To find the best smartwatches under $150, we have literally gone through hundreds of smartwatches.
$100-150 is a midrange budget for a smartwatch, and so unsurprisingly, very few watches in this price range offer high-end features.
Nevertheless, we have been able to find a couple of high-end watches here and there.
A skinny of the article: we have managed to enlist watches from top brands like Apple, Garmin, and Samsung. However, a great majority of smartwatches are from mainstream Chinese brands like Amazfit and Huawei. Here are our top 2 picks:
| Best Rugged Smartwatch Under $150 | Amazfit T-REX |
| Best Smartwatch For Fitness Enthusiasts Under $150 | Amazfit Bip U Pro |
We have deliberately avoided brands like YAMAY and Letsfit as we don’t consider them mainstream ones, and therefore, there is a good reason to be skeptical about their efficacy and performance.
So without further ado. Let’s get straight to our first smartwatch.
Wait a minute, You don’t have the time to read the full-length article, and can take our words to make this decision?
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Table of Contents
Our Best Pick?
As smartwatches are considered accessories of cell phones. Their dependence on the latter, one way or another, confirms it even a few of them offer standalone features.
We will decide our best pick based largely on the platform and purpose.
Best Budget Smartwatch for Apple: it is a no-brainer to guess the watch that works seamlessly with iphone. The non-LTE version of Apple Watch Series 3, which as we were penning down this article was hovering near $150. Anyways, Pick this one, even if you have to pay a little more.
A non-Apple watch for Iphones that is at par with Apple Watches can’t be better than Samsung Galaxy Watch Active in this budget. You might have to sacrifice a feature or two, but the overall build quality of the watch and its fast, but limited, TizenOS is nearly perfect for Apple Fans.
Best Budget Smartwatch For Android:
For Wear OS (previously known as Android OS) fanatics, the best mid-range budget watch is Ticwatch C2 Plus. It has superior hardware to run the power-battery-hungry Wear OS.
1 GB ram is more than enough, whereas, 4GB storage, 2.5GB for all practical purposes, can store more than 300 songs: Good news for runners. All this with the versatility of the Wear OS platform.
Fitness enthusiasts can’t go wrong with Fitbit Versa 2. The watch has one major drawback, it doesn’t have a standalone GPS. Alternatively, you can pick nearly half the price of it, Amazfit Bip U smartwatch.
Best Amazfit Smartwatches Under $150 (Amazfit Bip U Pro, T-REX, GTS 2e, Stratos 3)
Amazfit watches by Huami, a Chinese-based wearable company, offers the best value for the price. About 37 smartwatches were released under the Amazfit banner
We have added 4 affordable Amazfit smartwatches in ascending order of price tag. We believe that the known brands like Amazfit can be trusted with the investment more than obscure cheap brands like ‘Letsfit’ and ‘YAMAY’.
Amazfit Bip U Pro: Best Smartwatch With Standalone GPS & Voice Assistant
Amazfit Bip U Pro was released exactly one month after the release of Bip U and costs $10 more than the former. With Built-in Alexa, Standalone GPS, and several watches, it makes an excellent choice for a budget under $100.
Yes, you heard that right. As we pen down this piece for you, the watch costs about $70.
The key features that make a strong case for this affordable watch include a razor-sharp 1.43-inch color screen, heart-rate, and blood-oxygen monitors, more than 60 sport modes, and last but not the least, a battery that’s good for up to nine days.
The watch overall has pretty solid hardware but in the software department, it lags a great deal. The only reason you hate this watch is the clunky app, ZEPP. The proprietary app still has to come a long way before it matches the likes of Apple and Google Applications.
Amazfit Bip U Pro is the top smartwatch of Bip Lineup and by far the most affordable GPS watch. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first smartwatch by any reputable company that has both standalone GPS and Built-in Alexa and doesn’t cost over $75.
