Experts name the best smart watches of the season

Smart Watches tested by Consumer Reports

If you’re looking for a smart watch this holiday season, we have some recommendations for you.

Smart watches do more than just tell time. They count your steps, check your heart rate and display all your notifications conveniently on your wrist.

Consumer Reports rated more than a dozen watches, putting them through a variety of tests. The lab checked the durability of the cover glass by scratching it with picks of increasing hardness.

Consumer Reports also tested heart-rate accuracy by comparing watches to its highest-rated heart-rate monitor.

And testers assessed water resistance by putting watches into a pressurized tank. The $215 Sony SmartWatch 3 failed this test and landed at the bottom of Consumer Reports’s ratings.

At the top of the ratings — the Apple Watch, which starts at $700.

“The face doesn’t scratch very easily. And Apple Watch has caught up with Android Wear and Pebble to allow apps to be developed by third parties,” said Kerry Allen from Consumer Reports.

That means plenty of options like Fantastical, a calendar app, and OmniFocus, a personal-organizer app.

A good, less expensive choice: the $230 Asus ZenWatch 2. Unlike Apple, you can use it with a phone that runs on iOS or Android. Another gift option? The $350-dollar Samsung Gear S2. It’s offered without 3G in Canada.

Battery life is a big issue for smartwatch users. So it’s good to know that all of the smartwatches Consumer Reports recommended lasted at least a day.