Best smartwatches for Android phones 2021

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The wearable tech era is here, and a smartwatch is a great way to introduce yourself to gadgets you can wear on your body. The first generations of smartwatches reinvented the watch, adding fitness tracking capabilities, notification, and music playback to the seemingly humble watch. But, in 2021, the slew of smartwatches available on the market can make it pretty tricky to pick a wearable companion, and there are loads of them to choose from on Amazon.

Fear not! This list compiles the latest and greatest smartwatches at many different price points, so you can make an informed decision on what watch to buy.

Best smartwatches for Android phones

Samsung Galaxy Watch Active 2 / Amazon

Priced at a modest $179, the Samsung Galaxy Watch Active 2 is an affordable, sleek, and stylish offering from the South Korean tech giant. Powered by Tizen OS, the Active 2 is best paired with a Samsung Galaxy phone, with its integrations with Samsung Health and Bixby, making this watch a very handy, feature-rich watch.

Active 2 has a more sophisticated fitness tracking system than its hugely popular predecessor, going beyond just tracking steps and calories. The watch analyses your workout routines to give you detailed insights on everything from your running style to your heart rate.

You can respond to texts and read them out loud from your watch. Unlike the first Watch Active, this new one has a speaker. Bixby can finally talk back to you. Want to know your calendar whilst you’re running? Get Bixby to read it to you? Want to make a phone call? Just say, “Hi Bixby… call Mum,” and the watch will start a call all through the watch!

This watch runs Tizen OS, Samsung’s bespoke Linux-based OS for non-Android tech. It’ll connect to your Android phone, but unlike any watch running Google’s Wear OS, you’re limited to apps made for Tizen.

Tizen’s home screen is based on widgets. You can arrange the widgets in any order, add and subtract Apps, and navigate by scrolling between them or use the digital haptic bezel. The digital bezel adds a bit of class to the watch and works flawlessly. The Active 2 forgoes the bulk of other smartwatches, and Amazon reviewers appreciate how light and comfortable the watch is.

If you’re an avid Samsung user, you can’t go wrong with the Watch Active 2.

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Amazfit GTS 2 / Amazon

Taking one look at the Amazfit GTS 2 smartwatch makes it pretty obvious where the main inspiration comes from. From its boxy cube design to its singular scroll wheel mimicking Apple’s ‘digital crown,’ the GTS 2 takes many cues from the Apple Watch line of smartwatches, and for a good reason.

With a 1.65” AMOLED HD display covered in their patented “3D glass” – which is marketing mumbo for curved glass – the big, bright, and beautiful display is the highlight of this smartwatch. Amazon reviewers prefer the GTS 2 over the Samsung Galaxy Watch Active for its bigger display, making it easy to use for sweeping functions and intricate apps.

The GTS 2 boasts a whopping 20 days of battery life for basic usage or 7 days for a typical power user charge. Amazon reviewers comment a realistic estimate of its battery life is around 8-10 days, which especially compared to other watches on the market (my Galaxy Watch Active only lasts a day) this is super impressive.

With Alexa built-in, you can talk to Amazon’s virtual assistant: allowing the watch to send texts by voice commands, make calls on the watch using the included speaker, and even control your smart home appliances connected to your Alexa app! And for when you’re not connected to the internet, Amazfit has included a handy offline voice control feature.

Powered by Amazfit OS, the GTS 2 doesn’t support third-party apps or watch faces. There’s no Spotify, no Google Fit, nada. The watch offers 3GB of storage for music and photos, so you could download MP3s and transfer them over. Also, Amazon reviewers comment on a markedly poor GPS performance.

Overall though, if you know you’re not going to be making use of third-party apps like games and connected services, the GTS 2 is a fantastic choice for someone who wants a watch that performs great and lasts a heck of a long time on a single charge!

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Moto 360 3rd Gen (2020) / Amazon

Back in 2014, when the first generations of smartwatches brought us sluggish brutes like the Asus ZenWatch and the Pebble Steel (oh, the Pebble watches were the worst!), the Moto 360 1^st gen stood out to me as the sleekest and most stylish of the bunch. Now, Motorola is back with the 3^rd gen Moto 360, and it’s as good as ever.

Named by PCMag as the “best looking smartwatch you can get right now,” the main focus of this piece of tech is style and build quality. Crafted from stainless steel, with titanium screws, and with a genuine leather strap, this watch screams premium, even at its modest price of $179.

The Moto 360 2020 is powered by Google’s Wear OS (formerly Android Wear), and it is hands down the best watch OS to swear by if you’re not rocking a Samsung phone. Wear OS boasts the best selection of apps on this side of Android, including Spotify, Google Music, Google Pay, Shazam, Viber, and more!

The watch features a quick charge mechanism, giving it full juice in just over an hour! This may be useful as the battery life isn’t as great as its Amazfit counterparts. If you’re a power user, you could kill it at the end of the day, but given how quick it charges, this does seem manageable.

With built-in GPS, intelligent heart rate tracking, and sleep sensors included, the Moto360 was designed to be a beautiful looking smartwatch and powerful fitness aid.

