The Coros Vertix 2S is a small-but-meaningful upgrade on the Vertix 2, notably improving the accuracy of the GPS tracking. It’s one of the best sports watches you can get and despite the high price, it’s reasonable value for those who want a rugged titanium watch with long battery life.

However, it is still outclassed by the best Garmin watches, like the Garmin Fenix 7 or Garmin Enduro 2, which offer better navigation and smart features, while matching or outdoing the sports tracking and training analysis on the Vertix 2S. There are also AMOLED sports watches I prefer like the Garmin Epix Pro and Suunto Race.

Coros Vertix 2S: Price And Availability

The Coros Vertix 2S launched on April 25, 2024 and costs $699 in the US and £599 in the UK, the same price as the Coros Vertix 2. It’s far from cheap, but equivalent watches with titanium bezels and sapphire screens—like the Polar Grit X2 Pro, Suunto Vertical and Garmin Fenix 7 Pro—are all more expensive (if you choose the titanium models of each).

How I Tested This Watch

I used the Vertix 2S for two weeks prior to its launch, and will continue to use it until I’m able to drain the battery entirely. I have run more than 60 miles with the watch, as well as tracking other activities like yoga and strength sessions. I’ve tested the rest of the watches in Coros’s range and the Coros Vertix and Vertix 2, as well as the best sports watches from other brands.

Design And Hardware

The Vertix 2S is a large watch, with a 50.3mm case that’s 17.6mm thick. It’s light for its size though, with the case weighing 61g, which rises to 70g with a nylon band and 87g with a silicone band—both bands are included with the watch, and you can also use other 26mm straps with it.

There are three colors available—black, gray and blue—and all have a titanium bezel and back case, with plastic used for the rest of the case. The 1.4in memory-in-pixel touchscreen is made from sapphire glass. There are three buttons on the watch, with the middle one also being a dial. 

The Vertix 2S has a 10 ATM waterproof rating and will work in a temperature range of -22°F (-30°C) to 122°F (50°C), according to Coros. The materials used, and the durability of the watch, are a selling point because you have to pay more to get equivalent materials from other brands. However, the screen is duller than others, including other LCD watches like the Fenix 7, and it’s less bright than the AMOLED display you get on the likes of the Garmin Epix Pro and Polar Grit X2 Pro. It’s clear enough to read outdoors, but a bit dull inside and I often had to turn on the backlight to read it throughout the day.

The Vertix 2S has a new optical heart rate sensor that promises more accuracy than the sensor on the Vertix 2, but reduces the battery life of the watch. In fairness, the Vertix 2S has battery life to play with: the 2S will still last up to 46 days in watch mode and offers 118 hours of GPS tracking. As with the Vertix 2, the Vertix 2S offers dual-band GPS tracking, though Coros has redesigned the antennae to improve the accuracy. The Vertix 2S has a barometric altimeter and compass, and can measure blood oxygen saturation and heart rate variability. You can connect external sensors via Bluetooth, but not ANT+.

HR And GPS Accuracy

The Vertix 2 was the first sports watch I’d tested that offered dual-band GPS tracking, but it wasn’t as big an upgrade in accuracy as I’d hoped. Since then many brands have launched watches with dual-band GPS, and Garmin and Suunto’s watches were more accurate than the Coros watches with dual-band in particular.

Coros seemed to fix this with the Coros Pace 3, which is accurate, while the redesigned antennae on the Vertix 2S have improved the accuracy compared with the Vertix 2. On all my runs I compared the Vertix 2S to the Garmin Epix Pro and it matched up closely and there were few, if any, errors on the GPS traces I looked at after runs.

Unfortunately, the picture isn't as rosy with regards to the Vertix 2’s heart rate tracking. This is often a weakness with sports watches, but given that Coros sacrificed battery life to put in a new optical sensor to improve HR accuracy I expected better.

On almost all my runs the Vertix 2S has been inaccurate when compared to a chest strap, usually reading way too high, and if you’re planning on using its training analysis or using heart rate to guide your training, I would pair a chest strap to the watch.

Battery life

Coros watches are renowned for their long battery life, and the Vertix 2S is no exception. It will last up to 46 days in watch mode, though this drops to 36 days if you use the sleep tracking on the watch, and offers up to 118 hours of standard GPS tracking, or 43 hours of dual-band GPS tracking. All these numbers are comparable with the longest-lasting watches out there, like the Garmin Enduro 2 and Suunto Vertical, though the Vertix 2S offers less battery than the Vertix 2 because of the new HR sensor.

