The Best Smartwatches Available in Canada of 2023

Combining comprehensive fitness tracking, a sleek and minimalist design, and relatively long battery life, the Samsung Galaxy Watch Active 2 is a great smartwatch for Android users (though it works with iOS as well).

The Active 2 can make or take calls, handle messaging, and play music on the go. Samsung also offers the Bixby voice assistant, and a reasonably good range of third-party apps can run on its Tizen OS. Like the Apple Watch, Samsung’s watch comes in two case sizes (40mm and 44mm), in a range of finishes, and supports many different bands. Though it’s billed as a sporty smartwatch—with automatic exercise recognition, built-in GPS, and IP68 water resistance—it has all the features you need for a complete smartwatch experience.

Samsung’s large AMOLED screen is bright, crisp, and legible in sunlight or dark environments. There’s a touch-sensitive bezel around the screen, so you can easily scroll through menus. The two buttons on the side enable you to go back, jump into your apps, or conjure up Samsung’s Bixby voice assistant.

Unsurprisingly, the Samsung Galaxy Watch Active 2 really shines when it comes to health and fitness tracking. You can record all kinds of workout sessions, many of which are tracked automatically. There’s also sleep tracking, heart rate monitoring, and menstrual cycle tracking for women. You can even record food, water, and caffeine intake if you want. Along with tracking, the Active 2 also offers up reminders to be active and coaches you through different exercises. Samsung says that ECG and blood pressure monitoring will also roll out in the future. Battery life is easily good enough to see you through a busy day and can be stretched to two or even three days, depending on the settings.

Beyond the tricky setup, other drawbacks include a lack of some apps, a voice assistant that can’t keep up with Siri or Google Assistant, and slow charging—the slowest we tested, in fact. That said, the Galaxy Watch Active 2 starts as low as $279.99 and offers more than enough to justify its price, especially for Samsung phone users, though the Galaxy Watch4 will provide the best experience there.

If you’re interested in a smartwatch that runs Google’s Wear OS, you have plenty of options, but most of them, including the Skagen Falster 3, are manufactured by the Fossil group. You can find all kinds of facades from brands like Diesel, Puma, Michael Kors, and Fossil itself, but the internal hardware, the software, and the experience of living with these watches are all very much the same.

The Skagen Falster 3 wins our favour with its minimalist Scandinavian aesthetic that carries through from the external design to the watch face, all created in concert with the Danish brand. This is a stylish smartwatch that blends in wherever you are, whether it’s the gym, a restaurant, a bar, or the office.

The Wear OS platform is not as smooth as we’d like, but it does give you access to Google’s suite of apps. Top highlights include Google Assistant, Google Maps for easy navigation from your wrist, Google Pay for mobile payments, and Google Keep for checklists. There are also lots of third-party apps available and support for music. You can make or take calls and send and receive messages from your wrist, too.

On the downside, the Skagen Falster 3 does need nightly charging, Wear OS can be slow and flaky at times, and the fitness tracking is quite basic compared to other smartwatches on our list. There’s also no sleep tracking and you won’t find much in the way of insights into your health. Still, if you are primarily after a stylish smartwatch and fitness is secondary, the Skagen Falster 3 is a good choice.

Along with being one of the best smartwatches, the Fitbit Versa 3 is one of our favourite fitness trackers as well. We were most impressed by how much this fitness-first watch has to offer, especially against the likes of Apple and Samsung, for the price.

Unlike the Versa 2, Fitbit added a dedicated GPS to the Versa 3, so you won’t need to tap into your phone’s GPS to track where and how far you run or walk. Its automated fitness tracking is incredibly responsive, too—no delays or issues tracking the wrong type of workout.

The Fitbit Versa 3 also has a long battery life and comes with plenty of other features and apps, making this platform-agnostic smartwatch great for iPhone and Android owners alike (something we can’t say from Apple or Samsung). But the Versa 3 is especially Android owners; While both iPhone and Android owners can answer calls (not place them) from the Versa 3, Android owners can also voice-dictate a reply to text messages.

One major downside to the Versa 3: Unlocking premium features like in-depth health analytics, sleep data, Calm app meditations, and Fitbit workout videos costs extra per month. This may be a good fit for you, or it might not. (You can read more about it here). Compared to Apple Fitness+, which costs the same as Fitbit’s subscription, Fitbit doesn’t integrate its paywalled features as seamlessly, and as our health and fitness team noted, its workout videos feel more like watching workout videos on YouTube. Additionally, things like in-depth sleep analytics are already part of Apple’s and Samsung’s watch ecosystems for no additional cost.

