Are you a fan of simple and elegant-looking old-school watches but don’t want to miss on smart features available on a smartwatch? If yes then you can go with a hybrid smartwatch.
Hybrid smartwatches are traditional-looking watches that offer features like step tracking, calories burned, and even notification sync. I love these watches because they provide me with the best of both worlds as not only do I get smart features but also classic designs.
Most hybrid watches are expensive and finding a reasonably priced reliable hybrid smartwatch is difficult. Therefore we have listed the best cheap hybrid smartwatches that you can go for right now.
Quick Navigation
- Cheap Hybrid Watch Comparison Table
- Best Budget Hybrid Smartwatches
- Things To Look For Before Buying A Cheap Hybrid Smartwatch
- FAQs
Cheap Hybrid Watch Comparison Table
IMAGE | PRODUCT | SPECIFICATIONS | VIEW ON AMAZON |
Best Budget Hybrid Smartwatch  | Fossil Machine Gen 6 |
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Affordable Hybrid Smartwatch Under 100  | Withings Actività Steel |
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Best Cheap Hybrid Watch For Men  | Citizen Hybrid Watch |
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Cheapest Hybrid Watch For Women  | Skagen Women’s Hald Hybrid Watch |
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Best Budget Hybrid Smartwatches
1. Timex Metropolitan+ Activity Tracker Smart Watch
The first affordable hybrid smartwatch that I recommend is from Timex. It is aimed at users who want to track their fitness activities without wearing a dedicated fitness tracker or a smartwatch.
Speaking about the fitness features, using the watch I was able to track my steps, distance covered, calories burned, and sleep cycles.
Don’t worry about this cheap hybrid watch not being compatible with your phone as you can use this watch with any Android and iOS-enabled smartphone after installing the Timex Connected app on your phone.
Timex Metropolitan has two sub-dials. The first one is in the upper left corner which shows whether or not the hybrid smartwatch has been successfully connected to your smartphone. While the second subdial on the lower right side tells how much progress you have made toward your daily fitness goals.
Furthermore, this hybrid smartwatch comes with two buttons which include a single crown and a pusher button. Both buttons provide several crucial functionalities like the ability to reset the watch, pair your watch with your smartphone, and ability to reboot the watch.
It features a 42mm watch face and a 20mm band that can be replaced with any band of your choice. Moreover, this affordable hybrid watch is available in leather, stainless steel, and silicone strap.
With regard to the battery life of this cheap hybrid smartwatch, it uses a replaceable battery and easily lasted me for 6 months.
2. Withings Activite Steel- Activity and Sleep Tracking Watch
Withings is a well-known French brand that is best known for its smart wearable connected devices. This is the entry-level budget hybrid smartwatch from them. Nevertheless, being affordable doesn’t mean that this watch is compromising in the features department. It’s a perfect 24*7 fitness tracker and also a beautiful analog watch at the same time.
One thing that sets this hybrid smartwatch apart is the fact you can automatically record your fitness activities like walking, running, swimming, record sleep hours, calories burned during your day, and a lot more.
After syncing my data to my smartphone I was also able to visualize my daily fitness routine. It works with both iOS and Android devices, therefore, you won’t have to worry about the watch not working with your smartphone. In fact, you can even sync data to Apple Health app on your iPhone. This will ensure that your data remains safe if you buy a new hybrid smartwatch in the future.
This hybrid watch comes with a dedicated fitness sub-dial that represents your daily fitness progress. Therefore, you don’t even need to check your phone to monitor your daily fitness goals. Apart from fitness tracking, it can also monitor your sleep as it also supports sleep tracking functionality.
I also liked the alarm function on the watch which allowed me to use the watch to wake up on time. However, the vibration intensity of the watch is weak hence I won’t recommend relying on this watch’s alarm for any important meetings.
Despite all these features, this hybrid watch offers a decent battery life of 6 months and uses a replaceable lithium-ion coin cell battery. To be honest, I prefer rechargeable batteries over replaceable coin cell batteries on hybrid watches.
Withings Activite Steel has a stainless steel body with a chrome finish which gives it a premium look. The size of the watch face is only 36.3mm making it an ideal watch for those who are looking for a small-sized elegant hybrid watch.
Overall, this is a good-looking, reasonably priced analog hybrid smartwatch from Withings with some great fitness-oriented features.
