11 Best Expert-Approved Fitness Trackers For Cycling (2024)+ Buying Guide

For all the valuable health insights that you want to know about yourself, you need to buy a fitness tracker. It has never been so easy to track your health and get advanced health data as it is today. With a slew of the best fitness trackers for cycling out there, you can get all the important information at the drop of a hat. While the old-school cycling meter feels like home, fitness trackers are giving you all your health and daily activity data faster. You can use these trackers to record your heart rate, performance, and more.

In this article, we take a look at some of the fitness trackers to maintain cycling metrics and help you reach your cycling goals. Scroll down to know more.

11 Best Fitness Trackers For Cycling

1. Best Buy: Garmin Forerunner 935 Running GPS Unit

4.6

Image: Garmin

BUY ON AMAZON | $229.99

Garmin’s Forerunner GPS watch is one of the top picks because of its unique features and exceptional durability. This premium GPS triathlon wristwatch measures heart rate and monitors your performance. The data can be integrated with your smartphone. It is specifically designed for sale and support in North America only. This triathlon tracker weighs 49 grams and tracks your cycling activities, along with the elevation changes with an inbuilt barometer and altimeter. The built-in compass always keeps you on track using its GPS mode.

The tracker helps analyze biomechanical measurements, such as pedaling rate (cadence), ground contact time, balance, vertical oscillation, and vertical ratio for a better understanding of your performance. Challenge yourself every day by analyzing your laps and performances on the leadership board.

Beyond the tracking, the Forerunner 935 also has all the amenities you could want in a smartwatch. The tracker connects with both iPhones and Android phones. It can store your music and make phone calls easily, and you can even make NFC payments through Garmin Pay. Here’s an honest video review of this product with user insights based on the reviewer’s experience.

Pro Tip

Your watch strap might become dirty and smell without adequate cleaning. You may wash fitness trackers with elastomer straps using rubbing alcohol and a cloth to wipe the bands.

Why We Think It's Worth Buying

The extensive 2,718 rave reviews on Amazon prove why we are vouching for this product.

2. Best User- Friendly:Garmin Vívoactive 3 Smartwatch

4.4

BUY ON AMAZON | $239.99

The Garmin Vivo active 3 Smartwatch is preloaded with GPS. It is made of a stainless steel bezel and Corning gorilla glass that makes it scratch-resistant. The sideswipe user-friendly interface helps in quick scrolling and swift navigation of the menus and widgets. This fitness band is preloaded with apps for biking, along with others for yoga, running, swimming, etc. You can easily customize your cycling activity and integrate it with your smartwatch. With the help of the Elevate wrist-based heart rate technology, you can monitor your fitness and stress levels along with the VO2 max under different physical activities. Always get connected with the smart applications, live tracking, and the fitness community to keep track of your fitness goal and personal transformation. Check out this in-depth review video to get a clear picture of the features of this activity tracker watch through a tester’s experience of using it.

Why We Think It's Worth Buying

It has gained over 26,296 positive reviews on Amazon, making it an all-time best-seller.

3. Best Affordable: Fitbit Inspire 3 Tracker

4.4

Image: Fitbit

BUY ON AMAZON | $98.95

The Fitbit Inspire 3 keeps a log of your activity level including steps taken, distance traveled, active time, and the number of calories burned using its advanced features. It can monitor your heart rate and detect your blood oxygen level, keeping you informed throughout the day. This smart device can receive notifications for calls, messages, and app alerts. It comes with a variety of interchangeable bands and clock faces. The fitness tracking device claims to offer 10 days of battery life.

Quick Tip

Nintendo Wii was a major influence on Fitbit. The founders were impressed by the game’s use of motion sensors to personalize fitness and compete socially to make exercising fun.

