Smartwatch pricing spans a wider range than phones do: the Apple Watch SE 3 starts at US$249 while the Garmin Fenix 8 opens at US$999 — a fourfold gap. What that premium buys is usually not a faster chip but battery life and sensors: sports-first watches are rated in days, general-purpose smartwatches still in hours.

A second, less obvious fact is that these platforms are not interchangeable. The ten models run five different operating systems — watchOS, Wear OS, Garmin OS, Zepp OS and COROS OS — three of them closed platforms built in-house by sports brands. watchOS models pair only with an iPhone, while Garmin, Amazfit and COROS work with both iOS and Android. Choose the phone ecosystem first and the watch second; doing it the other way round gets expensive.