There are a couple of negative reasons Coros battery life is so good that are worth noting. One is the dull screen compared with other watches, and the other is that the watch only takes HR readings every 10 minutes rather than continuously when you’re not exercising. You can change this setting, though, and I think taking readings every 10 minutes is a good option to have as I’d rather have good battery life over 24/7 HR stats.

After 10 days of use, including eight runs using dual-band GPS and sleep tracking each night I was down to 60% battery. Even for those training heavily you can expect two to four weeks of battery life, with the main determining factor being how much time you spend training using GPS—in between workouts the battery barely drops on the Vertix 2. The battery life is as good as, or better than, what I got from the Garmin Enduro 2 and Suunto Vertical. The only watch that consistently outlasts the Vertix 2S is in fact the Vertix 2.

Sports Tracking And Training Analysis

The Vertix 2S has a variety of sports modes, including triathlon and open-water swimming tracking, along with a dedicated track mode for runners. You can create a custom sports mode if one of your favorites isn’t listed by default. It’s also easy to create and follow structured workouts or training plans on the watch, and you can customize data screens to show up to eight stats at once.

It’s an easy and intuitive watch to use for sports tracking. Coros has upgraded the sports tracking across its watches with a software update. This includes screen mirroring so you can see the watch’s stats on your phone during a workout, as well as the navigation screen if you’re following a route. This update also added a virtual pacer for running workouts.

The Vertix 2S also feeds into Coros’s EvoLab training analysis platform, which gives you a rating of your running (and cycling) fitness, predicted race times and a breakdown of your recent training load. This is available across all Coros watches. I’ve always found EvoLab a pretty accurate and useful gauge of my current fitness and training load.

The sports tracking and training analysis on the Vertix 2S is up to par, though it doesn’t stand out, aside from extra features for outdoor climbing I’ve not been able to test. Coros offers the same array of features across its range, and on the best Garmin watches you get extras like a training readiness score, plus interesting ratings of your endurance and hill running ability.

Maps And Navigation

The Vertix 2S has color maps with turn-by-turn directions on routes and a back-to-start feature. It’s easy to create routes within the Coros app, or import them into it from other sources to load onto the watch. The maps are not as colorful and clear to read as those on Garmin, Polar and Suunto watches, especially those brands’ AMOLED watches, nor are they as detailed as Garmin’s, but it’s easy to navigate routes using them.

You can’t add the maps as a default data screen within an activity, which seems odd to me, but I set the maps to come up when I held down the light button on the watch. You can do this during a run or other activity to add the map to your screens without pausing or stopping your workout. This will show a breadcrumb trail of your route so far overlaid on the map, and you can also add a back-to-start pointer to any outdoor activity. When following a route you also get an elevation profile that shows the climbs and descents to come, plus details on the total distance and amount of uphill you have left. 

The navigation features on the Vertix 2S are good and on a par with Polar and Suunto’s, but Garmin still reigns supreme here. Its watches have “routable” maps that know where you are so you can create or adjust routes on the fly, whereas the Coros routes are overlaid on a map, so if you go wrong you are just told you’re off course. Garmin also has the excellent ClimbPro tool that shows each climb and descent on your route individually to help you judge your effort on long uphills in particular.

Smart Features

The Vertix 2S shows your phone notifications and has a weather forecast widget, and can store music to playback on Bluetooth headphones. The watch doesn’t yet work with any streaming platforms, so you will need the digital files to drag and drop across to the watch, whereas Garmin works with Spotify, Deezer and Amazon Music so you can wirelessly transfer across your playlists.

It’s good to have the option to play music on the watch, but the way it’s done means it’s not a feature I’d use regularly. I mostly stream music and even getting hold of podcast files to transfer isn’t always easy. There is no app store for the Vertix 2S—though you can pick from a range of watch faces in the Coros app—and it doesn’t offer NFC payments. If you want a sporty smartwatch then Garmin is a better bet, while full smartwatches like the Apple Watch obviously offer more on this front.

Activity And Sleep Tracking

The Vertix 2S will diligently track the usual daily activity stats, like steps, active minutes and active calories burned, and it tracks your sleep if you wear it at night. It’s not the most comfortable watch to wear overnight, which is a problem with any large sports watch, but the sleep tracking was broadly accurate to me.