For fitness fanatics, athletes in training, and folks looking to get fitter and healthier, the Garmin Venu is a compelling smartwatch. The first thing that struck me when testing the Garmin Venu is how lightweight and comfortable it is. I could easily forget I was wearing this smartwatch, which is important because it tracks your heart rate and activity throughout the day and your sleep at night. It also offers phenomenal battery life. You can expect at least three days between charges, but you could push the Venu to five or more with the right settings.

The clear purpose of this smartwatch is fitness tracking and the companion app—which works well for Android or iOS—offers up a cornucopia of detailed charts and insights into your workouts, general activity, sleep quality, and more. The usual suspects like step counts and calories burned are there, but you can also gain insights into your respiration, track hydration, and there’s a clever “body battery” score that helps you decide how hard to push yourself.

The Garmin Venu doesn’t win too many style points, but it’s unobtrusive and fits in just fine with formal wear, sportswear, or casual clothing. The AMOLED touchscreen is bright and legible, but it was sometimes less responsive than I wanted, and didn’t always come to life immediately when I raised my wrist. The Garmin Venu is also a little light on smartwatch features with no support for calls or voice assistants, but if fitness is your priority it’s easy to recommend.

The headline here is an astoundingly low asking price. The Wyze Watch comes in two sizes (44mm and 47mm) both with a rectangular design that owes a debt to Apple’s smartwatch line. The grey aluminum-alloy case looks quite smart and there’s a single button on the right. The silicone band is comfortable and the Wyze Watch scores an IP68 rating, so it can be submerged in water for short periods without sustaining damage.

A slower processor in the 47mm model contrasts with the smaller screen and larger bezels in the 44mm model. Either way, the TFT LCD display is not the most responsive and the Wyze Watch requires a little patience. Fitness tracking is basic and includes a step count and calories burned estimate. There’s also a heart rate sensor and Sp02 sensor to measure your blood oxygen levels. Sleep tracking is automatic, but activity tracking has to be started manually and only seems to cover running.

You can configure the notifications you want to come through from your phone, but they are one-way only, so you can’t answer calls or respond to messages. Connectivity is occasionally flaky, but it works correctly most of the time. There’s no support for apps, music, mobile payments, or navigation. On the upside, battery life is very good, and most people will only need to charge the Wyze Watch once a week.

Ultimately, the Wyze Watch is a very basic smartwatch that offers one-way notifications, basic fitness and sleep tracking, long battery life, and not a great deal else, but that’s reflected in the bargain price.

With a colourful and bright AMOLED screen, detailed fitness and health tracking, and up to 14-days of battery, the Amazfit GTS has a lot going for it. This unashamed Apple Watch clone comes with support for Android phones, as well as iOS, and is offered at a very affordable price.

At a distance, you could easily mistake the Amazfit for an Apple Watch, though the single button is located centrally on the right of the case. The build quality is inevitably nowhere near as good as Apple’s, and my review unit picked up a couple of tiny chips to the case during the first week, though it is waterproof and had no issue going through the shower. Setup is convoluted and requires lots of time-consuming updates, making the Amazfit GTS by far the worst out-of-box experience on our list.

The software and the companion app are a little confusing, but the fitness tracking features are impressively detailed. You’ll find heart rate tracking, the ability to record workouts, standalone GPS, and detailed sleep tracking. The Amazfit GTS also offers something called PAI (Personal Activity Intelligence), which has been inspired by a scientific health study to push you toward enough physical activity to reduce your risk of heart disease and other health problems. While the scope of the fitness tracking features is impressive, and there’s lots of data to review, the accuracy is sometimes questionable—especially the step count.

The main weakness of the Amazfit GTS is the smartphone notifications. I had difficulty getting message and call notifications to come through and they remained inconsistent throughout testing. There doesn’t seem to be any facility to send or reply to messages, simply a notification that a message arrived on your phone, and the Amazfit GTS can’t make or receive phone calls.

There are also no third-party apps, mobile payments, or voice assistant support. While this is a very affordable smartwatch, with a great screen and some interesting fitness tracking features, for most people it will be worth spending a little more for something better.