Spotify support for smartwatches followed the Wi-Fi and cellular connectivity (delinking of smartwatches from phones and the rise of standalone smartwatches).
Garmin and Samsung were the first to integrate Spotify and other music streaming services long before Apple and Fitbit introduced them on their premium watches (but with certain limitations). Wear OS watches were not late to follow suit.
Gone are the days when all a smartwatch can do is control music on your phone. Even a $50 smartwatch can remote control music. Premium watches these days not only have music streaming services like Spotify well integrated (with offline support) but also enough storage to upload hundreds if not thousands of good old MP3 songs.
For the foreseeable future, smartwatches with Spotify support (or any other music streaming services) would surpass smartphones in popularity as nobody wants to tow their bulky smartphones during exercise. Especially during running, swimming, and cycling.
This trend goes hand in hand with streaming apps rising interest in wearables. Amazon Music, Spotify, Deezer, and Pandora already have apps for top-tier smartwatch brands (Apple, Garmin, Fossil, Fitbit)
In this roundup, we have shortlisted some of the best smartwatches for Spotify. Most of them offer offline music playback and have support for other popular music streaming services too. So be ready to get access to millions of tracks right on your wrist.
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Table of Contents
Best Smartwatch For Spotify Offline: Buying Guide
For all those who are specifically looking for a music streaming smartwatch, the three essentials features to consider are battery, interface, music support, and performance. Try this mnemonic to remember this by heart. (Better In Music)
Battery performance matters as you would most likely want these watches to stream music outdoors. Short battery life involves the annoying hassle of frequently taking off the watch for charging. A decent watch should perform all day long on a single charge.
The interface is basically the way the watch allows you to interact with the streaming apps. Features like screen size, resolution, touchscreen display, gesture sensor all count in to determine the overall interface of the watch.
Music Support means if the watch has the required hardware to support a seamless performance. It must have high storage capacity, should run streaming apps flawlessly, and flawlessly connect to the headphones/speaker pair.
Pro tip: Speakers in a smartwatch practically offer no advantage to music lovers. The sound quality is subpar, and they drain the battery. Better not to pay extra for speakers.
Apart from the essentials, the smartwatch should meet the subjective taste of the users. e.g. If the user wants a rugged watch, the smartwatch needs to be at least ATM 5 rated; if the user needs the smartwatch to replace their smartphones, it should have cellular connectivity (standalone watch), e-wallet feature, and solid third-party app support, so on and so forth.
What Are The Limitations Of Spotify On A Smartwatch?
This is true for other apps like Pandora and Deezer. Smartwatches still have a long way to go to offer the best compatibility with streaming apps.
The very first shortcoming is small storage capacity. Most smartwatches offer storage capacity for up to only 300 to 500 songs. You would frequently have to delete or download the songs or podcasts frequently.
Though many smartwatches allow streaming apps on their platforms, they don’t offer them much freedom. Like the case with the Apple watch series. Until recently, you can’t stream music on any Apple watch via Spotify. Now you can, but still can’t access them on the watch in the offline mode.
The short battery life of the smartwatch is yet another limitation. And so does the lack of a speaker in most smartwatches.
‘Below you will find our curated list of the best smartwatches for Spotify and other popular streaming apps. But before you get to the first review, let’s go through the following table to figure out the key differences, strengths, and weaknesses of a music streaming watch.
Best Smartwatch For Spotify: Comparison Table
10 Top Smartwatches For Spotify (with offline Support)
It goes without saying that these are some of the best smartwatches for music storage. Some have speakers, but there are useless for listening to music. You need to pair decent headphones or earbuds to listen to music on these watches. For a phone-free Spotify experience, make sure the watch has LTE or Wi-Fi support
Garmin Watches are best for music (also for Spotify), especially the ones dedicated to runners: the Forerunner series. Apple and Fitbit have limited support. Whereas Samsung has a couple of good watches with built-in music too.
