Best smartwatches for women in 2021

The best smartwatches for women are also among the best smartwatches for everyone, but the options vary in terms of style, price and features. 

Yes, any person will be satisfied with the smartwatches below. But these specific models may cater to women with their diverse designs, wrist-friendly sizes and advanced health tools. Some are also optimized to work with specific smartphones, but all are among the best smartwatches for women you can buy now.

Still, not all of the best smartwatches for women are made the same. Some are sophisticated fitness trackers beyond step counting, helping you manage sleep, stress and menstrual cycle patterns. Others have functional materials that make the ultimate fashion statement. A few of these smartwatches even support LTE, so you can communicate from your wrist, wherever you are. 

For brand-specific smartwatch buying advice, see our guides to the best Fitbit, best Apple Watch and best Garmin watch models. Otherwise, see all the best smartwatches for women below.

What are the best smartwatches for women?

We’ve tested dozens of smartwatches in all shapes, sizes and prices, and came up with a list of the few we think are the best smartwatches for women. Our current top pick is the Apple Watch 6. Starting at $399, it has practically everything you could want from a wearable. But if you’re not in a rush, you might want to wait for the Apple Watch 7 to be released later this fall. The next-generation smartwatch comes with a brighter screen, thinner display borders and a faster charging cord in the box. 

For Samsung smartphone owners, the Galaxy Watch 4 series offers a versatile design, complete with a sporty-looking model starting at $249.99 and an elevated ‘Classic’ model version starting at $349.99. The Galaxy Watch 4 is notably the first smartwatch with the new unified version of Wear OS, called Wear OS 3. 

The $299.95 Fitbit Sense is another excellent premium smartwatch for women. The Sense is built on Fitbit’s reliable platform complete with popular apps and voice assistants. The Fitbit Sense provides the most holistic look at your health of any smartwatch we’ve ever worn.

If cumbersome designs have deterred you from smartwatches, the Garmin Lily might be the one you’ve been waiting for. Starting at $199.99, it’s Garmin’s smallest smartwatch yet. It doesn’t get GPS, but it has the best display of any Garmin lifestyle watch yet.

The best smartwatches you can buy today

Though it’s on the way out, the Apple Watch Series 6 is the best Apple Watch yet and the best smartwatch for women overall, offering a built-in cycle tracking app among other marquee health features. It builds on everything we appreciated about the Series 5, from the always-on display to noise alerts, with an even brighter screen and added blood oxygen (SpO2) reader. Plus the Apple Watch comes in color for the first time — the exclusive blue and Product Red finishes are absolutely eye-catching.

While we would’ve liked to see the Apple Watch improve its 18-hour battery life, the Series 6 does benefit from faster charging. You can completely juice it up in just 90 minutes, which comes in handy for wearing, instead of charging it overnight. Yes, the Apple Watch 6 has all the best Apple Watch apps and sleep tracking thanks to watchOS 7. Better yet, it’s compatible with the newer watchOS 8, too.

Read our full Apple Watch 6 review.

The Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 is another top choice among the best smartwatches for women. Samsung ditched the ‘Active’ branding for its latest lineup, instead pitching a sporty-looking Galaxy Watch 4 as the company’s flagship and a ‘Classic’ version that carries on the luxurious characteristics like the physical rotating bezel. There are plenty of material and color choices, too.

Thanks to a 3-in-1 health sensor, the Galaxy Watch 4 measures heart rate, takes ECGs and reads body composition, which is useful if you’re monitoring your body’s makeup or charges over time. And while it gets appealing Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 Wear OS features, One thing to note — a number of features are exclusive to Samsung phones, like ECG and blood pressure monitoring — if you’re in a country it’s available. Otherwise, the one Galaxy Watch 4 setback is inconsistent battery life, but as long as you don’t mind a daily charge, you’ll benefit from on-board GPS, an always-on display, excellent sleep tracking and more.

Read our full Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 review.

The Fitbit Sense is the company’s most ambitious smartwatch yet. It comes with more advanced health and wellness features than any of the best smartwatches for women. Not only does it have an FDA-approved ECG sensor and blood oxygen reading, but the Sense has the ability to measure electrodermal activity and skin temperature, too. It can tell you when you’re stressed, and how to better monitor. You can even meditate with Deepak Chopra with Fitbit Premium.

Aside from it being a premium health tracking device, the Sense has on-board GPS, a native app store, Alexa, Google Assistant and other tools you’ll find useful on your wrist. The Google-owned Fitbit isn’t just a brand with products for tracking our steps: Fitbit devices like the Fitbit Sense show what it means to take a holistic look at our health. 

Read our full Fitbit Sense review.

The Garmin Lily is a small and stylish smartwatch that will make you forget the bulky GPS wearables the brand is best known for. An offering designed with first-time, female smartwatch users in mind, the $199 Garmin Lily isn’t one of the best sport watches, but it is a great choice for those who don’t like the traditional smartwatch look.

We like the Garmin Lily’s barely-there feel and fashionable appearance, which is accentuated by a patterned lens that somehow doesn’t obstruct the display. Of all the best smartwatches for women we’ve tested, this one looks the most like actual jewelry. Between its 34-millimeter button-less case, intricate hardware details and thin straps, it’s dainty. For female users, the Garmin Lily offers menstrual cycle tracking, as well as a pregnancy tracking guide that gives expecting mothers a more complete overview of their health. Although the Lily isn’t compatible with the Garmin Connect IQ app store, the pregnancy tracking app is one of the options that comes pre-installed on this smartwatch.

