Best smartwatch in India 2021: The top smartwatches for Android and iOS

The smartwatch segment in India is no longer left behind, thanks to the multiple launches and more useful stuff a wearable can handle, the smartwatch segment is witnessing some sunshine in the past few months. Smartwatches have moved to a different approach as compared to what they were a few years ago. 

The emphasis has now moved on from smartphone notifiers to extended purposes which increase the utility of your watch with features such as fitness, media controls and even calls. Android smartwatches have also gotten a second life thanks to efforts by Samsung and other hybrids. In 2021, we have some really dependable smartwatches that keep our hopes alive in the wearable tech world.

While smartwatches haven’t seen the pace of revolution that smartphones have, we have still seen improvements ranging from design, battery, software and features. These wearables now make a lot more sense if we compare them with two-year-old watches.

Smartwatches nowadays have neat little tricks up their sleeves. Want to talk to your smartwatch to search for something? Can do! Want to monitor your activities, ranging from walking, running, swimming or just… sitting? Can do! You can even set up an SOS feature on some watches, and if they detect an accident or a fall, they will inform your contacts. 

We have also listed a few good Wear OS smartwatches, which have become a lot better thanks to new updates and hardware. Google is also taking care of Wear OS in 2021. We have a new smartwatch from Samsung which runs on Wear OS and soon, we will see more smartwatches with Google’s new Wear OS platform.

Let’s take a look at the best smartwatches you can buy in India right now.

• Best smartwatches under Rs 5,000
• Check out the best fitness trackers in India 

The Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 comes with a lower price tag than the Galaxy Watch 3 and also brings revamped software experience that brings the best of Wear OS and Tizen platforms. It has good fitness features, strong battery life and a comfortable design. It’s not your typical Wear OS watch though; it’s called One UI Watch 3, and it’s been built by Samsung with Google’s help. 

The Galaxy Watch 4 isn’t compatible with an iPhone. While it works with most Android phones, you’ll need to own a Samsung smartphone to access some features, such as blood pressure or ECG measurements. There is no support for Google Assistant yet on the watch. The Watch 4 features Samsung’s own Exynos W920 chipset and 1.5GB of RAM – which is powerful enough to run any task on the wrist. There’s 16GB of storage on both models of the Galaxy Watch 4 for apps and music. 

Gone is the physical rotating bezel from the Watch 3. Instead, there’s a virtual rotating bezel which, in conjunction with two buttons on the right-hand side, allows for easy navigation around the smartwatch’s menus. The Galaxy Watch 4 is available in four variants: 40mm Bluetooth, 40mm LTE, 44mm BT, and 44mm LTE. The resolution is also impressive, with the 40mm watch featuring a 396 x 396 resolution and the 44mm model taking that up to 450 x 450. That’s 330 pixels per inch for both models. 

The Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 comes with a whole host of health and fitness features, including GPS for tracking runs, an optical heart rate sensor, and ECG support. The big fitness changes come in the form of a new 3-in-1 BioActive Sensor that enables the watch to monitor heart rate, blood oxygen levels and body composition. 

Read our Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 review

The best and cheapest companion to your Apple iPhone is Apple’s newest member in the wearable space, the Watch SE. It brings most of the features from the Watch 6 and is priced half of what the flagship model costs. The design of the Apple Watch SE is as familiar as you can get – the same curved edges, rounded aluminium chassis and the Digital Crown on the side.

It sports a bright OLED display, but the always-on display is missing though.  The integration into Apple’s ecosystem is immense with Apple apps and services. You can head out of the house without your phone and go running with a wealth of music given that you have an Apple Music subscription and a pair of Airpods. 

You can activate Siri simply by raising your watch to your lips, and for the most part, it worked pretty well. However, the Watch’s battery life is just too short to get the best out of it. The fitness capabilities of the Apple Watch SE are likely the key reason you’ll be buying this device. The key features here are GPS, 5 ATM water resistance, sleep tracking, and multiple sports tracking. 

Read our Apple Watch SE review

The best overall experience you can get in the segment, the Oppo Watch is one of the best Wear OS smartwatches money can buy in India today — while also being one of the cheapest. The hardware and software combination is commendable here. It does look a lot like the Apple Watch, but there’s a lot to like here in terms of its impressive display and fitness modes.