Garmin Forerunner 245 Music—Best For Runners
- Decent Storage Capacity For 500 songs
- Spotify support and offline syncing (Premium required)
- Deezer & iHeartRadio
- 6 hours Battery Performance With GPS+ music
- Offline playback supported
- All important metrics like Body Battery, Training Effect, Training Load, Recovery time, and Pace Pro
- Heart Rate, Sleep, Stress, and Blood oxygen saturation Monitoring
Forerunner 245 Music is Garmin’s attempt at a GPS running watch that provides music enthusiasts the pleasure of having their favorite tracks on their wrists. With an affordable price tag, offline music playback, and solid running features, FR245 doesn’t skimp on fitness features.
Build Quality:
FR245 Music has a lightweight design at a mere 38.5g and a small display. It is made entirely out of polymer plastic that feels cheap at first, but only when you wear it for some time you will know the benefit.
The textured plastic body can take a beating so you won’t have to worry about damage on occasions when you fell and land on the watch.
The silicone strap that comes with the watch is replaceable. There are buttons on the sides but no touch-screen, a feature it has common with Fenix Series. (Physical buttons are far superior to a touchscreen while running or exercising)
Interface & Display:
The interface consists of various screens in the form of widgets. You can access your favorite apps, weather, calendar, heart rate, GPS, etc. with just a push of buttons. It is quite simple and customizable.
It features a 240 x 240 pixel display and a Transflective Memory in pixel screen, common in Garmin Watches. The screen is easy to view in direct sunlight but lacks the handy Always-on feature.
Music Support:
Forerunner 245 Music provides the comfort of having about 500 of your favorite tracks on your watch. They can be uploaded very conveniently via a PC.
With a storage capacity of 3.5 GB, you can load music directly from your pc or sync playlists from Spotify, Deezer, and Amazon Music. Music from a connected Smartphone can be synced via Wi-Fi so that you can listen to your favorite podcast while out on a run.
Note: Only the Premium Subscribers can sync playlists from Spotify for offline support.
As mentioned earlier, the touch panel is missing so all the navigation is done by the buttons present at the sides of the watches. Convenient to use, they prevent accidental touches while you are exercising. However, it gets clunky for everyday usage.
To access the built-in music player, press the Down button on the side of the watch. Once opened, you can skip through tracks and shuffle playlists.
However, there are no onboard speakers, you will have to connect earbuds to listen to music. Here is how to connect AirPods to Garmin Watch.
Fitness & Health Features:
Garmin Forerunner 245 Music has plenty of sports modes with a focus on running. It will be your ultimate trainer with real-time heart rate and activity tracking in the field and by keeping tabs on recovery and energy levels during day or night.
Premium features from the Fenix Series like Body Battery, Training Effect, Training Load, and Recovery time are all featured on this running watch.
Also, It doubles as a health watch with sleep, stress, respiration, and blood oxygen tracking enabled. Apart from ECG, it offers what the Apple Watch is offering these days at an attractive price point.
Battery Life:
Garmin claims its battery lasts 7 days with GPS turned off. We find the performance consistent with this claim. However, It lasts 24 hours with GPS turned on, even less with GPS and Music running simultaneously.
Battery life has decreased compared to the previous model because of the music features enabled. But if used 4-5 times in a week, that 7-day number is decent.
Garmin Venu 2/2S: Best Mid-range Watch
- Up to 650 songs
- Spotify, Amazon Music, Deezer, iHeartRadio
- Almost 7 hours of music with GPS
- Offline playback/sync supported (Premium Account holders)
- AMOLED Display with on-screen animations
- Two Sizes: Venu 2 (45mm); Venu 2S (40mm)
- NFC payment (Garmin Pay)
- Heart Rate, Sleep, Stress, and Blood oxygen saturation Monitoring, Health Snapshot
- All important metrics like Body Battery, Training Effect, Training Load, Recovery time, Pace Pro
- Latest ELEVATE Sensor with powerful ‘Firstbeat Analytics’s Algorithm
Garmin Venu 2 is a worthy successor of the original Venu with a refined AMOLED display. It offers plenty of health and fitness features and is the current best mid-range sports watch on the market. Also, Garmin Pay is there for contactless payments.