4.Best For Route Navigation: SUUNTO Ambit3 Peak HR Running GPS Unit

4.3

Image: Suunto

BUY ON AMAZON | $402.01

SUUNTO Ambit3 is an ultimate GPS watch to track indoor and outdoor activities. Its bezel is made of steel and a mineral crystal glass. The tracker includes a built-in altimeter, barometer, compass, and a smart GPS system to accurately measure of elevation along with the weather checks. You can easily integrate your fitness band with the SUUNTO app, digital service, and a companion to track your records. You can easily track your activities, carry out goal setting, and get motivated by the social sharing of your goals with the fitness community. The large display touchscreen interface focuses on monitoring your heart rate, VO2 max value, and calories burned, along with your peak training effect and recovery monitoring. With the SUUNTO app, you can easily track the cycling speed, multiple bike POD support, hill incline, among other metrics.

5. Best For An Active Lifestyle: Amazfit Band 5

4

Image: Amazfit

BUY ON AMAZON | $39.99

This is an ultra-thin, lightweight,  GPS-enabled fitness tracker. Apart from cycling, it also contains apps for other sports like running, golfing, swimming, etc. The Garmin Vívo active Smartwatch has a robust, dedicated wearable technology that improves training metrics for athletes, tracks goals, achievements, and integrates them into a smartphone for a better view. Smart notifications keep you focused and your life in balance.

The Amazfit Band 5 has a 1.1-inch color AMOLED full-touch display that makes it simple to read even in direct sunlight. You can also personalize the user interface by changing the look and feel of your gadget to match your sense of style by selecting one of the 45+ watch faces available. Its sophisticated health monitoring capabilities are what makes it stand out. This device has a BioTracker TM2 PPG optical sensor that can continuously track your heart rate and even identify irregular heart rhythms. It monitors the quantity and quality of your sleep and blood oxygen saturation level. It can properly track your distance, pace, and calories burned during workouts and features 11 distinct built-in sports modes for tracking your fitness, including running, cycling, and swimming. The Amazfit Band 5 has a wide range of smart features, including call and message notifications and weather forecasts. Its advanced feature also supports Amazon Alexa voice control, allowing you to check the weather, control your smart home devices, and more, all with just your voice.

Why We Think It's Worth Buying

With 23,238 positive reviews on Amazon, this product has become a bestseller.

6. Most Popular: Garmin Fenix 5X Sapphire

4.5

Image: Garmin

BUY ON AMAZON | $499.0

The Garmin Fenix 5X Sapphire is one of the popular cycling wristwatches that includes three built-in cycling profiles like normal biking, indoor biking, and mountain biking. It also has tracking and analyzing features. This is a multi-sport GPS watch with an elevated wrist heart rate technology. Its multi network satellite reception allows you to do distance, route, and speed tracking. The preloaded topographic and cycling maps are handy and easy to operate. The rugged design features a stainless steel bezel with easy-to-operate button controls. The rear case design features sunrise and sunset times that sync with the GPS system.

A bright, high-resolution, full-color Garmin Chroma Display with LED backlighting enables good readability in different conditions. The transflective technology reflects and transmits the light and increases visibility and readability even under intense sunlight. The scratch-resistant lens with enabled WiFi connects to a wireless network and sends progress to the fitness community to keep you more focused.

7. Best Multisport Option: POLAR VANTAGE M

4.3

Image: Polar

BUY ON AMAZON | $279.95

The Polar Vantage M is a multisport GPS watch that is designed to provide athletes and fitness enthusiasts with advanced training features and performance metrics. One of the key features of the Polar Vantage M is its GPS functionality. This allows athletes to track their pace, distance, and route when they are running or cycling outdoors. In addition, it also offers a monitoring feature of advanced heart rate zones. It uses a polar precision prime sensor fusion technology, a wrist-based sensor to measure heart rate, which is then used to calculate a range of performance metrics, including VO2 max tracking and running index. This data can be used for training analysis and to track progress over time, identify areas for improvement, and optimize training routines. The fitness smartwatch also provides smart notifications, which allow athletes to stay connected to their phones without having to take them out of their pockets or bag.

