I walked 4,000 steps with these 4 fitness trackers — here’s the most accurate

Next up in my series of counting steps, while measuring the accuracy of some of the best fitness trackers on the market — I strapped four different watches to my wrist, and set out for a walk. I’ve already compared the accuracy of the Apple Watch 8 to the Garmin Forerunner 265, and the Apple Watch 8 to the Fitbit Inspire 3, so this time I added a Suunto watch to the mix as well. Read on to find out what happened. 

For this challenge, I wore the Apple Watch 8, the Garmin Epix Pro, the Fitbit Inspire 3, and the Suunto Vertical. All of the watches track how many steps you’ve taken by using an internal accelerometer, which measures the swing of your arm. 

Each swing counts for two steps. It doesn’t matter whether you wear your watch on your dominant or non-dominant hand, or whether you’re walking with your hands in your pockets, or holding something, the accelerometer should still measure your body’s movement. 

I walked 4,000 steps with these 4 fitness trackers — here’s which was most accurate 

As I walked I used a manual clicker counter to measure my steps. Each time I took a step, I clicked, and this allowed me to swing my arms naturally. In previous challenges, I’ve used an app on my iPhone, but the clicker was a lot easier, as it looped around one finger as I walked. It cost me £4.99 on Amazon, and is the kind of gadget you’d see a bouncer using in a nightclub. 

As I have pretty small wrists, I wore two watches on each wrist — the Apple Watch and the Garmin Epix Pro on my left, and the Suunto Vertical and Fitbit Inspire 3 on the right. In total, I walked for 4,100 steps, at which point I noticed my Apple Watch was on 1%, so I quickly stopped all watches before I lost all the data.