Build Quality:
It has a rubberized casing with a metallic bezel to save the screen from damage. The watch comes with swappable silicone straps with many holes to snuggly fit it around the wrist.
There are two size options for both men and women: 45mm and 40mm. Both watches have two buttons on the side and are priced the same.
Interface & Display:
Unlike the Fenix and Forerunner series, Venu 2 comes with a crisp and vibrant 1.3-inch touch screen display (416 x 416 pixels). Navigation is pretty easy with intuitive widgets, and the tracked data is represented in colorful graphs and charts on the watch.
Features are now easier to find and we can now customize data screens to view the most important running or heart rate metric.
You won’t have to open Garmin connect on the smartphone to get a summary of your sleep or blood oxygen tracking. Its always-on display helps you to glance at important metrics when your hands are full.
Music Support:
In terms of music, the storage (about 7 GB) is upgraded to add 650 songs instead of the 500 offered on the original Venu.
As Forerunner 245 Music and Garmin Fenix 5X, this watch offers offline syncing support for all the popular streaming platforms including Spotify.
Fitness & Health Features:
You are getting plenty of sport and health tracking features. It is one of the best Garmin For HIIT. The features we mentioned in FR245 Music Review are all there with extras like Health Snapshot and graphic animations to help newbies.
Garmin Coach is free like it was for the original Venu.
The health tracking includes Advanced Sleep Monitoring, hydration tracking, blood oxygen saturation, respiration, body temperature, and so on.
Battery:
The battery life on essential/smartwatch mode is 11 days for Venu 2 and 10 for the smaller unit. But if you run GPS and Music simultaneously (as you would during exercise), the battery takes a battery and is reduced to a mere 8 hours.
Garmin Venu SQ Music: Affordable Pick
- Storage for 500 songs.
- Offline Spotify, Deezer, Amazon Music, iHeartradio
- Square design with touchscreen (240 x 240-pixel)
- GPS onboard with a fine selection of sports mode
- 6 hours of battery performance with GPS and Music
Venu SQ Music is the only square watch by Garmin. It mimics the looks of the Apple Watch but lacks in features. It is an affordable Fitness-focused GPS watch with smarts like offline Spotify support and Garmin Pay.
Build Quality:
With a square design and plastic build, this is much closer to the Amazfit GTS 2. We find it comfortable to wear all day with a lightweight design that makes it invisible on the wrist.
The screen is protected by gorilla glass protection, and the watch is 5 ATM resistant to water ingression.
Interface & Display:
Garmin Venu SQ lacks the gains of the original Venu. The user interface is quite crude: No attention is paid to font size and visual styles.
1.3-inch screen (240 x 240 pixel) doesn’t offer the very impressive display we are used to on Apple and even cheaper Amazfit Watches. Garmin has surely cut corners here.
Music Support:
Only the Music variant comes with Wi-Fi sync. You need to pay about $50 to get enough storage for 500 songs. You would have to upload songs in mp3 format from your PC or Phone, or can sync files from Spotify, Amazon Prime Music, Deezer if you have a premium account.
Fitness & Health Features:
Venu SQ Music shines in fitness and health tracking.
The heart rate and GPS tracking are in line with the expensive Fenix series of Garmin. Surprisingly, it offers all the health tracking features except for ECG.
In the sports department, it can track 20+ sports including running, cycling (indoor and outdoor), walking, golf, strength, cardio, yoga/pilates, elliptical, and skiing.
Battery:
The watch would last you almost a week on a single charge if you prefer to use it as a time-telling device which we are sure you won’t. With GPS and Music enabled, the battery drain pretty fast, and the performance is limited to 6 hours.
Garmin Vivoactive 4/4S:
- 500 songs, the same as Venu SQ
- Spotify, Amazon Music, Deezer, iHeartRadio
- 5 hours of music with GPS
- Offline playback supported
- Garmin Pay, GPS support
- The same health and fitness features as in Venu SQ
If you don’t prefer a square design, Garmin Vivoactive 4 and 4S are available in the same price range. The mimic the features of Venu SQ but has a refined display. The watch improves very little on the predecessor: Garmin Vivoactive 3 Music.
