The 6 Best Cheap Running Watches Under $200

Garmin’s running watches have long been among our favorites at every price level, from the most basic of basic to the priciest, most feature-laden timepieces you can buy with mortal money. The Forerunner 55 represents the former, but you wouldn’t guess it at a glance. It’s a bit smaller than its more expensive siblings, but it still packs a punch with its trickled-down GPS tech. I, as a disliker of large faces, found it astronomically more comfortable.

The 55 strips away all kinds of frills to deliver a quality bit of tech that measures distance, pace, and time accurately. Sure, we weren’t able to measure barometric pressure or stride length with it, for example. But we wouldn’t consider either of those to be critical for the average training plan. Plus, with all that clutter out of the way, we found the screen is easy to read, even at a glance.

“Sleeper cars” are known among automotive enthusiasts as cars that have an unassuming, sometimes crummy exterior and a sneakily powerful engine under the hood. To transfer that terminology over to fitness tech, the Bip 5 is a sleeper watch. It looks cheap at first, and we don’t necessarily laud it for its comfort or durability, but it has all the fixings of a decent smartwatch for well below the price you’d expect.

On the health tracker front, you can check your steps and heart rate on a companion app similar to Fitbit’s. The data interpretations you get aren’t quite as expansive, but you can still see whether your exercise was aerobic or anaerobic during each run. You can even find out if you were in the right heart rate zone for burning fat, if that’s something you’re interested in. During runs, you can check your mileage, pace, and time on the fly, and you can additionally set reminders to drink water on your long runs.

This watch not only has standalone GPS for 90 bones (before discounts), but it also pairs with your phone to send and receive calls. On top of that, it has a full touchscreen, and you can customize the face with 70 different designs.

Regarding the watch’s wearability, we do have to knock it for its cheap-feeling plastic body and silicone band. Furthermore, the band has to tuck under itself after going through the buckle, leaving an annoying bump on your wrist that might not feel great on hours-long excursions.

Now that it’s a bit trickier to find trackers under $200 in general, it’s about time we take a look at a GPS-free option that has plenty of staying power. Enter Fitbit’s Inspire 3.

Minimalists will appreciate that, despite all the data this Fitbit can grab from your wrist, it’s sleek as can be. We found that this makes it a perfect all-day companion—one that can chart out your heart rate, stress levels, and even sleep cycles with impressive accuracy. Plus, if you do want to track your location, all you need to do is connect the Inspire to your phone.

To that end, the accuracy of any runs you map on this watch are only as good as your phone. Our tests found that the route can jump around a bit in thick woods, for example. But the other neat perk that comes with a Bluetooth connection is the ability to use the Fitbit app. It keeps a dynamic and detailed record of your base stats, such as heart rate and mileage, and charts them out on easy-to-read graphs so you can watch your fitness change over time.

This recommendation doesn’t actually come from past experience with Wahoo’s watches, but rather the brand’s cycling computers. The Elemnt Bolt is one of the best race-oriented handlebar units I’ve used on my bike, and it’s hundreds of dollars cheaper than a comparable Garmin model. Much of that tech seems to show up in the Rival watch as well, and Wahoo managed to pack a heart rate monitor in there too.

The neatest feature this watch boasts is its ability to pair to a Wahoo bike computer instantly, allowing for a seamless transition to the bike leg of a triathlon or duathlon without the need to start a new activity. Watches like Garmin’s Forerunner 265 similarly have a triathlon mode, but you can’t quite as easily sync the information on that watch with a screen on your handlebar. The Rival keeps it easy-peasy so you can go back to worrying about how quickly you can tighten your shoes.

Got a kiddo who wants to match your running bling? This affordable option is built for kids, the world’s most renowned experts in breaking-nice-things-ology. The Vivofit Jr. comes wrapped in a silicone case that buffers against cracks and scratches, and the whole thing is waterproof for when your young ’uns forget to take theirs off at the pool.

All the while, it’s tracking their steps so they can unlock fun facts and games that can keep them engaged with their playtime in a new way. And if you’re looking for a more compelling method to get them to complete their chores, you can also set up a program that awards them more games as they complete their tasks.

One thing to note: The battery here isn’t rechargeable, but it is replaceable. It’ll last you as long as a year, then you simply need to remove the face from its band to access the battery compartment on the back.

Believe us when we say we love the Apple Watch, and for good reason: It works well and looks good. Taking note of its commercial success, other watch brands scrambled to offer their own take on the sleek, phone-friendly running watch with a priority for all-day wear. The Venu Sq is Garmin’s offering.

While it’s not quite as high-octane as the Apple Watch in terms of features, it’s a heck of a lot cheaper, especially now that there’s a newer version out. And it has plenty of Garmin’s best sensors and software built in, such as stress tracking, a blood oxygen sensor, and advanced sleep tracking. You can even track your menstrual cycle if you’d like. The Forerunner 55 has some of those features, but not all of them.

Fewer features make the interface more intuitive Venu Sq 2? First and foremost, the Sq 2 doesn’t fit below our $200 mark. Second, the upgrades you’re getting are largely aesthetic—a brighter, clearer display, for example. That said, the Sq 2 does offer a “sleep score” function, which takes all the sleep data both watches measure and pre-digests it into an overall rating of your sleep quality on a scale of zero to 100. If you want to spend less time interpreting your sleep data on your own, that may warrant the step up.

Of course, because this is the first-generation model that’s being phased out, you’ll have to act quick to get one before it’s gone. The Venu Sq is in stock at the time of publication, but we don’t know if or when that will change.