Amazfit T-REX: Best Rugged Smartwatch Under $150
Amazfit T-REX is the polar opposite of the watch we discussed earlier. If the name couldn’t make an impression, we are sure that the feature would do. And as is true of the whole Amazfit Product line, the watch is on the lower end of the price.
This watch is big, a bit oversized for normal wrist size, and has a rugged construction through and through. T-REX is a military-standard certified smartwatch so it won’t fail you even if you put it through extreme abuse.
Heart rate tracking is there, pretty much a baseline for modern smartwatches. But the watch has sleep tracking too. You can control music playback, but not download or stream it on the watch. Unlike Amazfit Bip U Pro, it has an always-on display option, but it saps the battery pretty fast.
Amazfit made a staggering claim of 20 days battery backup if you choose not to use GPS or the ‘Always-on’ Display feature. A mixed usage will get you through 5 days,
T-REX is more of a manly watch due to its huge built, and oversized design. That being said, its long battery life and standalone GPS do qualify it as a rugged smartwatch for your next outdoor adventure.
Amazfit GTS 2e: Affordable Alternative To Apple Watch For Android
Amazfit GTS series has an eerily similar to Apple Watches. The watch is one-quarter of the price of the Apple smartwatch but in design and performance give tough competition to the latter. For Android users, there is no other better affordable alternative to the Apple watch.
Amazfit has been very clear in making this watch more of a smartwatch than a fitness tracker. The smartwatch features like razor-sharp crisp display, a unisex design, the comfortable strap are very telling of the design philosophy of Amazfit watches. A light-weight Aluminium case with curved glass gives it a premium look.
On the other hand, it has a pretty accurate heart rate tracker. The step tracker is a little off, and the sleep tracker is simply unreliable. The same is true of body temperature and blood oxygen saturation measurement. Pinpoint accuracy is not what we expect from even overly-priced smartwatches, but at least the watch can do better to keep the measurement in the optimal range.
The promise of 14-days battery life has been kept by the watch for users who don’t use the advanced features and especially not the ‘always-on’ feature. By the way, you won’t have to use it as the sensors are pretty accurate.
Amazfit Stratos 3: Best Affordable Sports Smartwatch
The sports smartwatch is bordering at $150 most of the time but can go up to $170. With more than 80+ sports modes, Stratos 3 can be easily qualified as an affordable smartwatch for a sports lover.
There are two downsides to Stratos 3, and the watch deserves the fan’s wrath for them.
- Poor Display quality
- Inaccurate GPS
But if you can overlook these shortcomings, this watch has to offer many powerful features that eclipse these drawbacks.
As a fitness smartwatch, the watch tracks the heart rate and steps pretty accurately. However, it doesn’t account for the short strolls. Both heart rate and step tracking are measured and compared against the reading of standard equipment and found to be up to mark.
It has a 1.34-inch circular color display surrounded by a ceramic and stainless steel dial. The bottom is made of plastic. It weighs about 40g and has 22mm-wide silicon straps with a Tang buckle.
There is a built-in wifi option, and a 2 GB storage capacity so you can store your favorite songs. The Watch is 5ATM rated and has a large battery that lasts 14 days. Amazfit is always true about the mentioned battery life.
Garmin Forerunner 235: Best Smartwatch For Runners Under $150
The Forerunner series was released for a very specific audience, and you can easily guess who they are. Forerunner 235 is now a 5-years old smartwatch, but it hasn’t lost its relevance primarily due to built-in GPS and top-notch accuracy as a runner’s watch.
With Forerunner 235, you would have to make several compromises. The most painful is the non-touch display. Of course, runners can live with that as they prefer button over touch while navigating through the watch screen( sweaty hands).
The watch is swim-proof and has pretty solid battery life. Once completely charged, it takes more than 6 days to drain the whole battery. It sports a traditional chunky design: circular dial with buttons for navigation.
Being an old version, the watch doesn’t have bells and whistles you can find in even cheap Letsfit and Wyze smartwatches these days. Plus unlike its successor, it doesn’t have a music storage option so you will have to carry around your phone with you while running.
