimalist tracker you're looking for.

Polar Loop

$169.99 at Amazon

$199.99 Save $30.00

Get Deal

Get Deal

$169.99 at Amazon

$199.99 Save $30.00

The Fitbit Charge 6 is $26 off

Fitbit's Charge 6 normally retails for $159.99, but right now it's on sale for $133.49. Or somewhere around there—I've been seeing the price jump up and down a few dollars throughout the day. You can read my review of the Charge 6 here. I found it a solid tracker if you just want the basics, but didn't love that it limits music playback to YouTube Music and requires your phone to be on hand for payments and maps. Still, it's one of the best options out there for a band that has a screen but isn't shaped like a watch. And if you don't ned GPS, you can save a few bucks and go for the Inspire 3, which is on sale for $74 to $88 depending on color.

Fitbit Charge 6

$139.99 at Amazon

Get Deal

Get Deal

$139.99 at Amazon

Amazon Prime Day FAQs

Is Amazon Prime Day worth it?

Yes, we’ve done the math, and it’s worth it for most people.

Is Prime Day once a year?

Prime Day happens every summer. Prime Big Deal Days (or October Prime Day) happens every October. Big Spring Sale happens every spring.

Is Prime Day a scam?

No. Prime Day is a legitimate online sale from arguably the biggest and most reputable online retailer in the world.

We may earn a commission from links on this page.

This year was an interesting one for smart rings and smart bands, and we ended up with a few new devices that mark serious improvements on what was available before. With these new developments in mind, here are my picks for the best fitness trackers to consider giving (or asking for) as gifts this year. 

The Fitbit Air is the best fitness tracker for most people

I’ll have recommendations below for athletes, runners, and people with higher budgets, but before we get into those, let me present the best fitness tracker for most people: the Fitbit Air. 

Google Fitbit Air

$99.99 at Amazon

Get Deal

Get Deal

$99.99 at Amazon

Google now owns the Fitbit brand, and it spent the past few years making questionable choices about its software and mostly neglecting the brand’s iconic hardware. Then, in a stunning turnaround, Google launched the smallest, lightest, and most comfortable fitness tracker I’ve ever used (not counting rings, but we’ll get to those). 

The Fitbit Air tracks your steps, sleep, and workouts without needing much attention from you. Its battery lasts a week, its app reports all the standard information without a subscription, and the price is sensible for such minimalist hardware: $99.99. The only real downside is the overly chatty AI built into the app, which you can disable if it annoys you as much as it did me. 

The Oura Ring 5 is the best fitness tracker to splurge on

If you have $499 to spare (or $399 for some colors), the tracker to get is the Oura Ring 5. Smart rings have always been pretty clunky, but for the fifth generation, Oura managed to get its ring to a size that blends in with jewelry rings. I’ve been wearing Oura rings since the gen 2, and this is the first one that really feels like you can forget you’re wearing a device. 

You pay for the privilege, of course: The purchase price, plus a $5.99/month subscription fee. But Oura’s app is one of the nicest and easiest to use of any smart ring I’ve tried. Besides just giving you daily sleep scores, it breaks down your data to show things like how well you’re recovering despite stress, and how regular your bedtimes are. 

Smart rings aren’t great for detailed workout tracking (or for strength training), but they’re excellent for casually monitoring how much exercise you end up getting throughout your day. For somebody who either doesn’t need workout tracking, or tracks their workouts with another device, an Oura is great for the rest of their day.

Oura Ring 5 - Gold - Size 8

$499.00 at Amazon

Get Deal

Get Deal

$499.00 at Amazon

The Whoop band is the best fitness tracker for athletes

Some people may want more information than what the Fitbit Air or Oura Ring can give. If they still want to avoid having a screen on their wrist all day, the perfect pick for this person is a Whoop 5.0, specifically with the Peak (middle tier) subscription. 

To explain the pricing: You’ll pay $239 for a Whoop band bundled with your first year’s subscription. After that expires, if you want to keep using it, you need to pay another $239 (or $199, if you want to downgrade your subscription and lose some of the features). That makes it more expensive than my top pick, the Fitbit Air. 

But for an athlete who wants data to pore over, the Whoop seriously delivers. During workouts, you can see your heart rate zones on your phone’s screen, which the Fitbit doesn’t offer. The app can also guide you through weekly plans that are specific to your goals—say, totaling a certain number of minutes of zone 4 and 5 training, while also keeping a consistent bedtime and avoiding screens at night. The app is great at analyzing how the habits you log affect your sleep and recovery, and it’s easy to customize toward the goals you actually care about. I find it easy to balance perfectly so you don’t get information overload. 

