Expert consulted: Some of the newest GPS running watches are stuffed to the gills with flashy features that can help you optimize every element of your training, leaving no facet of your health and fitness unmeasured. This is all in the name of making your training more efficient, but these technological perks can add up, both in price and complexity.
Not everyone wants all the bells and whistles—for plenty of runners, accurate records of your pace, heart rate, route, distance, and time are all you need to get the most out of your runs.
For when simplicity is key, here are some of our favorite affordable, intuitive fitness trackers that make sense right out of the box.
The Best Basic Running Watches
- Best Overall: Coros Pace 2 Running Watch
- Best Value: Amazfit Bip 3 Running Watch
- Best Everyday Watch: Garmin Venu Sq 2 Running Watch
- Best Intro to Advanced Watches: Garmin Forerunner 55 Running Watch
- Best Training Analysis: Polar Pacer Running Watch
How to Choose an Affordable Running Watch
Features
While you can expect basic running watches to have fewer bells and whisles than more advanced models, affordable GPS watches can be easier to use. In other words, they won’t slow you down with (what may be for your purposes) unnecessary functionality. If you’re unsure whether to leap into a higher price range, ask yourself how often you’ll be using the watch. Consider which add-ons are absolutely essential to you, and which would just be nice to have. For example, do you plan to use your watch twice a week for quick runs, or will you wear it daily for every workout? And when you’re done sweating, do you want to keep it on for the rest of the day to use other, non-running-related features?
Advanced watches often have LTE cell service, contactless payment, barometric altimeters, gyroscopes, voice-activated controls, and the ability to sync your music library—among plenty of other features.
While more basic watches under $200 might not stand in for your smartphone in this way, our recommendations still offer helpful features for tracking runs, like heart rate monitoring, sleep tracking, multi-sport functionality, and training recommendations. All of the running watches here include built-in GPS, too, which you can use to track your routes and way-find on runs.
Battery Life
One of the best perks of a lower-tech running watch is that the battery isn’t doing nearly as much work most of the time, so it lasts much longer than, say, an Apple Watch. Some of the cheap running watches here can run perfectly well for over a month without a recharge—you’re lucky if you get a full day out of most high-tech smartwatches.
That said, certain features (especially continuous GPS tracking) can wreak havoc on your battery, often cutting your time between charges in half. If you’re recharging between runs, this isn’t as much of a problem, but you might want to turn off GPS functionality after runs if you plan on using the watch all day or for extra-long distances.
How We Selected
Armed with pages of testing notes, we used our years of experience tracking and obsessing over runs of all distances to determine which smartwatch features truly make the most impact on our training, as well as which ones, while nifty, can go by the wayside if simplicity is paramount. Some examples of the former include trackers for speed, heart rate, and location; examples of the latter include multi-sport modes (if you’re only using the watch for runs), advanced biometrics like blood oxygen, and built-in coaching programs with uncertain accuracy or benefit—again, they’re nice to have, but you can form a solid training plan in their absence.
Once we narrowed down what we want in a basic watch, we looked for models we and our colleagues have tried that have those features at the forefront of their design, not cluttered by perks. We prioritized models with a max battery life of at least a week, a sub-$200 price tag (with some exceptions we think are worth the budget stretch), and adequately accurate tracking that, even if off by a few percentage points, doesn’t spike erratically or become illegible.
Even if you don’t stick with these watches forever, they’re a phenomenal launchpad for years of collecting, interpreting, and tracking changes in data about your fitness. And when you’re ready for a more advanced watch that’s tougher to read, you’ll already have your baseline preferences dialed. Read on to see where we think you should start.
Our Full Basic Running Watch Reviews
Pros
- Excellent battery life
- Extremely lightweight
Cons
- Nylon strap gets soggy
Key Specs
| Connectivity | Bluetooth |
|---|---|
| Battery Life | 30 hours in GPS mode, 20 days in watch mode |
We’ve long been fans of Coros for its affordable, long-lasting alternatives to the major players in the GPS watch game. Looking to pare down as much of its functionality as possible, the Pace 2’s focus is only on being the lightest, fastest run tracker for road runners.
The Pace 2 isn’t bogged down by any extra features you’re unlikely to use outside of an in-depth training analysis. At just 29 grams, it’s the lightest GPS watch we’ve tested—the Apple Watch Series 7 weighs 32 grams, and the original Pace was 48 grams. But it doesn’t skimp on battery. In fact, it’ll go up to 30 hours between charges with GPS tracking on, which is long enough that you can leave the power cord at home when you go away for a weekend run vacation.
Some of that weight savings comes from a lightweight nylon strap that’s comfortably snug and more easily adjustable than silicone options. But we found that this strap can get soggy after sweating a bunch or washing your hands.
Pros
- Super long battery life
- Charges twice as quickly as some previous versions
- Unbeatable price for the functionality
Cons
- Tall buildings interrupt GPS signal
Key Specs
| Connectivity | Bluetooth |
|---|---|
| Battery Life | 40 days, 14 days with regular GPS usage |
An update to one of our previous favorites, the Bip S, the Bip 3 touts vast improvements in performance and features while still managing to keep the price at a shocking $70. This watch’s biometric sensor capabilities, though not necessarily on par with other top brands, vastly outperform those of past Bip model. All that while the watch offers more than three times as many trackable sports—61, to be exact.
