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Amazon’s third annual Big Spring Sale kicks off next week (officially running March 25 through 31), but deals are already starting to roll in. You can find deal stamps across Apple products, robot vacuums, speakers, and even high-end fitness trackers, including Garmin, Google, and of course Apple Watches. Whether you need a new watch to track that 5K you’re training for or simply monitor your sleep habits, there will surely be a fitness tracker deal for you during the sale.

Deals are starting slow, with the biggest discounts so far on last-gen Garmin watches, but we’ll be updating this list as new price drops appear. There are a few big names that seem to be holding out until the official sale, like Whoop, Fitbit, and Oura. So we’d hold off on buying those brands until the Big Spring Sale commences.

Below, we’re tracking all the best fitness tracker deals at Amazon leading up to and throughout the official Big Spring Sale 2026.

Best early Amazon Big Spring Sale fitness tracker deal

Why we like it

While it’s since been replaced with the newer vívoactive 6, the Garmin vívoactive 5 is still an excellent choice. It’s a perfect all-rounder for someone who wants a fitness tracker with plenty of smartwatch features. It can track everything from long runs and rides to stress, sleep, and body battery, has a bright and responsive AMOLED display, and boasts 11 days of battery power (Apple could literally never). I personally gifted this watch to my boyfriend (he loves it) after snagging an epic Black Friday discount, but it’s now even cheaper. At $174.28, it’s over 40% off and is down to the lowest price we’ve ever seen.

Best Apple Watch deal

Why we like it

If you’re looking for a solid Apple Watch deal, this $100 price drop on the Series 11 makes it a pretty stellar value. It’s been chilling at this price for awhile now, so we’re hoping to see the Big Spring Sale drop it down even lower. But even if it doesn’t, $299 for the newest Apple Watch ain’t bad. It brings significant battery improvements over its predecessor, which alone makes it worth the upgrade. It also has a tougher design with more durable glass that’s twice as resistant to scratches, 5G capability for seamless connectivity, and a Sleep Score and hypertension tool for flagging high blood pressure.

More fitness tracker deals

Apple

Garmin

Google / Fitbit

Nothing

Samsung

By Joshua Tyler
| Published 51 seconds ago

One of the funnier scenes ever to make it into a movie happens in the classic Chevy Chase/Dan Aykroyd comedy Spies Like Us. The duo, playing inept spies, arrives at a Doctors Without Borders camp, and all it takes for them to convince the people there that they belong is to call everyone “Doctor” over and over and over again. It’s a fun, silly way of poking fun at pretentious PhDs and also the limited intelligence of our heroes.

Now imagine that sixty-second scene stretched over sixty minutes, played seriously instead of as a joke, and with Chevy Chase’s character replaced by a badly rendered miniature reindeer in a top hat. That’s what happens in season 2 episode 7 of Netflix’s pirate adventure show One Piece. Aptly titled “Reindeer Shames,” it may be the single worst hour of programming ever released on streaming, and somehow it’s the penultimate episode of the streamer’s new flagship show.

Having not seen episode 7 yet, and having previously enjoyed season one and all six previous episodes of season 2, I’d been recklessly recommending One Piece to everyone I know. Now, not only am I rescinding that recommendation, I’m not sure I have the strength to continue on and watch the second season’s final episode.

One Piece Fans Waited More Than Two Years For Time Wasting Filler

A quick positioning statement: I love anime and watch a lot of it. Like 99% of the people watching the Netflix show, though, I’ve never watched the anime version of One Piece. I’ve avoided it largely because there are thousands of episodes, and that seems daunting, but also because even its most ardent defenders often admit that many of those episodes are actually time-wasting filler.

The One Piece anime’s predilection towards time-wasting filler episodes may explain the presence of “Reindeer Shames” on the Netflix version, the plot of which involves none of the show’s actual cast. The story also has basically nothing to do with any of the narratives being developed in the rest of the season.

That might be an acceptable side trip in a series with thousands of episodes, but in the modern era of lazy streaming production, we only get eight episodes every two or three years instead of an annual two-dozen. Wasting one of those precious episodes on anything not directly relevant to what’s happening on the show would be a bad idea, even if it were somehow good. When it’s this bad, it feels almost criminal.

A Blatant Cost-Cutting Measure From Netflix

“Reindeer Shames” tells the story of a Doctor on the run in a country where Doctors are being rounded up for weird anime doctor-hoarding reasons. The Doctor encounters a tiny, talking reindeer who looks like he just fell off a Toys R Us plushy shelf during the Christmas holiday rush of 1997. Or he would look like that if the CGI used to animate him didn’t also look like it came from 1997.

It seems clear that at least part of Netflix’s motivation in making this episode was as a cost-cutting measure. The show’s other episodes look fantastic, with high-level special effects and large-scale action sequences. However, “Reindeer Shames” largely takes place in either an unremarkable bush or a single hut and offers only a few, half-hearted seconds of action at the end. And again, it doesn’t involve any of the show’s actual cast, which probably means Netflix only paid them for seven episodes while still producing eight. 

Netflix Has Opened Its Own Learing Center

This has all the earmarks of a scam. Making your subscription-paying audience wait two and a half years for eight episodes and then cheaping out on one of them is the streaming version of a Minnesota Learning Center. 

