14 Fitness Tracker Features That Improve Your Health (2024)

Especially important for workouts, the heart rate monitor can help you on your fitness journey. You’ll understand if you’re exercising efficiently. Think about how many times you feel like you’re at your peak but your tracker says otherwise. It’s also a useful tool to track your cardiovascular progress.

Just as important as exercise (maybe even more!), getting the right amount of sleep can have a huge impact on your overall health. Many trackers can produce an analysis of your night’s sleep. You’ll learn just how much deep sleep you get and how much time you spend restless and asleep.

What’s better than getting a notification that your exercise goal is complete? Many trackers now vibrate with this alert and also send you fun messages to show you just how far you’ve come. Research shows that this type of positive reinforcement is conducive to keeping you on the right track.

Designed to help you keep an eye on your heart health, this sensor may even be able to help you identify atrial fibrillation. Despite some mixed reviews about false alarms, many users have reported that this sensor has actually saved their lives.

We all recognize that water is a key factor to keeping you healthy, but it’s also hard to keep track of your intake. The apps that accompany fitness trackers make this easy and can also alert you with reminders throughout the day to drink more.

Fitbit and Apple Watch both have their own versions of competitions, whether it’s accepting a challenge with friends or checking to see who closed their rings first. Either way, having this level of accountability is bound to keep you motivated for success.

If you’re counting calories, it’s helpful to have your fitness tracker take out the guesswork for you. It’s also a useful tool to track over time and see how much you’re burning during exercise, as well as while sedentary or sleeping.

The apps on various fitness trackers allow you to track your weight and see a trend over time. You can also set goals if you want to lose or gain weight, which makes it simple to maintain your progress. Some trackers can also sync with smart scales to log this for you.

Especially important for sedentary office workers, the friendly nudge you get on your tracker to “move” can really be the wakeup call you need to take a break. You can set your daily step goal for the day and trackers can divide this throughout the day, reminding you to take a certain amount of steps per hour.

Once known as the gadget you put your finger into at your annual physical, keeping tabs on your blood oxygen saturation levels has taken center stage during the pandemic. Certain levels are considered to be associated with medical conditions. This feature in the fitness tracker could be a helpful way to get that addressed early.

Meditation and stress management are aspects of overall health that don’t involve your step count or calories burned, but your fitness tracker can play a part in this as well. With various techniques like deep breathing and yoga, the features in your tracker can help you master this aspect of your overall health.

It’s usually a premium feature with most trackers, but having a coach to support you on your health journey could make all the difference. There are different sessions focused on nutrition, exercise and mindfulness that can prove beneficial.

What’s the golden number? Despite varying reports, it truly does depend. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend 10,000 steps per day for adults to maintain general fitness. Getting reminders throughout the day can help you meet your goals – or encourage you to adjust them to something more realistic.

Despite many other apps available for tracking your menstrual health, some fitness trackers now track this aspect of your health. The features can allow you to note your symptoms throughout your cycle, when you had sex, when you ovulated and more.