Buying for someone who plans to start the new year right? Gadgets designed for running and fitness are a good plan, so what can you find that’s great?
The new year is right around the corner, and with it, a chance to get into a health kick.
Whether you’re buying for someone who already works out, someone who’s keen to start, or someone who has been telling you repeatedly that they’re going to get back into it shortly but needs a swift kick of their own, this guide includes a few gadgets for various price points to help out with that.
BlueAnt Pump Air Lite 2
Price: $99
Earphones designed for the gym and working out tend to come with hefty price tags, but that doesn’t have to be the case. In fact, if you want to land on a pair for someone without the high price tags, you might want to check out a pair from Australian brand BlueAnt.
The Pump Air Lite 2 are a variation on a theme we’ve seen a few times from BlueAnt, providing relatively inexpensive earphones with a water resistant design. The Pump Air can vary in sound quality, but BlueAnt is known for amping up the bass, so if you know someone who likes to work out with pop or dance, this cost-effective pair will probably be up their alley.
Beats Fit Pro
Price: $299
A pair of earphones we’ve loved since we set eyes on them, the Beats Fit Pro are what happens when you take the excellent AirPods Pro 1st-gen and set them up with a design that won’t fall out of the ear. It’s an earphone style that still goes in, but uses a little fin of sorts to hold to your ear, and that’s a good thing.
Outside of the design, the hardware is very similar to the AirPods Pro, complete with noise cancellation, head tracking, and great sound. It just also happens to be a fitness-focused pair of earphones designed with a degree of ANC.
Shokz Open Run Pro 2
Price: $319
A pair of earphones that have no right to be as good as they are, the Shokz OpenRun Pro 2 are one of the surprises this year.
Literally built for athletes and fitness, they’re a clever pair of runner’s earphones, designed to keep your ears free and able to listen to the world, all the while listening to your tunes.
The concept uses a combination of bone conduction and a small regular speaker, marrying the two for much better sound than we’ve heard from bone conduction before. It may well be the perfect combination, and a clever pair to get for anyone planning on going for a good run out and about.
Sennheiser Momentum Sport ANC
Price: $599
One of the more unusual pairs of fitness-focused earphones, the Momentum Sport ANC takes what worked with the recent Momentum True Wireless earphones and applies a fitness-friendly spin.
Instead of including just active noise cancellation, Sennheiser also includes heart-rate and body temperature tracking inside the earphones, giving the gadget an extra power. It’s handy for folks who might not want to wear a band or smartwatch, but still want to keep track of their fitness as they work out and listen to music or podcasts.
Therabody Theragun Mini 2.0 Handheld Massage Gun
Price: $199
After a decent run, the person you’re buying for might need some massage and muscle care, and that’s where massage guns come in.
The name is a bit of a misnomer, but these massage pummelling gadgets essentially beat your muscles back into shape at high speed with heavy amount of machine-assisted thrust. It’s not necessarily a replacement for the physio, but unless you live with someone who will happily do this for you, it’s often the sort of assist someone on a health and fitness kick might not be able to live without.
Withings Body Comp Scale
Price: $359
It’s obivously important to track how a health kick is going, and a scale is one way to do that. So why not check out a smart scale?
The idea is exactly what you think it is: a WiFi connected scale that can track fitness over time, monitoring weight changes for more than one person, while also checking other health metrics at the same time.
Very much a whole-health gadget, the Withings Body Comp smart scale is one of the more surprising health tech devices to find in homes because of what it’s doing: making the job of monitoring your health that much easier to connect with.
Apple Watch Series 10
Price: from $649
Long the wearable of choice for iPhone owners, this year’s main Apple Watch comes with a refined look and a bigger screen, while still bringing so many of the health features people are looking for: heart-rate, ECG, SpO2 blood pulse oximeter, and so on and so on.
Buying an Apple Watch for someone also means knowing they have an iPhone to begin with, because you can’t pair an Apple Watch without an iPhone. It’s just something to be aware of before you buy, just in case they’re part of the Android camp.
Withings ScanWatch 2
Price: $699
Not sure if you want to gift a watch you need to charge nightly? Consider one that measures its charges in weeks rather than a single day.
If the person you’re buying for can forgo the full touchscreen, the Withings ScanWatch 2 is a clever combination of health sensors in a design that looks rather like a conventional watch, and functions like one, too.
It’s water resistant, comes with features for heart-rate and ECG, and even does a pretty good job of monitoring your sleep and overall health. And if it’s not fancy enough, consider the slightly fancier ScanWatch Nova, which is exactly the same watch, except in a diver-styled design. And good news, ScanWatch models will work on iPhone and Android.
Samsung Galaxy Ring
Price: $699
Samsung’s Galaxy Ring is a little bit different from everything else here. Android only specifically for Samsung owners, the Galaxy Ring one of the first smart rings we’ve seen in Australia, and comes packing some clever features.
A smartwatch built into the style for your finger, it’s includes roughly a week of battery life with a neat wireless charger complete with its own battery inside. The technology is clever and small, and very much built for someone who doesn’t like a smartwatch, or wears something classic without the smarts.
Just know that the person you’re buying for really needs a Samsung Galaxy handset to make use out of this gadget. It could be an S23 or S24, or even one of the Samsung Fold or Flip phones from recent times, but this is one of those gadgets that is essentially just focused on Samsung owners, rather like how the Apple Watch only works for iPhone owners.
Garmin Fenix E
Price: $1349
A different league of wearable again, Garmin’s Fenix E could be the wearable to consider if the person you’re buying for wants a fitness watch focused entirely on fitness, on running, on athleticism, and generally runs around the place.
Built specifically for sports and strength workouts, it supports up to 16 days of battery life in a smartwatch mode, though that number will likely drop once you start using the built-in GPS technology, complete with topographical maps of the area.
It’s easily one of the more durable off smartwatches, spec’d for military standards and supporting metrics for performance and endurance, while also able to analyse your cadence, stride length, and more. For someone who plans to fully get into fitness more than ever in the coming days, weeks, or even the new year, it would be hard to go past the Fenix E as a serious fitness gift.