This is a serious drawback in a running watch, and if you can afford it you will be better off with Garmin Forerunner 245 music.
Garmin Vivoactive 3: Best Cheap GPS-enabled Smartwatch under $150
Garmin Vivoactive 3 has a lot of similarities with Forerunner 235, but it came later than the Forerunner 235 and therefore has many advanced features including a touch screen and mobile payment system.
We can’t help but compare these watches as most of the users get confused while buying affordable Garmin smartwatches under $150.
Thankfully, Vivoactive 3 has a built-in GPS and an advanced heart rate tracker. Its sleep tracking is better and advanced. While the Forerunner is focused more narrowly on fitness, specifically running. The Vivoactive is more of a multisport device for tracking a variety of workouts.
Vivoactive 3 has a solid battery life of 3 days which is half of Forerunner 235, but still impressive. The watch is ATM 5 rated, so you can swim with it.
Related Post: 7 Best Smartwatches With NFC Payment in 2022
The biggest disappointment by Vivoactive 3 is the lack of music storage functionality. You will have to pay $100 more to get your hands on the ‘music’ version of the watch.
Despite the superior watch in many aspects, Vivoactive 3 fails to surpass in popularity among serious runners. Why, most runners usually don’t care about bells and whistles, they need a product trimmed perfectly for their use. (Without any gimmicks)
Fitbit Versa 2: Best Fitness Tracker For Under $150
We had to make a choice between Fitbit Versa 2 and Fitbit Ionic while choosing the best fitness tracker cum smartwatch for under $150. Why?
Ionic And Versa 2 have a different set of strengths. Ionic’s biggest advantage is a standalone GPS and a long battery life. This on the top of a rugged, sporty design.
Versa 2 boasts a shiny, crisp display at par with the Apple and Galaxy watch display. The display has the always-on feature. Also, the overall design of the watch is a whole lot better than Ionic. The only caveat is the lack of standalone GPS. The smartwatch piggy bank on your smartphone’s GPS.
Both Ionic and Versa 2 have music storage capacity, whereas the latter is well integrated with popular streaming apps like Deezer and Spotify. You will have to buy a premium subscription to listen to songs offline. Alternatively, you can store up to 300 songs on both watches.
Last but not least, good news for those who use Alexa on a daily basis. Versa 2 has it well-integrated, though it is unresponsive at times and not up to par with the likes of Siri and Google Assistant.
Fitness tracking feature which made this a flagship watch by the company includes:
- heart rate tracking,
- VO2 Max monitoring,
- Step counting,
- Exercise detection
- Sleep tracking
If the lack of GPS isn’t a deal-breaker for you, Fitbit Versa 2 is the best budget fitness tracker-cum-smartwatch.
Ticwatch C2 Plus: Best Wear OS Smartwatch Under $150
Like the Fitbit ionic Vs Versa 2 battle, we had to make a tough choice between the Ticwatch C2 Plus and Ticwatch E2. Features that make C2 Plus the winner of our roundup includes contactless payment, sleek design, and superior hardware.
Ticwatch E2 is a big sporty watch, suitable for sports and definitely for a large wrist. C2 plus features a modern design with a thinner profile. Both smartwatches feature AMOLED display technology, but the E2 is slightly bigger 1.39-inch (as compared to C2 plus’s 1.3-inch)and offers better screen resolution 400 x 400 (360 x 360)
Both these watches have GPS and, surprisingly, Google Assistant. However, C2 Plus is better equipped to run Wear OS thanks to its 1GB RAM and 4 GB storage capacity. The processor in both smartwatches is a bit of a bummer though. Imagine using Snapdragon Wear 2100 when Qualcomm launched the best in the lot, Wear 4100 processor, last year.
Google Pay is only second to apple pay when it comes to coverage, It is supported by NFC carriers around 29 countries.