Running on the WearOS platform gives an advantage of being smarter than the other wearables in the segment. You get support for third-party apps, access to Google services and the Play store. The best of all is the ability to respond to notifications from the watch itself. The software is also slightly tweaked as Oppo has added its own flavour which blends perfectly with the Wear OS. 

You’ll want to consider its average battery life when you’re thinking about buying this, but if you don’t mind recharging your watch each night, you’re unlikely to be regularly frustrated. The watch can be recharged within an hour thanks to the VOOC Flash charge.

As for fitness features, there’s enough power as Google Fit brings 90 plus tracking modes. The Oppo Watch comes in two sizes ー 46mm and 41mm.  

Read our Oppo Watch review

This watch is for those who can spend some premium on a Wear OS which in turn gives you battery life better than most other wearables in the market. The TicWatch Pro 3 is a quality smartwatch with three-day battery life, great speed, and a sleek design. It doesn’t particularly excel at anything, but it satisfies all your basic workout and message-previewing needs, with a standard Wear OS software setup and a few TicWatch-branded workouts and health apps.

This is a flagship model that costs less than what you’ll have to pay for a Samsung or an Apple smartwatch. The TicWatch 3 Pro is also the only watch with the Snapdragon 4100 chipset in the market – which is fast and performs really well. On the front, you get a crisp 1.4-inch OLED display. 

There are the heartbeat and SpO2 sensors on the bottom of the watch case, and two buttons on the right side for navigation shortcuts, but it’s the overall look of the smartwatch. The watch is paired with 1GB of RAM and 8GB of internal storage that makes sure you get overall smooth performance. 

Read our TicWatch Pro 3 review

The best smartwatches from Huami are the Amazfit GTS 2 and GTR 2. These are also some of the cheapest wearables on the list. Apart from display and design, most of the specs between these watches are the same. The Amazfit GTS 2 follows the square design pattern while the GTR 2 offers a classic circular design. The GTR 2 comes with a 1.39-inch AMOLED display with 454 x 454 resolution and the GTS 2 comes with a  1.65-inch AMOLED screen with 348 x 442 resolution. 

Both come with a built-in GPS to track outdoor activities like running, cycling and open water swimming. There’s also BioTracker 2 PPG optical sensor, which delivers continuous heart rate monitoring, heart rate during exercise and opens up more detailed insights. You also get SpO2 sensors on both to take blood-oxygen measurements. 

Both watches also come with 3GB of storage to transfer over your own music. You also get an Alexa voice assistant. You can even make calls over Bluetooth with the speaker offering decent clarity. Further, these smartwatches are also capable of tracking your sleep and 90+ sports mode which includes outdoor running, walking, indoor cycling, open water swimming, pool swimming, climbing, free training, outdoor cycling, and more. 

Read our Amazfit GTS 2 review

Read our Amazfit GTR 2 review

The OnePlus Watch is a unique blend of a smartwatch and a fitness tracker, bringing the good stuff from both camps — but with some first-generation product drawbacks in terms of the execution. It takes the best stuff from full-fledged smartwatches and fitness trackers, viz. calls and notification management from the former, and loads of tracking and multi-day battery life from the latter, and tones them down by a bit to achieve a reasonable price tag. 

The OnePlus Watch gets many things right such as an integrated microphone and loudspeaker which allows you not only to receive can conduct entire calls on it, you can also initiate calls from the watch itself – a feature that is not present on most other smartwatches. The proprietary operating system is buttery smooth, well-laid-out and easy to navigate. 

It has the usual slew of fitness features, including workout tracking, pedometer, heart rate, SpO2, sleep tracking, stress levels, etc., all of which worked well in our testing. Moreover, detailed reports and graphs can be seen on the app to get a better understanding of your vitals.

On the downside, the software on the OnePlus Watch can seem limiting as there is no access to third-party apps, limited watch faces unintelligent notification replies and bugs which shouldn’t have been there in the first place.

Lastly, the OnePlus Watch battery life is great lasting a full week most of the time. And in case you wondered, it also supports Warp charging, going from 0 to full in just about 45 minutes. There is also a special limited edition OnePlus Watch dubbed, the Cobalt edition which brings more premium design, better screen protection and a more classy look. 