The only real downside is that many athletes may want something that gives them pace or heart rate data on their wrist. If your recipient already has a fitness watch, they can use it for workouts while using the Whoop for the rest of the day, and Whoop will seamlessly pull in workout data from the other device. That said, read on if you’re looking for an actual fitness watch with a display.

WHOOP Peak - 12-Month Membership

$239.00 at Amazon

Get Deal

Get Deal

$239.00 at Amazon

The Coros Pace 4 is the best basic fitness watch for runners

You probably thought I was going to recommend a Garmin—and I will, below—but first let me tell you why the Coros Pace 4 is a hidden gem, my personal favorite, and my best overall pick for most runners. 

First, the price. It’s $249, which is cheap in the running-watch world. But it punches way above its weight, with dual-band GPS for accurate pace and distance tracking, a heart rate sensor that performed well in my extensive testing, and a fun and useful extra in its voice training logs. As of a 2026 update, it can now display maps, which is incredible for a watch in this price range.

You’d have to pay more than twice as much for a Garmin with all of those features—specifically, the Forerunner 970, which I say more about below. Buying a nice Coros (or a Suunto, for that matter) feels like you’re getting away with something. 

Coros Pace 4

$249.00 at Amazon

Get Deal

Get Deal

$249.00 at Amazon

The Garmin Forerunner 970 is the best top-of-the-line fitness tracker for a runner

If there’s a runner in your life you love very much (and want your budget to reflect that), you can’t beat the Forerunner 970. Our resident marathoner Meredith Dietz has an in-depth review here that you might like to check out, but as a spoiler: She loved it. 

The Forerunner 970 packs in all the features a running watch could possibly have. It’s got all the core features of more basic watches like the Coros I mentioned above, plus more storage and better performance of onboard maps, so you can see where you are in the world by glancing at your wrist. 

The 970 also has a ton of performance metrics and tools to plan your training, plus a feature everyone loves: an LED flashlight that can shine on what’s in front of you without interfering with your view of the watch. If you’re looking for the best fitness watch out there, I can’t think of one that’s better than the 970.

Garmin Forerunner 970

$745.55 at Amazon

Get Deal

Get Deal

$745.55 at Amazon

We may earn a commission from links on this page.

A new Google wearable may be on the way, and leaked pictures suggest it may be a fitness band with a screen, a successor to the Fitbit Charge 6. Android Headlines reports that the new device will be called the Fitbit Edge. 

Earlier this year, Google ran ads on Reddit that seemed to show a new fitness band alongside Pixel watches and phones. In a post titled “Um so what the hell is that??,” redditors debated whether the unfamiliar wearable was an accidental leak of a yet-unreleased device, or just an AI hallucination. After all, if you asked an AI to create a hybrid of a Fitbit and a Pixel Watch, it would look more or less like what was in the picture.

What rumors say about the new "Fitbit Edge"

The leaked photos appearing at Android Headlines look like the device from the ad. It has an oval screen, only about as wide as the wristband and taller than it is wide. The rounded edges and the style of watch band match aesthetically with Pixel Watches, while the overall form factor—a tall screen set into a thin wristband—fits the design of the old Fitbit Charge 6. 

According to spec sheets that were reportedly also included in the leak, the device will have GPS, an altimeter, and a seven-day battery life. That's the same battery life as the Charge 6, which had GPS but no altimeter. The new device is said to work with both iOS and Android, as the Fitbit Air does, rather than being Android-only like the Pixel Watch. The rumors do not include a price, a release date, or a full list of features.

What this means, if true

If it weren’t for the earlier ad—the one that many thought was a hallucination—I probably wouldn’t have expected Google to release a device like this at all. Its last fitness tracker with a screen was the Fitbit Charge 6 in 2023. The Fitbit Air makes sense since smart bands are having a moment, and the Fitbit Air is a really well-executed one. But I wasn’t sure if Google was interested in continuing the Fitbit line beyond that one device. 