8. Best Durable:Fitbit Ionic Watch

4

BUY ON AMAZON | $299.95

The Fitbit Ionic Watch has a built-in GPS that tracks your pace, distance, and time and shows stats on the large durable and scratch-resistant Corning gorilla glass 3 display. It also helps with elevation tracking and records the split times and maps out your route. Unlike other smartwatches, the high-resolution large rectangular screen displays all your data even under direct sunlight. It has increased pixels and amplified brightness. Its operating temperature ranges from 4 degrees to 113 degrees Fahrenheit. Its maximum operating altitude is 30,000 feet.

These cumulative features help track running, cycling, swimming, and climbing. With the Pure Pulse Heart rate monitoring system, the smartwatch measures the acceleration of heart rate during exercise and optimizes it accordingly. You can check the dashboard for getting a summary of your entire day and challenge yourself by connecting with fitness communities.

Did you know?

Initially, Apple used to sell Fitbit devices but discontinued them in late 2014 for unspecified reasons. In April 2015, they released the Apple Watch that became an instant bestseller.

9. Best For Long Battery Life:Garmin Vívo active HR GPS Smartwatch

3.8

Image: Garmin

BUY ON AMAZON

The Garmin Vívoactive HR Smartwatch has a a high-resolution colored touchscreen GPS. It has a display size of 28.6 mm x 20.7 mm. It has built-in apps for indoor and outdoor sports activities like running, biking, swimming, skiing, snowboarding, golf rowing, and paddle boarding. It helps track time, distance, speed, and calories. With the Elevate Heart Rate technology system, the tracker measures the acceleration of your heartbeat while you are cycling or working out and quantifies the intensity of your fitness level. The smartwatch also tracks sleep wake cycles. The sunlight-readable high-resolution touchscreen is integrated with smart notifications. This display type produces clear visuals and makes the device user-friendly. From the Connect IQ online store, you can customize your smartwatch with 1300+ easy to download face apps for training plans, customize widgets and themes, and design your sport tracker the way you want.

10. Best For Efficiency:Fit bit Surge Fitness Super Watch

3.5

Image: Fit Bit

BUY ON AMAZON | $239.99

The Very sleek Fitbit Surge Fitness Super Watch is one of the best fitness trackers around. Its incredible accuracy along with multiple sensors to track your movement makes it ideal for all outdoor and indoor sports, in addition to cycling. The built-in GPS, accelerometer, gyroscope, compass, and altimeter track your speed, time, distance, routes, elevation in cycling, running, mountain biking, and swimming. A real-time wrist heart rate monitor is effective and convenient unlike most chest-strap monitors. The tracker measures your every beat accurately. It also has a sleep tracker feature that delivers perfect results. The wireless syncing and mobile app integration help you access data across devices and even computers for easy access to your goals (along with a track sheet). Use the Bluetooth to sync the watch with your smartphone so that you can receive notifications and control your music while on the go.

11. Best For Sleep Tracking:Fitbit Luxe Fitness And Wellness Tracker

4.3

Image: Fit Bit

BUY ON AMAZON | $128

The Fitbit Luxe Fitness And Wellness Tracker is crafted with accurate sensors to track heart rate, stress levels, and sleep quality and act like your wellness consultant. This device has an in-built GPS, and different exercise modes and can provide real-time feedback on your workout tracking. This is a smart device and can receive notifications for calls, texts, and application alerts. This device comes in a range of clock faces and colorful stylish interchangeable bands.

These are the 11 best fitness trackers meant for cyclists. They help measure and track your speed, time, and distance traveled. Most of these trackers are water-resistant, which means you can wear them even as you cycle in the rain. But before you purchase a tracker, you need to check a few things.

How To Choose The Best Fitness Tracker For Cycling

• Reliable GPS: The inbuilt GPS system of the tracker should be reliable to help you navigate properly on your trails. A fitness tracker with a built-in GPS can collect and process your GPS data to show you where you are at any given time.

