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Top 6 Best Sports Watch Brands

Best Sports Watch Brands

Sports watches are hugely popular accessories that complement a healthy and active lifestyle. The newest sports watches are packed with features to help monitor your performance and guide you through your workout while staying connected to your phone and important apps. Keep reading for more details on some of the top sports watch brands.

  1. Apple
  2. Garmin
  3. Suunto
  4. Fitbit
  5. Samsung
  6. Casio

1. Apple

Apple is an American technology company known for its consumer electronics, software, and online services. It is the largest information technology company in the world, as well as the most valuable publicly-traded company in the world. Apple got its start selling hand-built computer kits after being founded in Los Altos, California, in 1976 by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne.

Today, Apple sells a variety of consumer electronics, including personal computers, smartphones, digital music players, tablets, smartwatches, digital voice assistants, and wireless headphones, in addition to software and online services.

Their smartwatch, the Apple Watch, is the most popular piece of wearable technology in the world. Current Apple Watches include several fitness features and optional cellular phone connectivity. Apple has an exclusive marketing partnership with the Bayern Munich soccer team. NBA star Stephen Curry and comedian Bill Hader have endorsed Apple products as well.

2. Garmin

  • Founded: 1989
  • Website: https://www.garmin.com/en-US/
  • Products: Garmin Venu, Garmin Forerunner, Garmin Instinct, Garmin Epix, Garmin Fēnix, Garmin Vívoactive

Garmin is an American maker of GPS receivers and sports watches. Gary Burrell and Min Kao, two electrical engineers, started the company in Lenexa, Kansas, in 1989, under the name ProNav. The company’s first offering was a GPS receiver, which was adopted by the US Army in 1991, providing their first major contract.

Today, Garmin offers a variety of navigation, fitness, recreation, and wearable technology products. Their line of GPS receivers includes units for automotive, aviation, and marine uses, as well as handheld and wrist-mounted receivers. Their wearable technology options include a vast range of sports watches, many of them GPS-enabled, in several different price points.

Garmin sports watches are also designed for a variety of different user types, including outdoor and military, fitness and running, casual lifestyle, and woman-specific. Garmin sponsors over 15 cycling teams as well as hundreds of individual cyclists, runners, and triathletes. Notable Garmin-sponsored athletes are runner Cory McGee, mountain bikers Rebecca Rusch and Yuri Hauswald, triathletes Mirinda Carfrae, Holly Lawrence, and Timothy O’Donnell, paddleboarder Jenny Kalmbach, and surfer Anthony Walsch.

3. Suunto

  • Founded: 1936
  • Website: https://www.suunto.com/
  • Products: Suunto 9 Peak Pro, Suunto 9 Peak, Suunto 9 Baro, Suunto 5 Peak, Suunto Core Alpha, Suunto Core

Suunto is a Finnish maker of sports watches, compasses, dive computers, and precision instruments that is owned by Liesheng, a Chinese tech conglomerate. The company was founded in 1936, in Finland, by surveyor Tuomas Vohlonen to sell a newly-patented wrist compass he had designed.

Suunto grew their business throughout World War II and after by selling compasses and navigational devices to military and civilian customers. Suunto continues to offer a complete line of compasses, as well as dive watches and dive computers, and several models of sports watches.

Most of Suunto’s smartwatches are outdoors and fitness-oriented, but they do offer casual models. Suunto sponsors a multi-sport team of 50 professional athletes called the Suunto Elite Team, who compete in climbing, running, cycling, swimming, and triathlon. Members of the team include triathlete Time Rea and ultramarathoner Kyle Curtin. Suunto’s other notable sponsored athletes include mountaineer Kilian Jornet, freediver William Trubridge, skyrunner Emilie Forsberg, technical diver and underwater explorer Jill Heinerth, and ski mountaineer Greg Hill.

4. Fitbit

Fitbit is an American fitness and wearable technology company owned by Google. The company was started in San Francisco, where the headquarters remain today, in 2007 by James Park and Eric Friedman. They released their first product two years later, which was the original Fitbit Tracker, a personal fitness tracker worn on the wrist that recorded steps taken and sleep duration.

Throughout the 2010s, Fitbit added features to their trackers, introduced smartwatches, and acquired several technology companies before Google bought them in 2021. Fitbit sells several models of fitness-oriented sports watches, as well as a smart scale and wireless headphones.

They also continue to offer a line of non-smart enabled fitness trackers, including a stylish design aimed at women and children’s models that can be moved to bigger bands as children grow. Fitbit has sponsored the Minnesota Timberwolves NBA team as their official jersey patch sponsor. Endurance athlete and author Dean Karnazes and celebrity trainer and nutritionist Harley Pasternak are also sponsored by Fitbit.

