7 best Fitbits for kids and teenagers that encourage them to keep active

Best: Overall

Rating: 10/10

• Battery life: Up to eight days
• Swim-proof: Yes
• GPS: No
• Heart rate: No

It’s no surprise that Fitbit’s newest offering for kids takes the crown here. The ace 3 brings with it a few improved features. Firstly, the look and feel of the ace 3 is pleasingly curvy, with a very light and slim silicone strap that’s designed to fit small wrists. Our eight-year-old tester found it comfy to wear every day.

The ace 3 comes in blue with green details, black with red details, and a special-edition Minions version in yellow. The Fitbit component itself pops out of the strap easily, and you can buy straps separately if your kids fancy a change. The clock face is easy to read, and kids can choose an animation that comes to life as they hit their goals – which you set in the Fitbit app on your phone. Our tester watched as a rocket, which began grounded, went further into space the more steps he walked.

Features-wise the ace 3 can track sleep, set bedtime reminders and morning alarms, and has timer and stopwatch features for races. None of Fitbit’s child-friendly models track heart rate, so you’ll need to move up to an adult model if that’s a must-have. The all-day steps tracker was easily the most popular feature with our tester, and we definitely noticed an increased desire to be active from the first day he wore it – if only to beat his sister’s daily step goal.

The ace 3 promises up to eight-day battery life – although ours tended to need recharging after around five days, which is no surprise given the number of times our tester touched the screen to check the number of steps he’d done. It’s also water resistant to 50m which is great for swimming lessons, but equally reassuring for everyday spills.

Best: For price

Rating: 9/10

• Battery life: Up to five days
• Swim-proof: Yes
• GPS: No
• Heart rate: No

The ace 2 is pretty similar to the ace 3 (£69, Currys.co.uk), so it’s a good option if you want to shave a bit off the cost. The two biggest differences are the look – the ace 2 is slightly squarer – and the battery life, which is up to five days for the ace 2. We found ours tended to last three or four days before it needed recharging, but you can get more battery life if you don’t use the animated clock faces.

Our only gripe is that the Fitbit chargers aren’t universal, which would make life a whole lot easier. It also took a half an hour to sync with our app, where the ace 3 was ready to go in minutes. Other than that, the other differences are more subtle – the ace 2 has a button at the side of the screen for example, and the ace 2’s touchscreen display is ever so slightly darker than the ace 3, although it doesn’t impact use. Our six-year-old tester preferred the colour options available with the ace 2, and chose the watermelon red option.

Pretty much everything else is on a par with the ace 3, and this is another excellent activity tracker from Fitbit that our tester rarely takes off. She figured out how to swipe up and down to display the various menu items quickly – no instructions needed – and particularly liked the animated clock faces, especially the plant that grows as your step count increases. You can set family challenges in the Fitbit app on your phone, but our testers were just as happy to compare wrists and see who’d hit the highest number of steps before bed.

Best: For mindfulness

Rating: 8/10

• Battery life: Up to 10 days
• Swim-proof: Yes
• GPS: No
• Heart rate: Yes

The inspire 2 is basically a sophisticated version of the ace 3 (£69, Currys.co.uk), so it’s great for older children and teens who’ve outgrown the child-like design of the ace models. It has a grown-up look, with a sleek, slim band that fitted our pre-teen tester’s wrist and was comfortable and light enough to leave on at night. It comes in a choice of black, white and dusky pink colour options and certainly wins points for appearance. The 10-day battery life is another big bonus and it’s only slightly more expensive than the ace 3, so it’s still a budget-friendly option.

As a grown-up Fitbit, the inspire 2 includes extra features like female health, heart rate and calories burned, so think carefully about the age and stage of the wearer before you buy. We really liked the in-depth sleep features, with a breakdown of sleep stages to show how much light, deep and REM sleep you’re getting. Our inspire 2 also came with a 12-month free trial of Premium, which unlocks extras like sleep sounds and guided breathing.

Overall, this is a nice step up from the children’s models that replaces features like the child-like goals and animations with a focus on mindfulness and a more delicate look and feel.

Best: For fitness

Rating: 8/10

• Battery life: Up to seven days
• Swim-proof: Yes
• GPS: Yes
• Heart rate: Yes

If having a GPS feature is essential, the charge 4 is a good option for sporty youngsters and teens – particularly if they have a phone. We noticed that using the GPS drains the Charge 4’s battery a lot faster than the seven days you can get without it, although you can enable Dynamic GPS to preserve battery life and it will automatically use your phone’s GPS instead when it’s close by.