Google Fitbit Air - Screenless Activity Tracker

$99.99 at Amazon

Get Deal

Get Deal

$99.99 at Amazon

It’s a good idea, I think. Small trackers are easy to wear (and forget you’re wearing), but sometimes you just want to be able to see the time on your wrist. If Google is smart, they’ll allow you to swap seamlessly between the new device and the screenless Fitbit Air. (Currently, you can pair one Pixel Watch and one Fitbit to your phone, but you can’t pair two different models of Fitbit.) 

I’m excited to see what Google has in mind for the new device, assuming the rumors are true about its size, shape, and capabilities. I was disappointed by all the things the Charge 6 couldn’t do, and I hope the new Fitbit doesn’t repeat those mistakes. For example, the Charge 6 can control the music that’s playing on your phone, but only if you pay for a YouTube Music subscription. Most fitness watches—including Garmin, Coros, and Suunto watches I’ve tried—will simply give you controls for whatever is playing on your phone, no matter what app it comes from. 

If it’s true that the new device also has its own GPS and altimeter, that’s also exciting—but I’m skeptical that Google will be able to stuff in high-quality versions of those components in the space available. The Charge 6, I found, had trouble getting a good GPS reading and a good heart rate reading at the same time. But the Fitbit Air is surprisingly small and capable for its size, so I’m looking forward to seeing what the new device might be able to do.

We may earn a commission from links on this page.

When Apple releases a new watch, it’s not always worth upgrading. Last year’s Series 11 only had a few barely noticeable features to recommend it over the 10, and we said it’s probably one to skip if you’re happy with your current watch. But the Series 12 is different, and this one is worth the upgrade no matter which Apple Watch you’re coming from.

Apple Watch Series 12 (GPS, 42mm)

$349.99 at Amazon

$399.00 Save $49.01

Learn More

Learn More

$349.99 at Amazon

$399.00 Save $49.01

One of the biggest reasons to upgrade is that the Series 12's new processor (called, confusingly, the S11 chip) can support some features older Apple Watches can't. That's why only the new models are getting step counts, for example; Apple chose to implement those in a way that only the new hardware can calculate. Whenever there's a break in software compatibility, it makes sense to get the newer model. I'd expect more features are coming in future years that will be back-compatible with the 12 but not earlier models.

The heart rate sensor is a big upgrade

Apple upgraded the hardware on the back of the watch that optically reads your heartbeats. (This new sensor is in both the Series 12 and the Ultra 4.) I’ve tested its accuracy, and found it’s substantially better than the sensors in previous Apple Watches like the Series 10 and 11. If you train by heart rate during workous, or if you use heart rate data after the fact to evaluate and plan your training, the upgrade is worth it.

Apple claims it provides the most accurate heart rate of any wearable. I tested that claim and can partially agree: It’s as good as Garmin’s top-of-the-line sensor. I wouldn’t say it’s better than Garmin’s, but the two are tied in my book for the best wrist-worn sensor. (Chest straps are better than any wrist-based system, of course.) 

Steps on the watch face are a nice plus

I wouldn’t buy a new Apple Watch just for the step count, but it’s a nice upgrade and one I deeply appreciate. I can add a step count complication to my watch face (I have it in a corner of the Modular face right now) and I have step count pinned to my Smart Stack. 

If you don’t upgrade, you use use a third-party step counter to provide a complication for your watch face. But it’s nice that Apple finally has this feature built in. Apple says its step counts are the most accurate; I’ll be testing that claim soon.

Readiness and recovery HRV are another nice extra

The Apple Watch was always capable of measuring HRV, but until the Series 12 (and Ultra 4), it didn’t use the RMSSD version, which is most useful for gauging how stressed or recovered you are. (Instead, it used the SDNN version that can provide some information about cardiac health; the newer Apple Watches can do both.)

This means you can now get an overnight HRV reading that matches the kind of data you can get from the Oura ring or Whoop. I find HRV useful in monitoring how stressed or fatigued I am, so if you already wear an Apple Watch, it’s nice to be able to get that data from the watch instead of needing a second device. Apple has added a readiness score that uses HRV to tell you how “ready” you are for the day. 

What I’m less excited about in the Series 12

Besides the features above, Apple has announced a few things that it’s using as selling points for the Series 12, but I wouldn’t put too much weight on these. Some are software features, like a small upgrade to Workout Buddy and a big upgrade to the Health app on the phone; you don’t need a new watch for these. Others are actually tied to the watch, but they wouldn’t be a reason to upgrade, at least for me personally. They include: 

Siri AI

There’s a new AI-based version of Siri, and it’s available on the watch. It can do a few things better than the old Siri, like searching your messages and emails, but it seems to have gotten worse in some respects. I wrote about my experience trying Siri AI on the watch; I got plenty of delays and errors that negated any small benefit of the new algorithm. I suppose it will get better over time, but right now, it's not very good.