5. Samsung

One of the largest companies in the world, Samsung is a multinational conglomerate based in South Korea. Lee Byung-chul opened Samsung as a trading company in Daegu, Japanese Korea, in 1938. Over the next several decades, the company branched out into other industries, including securities, manufacturing, shipbuilding, and consumer electronics.

Samsung Electronics, the consumer electronics division, sells laptops, memory chips and drives, mobile phones, televisions, and screens. They offer two versions of their smart-enabled sports watch. One is fitness-oriented, and the other is designed for casual wear. Both are available in two bezel sizes.

Notably, Samsung’s sports watches use Google’s Wear OS, making them the strongest alternative to the Apple Watch for Android users. Samsung is an official sponsor of the Olympic Games, and they have provided a commemorative smartphone to each Olympian since 2014. The company also supports several South Korean sports teams as naming sponsors, including teams in baseball, football, volleyball, basketball, table tennis, wrestling, and taekwondo. 

6. Casio

  • Founded: 1946
  • Website: https://www.casio.com/us/
  • Products: Casio G-Shock, Casio Baby G, Casio Edifice, Casio Oceanus, Casio Protrek, Casio Vintage, Casio Classic Watch

Casio is a consumer electronics manufacturing corporation based in Japan. The company was started by Tadao Kashio in 1946 as a fabrication business called Kashio Seisakujo. Tadao and his younger brothers developed and sold the world’s first all-electric compact calculator in 1957.

During the 1980s, Casio produced extremely popular home electronic musical keyboards and quartz digital watches, iconic products with which the company became strongly associated. Casio currently offers calculators for both business and education, electronic musical instruments, label printers, and an enormous range of watches, notably their G-Shock line of rugged sports watches.

Although some models can be expensive, Casio’s sports watches are known for being affordable. Casio has recently started making smart-enabled sports watches. They have released a model running Wear OS, which may appeal to Android users. Casio sponsors Japanese professional golfer Ryo Ishikawa, Japanese-American NBA player Rui Hachimura, and American mountain runner Joseph Gray. Other Casio-sponsored athletes are skateboarders Stevie Williams and Kelvin Hoefler, surfers Kanoa Igarashi, Adriano de Souza, and Yadin Nicol, and snowboarder Louie Vito.

Honorable Mentions

Amazfit

Amazfit is a sports watch brand that provides functionality and attractive design at extremely low prices. However, quality is not sacrificed, as this young Chinese brand uses excellent materials and modern styles in their GPS fitness watches.

In addition to a wide range of styles of smart         watches with customizable bands, Amazfit sells a smart scale, which can be coordinated with a smart watch through their app for a more complete training experience. If you are looking for a fully-featured smart watch and training system for a much lower price than the leading brands, Amazfit may be the brand for you.

COROS

  • Founded: 2014
  • Website: https://us.coros.com/
  • Products: COROS PACE 2 GPS, COROS APEX 2 Pro, COROS VERTIX 2, Accessories

COROS is one of the best choices for budget-friendly sports watches that are rich in features. The Chinese brand was founded in 2014 and is a relative newcomer to the sports watch industry. Nonetheless, they have carved out a niche with products such as the capable Apex series and the affordable Pace series.

COROS watches offer all the features and most of the same performance as more expensive watches from brands such as Garmin and Suunto for less than half the price. They also sell changing pods and straps in a variety of colors. If you don’t need top-end performance but want all the features of a top sports watch for a lower price, COROS is a great choice.

Timex

  • Founded: 1854
  • Website: https://www.timex.com/
  • Products: Timex iConnect Active+, Timex Ironman Classic, Timex Essential 30-Lap

Timex is a classic American watch brand that offers affordable, no-nonsense sports watches. Although they are mostly known for their waterproof, digital and analog sports watches, Timex also has a line of smart-enabled sports watches. Their iConnect Active+ smart watches feature activity tracking, optical heart rate monitoring, custom faces, notifications, and media controls.

Timex also sells a vast array of traditional sports watches for men and women at several price points. They make several attractive and feature-rich models that start around $50, with prices increasing up to around $200 for the addition of features and higher-end materials. Timex also sells a full range of casual and dress watches, all with affordable starting prices.

FAQ

What is the best sports watch brand?

Apple is the best sports watch brand. Apple’s trademark Apple Watch is one of the best, most revolutionary smart watches on the market, coming from the largest technology company in the world. The Apple Watch has multiple fitness and sports-related features, including heart rate monitoring, cardio fitness notifications, fall detection and SOS features, sleep tracking, breathing reminders, and even the ability to perform an ECG, with certain models.

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