Walking is a great way to get your daily exercise. It can help control weight, it's great for your heart and it's not too hard on your body.

A pedometer makes it easy to see how many steps you take. Some people try to get in 10,000 steps a day. It's also a good motivator.

When it comes to measuring the steps you take, you want a pedometer that's accurate. But some pedometers can be way off the mark.

The Good Housekeeping Research Institute put ten pedometers through the paces to see which ones count the best.

Jenny Cook, executive editor of Good Housekeeping, says pedometers are nifty little gadgets that count steps your according to your body movement.

"Just clipping one on seems to make people want to walk more, and that can have a number of benefits: It can help you lose weight - one pound every ten weeks, which is about five pounds a year. It can help you maintain healthy blood pressure. And it can also increase your activity level, according to one research review, by 27 percent," she said.

So the Good Housekeeping research Institute asked 17 volunteers to test ten of the newest pedometers to check their reliability.

Test coordinator Charmaine Gillespie had her panelists walk on the treadmill at speeds of 2.5 and 3.5 mph for about 10 minutes.

"I counted their steps with a counter and then we compared their actual pedometer readings to the counter readings," she said.

If you want a pedometer with a lot of features, the institute recommends the Accusplit Eagle Multi-Function Pedometer.

"This pedometer has a goal-tracking feature that allows its users to monitor their progress. It measures calories burnt, it measures distance walked and also has a time feature on it," said Gillespie.

The Omron Pocket Pedometer is Good Housekeeping's pick for the tech-savvy walker. Its software system connects to your computer so you can track the steps you've taken, the calories you've burned and the distance you've covered.

"This one is small. It's compact. I forget that it's there," said tester Nicole Larsen.

"The Yamax CW-300 Digi-Walker is good for those users who just want a simple pedometer that measures steps accurately," said Gillespie.

A recent Stanford University study found that people who wear a pedometer take more than 2,000 extra steps a day. That's well over a mile, so pedometers can really be an incentive to get you walking.