Rewind and recaps

Apple touted two features on the new watches that feel a little more creepy than useful to me: Live Rewind, which gives you a text transcription of whatever audio it heard in the last 15 seconds; and Siri Recaps, which summarize meetings. Despite Apple’s assurances about privacy, it’s still a feature that's always listening to you and to bystanders who didn’t consent to be rewound or recapped. This feature isn’t live yet on my watch, so I can’t comment on what it’s like to use—but I’m not exactly thrilled about the idea.

We may earn a commission from links on this page.

Outdoors, smartwatches do a great job of telling you how far you ran or walked. Indoors, they often disagree with the readout on the gym’s treadmill. Which leaves a lot of us wondering—should we trust the treadmill, or the watch? 

I won't make you wait: The answer to this question is the treadmill. While a watch guesses at your speed based on wrist movements, the treadmill will always have a better idea than the watch of what your feet are doing. But I don’t blame you for doubting everything you see on a gym machine’s readout. After all, their calorie counts are notoriously inaccurate.

How treadmills determine distance

Whenever we’re evaluating accuracy, it’s important to know whether a device is measuring something directly, or interpreting data to make a guess. In this case, the treadmill is measuring distance, while the watch is guessing at it. (Calories are always interpreted, which is why they are never truly reliable.) 

Distance is pretty simple: It’s the number of miles (or meters) of treadmill belt that passes under your feet while you run. The treadmill knows how long its belt is, and how fast the motor is running, so it’s pretty directly measuring how much belt it’s sending under your feet. (Sticklers will note that technically there is still some interpretation going on here, since the relationship between the motor's performance and how much belt it moves can change over time, which is why gyms should recalibrate their treadmills from time to time. But the treadmill's number is likely to be close to accurate even if it's not perfect, and is still your best bet for the purposes we discuss here.)

How watches determine distance

Your watch, by contrast, is on your wrist. There’s no way it can know what your feet are doing. It can make some guesses based on how much your wrist is swinging back and forth, and thus pick up a cadence (each arm swing corresponds to one footstep). You’ll swing your arms a bit harder and higher when you’re running faster, so it can use the oomph in your arm swing to make a guess at the speed you’re running. From speed and time, it calculates distance.

Some devices use outdoor, GPS-tracked activities to estimate the length of your average stride. That number then goes into the distance calculation, which helps to improve accuracy. But your stride length isn't the same for every speed you might run or walk, or for every type of terrain. The calculation is pretty limited in its usefulness.

How to get the most accurate numbers on a treadmill

Neither is guaranteed to be perfect, but the treadmill is a lot more likely to get the right idea. A treadmill can be slightly miscalibrated, and give you a distance that’s a smidge off from what you actually ran. But a watch is just riding on your wrist, guessing. I’ve noticed that my arms don’t swing all that differently when I’m running at a fast versus a slow pace. 

In fact, while following an interval workout on the treadmill on a Garmin, I’ve found that the watch thinks I’m going slower than I am during the fast parts. If I'm following a Garmin workout that asks me to run specific paces, it often buzzes to chide me (“Pace low”) even if I'm going at the right speed. I can often convince it I’m in range by pumping my arms a little harder. This isn’t really a solution, though.

Garmin Forerunner 570 42mm Advanced GPS Smartwatch (Slate)

$549.99 at Amazon

Shop Now

Shop Now

$549.99 at Amazon

Instead of trying to get more accurate numbers from my watch during the run, I approach my treadmill workouts with the assumptions that the following things are accurate: 

• The treadmill speed during the workout

• The treadmill distance at the end of the workout

• The heart rate from my watch (especially if I’m using a chest strap)

• The time from either or both devices (which should be the same if I started them at the same time)

I then follow my workouts appropriately. If it’s a heart-rate-based workout, I let my watch handle everything. (Garmin might tell me to do 32 minutes at 139 to 167 beats per minute. Perfect. All you, Garmin.) 

But if I want to do a speed- or distance-based workout, I manage that manually, with my human brain. A quarter mile at 7.5 miles per hour, repeated eight times? I boop the buttons on the treadmill accordingly. At the end of the workout, I’ll either “calibrate” (from the watch) or edit the distance on my app to make sure it recorded the correct total distance. 