Build Quality:
In terms of build quality, this watch doesn’t offer anything different than Venu SQ except for the square design and a stainless steel bezel. The same fiber-reinforced polymer goes into its construction with the standard silicone strap. It also is rated 5 ATM for water resistance.
However, this watch is available in two sizes.
Interface & Display:
The interface has a sleek and simple look, with a dark background, mostly white text, and color icons. It lacks the AMOLED display which would have definitely added to its aesthetic appeal.
Vivoactive 4’s 1.3-inch screen ( 260 x 260-pixel resolution) offers a little better resolution than Venu SQ, but it is still noticeable. It has an Always-on mode and is protected by gorilla glass.
Music Support:
Like the Vivoactive 3 Music, the Vivoactive 4 and 4S offers onboard music storage for up to 500 songs. To download the music from third-party services, you would have to pay for the premium account. You will first have to connect to Spotify account via the Garmin Connect App and then you can download the playlists.
Follow this step by step process to sync Spotify Account and Download music: (this work for all Garmin Devices on this list, and all other music streaming services)
- Open connect app>>tap music>>Spootify >> follow on screen instruction to connect your account.
- Connect to Wi-Fi>>Open Music Control Widget>>Hold The bottom/back button>>Select Music Providers>>Choose a connected provider>> Select Playlist you want to download.
Fitness & Health Features:
Garmin Vivoactive 4 apes the other health metrics of Galaxy Watch 4 except for ECG and Body Composition. In terms of accuracy, it is somewhat better than the GW4 and the Apple Watch. Compared to its own brethren on this list, it has little to nothing more to offer.
It has multiple sports and workout profiles and offers comprehensive data for popular ones like running, swimming, and weightlifting. The GPS tracking is solid in line with the likes of the Apple Watch Series 6 and Garmin’s own Fenix 6.
Battery:
Garmin says the Vivoactive 4 lasts up to 8 days in smartwatch mode, 6 hours in GPS mode with music, and 18 hours in GPS mode without music. The 4S has an estimated battery life of up to 7 days in smartwatch mode, 5 hours in GPS mode, or 15 hours in GPS mode without music.
For the most part, we have found the watch performance consistent with the claim of the company.
Garmin Forerunner 945: Triathlon watch
- 1,000 songs storage
- MP3, Spotify, Deezer, Amazon Music and iHeartRadio
- GPS with music: 10 hours
- Offline playback supported
- Big on Swimming, cycling and running
Forerunner 945 is a high-end Garmin for Triathletes with a huge capacity to store 1K+ songs. If budget is not a problem, we would recommend you to ditch the Forerunner 245 Music for this premium beast.
Build Quality:
It is by all standards a large watch but with a lightweight design (50g). Again, it is made of a fiber-reinforced polymer casing with a silicone strap.
The 22mm perforated silicone band makes it comfortable to wear during a sweaty workout. However, you can swap it out for any third-party strap you like thanks to the Quick release mechanism.
Interface & Display:
The Forerunner 945 has an always-on, 1.2-inch display, which is easy to read in broad daylight. The resolution is the same as that of Venu SQ. The screen is well optimized for daylight: anti-glare. The user interface takes time to get used to with plenty of physical buttons for navigation.
Music Support:
Other than the dedicated 4 GB storage for MP3 Music and Spotify playlists, the watch has nothing more to offer than other Garmin watches. However, the LTE variant allows you to stream music on your wrist without having to be around your phone.
Fitness & Health Features:
It is essentially the Fenix 6 minus extra sports tracking. It comes packed with 30+ different indoor and outdoor sports including running, open water swimming, strength training, skiing, and more.
The health and fitness tracking is just the same as you might find it in the Garmin Venu 2.
Battery:
The Forerunner 945 boasts of up to 2 weeks of battery life in smartwatch mode (and stands true to it), up to 36 hours in GPS mode, and up to 10 hours in GPS mode with music. As expected you would find a very little discrepancy in the actual performance.
