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Recently, small wearable devices have become popular to track vital parameters, such as walked distance, heartbeat rate, calorie consumption and quality of sleep. There is a variety of names for those devices, for example Activity Tracker, Smart Bracelet or Fitness Tracker.

I wonder, what is a common Russian word for such a device?

Apart from obvious Anglicisms like Трекер активности or Фитнес трекер, is there any better Russian word or descriptive term for such a device (e.g. bracelet for tracking vital parameters)?

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    I consider that there is no such word. The closest device we had was шагомер (a pedometer), but activity trackers are more stuffed with features. So, since smart bracelets became being imported on the peak of fashion in English-sounding words that supposed to show you as a smart person, there is no translation, but anglicisms only. However, I would be glad to be wrong.
    – Arhadthedev
    May 14, 2019 at 8:38
  • Could I also refer to such a device as Электронный шагомер or Цифровой шагомер to emphasize that it is non-mechanical and somewhat smart? Or would a native speaker find these terms rater unnatural?
    – user1438038
    May 14, 2019 at 17:12

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Yandex (Russian's biggest search engine) finds about 3 millions pages for фитнес-браслет search query and about 2 millions for фитнес-трекер. Those are two most popular terms and all other counterparts (including etymologically, let's put it this way "more Russian" ones) and not even close that frequently used.

However, шагомер (it's a derivative from шаг, a step and -мер, an ending used for tools that are measuring something) mentioned by @Arhad is also used frequently enough to be recognized buy search engines. One can search for купить шагомер and find offers on exactly fitness trackers. It's just that шагомер is not necessarily a device in a smart watch factor.

There's also a Latin-based counterpart for шагомер, педометр but it's used even more rare.

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  • I was not looking for the most commonly used term to name such a device in Russian, and I'm well aware that Фитнес трекер is very popular on search engines. I was rather trying to avoid these Anglicisms. Шагомер seems like a good alternative, even though I get your side note that it does not emphasize on the 'smartness' of a device.
    – user1438038
    May 14, 2019 at 17:05
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Most common short form is just "трекер". There are no other common things that can be called in this way in Russian. "Фитнесс" part is excessive, but is used as official name in retail.

"Трекер активности" - is never used for this device, because "активность" is extremely general and scientific in Russian and most likely will be understood as designation of some radioactivity gauge.

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It may look strange but some people prefer to just use the word БРАСЛЕТ or ЧАСЫ for this kind of device. From the context it's usually clear what they mean. In casual talks they tend not to use complicated marketing names as трекер, and use simpler words for description. But that's not for shop terms, if you need a marketing term you can just find it at an online shop site.

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