C2 Plus has a slightly low battery performance due to its small size, but it is well integrated with Spotify and has the option for music storage. Also, the watch comes with multiple straps so you can personalize the watch to your liking.
Samsung Galaxy Watch: Best Affordable Smartwatch For Samsung Fans
Samsung Galaxy Watch And Galaxy watch Active 2 come in the same mid-range budget $100-150, but the Galaxy watch is better than the latter in a lot of aspects. There is a reason why people still draw its comparison with Apple’s latest Series 6.
Galaxy watch, unlike Active, has a rotating bezel for menu navigation. The large version (46mm) offers a solid 6 days of battery backup. There are hundreds of watch faces available on Samsung’s very own Tizen OS. The galaxy watch has an LTE addition two, which comes in very handy while streaming music on Spotify.
The new watches track a great variety of exercises (21 indoor exercises, 39 tracked workouts total). Fitness and sleep tracking are tied into Samsung’s S-Health app but there are also tie-ins to other fitness apps from Under Armour, MapMyRun, Speedo, and others.
Bad News for Wear OS fans, the watch feature’s Tizen which have very limited apps designed for it. You will have to compromise on Google assistant for Bixby rather than an erratic voice assistant that needs massive improvement by the company.
Apple Watch Series 3 (GPS): Best Apple Watch Under $150
Apple Watch Series 3 has two variants like all its successors: one with cellular connectivity and the other without cellular connectivity. The brand-new watch is not exactly less than $150 but hovers very close to this figure whenever Apple decides to put it on sale.
Fortunately, as we write this article the watch is on sale.
Apple watch has a sharp vibrant retina OLED display. Together with Samsung, Apple is the pioneer in display technology so no other watch can beat it in this particular feature. The same goes for the design. Apple Watch design has become a Gold Standard in the industry, and some Chinese manufacturers proud themselves brazenly aping the Apple watches.
Battery Life is Apple’s Achilles heel. No matter what you do, these watches will hardly make it through the day.
A big advantage of Apple watches is Siri, the most responsive voice assistant on wearable devices, and WatchOS as a whole that has more than 20000 applications to satisfy the needs of all kind of users
Disclaimer: We don’t guarantee that this sale will be evergreen. You might find the smartwatch $10-20 expensive. But even after adding this, the Apple Watch Series 3 is worth the money.
HUAWEI Watch GT 2
Huawei Watch GT2 is a decent watch but the company has almost lost all its leverage in the US market. You might know the dispute between the US govt and Huawei which ended up with the ban on Huawei products in the US market. The company’s future and thus the attached products are in jeopardy as the US and its allies are slapping its bans and restrictions.
The point of describing this long background is to inform you about the possible low reselling value of Huawei products, including this affordable fitness-oriented watch by the company.
The watch has two variants: 42/46mm model that sports 1.2-inch, 390 x 390 AMOLED, and 1.39-inch, 454 x 454 AMOLED screens respectively. The whole build of the watch is from premium stainless steel material. Plus the watch is ATM 5 rated, so highly suitable for swimming and snorkeling.
Gt2 offers the best selection of hardware components in such a competitive price range, but the software side of the spectrum has been lacking. Huawei Wear Lite is far behind Apple’s Watch OS and even the Wear OS by Google.
A brief overview of the sensors can give you a better idea of the prowess of the smartwatch.
- GPS Technology: GPS, GLONASS, GALILEO
- Activity: Accelerometer, gyroscope, geomagnetic sensor, optical heart rate sensor, ambient light sensor, air pressure sensor
- Fitness: heart rate, sleep, and stress tracking
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Withings Move ECG is the most affordable smartwatch by the fashion watchmaker, but Steel HR is its flagship product.
Unlike Move ECG, Whiting Steel HR has no ECG functionality, but its features are more aligned with most users’ expectations of a fitness smartwatch. So if you have the money to spend $20-30 extra, we would recommend you to go For Whiting Steel HR instead of Move ECG.