Samsung Galaxy Watch 4: Best Wear OS Watch
- 2000+ songs (16 GB storage)
- Offline Spotify Support
- Wear OS-powered
- Thousands of third-party apps
- Lifestyle Watch.
- Body Composition and ECG monitoring
- Different sizes, LTE and Bluetooth models
Galaxy Watch 4 and 4 Classic were released last month and Samsung made a come back to Wear OS after a long time. This smartwatch is focused on lifestyle and health features, and the best Samsung has to offer in terms of music storage and performance.
What’s interesting? Samsung doesn’t attach a crazy price tag with this watch.
Build Quality:
The Galaxy Watch 4 has a metallic construction and silicone straps. It is extremely lightweight and has a sleek form factor. We particularly loved the streamlined shape and the color option available for the watch.
Interface & Display:
The new Wear OS has a Samsung One UI messed on it that gives a feel of Tizen. The screen is super crisp at 450×450 pixel resolution and has a minimum bezel.
The watch is easy to navigate using the touch bezel a feature it inherited from the Galaxy Watch Active 2. Overall the interface is quite intuitive with widgets logically positioned.
Music Support:
The Galaxy Watch 4 and Watch 4 Classic support offline music playback. Though you would have to install the Spotify app from Play Store. Worry not, if the app is installed on your phone, the watch will already notify you to install it on the watch.
Just like Garmin, Samsung wants you to buy a premium account to play tracks with no internet connection.
Apart from downloading Spotify playlists for offline listening, you can stream tracks and podcasts directly on the wrist via Wi-Fi and LTE (available only in LTE models).
There is an app for Youtube Music too, that lets you cast your watch screen on the smart TV when your phone is away.
There are no speakers on the watch, but believe me, you would not have wanted them for listening to music.
Fitness & Health Features:
Galaxy Watch 4 has plenty of sports modes pre-installed with offline GPS support. However, we all know the company’s tilt towards lifestyle and health features. So sports tracking is not up to par with the likes of Garmin and Fitbit, but there is plenty of health features including the brand new body composition tracking and the older yet rarer ECG monitoring.
Battery:
This watch hasn’t improved on its predecessor namely Galaxy Watch 3. A one-day watch that needs to be recharged once or even twice a day, GW4 shares the woes of the Apple Watch.
Galaxy Active Watch 2—Best Samsung Smartwatch For Spotify
Samsung upgraded the Active 1 in just 6 months after its release. The newer Active 2 comes with a lot of features that attract music and smartwatch geeks alike.
Music Support:
With the internal memory of 4 GBs, lots of your favorite playlists can be at your disposal. The cherry on top is that Active 2 supports Spotify offline, which means your Spotify tracks can be used even when you have no service. The watch allows immaculate Bluetooth connectivity with Bluetooth headphones of your choice.
Samsung Active 2 connects to your phones via Bluetooth but also allows wifi connectivity in case of the phone being out of range. The settings are managed by Samsung’s wearable app which controls apps, pairing, watch settings, etc.
Interface:
Galaxy Active 2 is controlled by a feature called a touch bezel which is a digital embodiment of the mechanical dial in the previous model. The interface, made of Tizen OS, is quite simple and user-friendly. It is fast, snappy, and lag-free. The watch rocks and is always on display which is also customizable.
Battery Life:
Galaxy Active 2 has pretty decent battery life. With the always-on display turned off, it can last for almost 2 days along with music and other apps. With the display turned on, it lasts for a bit more than 24 hours. It juices up in about 2 complete hours.
Garmin Fenix 5 Plus—Durable Garmin Smartwatch For Spotify
Looking for a rugged option that also caters to your musical needs? Fenix 5 plus might just be the perfect smartwatch for you.
Music Support:
Garmin provided beastly storage of 14 GB along with the support of your favorite music players like Spotify and Deezer. It supports offline listening if you pay for the premium subscription of Spotify. These apps can be synced using wifi. You can store tracks manually via a USB cable.