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication.

Amazon's October Prime Day sale is over, but some good deals on smartwatches are still live, from traditional smartwatches like those from Apple, Google, and Samsung, as well as fitness-focused watches from companies like Garmin. Here are the best sales still active right now.

The Apple Watch Series 12 is $50 off

The Series 12 is the newest watch in Apple's lineup, and it's one that I think is definitely worth the upgrade. It's been on the market less than a month, but it's already on sale for $50 off its original price. The GPS-only model starts at $349.99 (normally $399) and the cellular model at $449.99 (normally $499). This is the watch with the new heart rate sensor, which I found to be very accurate, on par with the best Garmins. It also has step counts and recovery HRV, features that will unfortunately not be coming to the Series 11 or earlier.

Apple Watch Series 12 (42mm)

$389.99 at Amazon

Get Deal

Get Deal

$389.99 at Amazon

The Apple Watch SE 3 is only $199

Apple Watch SE 3 is still at $199 today for GPS-only models; the cellular models seem to no longer be on sale. The SE is the budget version of the Apple Watch, and these watches normally go for $249 and $299, respectively. The current sale price is the lowest I've ever seen it.

Apple Watch SE 3 (40mm)

$239.99 at Amazon

Get Deal

Get Deal

$239.99 at Amazon

The Apple Watch Ultra 3 is $200 off

It's hard to beat an Apple Watch as a combination smartwatch and fitness tracker. You can read more about how they hold their own against Fitbits and Oura rings, or see which are our favorite models for 2026. If you're looking for an Ultra, try the Apple Watch Ultra 3 for $699.97 (down from $899.99).

Apple Watch Ultra 3 [GPS + Cellular 49 mm]

$699.97 at Amazon

$899.00 Save $199.03

Get Deal

Get Deal

$699.97 at Amazon

$899.00 Save $199.03

The Samsung Galaxy Watch 8 Classic is $150 off

Samsung's Galaxy Watches tend to be strong in fitness features and are a great companion to a Samsung phone. I'm seeing the 2024 Samsung Galaxy Watch 7, 40 mm, Bluetooth only, for $159.99 (down from $249.99). But what's even better are the deals on the Samsung Galaxy Watch 8, starting at $219.99 (originally $299.99), and the Samsung Galaxy Watch 8 Classic, LTE, 46 mm, $399.99 (down from $549.99).

Samsung Galaxy Watch 8 Classic (46mm, LTE, Black Band)

$479.99 at Amazon

$549.99 Save $70.00

Get Deal

Get Deal

$479.99 at Amazon

$549.99 Save $70.00

The Pixel Watch 5 is $65 off

Google's Pixel watches are good at fitness tracking and everyday smartwatch use, and I loved the ultra-fast charging when I tested a previous version. If you'd like to pick up the newest edition, the Pixel Watch 5, the wifi-only model starts at $349.99 today, down from $399.99. The cellular model is $429.99, down from $499.99.

Google Pixel Watch 5 (41mm, Wi-Fi, Obsidian)

$399.99 at Amazon

Get Deal

Get Deal

$399.99 at Amazon

Amazon Prime Day FAQs

Is Amazon Prime Day worth it?

Yes, we’ve done the math, and it’s worth it for most people.

Is Prime Day once a year?

Prime Day happens every summer. Prime Big Deal Days (or October Prime Day) happens every October. Big Spring Sale happens every spring.

Is Prime Day a scam?

No. Prime Day is a legitimate online sale from arguably the biggest and most reputable online retailer in the world.

We may earn a commission from links on this page.

Google’s “Health Guardian” feature set has rolled out to Pixel Watches 3, 4, and 5 this week and will be coming to Fitbit Air users “later this year.” Google says the new features include reports on your blood pressure trends and on insulin resistance, which is a big claim for a wearable. Here’s what we know about Health Guardian, including how to set it up and what to expect. 

Google Pixel Watch 5 (41mm) - Android Smartwatch - Obsidian - LTE

$414.99 at Amazon

$499.99 Save $85.00

Learn More

Learn More

$414.99 at Amazon

$499.99 Save $85.00

Can you really measure insulin resistance with a wearable? 

