5 smartwatches you should buy instead of the Moto Watch Ultra

The Moto Watch Ultra is Motorola’s latest smartwatch, featuring a unique blend of features for the price. The singular variant costs $350 and includes LTE eSIM support, Wear OS 6, a 1.5-inch pOLED display, and Polar’s health and fitness tracking algorithms. That’s a fabulous combination in itself, but Motorola has cut corners on the processor and is only offering two OS upgrades.

Thankfully, there’s no shortage of good Wear OS smartwatch options in the market. From Google to Samsung, there are plenty of great alternatives you should consider first. So, before settling on the Moto Watch Ultra, consider these five other alternatives.

Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra (2025)

The Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra (specifically the 2025 model) is, in my opinion, the best alternative if you already own a Samsung phone. It’s a refresh of the 2024 Galaxy Watch Ultra with double the storage and a new color. You can easily find one on Amazon for $330 now, making it really good value.

The Galaxy Watch Ultra 2025 features a similarly chunky, rugged design to the Moto Watch Ultra, along with a 1.5-inch AMOLED display, 64GB of storage, LTE, and a larger battery. Samsung’s offering is even tougher as it comes with sapphire crystal glass and MIL-STD-810H certification.

Health and fitness tracking is solid, GPS tracking is accurate, there’s four years of OS upgrades, and the battery easily lasts for two or more days at a stretch. The only thing holding the Galaxy Watch Ultra 2025 back was the high launch price of $650, but that isn’t an issue anymore.

Google Pixel Watch 4

The Google Pixel Watch 4 is still a solid choice, one year on. Compared to the Moto Watch Ultra, you’re getting a lighter, sleeker design, a brighter display, a faster chipset, and a choice between two sizes, with optional LTE connectivity. Since it’s been out for a year, the 41mm model can be found for as low as $230, while the 45mm model with LTE hits $530.

Google also offers three years of OS upgrades, which means the Pixel Watch 4 will be supported until October 2028. The Pixel Watch 5 does replace it this year, but there isn’t much new in terms of hardware. This makes the new starting price of $499 not the best value for money.

I’ve been personally daily-driving the Pixel Watch 4 for the past few months, and can vouch for its incredible display quality and superb battery life. Sleep and health tracking metrics are also on point, and you can fully charge it from empty in roughly half an hour. It’s definitely Google’s best smartwatch attempt, and it’s incredibly good value today after the price drop.

Samsung Galaxy Watch 9

If you want better future-proofing, the Samsung Galaxy Watch 9, starting at $380, is a solid choice. This is the 2026 model featuring the new Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear Elite SoC, and it will get five generations of Wear OS updates. It also supports the Raise to Talk feature, which has been Pixel Watch-exclusive until now.

Compared to the Moto Watch Ultra, the Galaxy Watch 9 is slimmer, lighter, and features tougher scratch-resistant glass. Health and fitness tracking of Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 8 was excellent, so you should expect the same, if not better, performance in the Watch 9. The only two things worth noting here are that, to use all the health-tracking features, you will need a Samsung Galaxy phone. Secondly, the charging speed is only 10W, which isn’t very quick.

Garmin Venu 4

If it’s health and fitness tracking you’re primarily after, the Garmin Venu 4 has you covered. Similar to Polar’s strong health-tracking features on the Moto Watch Ultra, Garmin smartwatches are renowned for their highly accurate health-tracking suite. The Venu 4 comes in two dial sizes, each with a variety of colors.

A couple of things that really stood out about the Garmin Venu 4 during our review were its refined design and vivid display. The OS is also responsive; you get plenty of advanced fitness and training tools, heart rate and GPS tracking are very accurate, and there’s up to 12 days of battery life.

While the Venu 4 offers all the basics of a smartwatch, like notifications and the ability to make calls, features like on-device Gemini are absent, and the variety of watch apps is limited, too. There’s also no LTE variant, and it costs a fair bit more than the Moto Watch Ultra. However, if you’re serious about health/fitness features and want them packaged into a sleek form factor, there’s a lot to like here.

Amazfit Balance 2

The Amazfit Balance 2 looks similar to the Moto Watch Ultra, but costs less and can run up to 21 days on a single charge. You get a host of premium features, including sapphire glass over the display, a bright, vivid 1.5-inch AMOLED screen, dual-band GPS, downloadable maps, and a comprehensive suite of health and fitness-tracking tools.

The Balance 2 is powered by Zepp OS 6, which features a wide array of fitness training metrics, including HYROX. You can track deeper performance insights for outdoor runs, get guided route navigation, and monitor elevations in your route. There’s also an OpenAI-powered voice assistant called Zepp Flow which lets you type out replies to messages, adjust settings, and more — all by voice commands. It’s even less capable than the Venu 4 in terms of smart features, but if you want a robust fitness watch at a great price, the Balance 2 checks a lot of boxes.