Can A Smartwatch Track Your Treadmill Workout? A Complete Guide

If you’ve just gotten into fitness – chances are that the treadmill has turned into your best friend. With that said, though, it kind of sucks that you clock in all those steps only for the memory of them being erased as soon as you leave your treadmill.

However, with the help of a smartwatch, you can log all those steps and rightfully add them to your daily fitness regimen and also get detailed stats on your treadmill run!

Can A Smartwatch Track Your Treadmill Workout?

With the advent of COVID-19, a lot of avid gym-goers or runners were duly stuck in the confines of their homes. So, most smartwatch companies took the liberty of implementing a Treadmill Mode into their smartwatches.

With it, you are able to track your treadmill workouts through your smartwatch with relative accuracy while also getting detailed statistics including the number of steps you’ve taken, calories burnt, and the distance you have covered. While none of them are 100% accurate, they are precise enough to be used to track your daily regimen and progress.

So, in short, yes, most smartwatches can track your treadmill workouts in an accurate manner. With that said though, we’ll be listing down our picks for the best smartwatches that track your workouts.

The Best Smartwatches That Track Your Treadmill Workout (2022)

Instead of boring you out with swathes of paragraphs that you’ll end up skipping through anyways, we’ll be putting out concise, comprehensive information justifying each of our picks. Needless to say, you can’t go wrong with any of the picks that we’re going to be mentioning down below.

Fitbit Charge 5

Battery Life7 Days
ConnectionsWi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, NFC
Additional FeaturesSpO2, Skin Temperature, ECG

The Fitbit Charge 5 is Fitbit’s most comprehensive fitness tracker to date. And, it definitely gets the job done. With great battery life comes great responsibility and the Charge 5 certainly delivers on both fronts.

With a dedicated treadmill mode built-in, you’ll be able to get your stride length, the number of calories you’ve burnt alongside other essential details. However, that’s pretty much it – the essentials. Unlike some other mentions in this list, the Fitbit is not as comprehensive as its competition.

However, it is important to understand that this was a conscious decision. The Fitbit by no means is a shoddy device that can’t pick up on nitty-gritty details. In fact, the UI and the application are structured in such a way that it favors user readability and ease of use over detailed statistics and metrics.

In our opinion, this turns the Charge 5 into a great all-rounder for all shapes and sizes. However, most professional athletes might be left a bit melancholic after going through the stats of their workout.

Pros:

  • Great battery life 
  • Top-of-the-line fitness tracking
  • Unobtrusive to wear 

Cons:

  • Fitbit application leaves a lot to be desired in terms of stat tracking
  • Can be quite convoluted to transfer your Fitbit data to other health apps

Apple Watch Series 7

Battery Life1-2 Days
ConnectionsWi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, NFC
Additional FeaturesSpO2, ECG

Here comes Apple’s entry on the list and boy – do they come in with a bang! Besides the Apple Watch’s major flaw of not being compatible with an Android device, the Series 7 definitely checks all the boxes.

Unlike other smartwatches / fitness trackers in this list, it has no treadmill mode. Instead, it automatically detects your movement and starts counting your steps, and provides you with accurate estimates as soon as you hit the treadmill. How nifty is that?

Besides that though, the Apple Watch Series 7 is an iconic timepiece. The LTE model allows you to be completely phone-less, so to speak: allowing you to make phone calls and receive texts with your smartphone chucked away at home.

All in all, for someone who owns an iPhone and has a few hundred bucks to spare, you can’t go wrong with an Apple Watch Series 7. 

Pros:

  • Automatic treadmill mode
  • Great workout tracking
  • A plethora of health features

Cons:

  • Only works with an iPhone – bummer
  • Poor battery life

Garmin Forerunner 745

Battery Life7 Days (6 Hours with GPS + music)
ConnectionsWi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS
Additional FeaturesSpO2

Garmin’s entry into the list is one that’s quite refined. Forget traditional notions of what you think a smartwatch does. Instead, focus on the rugged, durable nature that a Garmin has and put all that into a smarter package. 

Jokes aside, the Forerunner 745 has a treadmill mode that requires calibration before you can get it up and running. While this may sound tedious, it’s actually quite simple. All you need to do is enter the distance reading you get from your treadmill once after a workout. After that, you are all set and done!

The place where Garmin truly sets itself apart is the number of statistics and detail that you get from each workout. With the ability to take a look at your stride length, tracks cadence, and active heart rate throughout the run – it doesn’t get much better. 

One other added advantage is the fact that the treadmill mode puts your Garmin in a dedicated watch face (which is customizable) allowing you to show the details that you require in a moment’s watch. A great touch! 

Pros:

  • Rugged, durable, Garmin design
  • Great fitness tracking / stats

Cons:

  • Future software updates remain a big question mark 

Should I Use A Smartwatch To Track My Treadmill Workout?

Absolutely, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t. A smartwatch provides you with detailed metrics about your workout that even the most expensive treadmills do not. Let alone your run-of-the-mill treadmill at a local gym.

So, if you want to get an accurate estimate of how many calories you’ve actually burnt and wish to propagate your workout into a fitness tracking application without needing to manually enter data, a smartwatch is the definite way to go!

Besides that though, a smartwatch or even a fitness tracker does much more than track your treadmill workouts. It lets you see your notifications, navigate through the city, and some even let you make and receive calls / texts and play music directly to your headphones. 

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I bought my first smartwatch in 2018 and have been wearing one ever since. It might get frustrating at times to receive 100 notifications a day. That's why we need to know how to make the best of them and how to use them to improve our daily lives, not the other way around. I write about the newest smartwatches, I create top picks, and I write helpful guides and simply explain complicated things.