The big Pocket Gamer accessory guide 2018 - Health and fitness accessories
Health and fitness accessories: get fighting fit with your phone
Has 2018 been the fit, healthy refresh that you promised yourself it would be? No? Well, it's never too late to start.
One thing that can help a lot - particularly if you're easily distracted by whizzy technology - is your smartphone. Invest in some smart health and fitness tech, and the journey to wellness can be a much easier one.
There's a vast range of fitness accessories that tie in with your phone and help track, motivate, and direct your get-fit schemes. Here are some of the best examples.
Nokia Steel HRNokia's attempt to enter the digital health business hasn't exactly gone to plan, and it's planning to sell Withings back to its French founder. Despite that, the Nokia Steel HR is a fine hybrid that matches classic wristwatch looks with great heart-rate monitoring and fitness tracking features.
Suggested price: £150Buy from Amazon
Garmin Forerunner 230
You wouldn't want to wear the Garmin Forerunner 230 out to dinner, but that's not the point. It's a hardcore fitness tracker with excellent GPS tracking and usability, as well as advanced fitness programmes, and strong battery life. All this and it's not too expensive.
Suggested price: £170Buy from Amazon
Omron Evolv
We're getting out of light and fluffy fitness tracker territory and into serious health-tracking technology here. The Omron Evolv is a clinically approved blood pressure monitor cuff that takes your readings with a high degree of accuracy. These can then be shared with your doctor via an app.
Suggested price: £130Buy from Amazon
Under Armour Speedform Gemini 3 Record-Equipped running shoes
Don't like strapping things to your wrist when out running? Check out Under Armour's smart trainers. There are smart sensors in the heels that track all of the relevant running metrics and upload them to your phone. They can also conduct a 'jump test' to determine how intense your next run should be.
Suggested price: from £60Buy from Under Amazon
Fossil Q Marshall smartwatch
It's far from being a fitness watch, but the Fossil Q Marshall looks great and deals with all your notifications (if you're an Android user) with a side order of step counting.
Suggested price: £150Buy from Argos
Nokia Body+ smart scale
Get a detailed picture of your body composition (bone mass, water retention, fat and muscle mass) with this smart scale. It also syncs up with the Health mate app to provide you with personalised fitness plans.
Suggested price: £50Buy from PC World
Asus ZenWatch 3
One of the best Android wear smartwatches on the market, with a superb screen and decent build quality. Again, it's not a fully fledged fitness watch, but it'll track your steps.
Suggested price: £250Buy from Amazon
Samsung Gear Fit 2
No wearable maker has iterated more than Samsung, and you can see the fruits of those efforts in its latest devices. The Samsung Gear Fit 2 is an excellent fitness tracker, with a sleek design, a strong AMOLED display, and advanced heart rate monitoring features. It even has iOS support.
Suggested price: £209Buy from Samsung
TomTom Spark 3
You might recognise TomTom more from its work on sat nav systems, but it also dabbles in the fitness wearable field. The TomTom Spark 3 has the kind of robust, no-nonsense looks you might expect from the brand, but it also brings across its GPS and route-tracking expertise. You can also load up music on it, so you don't need to take your phone.
Suggested price: £150Buy from Amazon
Misfit Ray
If you want something a little more stylish and less, well, geeky than your average fitness tracker, try the Misfit Ray. It sports a sleek cylindrical design, and there's no screen to speak of. All the step and sleep tracking is funnelled through your smartphone.
Suggested price: £43Buy from Amazon
Moov Now
You don't need to break the bank for a good smart fitness tracker, nor do you have to contend with fiddly UIs or compromise on functionality. The Moov Now is a simple wrist-mounted tracker that tracks and talks you through your workouts with real-time audio coaching.
Suggested price: £48Buy from Amazon
Misfit Shine 2
Here's another neatly unobtrusive fitness tracker from Misfit. This one looks more like a traditional watch - although there is a discrete ring of LED lights rather than a display - but the main unit can also be removed from the strap and clipped to a shoe for bare-wristed running or walking.
Suggested price: £47Buy from Amazon
Apple Watch Series 3
Forget all the high-falutin' claims about the Apple Watch - it's not going to transform your life. But the latest model is a really good fitness tracker (provided you own an iPhone) with the worthwhile addition of GPS and cellular connectivity, so you don't need to take your iPhone with you on your workout.
Suggested price: £399Buy from Apple
Fitbit Charge 2
The brutal truth is that the smartwatch market hasn't taken off like everyone predicted. You can bypass all that notification nonsense and skip straight to the hardcore fitness tracking with the Fitbit Charge 2. It's comfy, as a clear display, ties in with your phone's GPS, and has a great hear rate sensor and fitness tracking software.
Suggested price: £109Buy from Amazon
Garmin Vivosmart HR+
The Garmin Vivosmart HR+ might not be quite as slick in operation as the Fitbit, but it has the added benefit of built-in GPS and water proofing to 50 metres - both of which make it the ideal fitness tracker for swimmers.
Suggested price: £120Buy from Amazon