• Activity Tracking: With more advanced statistics and built-in features, a fitness tracker can track the progress of all your activities, including the pedaling rate (cadence sensors), stride length, ground contact time and balance, vertical oscillation, and vertical ratio for a better understanding of your performance.

• Water-Resistant: A higher water-resistance rating means your watch is more durable.

• Heart Rate Monitoring: This feature synchronizes your heart rate with the intensity of your sports. The wrist pulse monitors are generally a little less accurate than chest strap heart rate monitors, although the accuracy varies between models. This is one area where a more expensive watch will deliver better results.

• Sleep Tracking: Tracking your sleep helps maintain your fitness levels. By wearing your device on your wrist while you sleep, you can find out the exact duration of your sleep and that of your deep sleep versus light sleep.

• Battery Life: An outstanding battery life increases the longevity of a fitness tracker and helps to track your progress all day. The battery should also be rechargeable.

Infographic: How To Effectively Use Your Fitness Tracker

Fitness trackers offer multiple readings and insights into your health and workout goals. But you need to use them correctly to make the most out of them. We have made a list of ways you can get the optimum benefits of your fitness tracker. Check out the infographic below to learn more.

Illustration: StyleCraze Design Team

Frequently Asked Questions

Should I sleep with my fitness watch on?

No. It is best if you sleep without the fitness watch. The low-frequency waves from your health tracker are not good for your heart. Moreover, the battery will drain out unnecessarily.

Are fitness trackers safe to wear?

Yes, fitness trackers are safe to wear throughout the day. Although most fitness trackers emit electric and magnetic fields (EMF) radiation, it is not enough to cause adverse effects.

How do you use a fitness tracker effectively?

Wear the right tracker that tracks your needs. Determine what you are tracking and wear it daily to set specific goals. Then, track results and make changes accordingly.

What are the cons of fitness trackers?

• The battery drains faster when you use it for multiple purposes like listening to music and tracking details.
• Some devices offer inaccurate results.
• More features equals higher prices.
• Constant tracking can lead to an obsession in users.

Is it time to stop using your fitness tracker?

No. In fact, Max Lowery says, “If you want to take your training to the next level, and become more efficient, data is key. Investing in a high quality tracker will give you the data to make better decisions about your training and recovery.”

Why Trust StyleCraze?

Aditi Naskar, the author of this post, holds a diploma in wellness and nutrition. She always has a keen interest in various products for fitness. After in-depth research and reading many online reviews, this list of best fitness trackers for cycling has been carefully curated by her. She says that these trackers are a must-have for cyclers to track their cycling goals and monitor their performance and heart rate.

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Max LoweryPersonal Trainer & Online Health Coach

     

Max Lowery is a personal trainer and online health coach with 10 years of experience. His clientele includes high-profile celebrities, top models, and influencers. After experimenting with intermittent fasting and realizing its power, Max developed his own method known as The 2 Meal Day. He advocates eating simple and delicious meals with focus on the nutritional content. He believes in...more

Aditi NaskarAssociate Commerce Editor

 

Aditi Naskar has a postgraduate degree in English literature from Presidency University, Kolkata, a bachelor’s degree in education from WBUTTEPA, Kolkata, and a diploma in health and wellness. She is an associate commerce editor with 5 years of experience and specializes in reviewing fitness and health products. She has previously worked as a scriptwriter for an educational technology company and...more

Medha DebCommerce Editor

Medha Deb is a commerce editor with a master's degree in applied linguistics from the University of Hyderabad, which has allowed her to develop a deep understanding of language and its application in various contexts. She specializes in the areas of beauty, health, and wellness and is committed to ensuring that the content on the website is of the highest...more

Rajeshwari DasAssociate Commerce Editor

Rajeshwari is a dedicated fitness and lifestyle enthusiast, deeply committed to enhancing our readers’ well-being and vitality. She has a master’s degree in Journalism & Mass Communication from the University of Calcutta. Her unwavering passion for evaluating fitness and wellness products, whether it's workout gear or exercise machines, her discerning advice, and her enthusiastic guidance are guaranteed to elevate your...more