The Moto 360 was one of the first and most popular smartwatches, and the latest edition keeps up the streak of providing a great wearable experience on Wear OS.

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Honor Watch ES / Amazon

Looking for less smartwatch, more affordable fitness tracker? The HONOR Watch ES is a fantastic pick if you’re a fitness fanatic who wants a fitness tracker with even more bells and whistles.

The watch’s bright 1.64-inch AMOLED display makes this great to view your notifications and track your daily exercise with multiple workout patterns. This can track your heart rate, monitor your stress levels, and track your sleep. Your watch can record your step count, distance covered, calories burnt, and other data. Your watch also records data such as duration of moderate to high-intensity activity and standing.

Whilst this is a great fitness tracker, this is less so a feature-rich smartwatch. You can’t respond to texts or make calls, and so like a Fitbit, only purchase this if you want a fitness tracker first, a smartwatch second.

And it’s a fitness tracker that’ll last; with 10-day battery life, you can go ages without juicing the Watch ES up.

With its bright and beautiful display that’d rival even the Apple Watch, the Honor Watch ES falls into the camp of a premium fitness tracker. If it’s this or a Fitbit Charge, Honor’s offering comes out on top. Though, if it’s the smartwatch connected life you’re after, look elsewhere on this list. Amazfit perhaps?

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Fossil Gen 5 Carlyle Stainless Steel / Amazon

Another offering running Google’s Wear OS is the premium watch brand Fossil’s Gen 5 Carlyle. Powered by Snapdragon’s Wear 3100 SoC, this watch performs like a champ, bringing smart sensing and great connectivity.

Gen 5’s improved heart-rate sensor is battery efficient so that you can check your heart rate anytime you’re on the move. The Gen 5’s integration with Google Fit makes it super easy to track your workout, giving you real-time progress on your fitness goals.

Wear OS’s superior choice of apps, and use of Google Assistant make this great if you’re super into the Google ecosystem. Control your smart home appliances from your watch, check the weather, send messages, and take calls straight from your phone.

The battery is rated to last 24 hours on typical usages, but there are multi-day modes to stretch how long your watch will last between charges. Battery life isn’t anything special, but if you keep on top of charging it every night, you shouldn’t run into issues.

With excellent hardware and excellent software, the Fossil Gen 5 is often regarded as the reigning king of Wear OS smartwatches. And until Google do us all a favor and make a Pixel Watch, that’ll be your best bet for team Google.

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The Best Rugged Smartphones of 2021 – MBReviews

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7. Kyocera DuraForce Pro 2 Rugged Smartphone

The Kyocera DuraForce Pro 2 is the latest handset from the Japanese manufacturer to join the rugged smartphones market as a successor to the DuraForce Pro in an effort to improve some key elements and make the device more suitable for the today’s exigence. But, despite people craving for an elegant, yet rugged smartphone, the manufacturers are still having a hard time to keep their devices slim and with the latest features, while also being resistant against drops or other mechanical shocks.

Samsung and Motorola have made some interesting advancements with their waterproof and dustproof Active and Force series, but it’s worth noting that Kyocera has also pushed its rugged smartphones towards a more modern design, so while the Kyocera Brigadier was already a better looking rugged smartphone than its competitors, the DuraForce Pro 2 got a bit closer to the more elegant non-rugged flagships. At the same time, it doesn’t differ that much from its predecessor even if it comes with a redesigned case and it still carries the signature look, has better internal hardware and the same iconic sapphire screen.
As expected, you won’t find the glass and metal combination (which is definitely attractive, but fragile) and instead, you get a mix of polycarbonate and thick rubber. The case has a curved back, soft rounded corners – it’s less curved than the DuraForce Pro 2, the lateral sides protruding towards both the bottom and the top sides. Furthermore, on the rear panel, there are four patches of texturized rubber that slide towards the screen and, on centre of the rear panel, the plastic is a lot smoother.

All around the case, you can find pretty much the same buttons and ports as on any other smartphone (yes, it has a headphone jack), with every port opening being covered by protective flaps and, unfortunately, Kyocera decided to get rid of the three front buttons for Back, Home and Recent and instead, it went with capacitive buttons – this hasn’t been the best decision because the physical buttons remained operational in every type of environment (as a bonus, there are front-facing speakers). The PTT/Programmable key has been kept from the DuraForce Pro (by default, it will activate Verizon’s push-to-talk service, if you use Verizon, but you can program it to either launch any app or to automatically send help texts and the GPS location in case you get lost or are in danger), as well as the Fingerprint Sensor on the Power key (this feature has now become a standard even on rugged phones).

