Track Your PRs Without Extra Noise With the Best Basic Running Watches (2024)

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.

• Best Overall: Coros Pace 2 Running Watch
• Best Value: Amazfit Bip 3 Running Watch
• Most Stylish: Garmin Venu Sq 2 Running Watch
• Best Features: Garmin Forerunner 55 Running Watch
• Best Training Analysis: Polar Pacer Running Watch

Features

While you can expect basic running watches to have fewer features than more advanced models, affordable GPS watches can be easier to use, so it won’t slow you down with 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 a quick run, 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, 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 we recommend 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, and 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 or more. 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.

Every model here has been evaluated and vetted by our team of test editors. We research the market, survey user reviews, speak with product managers and designers, and use our own experience tracking and obsessing over runs as short as 100 meters and as long as 100 miles. We evaluated the accuracy, reliability, durability, features, style, and value of smartwatches from our our favorite brands to narrow down the best ones under $200. But we maintained one important requirement: GPS run tracking is built into all of these watches—no smartphone-tethered apps or Bluetooth connections required to hit the trails.

We’ve long been fans of Coros for its affordable, long-lasting alternatives to the major players in the GPS watch game. The new Pace 2 running watch is refined to focus only on being the lightest, fastest run-tracking experience for road runners.

The Pace 2 isn’t bogged down by any extra features you’re unlikely to use. 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 new lightweight nylon strap that’s comfortably snug and more easily adjustable than silicone options, but we found that the new strap can get soggy after sweating a bunch or washing your hands.

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An update from 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 models, all while offering 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. It also occasionally loses your location between tall buildings, so keep that in mind if you live or run in an urban area.

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 it also ticks plenty of feature boxes if you want to get fancy: You get accurate GPS tracking, along with many of the same basic run-tracking features you find in the Garmin’s Forerunner 55 below—cadence, optical heart rate, customizable data pages, VO2 max estimates, and the ability to record laps automatically or manually. It even comes with a sensor that measures your blood oxygen levels, and for an additional $50, you can store and stream music right from the watch without your phone.

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 new Forerunner 55 improves on the smartwatch functionality and battery life of its predecessor, the Forerunner 45—it can now get you through a week of runs between charges. Plus, it still packs a continuous wrist-based heart rate monitor.

The unassuming but effective Pacer Pro packs performance tests, Strava live segments, and plenty more into a competitively lightweight unit. Its more basic counterpart, the Pacer, similarly exceeds expectations while also sitting just above the $200 mark, rather than $330.

The built-in Running Program mode lets you select a race training plan for a 5K, 10K, half marathon, or marathon and track your long-term fitness trends. You’ll also receive 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, 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.

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.

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 time spent in REM sleep to where your resting heart rate stands among that of average adults.