Best fitness tracker for starting out, and why I skipped the Garmin everyone points at

The best fitness tracker for someone just starting is probably not the one everyone tells you to buy. I went looking in January, decided this was finally the year, and every list pointed at Garmin. I nearly bought one before I admitted the obvious thing: I had no idea yet whether I'd still be doing this in March, and I was about to spend like I did.

What I got instead: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DT3YNMBX

What sold me was a test where somebody ran for half an hour with this on one wrist and an Apple Watch Ultra 2 on the other. Same route, same distance out to two decimal places, and average heart rate came out one beat per minute apart. I don't need it to beat a watch that costs several times more. I need to know it isn't lying to me, and that was enough.

Battery is what I actually notice day to day. Rated around ten days, but with everything switched on I get roughly a week, which still means it charges when I get around to it instead of when it starts nagging. It's got its own GPS so I can run without carrying the phone, and it's rated 5ATM, which is why I stopped taking it off at all.

The parts I'd want somebody to tell me. Strength training is the weak spot and it's clunky, so if lifting is the main thing you do, this is the wrong watch. The software is rougher than the hardware, small things feel half finished in a way the build never does. And there's no charging cable in the box, which I found out the evening it turned up.

If you already know the running is going to stick and you want structured plans, the Garmin Forerunner 165 gives you those for free and is the better buy. I just wasn't there yet.