Best Fitness Trackers or Smartwatches for Cycling in 2026: Every Rider’s Complete Guide

Most sports activity trackers are designed rugged so they can withstand knocks and shocks during intense activity. They are usually waterproof enough for diving, too.

More basic models will have a plastic case and strap, but spend more and you will get a metal bezel or casing, a tougher glass face, and may even be able to purchase a metal strap.

If your primary goal is sports tracking, beware of flashy features. We have tested high-end smartwatches that are heavy and uncomfortable to wear, with sharp metal edges that dig into your wrist when holding the bars.

GPS tracking is vital. More basic smartwatches may piggyback from a smartphone for the duration of your rides, but now even Fitbit has built-in GPS in many of its fitness trackers.

Many multisport watches also come with barometers and altimeters, which are useful for producing accurate elevation profiles in your recorded data.

Keep in mind that more sensors mean a greater drain on battery life, leading to larger watches with bigger batteries.

Even if you only use it for cycling, your smartwatch needs to be water-resistant. As a starting point, we recommend an IP67 rating — IP is a rating of the watch’s ingress protection, and the higher the number, the better the protection.

Some smartwatches have a touchscreen interface, although most work just as well with an array of buttons. Touchscreens can be very intuitive and easy to use off the bike, but when you’re riding they can be awkward to operate — which is why having buttons as well is useful as a fallback.

The decision between touchscreen and buttons is more personal preference than anything else. Buttons have a more tactile feel, are much easier to use when wearing gloves, and guarantee impressions even in wet conditions. The quality of touchscreens and their performance in wet weather vary considerably from brand to brand.

On the other hand, touchscreen displays are often more aesthetically pleasing, with less bezel and sometimes with smaller screens. Usually, a touchscreen smartwatch will offer buttons too — and may only allow you to use the buttons to control functions during exercise, to prevent you from inadvertently stopping recording as you ride.

The best smartwatches include sophisticated battery management functionality that lets you eke out plenty of battery life between charges.

You can expect around a week of battery life from the best smartwatches when using them in smartwatch mode. That figure will drop significantly once you start to use the GPS chip to track your activities — but even so, the top performers should rival the best bike computers.

If you’re going long, a good cycling smartwatch should include the option to dial down battery-intensive functionality to add days to its runtime. That might mean lowering the sensitivity or sample rate for GPS tracking, turning off connectivity functions or in-built sensors, or simply powering up less of the screen.

Garmin has added to battery life by giving riders the option to choose solar charging in some of its smartwatches. We didn’t find it added much to battery life on the Fenix 6, but battery life has been significantly extended in its replacement, the Fenix 7. The Garmin Enduro is also solar-charged, and Garmin has claimed it can run for up to a year between charges in its lowest power mode and 95 days with low-power GPS tracking.

When it does come time to recharge, most smartwatches use a USB cable with a connector specific to your smartwatch.

You can expect route planning and navigation as standard in any smartwatch designed for sports. At a minimum, look for a breadcrumb trail of a pre-planned route — though the more sophisticated models will include a basemap too.

If you follow a pre-planned route, the best smartwatches will give you turn-by-turn instructions, just like a cycling computer. You may also get in-ride rerouting, although you might need to carry your smartphone with you for this feature to work.

Many models also offer features found in the best cycling computers, such as back-to-start routing, hill climb profiles, and weather alerts.

Before you buy, check the compatibility of your power meter or cadence sensors with the cycling smartwatch you are considering. Some watches don’t pair with external sensors at all, particularly those aimed at general fitness as well as cycling.

The best smartwatches for cycling include BLE connectivity to let you link up to these devices. Often you’ll get ANT+ connectivity too on devices specifically designed for cycling and multisport tracking.

Optical heart rate sensors work by lighting up your capillaries with an LED. As your blood pumps through, the density changes and the light reflects back differently — and the watch translates this into a beats-per-minute reading.

Although many smartwatches have wrist-based heart rate monitoring built-in, you may get a more accurate measurement if you wear a separate heart rate monitor strap, as movement and sweat at the wrist can affect how well the optical sensor works.

If you already have an HRM, check that your smartwatch will work with it — most modern HRMs broadcast both BLE and ANT+ signals.

Nearly all smartwatches track the same metrics as basic fitness trackers: step count, calorie burn, and sleeping habits. This data is usually integrated into a broader overview of your fitness, often with tips and advice on how to improve.

The latest smartwatches for cycling record your heart rate continually while you wear them, giving you a day-to-day record of your resting heart rate. You can use this to see the trend in your fitness level, check whether you are becoming fatigued, overtrained, or ill — or to know when you are about to hit peak fitness. A prompt from the smartwatch may suggest that you rest up or carry out specific drills to help you hit your goals.

Some smartwatches include blood oxygen monitoring, which is useful for tracking adaptation to altitude — though it is quite power-hungry and only works when you’re not moving, so it may only operate when you’re asleep.

Another function that some smartwatches offer is electrocardiogram traces. You have to initiate these yourself, and it is another function that may give you limited useful data unless you know what to look for.

Most smartwatches include Bluetooth and WiFi connectivity to link to a smartphone app or computer app and upload activities wirelessly. The app will provide more health and exercise analysis and history, along with connectivity to Strava and training apps such as TrainingPeaks.

Screen size is obviously limited in a smartwatch compared to the best bike computers. Models with larger screens can get a bit chunky, so look out for a size that will feel comfortable to wear — especially if you’re planning to wear your smartwatch day and night for sleep tracking.

Just like with a bike computer, you can usually change what data is displayed on your screen, but you may need to limit how many fields are shown to fewer than with a cycling GPS. The small screen is more limiting with graphic content like routes and maps, where it may be difficult to zoom out or track around enough to see the bigger picture.

On the other hand, you can often set the smartwatch to vibrate to alert you to turns when navigating, or to incoming messages from your smartphone.

Attached to your wrist, you may find it harder to keep an eye on the metrics displayed on a smartwatch than on a cycling computer with its screen facing you. Some brands offer bar mounts to let you attach your watch to your bike for better visibility while riding.

If your exercise targets include triathlons, many smartwatches offer the ability to transition between activities automatically. The Wahoo Elemnt Rival majors on this with seamless transitions, while other brands like Garmin include this functionality as well.

Both these brands include functionality for mirroring, allowing your cycling computer to display data collected during your swim for a holistic view of your performance.