Style-wise this model has a chunkier strap and a more masculine look than the inspire 2 (£89.99, Smythstoys.com), and our tester chose the black option. As with all the Fitbits it’s easy to snap on a new band if you fancy a change, and there’s everything from stitched leather to a glamorous rose gold steel option available to buy separately.

Like all the Fitbits we tested, you can wake the Charge 4 up by pressing the side of the screen, turning your wrist or tapping the screen, but our tester found it didn’t always respond the first time. Once it did, it was fairly easy to scroll between features and track all sorts of sports – from swimming to tennis. You can change the default shortcuts in the app, and with the GPS on you can track pace, speed, distance, time and heart rate – then see your run on a map in the app.

Although not a smartwatch, the charge 4 also has some smart features including Fitbit Pay for mobile payments. It’s a great budget option for teens who want a fitness tracker with GPS but don’t want to shell out a small fortune for it.

Best: For teens

Rating: 8/10

• Battery life: 6+ days
• Swim-proof: Yes
• GPS: Yes
• Heart rate: Yes

If you’re looking for a smartwatch for an older child, put the versa 3 on your list. This one is a good all-rounder at a decent price, and means kids can leave their phone at home and still track their exercise with GPS, and get text and WhatsApp notifications on their wrist.

Our tester really liked the design of the versa 3, which looks more like a watch than a fitness tracker. The display is bright, crisp and colourful, and definitely trumps the other Fitbits that made it onto our list. The only downside is the sensor on the side of the screen, which is more like an indent and can make waking the Fitbit up quite tricky until you’ve got the hang of it.

Aside from that the versa 3 is very easy to use straight out of the box, and beyond the standard activity tracking features there are things like local weather and a find my phone function (although truth be told, our tester had to be pretty close to their phone for this to actually work). Phone notifications are pretty unobtrusive on the vibration setting, but you can switch them off entirely or tweak which notifications you receive in the app.

All the Fitbits in our list track something called “active zone minutes” (active minutes for the two ace models), which is basically any activity that raises your heart rate. The default goal for the adult models is set to 150 active zone minutes each week, which is based on recommendations from The American Heart Association and World Health Organization. As with most of the features, this is customisable and you can change your target or switch off notifications completely in the Fitbit app.

Best: For stress management

Rating: 8/10

• Battery life: 6+ days
• Swim-proof: Yes
• GPS: Yes
• Heart rate: Yes

The Fitbit sense is the company’s health-focused smartwatch, and it has some useful stress-management tools that work well for teens. The standout feature is an EDA sensor that monitors electrodermal activity on your skin. Put simply, it tracks electrical changes in your sweat to give you feedback on your body’s response to stress.

You can track your EDA during guided meditation sessions – just bear in mind these are behind the Fitbit Premium paywall once your free six-month subscription runs out. We preferred the 60-second quick-scan feature – to use it you just hold the palm of your other hand over the watch face, which forces you to relax and renders it impossible to do any social media scrolling. Our tester noted that it’s surprising how slowly a minute passes by when you’re used to doing a million things at once.

The sense also includes essential smartwatch features like voice assistant, Bluetooth calls and notifications, Fitbit Pay and built-in GPS, so your teen has everything they need on their wrist alongside some excellent wellness features. It looks great, too – our tester loved the grown-up stainless-steel face, and there are some seriously chic bands to buy separately if you want to switch it up a bit.

Best: For wellness on a budget

Rating: 9/10

• Battery life: Up to seven days
• Swim-proof: Yes
• GPS: Yes
• Heart rate: Yes

The Fitbit charge 5 feels a bit like a grown-up ace (£69.99, Fitbit.com) or inspire (£89.99, Smythstoys.com). It has the same neat, narrow shape that doesn’t feel bulky on smaller wrists, paired with more luxurious materials and a more refined design that suits teens and older children.

It’s also similar to the sense (£199, Johnlewis.com), in that it features an EDA sensor as well as an ECG app alongside various wellness-focused features, including a daily readiness score. This analyses your data – from your sleep patterns to your heart rate – to tell you if your body is in tip-top condition for a workout, or if you’d be better taking a break. It’s a nice feature to remind older children to prioritise rest and recovery, although it’s another of Fitbit’s Premium features that you’ll need to pay for to continue using after the free six-month subscription runs out.

The charge 5 has built-in GPS so you can track pace and distance, and our teenage tester loved the full-colour screen – which was a welcome step up from the monochrome charge 4. We found enabling the always-on screen feature drained the battery much more quickly than the seven days it’s capable of, so we ended up switching that off.

Other than that, this is an excellent fitness tracker that improves on the ace 3 (£69, Currys.co.uk) and the charge 4 (£99: Very.co.uk), and even steals a few of the best features from the sense – just with a more reasonable price tag, and without the ability to take calls.