3. Fossil Men’s Neutra Hybrid Smartwatch HR
Fossil is a well-known brand known for its premium-looking hybrid smartwatches and Fossil Neutra HR is no different. It is the cheapest hybrid smartwatch under 100 dollars for men available from Fossil.
In most hybrid smartwatches, you are not able to read notifications and see daily fitness activities as they don’t have a built-in display. But what sets this watch apart from the previous two watches is that it comes with an E Ink display. This E Ink smartwatch enables you to read your email, text messages, weather updates & daily fitness activities right on the watch face.
Let me tell you that this is not a touch-screen hybrid smartwatch. Instead, there are 3 buttons on the right side of the watch to navigate the watch. Using the top & bottom buttons, I was able to scroll through the notifications & center button is used to select & dismiss them.
Unlike the previous two watches, this Fossil’s hybrid smartwatch comes with a heart rate tracking sensor as well. So I was able to track my heart rate while resting, sleeping, & working out. Heart rate can be a useful metric to track & manage your workout intensity. Besides heart rate, the hybrid smartwatch also tracks calories burned, steps taken, distance covered, & more.
When I used Fossil Men Neutra it offered me 2 weeks of battery life on an hour’s worth of charging time. So I never found myself in a position where the watch was dying on me.
This watch is also available in four different color bands which include brown leather strap, dark brown leather strap, black silicone strap, and smoke style with stainless steel strap. Moreover, you can further customize the look of your watch as it uses a 22mm interchangeable band.
4. Skagen Women’s Hald Hybrid Watch
The next watch on the list is the best affordable hybrid watch for women from Skagen. At the time of writing this cheap women’s hybrid smartwatch only costs around $50. This watch from Skagen comes with gorgeous looks & does all the tracking discreetly.
No one was able to recognize that this watch is able to track my activities by looking at the watch. Using the watch, I tracked my steps, calories burned, & distance covered.
Besides that, the watch also has 3 buttons on the side that allows you to quickly launch apps on your phone. You can program it to open the calendar, take photos, ring your phone, or track a second time zone on the watch.
It doesn’t have the heart rate tracking feature that various modern smartwatches have. Having said that, if that feature is included then it will seriously hamper the battery life of this hybrid watch with a second hand.
Speaking of battery life, this Skagen women’s Hald Hybrid smartwatch uses a replaceable coin cell battery. However, battery life is a little mediocre for a hybrid watch, a single coin cell battery lasts 1-2 months on this watch. The company claims to offer 6 months of battery life but the claim didn’t really hold up when put to the test.
5. Fossil Women’s Charter Hybrid Smartwatch
If heart rate tracking is an important feature for you in a smartwatch then you are going to like Fossil women’s Charter hybrid smartwatch. It comes with a heart rate sensor on the back that can track your heartbeat & sleep.
The watch also features E Ink display technology which ensures that I didn’t have to check the app for the latest stats. I was able to see my steps, heart rate, distance covered, email, calories burned, & notifications on the screen.
However, E-Ink display has some downsides too. The first one is that this watch doesn’t have a dedicated backlight which means it is kind of like a G-Shock or any other negative display. So to be able to read at night I used the separate LED light feature provided to light up the display at night.
Similarly, E-Ink displays have a slow refresh rate which means that the simple act of scrolling and using the watch feels slow.
Thankfully, the watch comes with a vibrating alarm feature that I found helpful in waking up from sleep. It also alerted me about incoming texts, calls, & notifications through vibration. It is a must-have feature on a smartwatch that doesn’t have a built-in speaker or AMOLED display.
There are two buttons on the side that are reprogrammable to open your favorite apps or feature. You can also control music playback on your phone using the watch. I found this feature extremely useful on my morning & evening walks.
While I am talking about walks, let me also tell you that the watch is not that accurate in workout tracking. It usually over or undercounts my steps so I won’t consider this to be a Garmin watch alternative. If fitness tracking is an important metric for you then I would recommend going with Polar, Coros, or Cheap Garmin watches.
Talking about the build, this budget hybrid smartwatch features a 42mm stainless steel case & 18mm strap. And, you can replace the stock strap with a third-party compatible strap.
This Fossil women’s charter hybrid smartwatch is available in 7 different designs & color combinations. You can get the Rose Gold mesh strap variant of this best budget hybrid smartwatch for under 100 dollars.