Because of the curved back, the phone fits comfortably inside the palm of the hand, but the increased size over the DuraForce Pro 2 will not go unnoticed, since it now measures 5.91 x 2.89 x 0.53 inches and it’s got a bit heavier (8.57 oz). The bigger size means more screen real-estate, but bigger smarphones are usually more fragile and more prone to breaking than any other smaller handsets (until better technologies are developed, I’m not sure rugged smartphones should go over 5 inches). Another interesting aspect is that I found it hard to fit the phone in my pocket because of its thickness (so keep that in mind before purchasing). That being said, the main attraction of any phone is the display and Kyocera has equipped the DuraForce Pro 2 with a 5-inch IPS LCD display that features 16 million colours, a resolution of 1080 x 1920 pixels and a pixel density of 441ppi (so, nothing has changed in this department). Furthermore, you get the same Sapphire Shield protection, so the display becomes virtually unscratchable and it is a bit harder to break than the traditional screens (if it falls at a odd angle, the screen will shatter into pieces instead of cracking like the usual Corning Gorilla Glass protection).
Similarly to the DuraForce Pro 2, the display is greatly improved over the dim Kyocera Brigadier, so, even for a sapphire screen, you can clearly see everything even under direct sunlight.

Still, you should not expect the vividness of AMOLEDs or the true colours of iPhones, but the DuraForce Pro 2 does a fair job on delivering a good visual experience, with images and text being crisp and clear, the colour accuracy is reasonably good and it has surprisingly good viewing angles. What I found annoying is that Kyocera left so much space unused on the front, while the display of so many other smartphones cover almost completely the front side (except for the dreaded notch).
Note: You can use the touch-screen even if you are wearing gloves or if your fingers are wet.

Similarly to Kyocera DuraForce Pro, the DuraForce Pro 2 has a Military Standard 810G certification, so the phone should withstand low pressure, temperature shock, any contamination by fluids, humidity, solar radiation, high altitude, mechanical vibration, pyroshock, icing or freezing rain and more, which makes the handset perfect for working in industrial fields (the device is also Class I Division 2 rated, so it can be used in hazardous places without causing explosions). This should ensure a serious protection from the elements and in case you accidentally drop it, know that the screen is not unbreakable (as said before), so be aware that if you drop it on a sharp object face first, it could shatter (there is a lip around the display which will definitely help a lot with keeping the screen’s integrity intact).

Furthermore, the phone is IP68 rated, which means that it is protected against dust and it is waterproof, meaning that it can be temporarily immersed under water. To be more precise, the DuraForce Pro 2 will allow you to go as deep as 6.5 feet for up to 30 minutes and, at the same time, there is the Underwater Mode for all the camera options (you can film and capture photos under water).
And that leads us to the cameras. On the rear side, the DuraForce Pro 2 features a main 13-megapixel camera, with autofocus, LED flash and HDR, and a secondary wide-angle 8-megapixel camera (an upgrade from the 2-MP of the previous model).

In good light, the camera can capture some really good photos, with accurate colours, a low amount of noise and an overall good exposure. In low light, the camera struggled a bit, capturing photos with a lot of noise and grain. The secondary wide-angle camera is definitely an interesting addition, because it can capture super wide-view 4K videos (and the upgrade to the 8-megapixel sensor is definitely noticeable). The front 5-megapixel camera (no upgrade here) is good for selfies, but again, it will do a decent job in good light, but not so much indoors and in low-light environments. Another great feature that’s been developed for the DuraForce Pro 2 is the advanced echo and active noise cancellation using four microphones which have the role of counterbalancing the external sounds, allowing you to better make phone calls (even using the speaker option) or simply listening to music or videos.

On the inside, the DuraForce Pro 2 is equipped like a mid-range smartphone, sporting an octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 630 chipset (octa-core 2.2 GHz Cortex-A53 CPU), an Adreno 508 GPU, 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage memory, which can be augmented by 512GB using a microSD card. This hardware is specific to a mid-range handset and the performance will be as expected: great at multitasking, but not the best with 3D games that require a lot of resources. The phone also runs on Android v8.0 Oreo, but it has some pre-installed elements from Kyocera and some more from its carrier (the DuraForce Pro does not have an unlocked version, for now) – thankfully, the 4 GB of RAM will make a difference to contain the bloatware from the carrier.

Ignoring the carrier apps, the interface is reasonably clean and Kyocera added only a few native applications, such as the Outdoor Portal, which is a good tool for checking the weather, the real-time position of the moon and the sun, the correct altitude and even the tide with a fish activity rating. There’s also the Camera Underwater Mode which basically disables the touch-screen and let’s you control the phone using only the physical buttons.

The last aspect that I would like to cover is the battery life. Just like the Duraforce Pro, the Pro 2 comes with a non-removable 3240 mAh battery which will get you through a full day of medium use (in the continuous loop video test, the battery died after almost 7 hours). The good news is that the phone comes with the UBS Type-C fast charging, so the battery will charge up to 60 % in about half an hour and there is support for the Qi wireless charging, but the charging pad is not included.

Verdict: The Kyocera DuraForce Pro 2 is definitely a better smartphone than the Kyocera Brigadier, but less of a significant upgrade over the DuraForce Pro 2 (although it does have a slightly better camera and more powerful hardware). At the same time, some improvements have been made to the overall ruggedness from its predecessor (the case it completely redesigned), but I’m not really a fan of not having the option to purchase this phone unlocked from the start and being forced to go through a carrier (which this time has added an annoying amount of bloatware). This is the main minus of the Kyocera DuraForce Pro and of course, I have already signalled all of its pluses, so if it’s not a problem for you to go through Verizon, this is a worthy smartphone for active people that like rock climbing and swimming.

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