Bluetooth 5.0 provides flawless connectivity to your most loved pair of headsets. But this doesn’t mean that you cannot connect it to your other Bluetooth appliances, for example your car Bluetooth or your Bluetooth speaker, the connection is just as good.
Interface:
The controls and interface are straightforward. The traditional button controls are present which have a tactile feedback to them. They are very convenient to use and can be used while running and exercising. Especially music controls are very easy like play, pause, next, previous track and volume controls are all done by the side buttons.
Battery Life:
Battery performance is not something that stands out. The watch offers 18 hours of juice with the GPS turned on. These numbers can be boosted to 42 hours in the Ultratrac mode where the data tracking quality is decreased specifically to increase the endurance. The timing is still decent for day to day usage.
Fitbit Versa 3—Best Fitbit For Spotify
Fitbit Versa 3 is a potent combination of a great battery, a loaded fitness watch, and convenient music control. This is sure to give you the Apple Watch vibes on a low budget.
Music Support:
Versa 3 provides a greater extent of musical support. The only problem is that the offline playback is only supported by the Deezer, Pandora, or the watch’s onboard memory. Spotify only allows you to use your watch as a remote control for the tracks being played on your smartphone. Deezer, Pandora, and Spotify come pre-installed though.
Users can listen to the songs through the speaker or using Bluetooth devices. Connectivity is great with little to no latency. Even when running or exercising, there is no jitter or fluctuation in the playback.
Interface:
Versa 3 is equipped with a 1.58 inch AMOLED touch panel which acts as an input for navigating through the interface. You can receive calls, select playlists, and songs from your favorite apps just by a touch. The interface is quite simple and understandable. There is also a programmable button that can be used to access Alexa or your favorite apps instantly.
Battery Life:
The battery is one of the most promising features of Versa 3. It can last up to 6 days with routine usage and GPS used 2-3 times a week. With the always-on display turned on, it lasts roughly for 2 days. It supports fast charging also with a 15 minute charge giving roughly 35% boost.
Apple Watch Series 6: Best Apple Watch For Spotify
Just recently Apple allowed Spotify to stream music directly on the watch without any need for a connected iPhone. The Apple Watch Series 6 is the latest in the series of premium wearables so we added it here for its advanced features. But if you are on a budget, you can opt for Previous versions with Wifi or Data connection.
Keep in mind that for IOS devices no other watch can offer better compatibility than the latest Apple Watch series.
Music Support:
Until recently, Apple has been less open to third party apps like Spotify, Deezer or Pandora. Though it allows you to install these apps onto your Apple watch, but allows them little functionality. Like just a few months back you can tinker with the playlist on the phone through the spotify app on the watch.
A lot of this has to do with Apple promoting ‘Apple Music’ to its user base and securing a wide space in the streaming apps industry. But as it always happens, they had to open up to slash the growing pressure of its users.
You can stream music on Spotify when your watch is connected to a Wifi or has a cellular connection. But you can’t listen to music offline. However, ‘Apple Music’ Offers you that functionality.
The watch has 32 GB of storage, has a pretty loud speaker, and flawlessly connects to Airpods.
Interface:
Apple Watch series 6 has a killer display and if that could not impress you, I wonder what can? ( Speaking of smartwatch display) Always-on, Retina Display is the Gold standard of smartwatches.
Battery Life:
Apple Watches don’t offer something out of the ordinary when it comes to battery life. Series 6 offers standard 18 hours of battery life. But if you assign it heavy-duty tasks like streaming songs on a cellular connection, the battery would hardly make it to the end of the day.
However, thanks to fast-charging support you can fully charge it in less than 1.5 hours.
Final Verdict:
Almost all these smartwatches support Spotify(and many other music streaming apps) offline if you pay for the premium subscription of the app. You can check the comparison table for a quick overview of the key features of the smartwatches with respect to music streaming.
The best smartwatch for Spotify is, however, Garmin Forerunner 245 Music as it has the best battery life, supports offline listening, and allows you to stream music directly via Wifi Connection.