“The Withings Move ECG is one of the few devices to feature a consumer-grade, wrist-based ECG monitor (The first-ever ECG analog watch on the market). “
“Withings claims the Move ECG can provide a medical-grade ECG reading in just 30 seconds. Taking an ECG is incredibly easy.”
For those who suffer from heart arrhythmias, such as atrial fibrillation (AFib), MOVE ECG can be the only thing standing between life and death.
The watch has a long battery life thanks to the CR2430 button-cell battery, which needs to be replaced every once a year. As the smartwatch is ATM 5 rated (meaning Highly resistant to water) it takes an expert to remove the battery and install a new one
Move ECG comes with an interchangeable strap option with a silicone strap as standard. Silicon is a comfortable, lightweight material but in some cases, it causes rashes on very sensitive skin.
How To Choose The Best Cheap Smartwatch Under $150?
While looking for a smartwatch for under $150, you can expect pretty decent features from a watch. $100-150 is an interesting budget range in which you find competitive Chinese brands like Amazfit and Mobvoi and the low-end or we can say old yet relevant models by top tier brands like Garmin and Samsung.
If you are a fan of the Apple ecosystem (Love to have all Apple Devices around you), Apple Watch Series 3 (non-LTE version) is your best choice even though it is priced slightly higher than $150 for now. One of the reasons to pair only an Apple Watch with an iPhone and going to lengths to achieve it is the seamless compatibility of both devices.
For Andriod Devices, you would be left with wearables that either have Wear OS by Google or a proprietary OS by the watch manufacturer (Tizen by Samsung, Garmin OS, and Amazfit OS by Garmin and Amazfit respectively.
“ Wear OS is power-hungry and battery-killer and is a bit lagging behind the rest, and yet has a sizable developer community and therefore thousands of applications.”
Wear OS might have a much larger app store than Samsung’s Tizen-based operating system, it is not at par with the latter in terms of User Interface. Plus Samsung Devices tend to have much longer battery life.
Fitness Features To Look In A Smartwatch For Under $150:
If you are into fitness features and expect the watch to contribute to your personal well-being, don’t miss out on the following features.
- Accurate Heart Rate and StepTracking
- Sleep Tracking (optional)
- Standalone GPS
- Music Storage Capacity
- Versatile Sports modes (optional)
- A long battery life.
- Waterproof Design
- Interchangeable Straps
Smartwatch Features To Look For An Affordable Watch For Under $150:
However, if you want a smartwatch to be a smartwatch and not a fitness tracker, pay attention to these features in a cheap smartwatch for under $150.
- Voice Assistant
- Contactless payment
- Notification Alert
- Calling and texting (With Phone Connected to the watch)
- Amoled Display with max resolution and brightness level
- Touch Scratch Resistant screen
- Alarm, Calendar, and Stopwatch
- Customizable Watch Faces.
- A sizable collection of apps.
Best Cheap Smartwatch Under $150: FAQs
What Is The Best Cheap Smartwatch For The iPhone Under $150?
As we know that only the Apple smartwatch offers the best compatibility with iPhone, the best Apple watch we get at this price range is Apple Watch Series 3 (No LTE), and that two at a discounted price.
Best Non-Apple Smartwatch That Works With iPhone? (Under $150)
The following comes closer to the apple watch compatibility but are not the best compatible wearables with an iPhone.
- Fitbit Versa 2
- Amazfit Bip U Pro
- Samsung Galaxy Watch & Galaxy Active
- Huawei GT 2e
The list is long but as we have confined the budget to under $150, only these options fit right.
What Is The Best Cheap Smartwatch For Android Under $150?
For android users, there are plenty of smartwatches under $150.
- Ticwatch C2 Plus and E2
- Samsung Galaxy Watch & Galaxy Active
- Fitbit Versa 2, Ionic, Versa lite
- Amazfit GTS 2e, T-REX
Of all these, the wear OS enabled Ticwatch C2 plus is the best suited for Android users in this price range for its great variety of features and Wear OS platform