The GPS tracking isn’t great for this running watch’s battery life, knocking it from 40 days closer to 14, but that’s still nothing to sniff at. We also found that it occasionally lost our location between tall buildings, so keep that in mind if you live or run in an urban area.
Pros
- Sleek design
- Similar functionality to Garmin’s Forerunners
Cons
- Display can’t fit quite as much info
Key Specs
| Connectivity | USB, Bluetooth |
|---|---|
| Battery Life | Up to 11 days |
Most basic running watches look like, well, basic running watches. Or at least they used to. Now, we’re seeing more stylish and versatile options—no doubt spurred by the crossover success of the Apple Watch. The Venu Sq takes full advantage of this trend, presenting a less bulky, more casual watch that still operates effectively during your workouts.
The Venu 2 has an approachable interface that can keep things simple if you don’t care for bells and whistles. But we found it also ticks plenty of feature boxes if you want to get fancy. We got accurate GPS tracking, along with many of the same basic run-tracking features you find in Garmin’s Forerunner 55 below—cadence, optical heart rate, customizable data pages, and VO2 max estimates, to name a few. It even comes with a sensor that measures your blood oxygen levels.
Garmin Forerunner 55 Running Watch
Pros
- Easy to use
- Longer battery life than the Forerunner 45
Cons
- Large display may feel uncomfortable on small wrists
Key Specs
| Connectivity | USB, Bluetooth |
|---|---|
| Battery Life | 20 hours in GPS mode, 14 days in watch mode |
For runners who normally stick to basic metrics—pace, time, and distance—the Garmin Forerunner 55 is an extra-intuitive step into more advanced territory. Besides recording your sleep, stress, and heart rate, a “Body Battery” feature (a score out of 100 that represents your energy level) lets you know if it’s advisable to work out or take a rest day.
Bluetooth connectivity can also sync your phone’s data to Garmin’s Connect app. And, like a portable personal assistant, the watch notifies you about calendar appointments and incoming calls and texts.
The Forerunner 55 improves on the smartwatch functionality and battery life of its predecessor, the Forerunner 45—it got us through a week of runs between charges. Plus, it still packs a continuous wrist-based heart rate monitor.
Pros
- Only 40 grams
- Programs for targeting race/fitness goals
Cons
- Some features are difficult to troubleshoot
Key Specs
| Connectivity | USB, Bluetooth |
|---|---|
| Battery Life | 35 hours in GPS mode, 7 days in watch mode |
The unassuming but effective Pacer Pro packs performance tests, Strava live segments, and plenty more into a competitively lightweight unit. Its more basic counterpart, this Pacer, similarly exceeds expectations while also sitting just above the $200 mark, rather than $330.
The built-in Running Program mode let us select a race training plan for a 5K, 10K, half marathon, or marathon and track your long-term fitness trends. We also received helpful feedback and training insights after intervals and long runs. Features like FuelWise, which gives you mid-run reminders to take gels and water, and Training Load Pro, which monitors strain on your body, can additionally keep you optimized in-flight. And if having all that info on your wrist sounds overwhelming, you can edit the widgets to display only the basics, such as pace, time, and distance.
Pros
- Smallest option out there with a legible screen
- Customizable display
Cons
- Can’t fit much info on the screen
Key Specs
| Connectivity | Bluetooth |
|---|---|
| Battery Life | Up to 10 days |
Minimalism doesn’t always have to come at the cost of functionality. If your idea of “basic” has more to do with your watch’s appearance than its feature set, Fitbit‘s Inspire is worth a look. It’s a tech-dense, featherweight watch with a face that’s only half an inch wide. And when you pair it with your phone, it can track runs with commendable accuracy for a sub-$100 device—we got a few jumpy lines across roads and rivers on some of our Strava uploads, but it wasn’t enough of a spike to make the rest of the data unreadable or useless. The zig-zags also say more about the phone GPS we used than the Inspire’s attempts to interpret its data.
When you’re not out on a run, the Inspire can track health metrics like your heart rate and sleep quality. And thanks to a companion app you can install on your phone, you can get accurate readouts of everything from your REM sleep to where your resting heart rate stands among average adults.
Adam Schram is an Assistant Editor of Commerce at Runner's World, though you might see his byline on Bicycling and Popular Mechanics, too. A lover of all things outdoors, Adam's writing career comes after six years as a bike mechanic in his hometown of State College, PA. His journalism experience is steeped in cycling and running gear reviews, and he's also a published creative nonfiction and satire author. When he's not writing, riding, or running, you can catch Adam at home mixing cocktails, watching Star Wars, or trying in vain to do the Sunday crossword. You can check out his latest work below.
Jeff is Runner-in-Chief for Runner's World, guiding the brand's shoes and gear coverage. A true shoe dog, he's spent more than a decade testing and reviewing shoes. In 2017, he ran in 285 different pairs of shoes, including a streak of 257 days wearing a different model.
Amanda is a test editor at Runner’s World who has run the Boston Marathon every year since 2013; she's a former professional baker with a master’s in gastronomy and she carb-loads on snickerdoodles.