Read our OnePlus Watch review

Check out OnePlus Watch Cobalt Limited Edition

The TicWatch E3 is one of the most powerful smartwatches available in India right now. It is powered by Snapdragon Wear 4100 chip and runs on Google’s Wear OS platform along with 1GB of RAM 一 these three make the TicWatch E3 a powerful and feature-rich smartwatch. It also brings plenty of health and wellbeing apps. The watch is also confirmed to get Wear OS 3 update.

Thanks to Wear OS, you get the ability to respond to notifications, answer calls, access the play store, Google Assistant, and do much more. In terms of health and fitness features, the TicWatch E3 brings all the workout tracking basics you’d expect, as well as a bunch of health and wellness features in the form of Tic-branded apps like TicOxygen to track your blood oxygen levels, TicBreath for guided breathing, TicPulse for heart rate, TicZen for stress, and more.

The battery life is good considering all the good feature set it offers. But, the watch lacks fast charging which is a big miss at this price point. The 1.3-inch LCD display is large and good, but we did not like the thick bezel and also the build could have been more premium. Barring these couple of letdowns, the TicWatch E3 is a great wearable to own especially if you want a feature-rich watch on your wrist. 

Read our TicWatch E3 review

The Galaxy Watch 3 comes with a dazzling design, a vivid display, and a bunch of new fitness features to help you track your progress across a wide range of activities, and stay motivated. Samsung has stuck with a traditional-looking circular display shape and a rotatable raised bezel that enables you to physically cycle through on-screen menus. It’s tactile, and that click, click, click as you navigate the round interface feels satisfying—It is also pretty addictive.

The Galaxy Watch 3 is better than its predecessor and is also slimmer and lighter. The battery life is on par with the watch but, you’ll be stuck with slow charging. The new fitness features improve the activity tracking that you expect to get from a smartwatch in 2020. Samsung has also added stress tracking and SPo2 monitoring. 

If you’re looking for the best smartwatch to pair with the Android phone, this could be it – and if you own an iPhone, this may even beat the Apple Watch if you’re looking for a circular device rather than Apple’s trademark squared design and you like what you see.

Read our full Samsung Galaxy Watch 3 review

The Fitbit Versa 3 is an excellent upgrade from the last-gen with an integrated GPS and some design tweaks –  the Fitbit Versa 3 is an excellent wearable. However, it’s more of a fitness tracker than a smartwatch – more on fitness, a bit less on productivity.

You do get a great battery life, a larger 1.58-inch AMOLED display, and a plethora of fitness statistics, making this a very compelling and affordable Apple Watch alternative. The performance is excellent, as we’ve come to expect from Fitbit devices. Battery life is about six days on a dim screen setting, but it drops to half that if you have the display set to always-on.

Fitbit Versa 3 also supports Alexa and Google Assistant – making it more useful and smart. Android users can respond to messages via the device, but the options are limited. The iPhone owners can’t respond to messages. 

Read our Fitbit Versa 3 review

Apple Watches are rising in popularity to the point where most will know that they’re small second screens that connect your iPhone to your wearable, and you might be wondering whether the new device offers anything massively alluring; if you’re thinking about upgrading from an older model you’ll be especially keen to learn what’s new here.

Well, here are the highlights: starting at Rs 40,900 for the 40mm version, Apple’s new Watch has a blood oxygen sensor inside, new colours to delight (we’re into the red) and a more efficient S6 engine at its heart. It’s also supposed to have a brighter display in sunny conditions.

Beyond that, the rest of the new features that arrive with the Watch 6, like sleep tracking, hand-wash tracking, and new buckle-less bands, will be made available to older Apple Watches.

On the outside, the Apple Watch 6 continues with the same design language used in previous models – a rounded, metal body with a square display that curves elegantly into the device itself.

The new colours and designs are interesting, with the new blue and red flavours, in particular, appealing on the wrist, the aluminium casing blending nicely with the more striking hues.

Read our full Apple Watch Series 6 review

List of best smartwatches in India 

---

1. Samsung Galaxy Watch 4
2. Apple Watch SE
3. Oppo Watch
4. Ticwatch Pro 3
5. Amazfit GTS 2/GTR 2
6. OnePlus Watch
7. TicWatch E3
8. Samsung Galaxy Watch 3
9. Fitbit Versa 3
10. Apple Watch Series 6

---

• Best smartwatches under Rs 10,000
• Best smartwatches under Rs 15,000