If you wear the watch at night it also provides a heart rate variability score in the morning, which is compared with your baseline. You can use this as a guide to how stressed your body is, and it can help guide how hard you push in training each day, since HRV is the main data used to underpin readiness scores from other brands. The Vertix 2S tracks stress levels throughout the day, and you can take a wellness check, which gives on-the-spot measurements of your HR, HRV, stress, breathing rate and SpO2. 

Is The Coros Vertix 2S Worth It?

The Vertix 2S is an excellent watch and a strong alternative to the Garmin Fenix 7 for those who want a watch that uses the best and most durable materials, and does the essentials of sports tracking well. You get more features from the best Garmin watches though, and the features Coros and Garmin have are generally more polished with Garmin, such as music and maps. 

The Fenix 7 is also in sales fairly regularly, so you may be able to get a titanium one for a similar price to the Vertix 2S, and that would be a better buy, while the Garmin Epix, Polar Grit X2 and Suunto Race are attractive alternatives with AMOLED screens.

The main upgrade you get here, compared with the Vertix 2, is improved GPS accuracy, which may not be a vital feature for some who’d rather have the longer battery life of the older watch, which is still getting regular software updates from Coros.

Picking the best Garmin watch isn’t easy. The main reason: Garmin itself. The company has many watches in its range and while that means there will almost certainly be one that matches your preferences, it can be hard to find that watch without spending ages researching the differences between the devices.

You can, however, leave all that to me because I’ve tested pretty much every Garmin device that’s been released in the last five years and know the range like the back of my hand. Or wrist, in this case.

Garmin is renowned for making some of the best sports watches and running watches. Whatever your favorite form of exercise, the company has a device for you. I’ve picked out the best Garmin watch for a range of sports, along with my top overall pick that offers the best balance of value and features.

The quick list

Here’s a run-through of the top Garmin watches available in the most important categories. Click on any watch here to jump to its entry in the main list below.

How I Test Garmin Watches

Best overall

The Forerunner 265 is a multisport watch with an AMOLED screen that offers useful training analysis, including Garmin’s readiness rating, on top of accurate sports tracking and smart features. It’s a great all-rounder that will suit you whatever your preferred sport is, and it’s a good smartwatch and general fitness tracker, too.

The price is still high, but the Forerunner 265 is considerably cheaper than top watches like the Forerunner 965 and Fenix/Epix ranges, which offer maps, longer battery life and more durable designs as an incentive to upgrade. If you aren’t fussed about the AMOLED display of Garmin’s training readiness feature, then the Forerunner 255 is a good, cheaper alternative to the Forerunner 265. Explore the differences between the two with my Garmin Forerunner 265 vs Garmin Forerunner 255 comparison.

Read more in my Garmin Forerunner 265 review

Best for running

The Forerunner 165 Music is the brand’s entry-level AMOLED watch and a great option for runners. It provides accurate GPS tracking (though it’s a shame it doesn’t have dual-band GPS as with more expensive Garmin watches), structured workouts and training plans you can follow on the watch, plus music storage and breadcrumb navigation.

If you find the Forerunner 255 in a deal for around the same price as the Forerunner 165 then that would be a strong alternative for those who don’t need or want an AMOLED screen, since the 255 has more insightful training analysis and dual-band GPS tracking. I’ve gone into more detail on the differences between the two in this Garmin Forerunner 255 vs Garmin Forerunner 165 article.

If you’re just starting out with running the cheaper Forerunner 55 is another good option that does the basics well.

Read more in my Garmin Forerunner 165 review

Best for cycling

Assuming you can find it in a sale (usually easy as it’s an older watch), the Forerunner 255 is the best-value Garmin watch, and could be the pick in a number of categories in this round-up. I’ve singled it out for cyclists as a more affordable option that has key features like power sensor support and a multisport mode, which you don’t get on cheaper Forerunners and Garmin smartwatches.

If you want an AMOLED display and training readiness the Forerunner 265 is a possible upgrade, or you could go up to the Forerunner 955 or 965 to get maps as well. You could also save by getting an entry-level watch like the Forerunner 55 and splash out on a Garmin bike computer instead, which is easier to view during rides.

Read more in my Garmin Forerunner 255 review

Best for triathlon

Another old-but-excellent watch, the Forerunner 955 packs in the same excellent multisport features as the newer Forerunner 965 (minus the AMOLED display), and Fenix/Epix ranges, into a lightweight plastic design with an LCD display. It’s a better pick than the Forerunner 255 and 265 for triathletes tackling longer events in particular, since the extra battery life you get from the Forerunner 955 will be handy in an Ironman, for example. It supports all the sensors you need and will automatically transition between sports during multisport events.