Credit: Beth Skwarecki

Insulin resistance is associated with type 2 diabetes, and can be an early sign that you are heading toward pre-diabetes or diabetes. When your body’s insulin receptors stop responding as strongly to insulin, you’re more likely to have higher blood glucose. 

Insulin resistance is normally measured with bloodwork. For example, your fasting glucose levels and fasting insulin are combined into a score called HOMA-IR. If you’re concerned about insulin resistance or pre-diabetes, it’s best to talk to an actual healthcare professional to find out what tests they recommend, and what to do with the results. 

The insulin resistance feature coming to Google Health is, Google notes, “not intended for medical purposes” and “not a pre-screener for diabetes.” 

Google published a paper describing some of the testing that went into developing its insulin resistance algorithm. In the study, the researchers had people use their own Fitbits or Pixel Watches to record a variety of metrics, including heart rate, HRV, and activity. It’s not clear from this paper exactly how the algorithm works or whether it’s likely to be useful in a general population, but apparently Google is betting on it being an interesting factor to track in your Google Health app.

Can you really measure blood pressure with a wearable?

Credit: Beth Skwarecki

Google also published a paper on a blood pressure algorithm, although it is not peer-reviewed. Instead of explaining how the algorithm works, it describes how the researchers tried to figure out what their AI-based model might be looking at. According to this paper, Google's model works about as well as clinical blood pressure measurements, but it's not clear how useful it would be in the real world. For example, the study excluded people with heart disease, but I'd imagine plenty of people with heart disease would be interested in their blood pressure scores.

Is Health Guardian free? 

Google said in a press release that Health Guardian, which includes insulin resistance and blood pressure trends, is available for free for people who use a Pixel Watch 3, 4, or 5. Fitbit Air users will get blood pressure and insulin resistance trends “with a Google Health Premium subscription later this year.” So it’s free if you have a Pixel Watch, but not if you only have the Fitbit Air. Google Health Premium is $9.99/month. 

It’s unclear what happens if you own both devices; presumably, having a Pixel Watch will get you free access. In any case, other devices, including older Fitbits, do not seem to be included. For the moment, I'll note that a mix of Pixel Watch and Fitbit Air data wasn't enough to get my insulin resistance report; Google Health seems to require data from the Pixel Watch specifically.

How to get Health Guardian’s blood pressure trends and insulin resistance estimates

The new features are built into the 5.09 release of the Google Health app for Android, which is rolling out this week. (It seems iOS will be getting the features later. This makes sense, since iOS users wouldn’t have a Pixel Watch paired, anyway.) 

You can set up your blood pressure and insulin resistance tracking as soon as you get the new version of the Google Health app. I was able to set up insulin tracking by going to the health tab and then tapping Metabolic, and I set up blood pressure under Heart. If you go to Respiratory, you can also set up sleep-breathing quality. (Some European users will get a feature that can call for help in a "breathing emergency," but that is not available in the U.S.)

Google said that the insulin and blood pressure features will give you a monthly report on the first of each month, with the first report coming Oct. 1, if you have given the watch enough data in the previous month. Here is what the app requires:

• For blood pressure reports: You need to wear the watch for five consecutive days in the previous month. You don't have to wear the watch at night.

• For insulin resistance: You need to wear the watch for seven days and nights in the previous month, but they don't need to be consecutive.

How well does Health Guardian work? We don't know.

I set up both features as soon as I got the update last week, but that timeline didn't give me a full seven days and nights. That means I don't have an insulin resistance result. I do have my blood pressure trend result: "Not High." As a reminder, a watch cannot know your actual blood pressure, so the watch is making estimates based on data that may not correspond with your actual blood pressure. That said, my blood pressure tends to read in the normal range at doctors' visits, so at least this wasn't surprising.

What's more confusing is what you're actually supposed to do about the results. If your watch says your blood pressure or insulin are fine, would you delay seeking care or abandon a treatment or lifestyle change that was supposed to help you? If your watch says something is wrong, would you believe that and maybe spend unnecessary time and money getting checked out? Pixel Watch users are discussing their results online, with a variety of reactions. One redditor says: "I awoke to find out that my blood pressure is too high and apparently the insulin in my body does nothing. This despite that my most recent doctor's visit and blood work were all perfectly normal." Another said: "I got this high insulin result this morning. I have really changed my diet the last 4 months and I have been going to the gym regularly. I have lost about 40 pounds this year. It's a bummer to see this. I just wonder if it's accurate." I wonder that, too.