Read our full Garmin Lily review.

The Apple Watch SE is a hybrid of the Apple Watch Series 5 (which has since been discontinued) and the Apple Watch Series 3. The $279 smartwatch doesn’t have all the Series 6’s features — there’s no always-on display, for instance —  but still stands out for its speedy chip and safety features. It also offers an LTE option, making it a good choice for those interested in trying out Family Setup. Plus it gets the watchOS 8 software update, and will continue to get new software updates for the coming years.

When choosing between the Apple Watch 6 vs. Apple Watch SE, your ultimate decision will be if you want to spend an extra $120 for a brighter display with an always-on option, an ECG monitor, and an SpO2. If those tools aren’t deal-breakers for you, the SE is a highly capable option for female iPhone users.

Read our full Apple Watch SE review.

The best smartwatch for women interested in basic fitness tracking and advanced sleep tracking is the Fitbit Versa 3, the next-generation of the popular Fitbit Versa 2. The Versa 3’s standout upgrade is on-board GPS. Even when you leave your phone at home, the Versa can track your location during outdoor exercise. Sleeker metallic finishes are welcome, too.

Plus the Versa 3 has gained a great motivational workout feature, Active Zone Minutes. Introduced with the Fitbit Charge 4 and now a staple of Fitbit devices, Active Zone Minutes monitors the time you spend in the fat burn, cardio or peak heart-rate zones while exercising. Your goal is to earn the AHA’s and WHO’s recommended 150 Active Zone Minutes each week. Again you can use your Fitbit Versa 3 for phone calls and speak to voice assistants for queries, but note you can only enable one voice assistant at once. Torn between the Sense and Versa? See our Fitbit Sense vs. Fitbit Versa 3 face-off.

Read our full Fitbit Versa 3 review.

As our Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 vs. Galaxy Watch Active 2 face-off explains, the Watch Active 2 is still worth buying, especially when you find it on sale. Samsung’s watch works with any Android smartphone and features GPS, a heart rate monitor and the option to enable LTE. It also can automatically track your activity and sleep.

As for looks, Galaxy Watch Active 2’s circular design is visually appealing, whether you get the 40mm or 44mm model. You’ll appreciate the finish options, offering several metallic choices to match your jewelry or personal style. Based on Samsung’s Tizen operating system, this Galaxy Watch boasts other useful features such as Samsung Pay, onboard music via Spotify and heart health features. That includes an ECG feature, which is usually reserved for pricer models. 

Read our full Samsung Galaxy Watch Active 2 review.

Another previous-gen model on this list, the Fitbit Versa 2 is a highly capable smartwatch for women. It has Amazon’s assistant built in, which lets you do such things as control smart home devices, look up the weather and news, and a lot more. It comes with advanced sleep-tracking features, which, when combined with the Versa 2’s ability to monitor blood oxygen saturation levels, could help alert you to conditions such as sleep apnea.

You can also download up to 300 songs to the Versa 2 itself, as well as from Pandora and Deezer, so you can leave your phone at home if you want to listen to some tunes. Sadly, the Versa 2 lacks on-board GPS, so you will need to tote your phone if you want that feature. Thanks to the best Fitbit deals, you can usually find this model at a discount.

Read our full Fitbit Versa 2 review.

How to choose the best smartwatch for women

Among the best smartwatches for women, you have a bounty of options to match your needs and style. That said, if you have an iPhone, you’ll probably appreciate the ecosystem experience of the Apple Watch 6 or Apple Watch SE. The same goes those with Samsung smartphones, your best choice is a Samsung-made Galaxy Watch, But if fitness tracking or working out is your priority, a Fitbit or Garmin wearable might be better for reaching your goals. Plus both those companies offer diverse design options.

When picking any smartwatch, you’ll also want to get one that fits your wrist comfortably. Those with smaller wrists may find larger smartwatches bulky and cumbersome. All of the smartwatches above have 40mm or smaller size options, though the 34mm Garmin Lily is by far the more compact.

Some of the best smartwatches for women look like high-tech fitness trackers while others look like traditional timepieces, too. If you want something sporty, stick to sleek materials with fewer embellishments. If you want something you can wear on nicer occasions, look for bezels or other eye-catching accents.

How we test the best smartwatches for women

Whenever an attractive smartwatch for women is released, we fully charge it up, then strap it on our wrist for about a week or so to test out all the features.

We gauge how it feels on our wrist throughout our day-to-day, as well as how easy (or not) the interface is to navigate when we need to read notifications, set timers or change other settings. Next, we look at its fitness features, such as heart rate readings, blood oxygen readings, step counts and, when applicable, GPS. How accurate are all these readings? Does the smartwatch offer female-specific features for menstrual cycle or pregnancy tracking?

Finally we consider battery life claims and compare it to our actual use. Some features like continuous GPS use, playing music or enabling an always-on display chew up juice faster than others. We understand that not all smartwatches last two weeks — we just want our experience to match up with the expectations set by the company.