The talking reindeer is named Chopper, and I’m told by Jonathan Klotz, who I consider an expert in all One Piece matters, that this character is a beloved figure in the animated version of this tale. Maybe he’ll grow into that over the course of Netflix’s live-action series, assuming the awfulness of this outing doesn’t cause the show to be canceled. Still, he’s garbage in this episode, and plays out like a clumsy, half-baked attempt to create the next Baby Yoda in a world where everyone’s sick to death of Baby Yodas. 

Stop Watching One Piece Unless Supervised By A Doctor

Instead of delivering the kind of pirate adventure One Piece viewers are tuned in for, the episode meanders around, fixating on endless speeches about how amazing and important Doctors are. Doctor this and Doctor that, and oh, aren’t Doctors incredible angels who totally aren’t doing this job just because they like buying Corvettes and hanging out at country clubs. 

Sitting through “Reindeer Shames” made me wish One Piece was on YouTube instead of Netflix, so it could be interrupted by an Incogni ad. In that worse-than-streaming-sponsorships environment, I guess Chopper, since he isn’t a Doctor and only wants to be one, is the least worst thing about it. That’s a hopeful point for his continued Doctor presence on the show, which seems like something I’ll have to endure if I ever again work up the doctor-like courage to watch another One Piece episode. I probably won’t, at least not without the supervision of a Doctor.

“REINDEER SHAMES” REVIEW SCORE

By Robert Scucci
| Published 9 seconds ago

2016’s Nocturnal Animals does the unthinkable by boasting a story-within-a-story framework without ever coming off as patronizing or confusing. Adapted from the 1993 Austin Wright novel Tony and Susan, it respects the source material by bringing its essence to life through a visual medium and has zero fat in its storytelling. What impressed me most was how the film actually plays like a novel. Scenes jump from the main narrative to the in-universe fiction seamlessly, as if you’re picking up a great book, reading a flashback sequence, and then being thrust back into the present the second you turn the page and start a new chapter, complete with the context needed to keep the story moving.

A dark romantic thriller with a gritty neo-noir bent, Nocturnal Animals sees Susan Morrow (Amy Adams) and Edward Sheffield (Jake Gyllenhaal) come to terms with their lives as fiction becomes reality, the past bleeds into the present, and regret takes on a life of its own through art and the lingering question of what could have been if things had turned out differently.

The Breakup And The Book

We first learn about Susan Morrow’s present-day life in Nocturnal Animals, and it’s an unhappy one despite her success. Susan owns an art gallery, and her latest installation is a resounding success and the talk of the town. At home, however, her life leaves much to be desired. Her husband Hutton Morrow (Armie Hammer) constantly travels for work, cheats on her, and remains emotionally absent from their relationship.

When Susan receives a package from her ex-husband Edward, whom she hasn’t spoken to in 20 years, her curiosity is piqued. Inside is a manuscript for the novel he’s trying to publish, Nocturnal Animals. Not only does the title reference the nickname he gave her when they were married, but the book itself is dedicated to her. Feeling unfulfilled in both her career and her current marriage, she cracks the book open to see what he has to say and is immediately sucked in.

The Story Within The Story

In Nocturnal Animals, the fictional novel depicted in Nocturnal Animals, we’re introduced to Tony Hastings (also portrayed by Jake Gyllenhaal), who is traveling along a remote West Texas road with his wife Laura (Isla Fisher) and daughter India (Ellie Bamber). They are accosted by three thugs, Ray Marcus (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), Lou (Karl Glusman), and Turk (Robert Aramayo), who kidnap Laura and India after terrorizing the family on the dark highway.

Tony, separated from his wife and daughter during the encounter, has no idea what has happened to them after he is dragged away and left stranded in the middle of the night. He eventually learns the horrifying truth that Laura and India have been brutally assaulted and murdered.

Grieving the loss of his wife and daughter, Tony seeks help from Detective Bobby Andes (Michael Shannon), who reveals he has terminal lung cancer and will soon be forced into retirement. When pressed by Detective Andes, who’s got an axe to grind and nothing to lose, Tony becomes convinced that pursuing revenge by any means necessary is the only path forward because doing things by the book will never bring him the justice his family deserves. Dead set on identifying the men who destroyed his family and killing them himself, Tony’s grief slowly transforms into rage, and the hunt begins.

As Susan reads through Nocturnal Animals, memories of her tumultuous relationship with Edward resurface. Here we see a much younger, well put together Jake Gyllenhaal who is wide-eyed and idealistic because they still have their entire lives ahead of them. While we don’t fully grasp the symbolism embedded in the novel until the film’s third-act reveal, it becomes increasingly clear why their relationship fell apart and why Edward is suddenly so eager to reconnect with Susan after decades of silence.

Not A Baby-Bird Endeavor

With so many layers in its narrative structure, Nocturnal Animals is far from a passive watch. It’s obvious that the grief depicted in the novel within the film serves as a metaphor for Edward’s past relationship with Susan, among other things, but we aren’t given all the details right away, nor should we be. If you watch the film a second time, you’ll notice a breadcrumb trail of clues that probably slipped past you during your first viewing.

Despite its many layers, watching Nocturnal Animals is a fluid and visceral experience. Since we are seeing events through Edward’s eyes as he wrote them in his novel, which is dark, violent, and sexually graphic at times, none of the more heightened sequences feel out of place. The fictional narrative plays like pulpy crime fiction designed to provoke this exact reaction through its brooding tension and grimy atmosphere.

At some level, any seasoned thriller fan will recognize where this story is headed, but the road getting there will haunt you long after the credits roll. To experience the story within the story for yourself, you can stream Nocturnal Animals on Paramount+ as of this writing.