Apple recently revealed that its first top-end Edition Apple Watches won’t be getting any new features. If a £15,000 wearable can’t be trusted, surely there’s no such thing as a good cheap smartwatch?
Not true. If you’re looking for a smartwatch on a budget, there are plenty of options. They may not have the same bells and whistles as their top-end counterparts, but for the most part they offer all the features and perks without breaking the bank.
READ NEXT: Best smartwatches
How to find the best cheap smartwatch for you
What sensors do you need?
When buying cheap smartwatches, cost savings have to be made somewhere, and typically that will be in the number of built-in sensors. Think carefully about what you want and need, because the chances are this will be a series of trade offs. Do you need built-in GPS, or are you happy to run with your phone? Do you want to be able to pay for things with your wrist? If so, you’ll need NFC.
Does the operating system matter?
As with smartphones, the majority of smartwatches run Google’s own operating system – in this case Wear OS. That, as you might imagine, plays nicely with Android, but has some teething problems when talking to iPhones.
Generally though, the OS doesn’t matter too much. Samsung watches use the company’s own Tizen software, while smartwatches by Fitbit use the company’s own code meshed with Pebble’s, which it purchased in 2016. With most of the smartphones in the world running iOS or Android, compatibility shouldn’t generally be a problem, but for best results it always helps to match company to company (I.E: Apple Watches work best with iPhones, and Samsung watches love to be matched to a Galaxy.)
How long should the battery last?
To keep smartwatches slim, the battery tends to be small – often as little as 200mAh. To put that into perspective, most smartphones have batteries that are 3,000mAh or more.
That’s okay – they do a lot less, but battery life varies hugely, with some requiring charging every night and others lasting a week or more. Why the huge difference? Well, it tends to be down to their design: as a rule of thumb, the more beautiful and feature-packed a smartwatch, the shorter the battery life. Ones with black and white e-paper screens (using a similar tech to Amazon’s Kindle e-readers) will last a lot longer than those with bright, always-on OLED displays and GPS built in.
Preowned or new?
To keep prices down, some of the smartwatches in this list are older models. That means you’ll be looking at the preowned market for the most part.
This generally isn’t a problem – smartwatches don’t tend to store much personal data and can easily be factory reset anyway – but due to being worn on the wrist at all times, they may have cosmetic wear and tear. If you can, try and look at a smartwatch before buying, and if you’re particularly phobic of other people's’ skin, it might pay to get one where the strap is replaceable.
A word of caution
As I mentioned above, you’ll notice that many of the cheap smartwatches below are older models. That’s generally a safe strategy, as the technology behind smartwatches is not refreshed as frequently as smartphones, but there is one important caveat: Some Google-based watches don’t support Wear OS or even Android Wear 2.0 for technical reasons, and are stuck on the original Android Wear software.
Only one makes the list below (the Sony Smartwatch 3), but for the avoidance of doubt, the original Moto 360, the LG G Watch, first-generation Asus ZenWatch, Samsung Gear Live and Sony Smartwatch family all miss out on all the bells and whistles that Wear OS 2 provides.
READ NEXT: The five best new features of Android Wear 2
Also in the list below are a number of watches that don’t run Wear OS. In these cases, support can be withdrawn at any time, often due to circumstances beyond the manufacturer’s control. See: Pebble.
The best cheap smartwatches 2018
1. Amazfit Bip: The best smartwatch under £50
Price: £46 | Buy now from Gearbest
How good can you expect a £46 smartwatch to be? Much, much worse than this, that’s for sure. The Amazfit Bip may look like the Apple Watch and the Pebble had a slightly plasticky looking baby, but it offers specifications well beyond the outlay.
There’s the 45-day battery life, for a start – and no, that’s not a typo. Our tests found these unbelievable claims entirely true. Sure, it’s reduced if you have constant heart rate monitoring or use the built-in GPS a lot, but not by that much, and the very fact we’re talking about these features in a sub-£50 smartwatch is nothing short of miraculous.
There are drawbacks, of course: being a Chinese company, the amount of support for Western connected apps is severely limited, it can feel a bit slow sometimes, and we have questions about the accuracy of the sensors, but you won’t find a better smartwatch for this price, period.
Key specs – Operating system: Proprietary OS; Screen size and type: 1.28in 176 x 176 transflective LCD; Battery life: 45 days; Replaceable strap: Yes: 20mm GPS: Yes; Heart rate: Yes; NFC: No
2. Ticwatch E: The best cheap Wear OS device
Price: £140 | Buy now from Mobvoi
Mobvoi – the company behind Ticwatch – first launched this cheap smartwatch through a Kickstarter campaign that managed to raise £2.3 million in funding. And you can see why; this is a watch that doesn’t cut corners, while still managing to come in at a very appealing price. And it uses Wear OS – Google’s wearable operating system.
With GPS and heart-rate monitoring built in, you’re only really missing NFC for contactless payments, when compared to more expensive Wear OS devices. And barring a handful of build quality issues (a slightly fuzzy housing, and crude bezel) there’s very little to give the game away that you’ve not paid top dollar.
It’s worth noting that Mobvoi also makes the Ticwatch S – it’s more expensive, but the only difference is that GPS is built into the (non-replaceable) strap. In our opinion, the E is the more appealing buy.
Key specs – Operating system: Wear OS; Screen size and type: 1.4in 400 x 400 OLED; Battery life: 2 days; Replaceable strap: Yes: 20mm GPS: Yes; Heart rate: Yes; NFC: No
3. Samsung Gear S2: A premium watch, now cheap
Price: £250 | Buy now from eBay
The Samsung Gear S2 launched at £250, but as Samsung frequently blesses us with newer models, it has come down nicely in price. Shop around, and you can easily find it for between £100 and £150 pre-owned.
And you get all the usual levels of Samsung polish here: it’s a smart-looking smartwatch with most of the bells and whistles you’d expect including heart rate tracking and NFC for payments. It even has a fancy rotating bezel for navigation, which is very swish.
One key point, though: you only get GPS in the 3G model, which will obviously be more expensive, so bear that in mind when shopping.
Key specs – Operating system: Tizen; Screen size and type: 1.2in 360 x 360 AMOLED; Battery life: 2-3 days; Replaceable strap: Yes, but non-standard connector GPS: No; Heart rate: Yes; NFC: Yes
4. Sony Smartwatch 3: A solid, cheap smartwatch
Price: £90 | Buy now from Amazon
Sony’s Smartwatch 3 is a solid device that can now be found on the cheap – anywhere between £60 and £130 if you look around for a pre-owned version or a deal. It boasts a two-day battery life, GPS and an enjoyable Android experience – even if the touchscreen can be a touch fiddly.
There are drawbacks. Firstly there’s no heart rate sensor, so while you can track runs with GPS you can’t get insights into your cardio performance while you do. Ditto, while there is an NFC chip inside, it’s not enabled by Sony, instead requiring some jiggery-pokery to get it working.
Most damagingly of all, it never got the upgrade to Android Wear 2, and it won’t make the jump to Wear OS – again, not officially anyway. That may not matter to you if you’re happy with the basic features of the original Android Wear, but you should at least go in informed of what you’re missing.
Key specs – Operating system: Android Wear OS; Screen size and type: 1.6in 320 x 320 TFT capacitive touchscreen; Battery life: 2 days; Replaceable strap: Yes, but non-standard connector GPS: Yes; Heart rate: No; NFC: Not officially