It is a great watch for users who are on a tight budget. However, I personally would recommend going with the Rose gold & leather strap variant of the watch. It’s a little expensive but looks alone justify the $50 price bump.
6. Citizen Hybrid Watch
Fossil is a pretty good watch brand but not everyone likes or prefers their design. For those users, I would recommend this Citizen hybrid watch.
Instead of a simple style, the watch comes with a rugged G-Shock-like look & build which makes this the perfect hybrid smartwatch for sports activities. One of the USPs of the watch is that this Citizen watch comes with golfing report feature.
Using it, I was able to add my golf course, monitor the weather, track wind speed, & more. Moreover, this budget hybrid smartwatch also has a watch face to track live golf scores as well.
This also has all the usual features found on budget hybrid smartwatches as well. Like a heart rate sensor on the back of the watch. During my usage, I found heart rate tracking to be performing decently. Similarly, the watch can track your steps & sleep other health vitals.
The Citizen hybrid watch also supports the ability to connect the watch to Apple Health & Google Fit.
Like previous hybrid watches, this one too supports notification sync. Whenever I received a notification, the watch hand started pointing to the 3 & 9’o clock positions. It ensured that the watch’s screen was easy to read.
Talking about the dimensions, the Citizen watch has a 44mm case making it one of the biggest watches on the list. Similarly, the Citizen watch comes with a 26mm band which is big & difficult to replace with 3rd party straps.
Moving on to the build, this watch is water resistant up to 30m underwater like all hybrid watches. That’s why I didn’t have to worry about the occasional water splashes damaging the watch.
7. Fossil Machine Gen 6
Fossil has launched its latest Fossil Machine Gen 6 hybrid smartwatch with a second hand. And, this generation Fossil hybrid watch comes with various new features.
For instance, this is the first cheap hybrid watch that comes with Alexa. This allowed me to use Alexa on the smartwatch itself. It is good for quickly setting alarms, controlling IOT devices, & other basic tasks.
Fossil has also improved the heart rate sensor on the watch as it can also track your blood oxygen levels. There has been some refinement on the build quality & software side of the watch too.
First, you can see that the crown-style buttons have been ditched for more flush & cleaner-looking flat buttons. I loved this new design of the Fossil Gen 6 watch. On the software side, I found the watch to be better polished & more fun to use.
The watch also has an always-on display which delivers performance similar to other E-Ink smartwatches on the list. Similarly, the watch comes fast magnetic wireless charging feature that can charge the watch from 0 to 80% in 60 minutes. And, a full charge lasted me 12 to 14 days depending on my usage & features enabled.
On a final note, I would say that this is definitely one of the best hybrid smartwatches that you can buy. It has all the features that the original Fossil hybrid watch had & makes various improvements to it as well.
Things To Look For Before Buying A Cheap Hybrid Smartwatch
1. Features
If you are buying a hybrid smartwatch then you should decide beforehand what features you expect from it. Today hybrid smartwatch can help you in tracking your fitness activity, getting notifications alerts, setting alarms, checking weather updates, and much more.
However, not all hybrid smartwatches have all smart features. Therefore before making a final decision make sure to thoroughly check whether the watch you have selected supports all the features you need or not.
2. Battery Life
Most users prefer hybrid smartwatches because they offer a longer battery life when compared to full-fledged smartwatches. But that’s not always true as some hybrid smartwatches can also have shorter battery life. Hence choose wisely otherwise you might end up with a hybrid smartwatch that offers poor battery backup.
3. Price
Hybrid smartwatches are available at a wide range of prices. From super expensive to the cheapest, there is a watch that fits everyone’s budget. So choose wisely and you will definitely find a good hybrid smartwatch that fits your budget.
FAQs
Is A Hybrid Watch Worth It?
Yes definitely it is. A hybrid smartwatch can track your fitness activities, send notification alerts, track your sleep and heart rate, and do a lot more.
What Is Hybrid Smartwatch?
Hybrid Smartwatches are watches that look like simple analog and digital watches but they offer several smartwatch features like fitness tracking, notification sync, and more.
How Long Does Fossil Hybrid Watch Battery Last?
Fossil Hybrid watches that use coin cell batteries offer a battery life of up to 2-3 months. On the other hand, Fossil Gen 6 hybrid watch comes with a rechargeable battery that offers a battery life of up to 2 weeks.