The Forerunner 965 does all of the above and has a bright AMOLED display and a titanium bezel, to increase its durability a little, and of course triathletes are well served by the excellent Fenix 7 and Epix ranges, which have more durable designs than the 955 and come in a range of sizes. If you’re sticking to shorter races and don’t need maps, then the Forerunner 255 and 265 watches are also excellent for triathletes. See how the Forerunner 955 stacks up in my comparison of it alongside the Forerunner 255.

Read more in my Garmin Forerunner 955 review

Best for swimming

Most of the watches in Garmin’s range offer a lot to swimmers and if you also do other kinds of activity I’d suggest opting for a more rounded watch, such as the Forerunner 255 or 265, which match the swimming features of the Garmin Swim 2. However, if you just swim the Swim 2 is a cheaper alternative that has all the features you need to track pool and open-water workouts.

It’s a lightweight watch and records swimming-focused metrics, including distance, pace, stroke count, stroke type and Swolf. You can set up and follow swimming workouts on the watch and use it to measure your critical swim speed, which is an indication of your aerobic swimming threshold.

Read more in my Garmin Swim 2 review

Best smartwatch

The Vivoactive line is one of two dedicated smartwatch lines within Garmin’s range, along with the Venu line, but the same smart features are found across a wide array of Garmin devices. These include music storage, NFC payments, notifications and access to the Connect IQ apps store (which is limited compared with the Apple or Google app offerings).

You get all of this on the Vivoactive 5 at a lower price than other smart Garmins, aside from the cheaper Venu Sq watches, which are not as attractive and enjoyable to use in my experience. If you upgrade to the Venu 3 you get a mic and speaker, which is a handy feature in a smartwatch, and you do get better sports tracking and training analysis from the likes of the Forerunner 265, which also has the same smart features as the Vivoactive 5.

Read more in my Garmin Vivoactive 5 review

Best for hiking

Hikers heading on adventures in the great outdoors will benefit from the long battery life of Garmin’s Fenix and Enduro watches, which also have maps to help you navigate. The Fenix 7X Solar has solar panels around the outside of the face to extend the battery life more in sunny conditions, and I’ve picked it out over the smaller Fenix 7S and 7X because it has a built-in flashlight, a handy extra for those who camp in particular.

The newer Fenix 7 Pro range all have built-in flashlights but you pay more for a watch that otherwise isn’t an upgrade on the Fenix 7 range. The Enduro 2 has a flashlight and the longest battery life, but is expensive. A cheaper option for hiking than the Fenix 7X is the Garmin Instinct 2 Solar, which doesn’t have maps, but does have a rugged design, breadcrumb navigation and long battery life. My head-to-head comparison pits the Fenix 7 against the Enduro 2.

Read more in my Garmin Fenix 7X Solar review

The best running watches can do a lot more than track your workouts. Come race day your Garmin watch can help you stay on track and hit your target time, with a variety of features available to help you successfully pace a marathon.

I’ve run the London Marathon six times and used several different approaches when setting up my watch for the race, all of which were designed to keep me on track for my target time. That’s harder than in other marathons I’ve run because the GPS signal goes AWOL running through Canary Wharf and the tunnels on the course.

The simplest way to track your race is with your normal data screens, but I’d suggest adding lap pace to them, rather than current pace. Current pace is particularly susceptible to GPS trouble and will jump around a lot, while lap pace is your average pace for the current mile or kilometer split you’re running and is a more stable number to help you pace your run.

Even with lap pace the GPS problems you encounter in the second half of the London Marathon when running under high buildings and through tunnels can throw your watch off. I take manual splits when passing the mile/kilometer markers to get an accurate number for each to make sure I’m hitting my target pace.

A more advanced setting is to use the distance and time target setting on the watch. On your run page hold the menu button, select training, quick workout (or set a target depending on which model you’re using) and then distance and time. Select marathon distance and put in your target time and you’ll get two new data screens. One shows how far behind or ahead of your goal pace you are, and another gives a predicted finish time plus your average pace and distance remaining. 

The predicted time is handy as long as you take into account the distance your watch has measured compared with the actual distance you have left to run, with GPS inaccuracies included. Check the distance on the watch against a marker when you pass it and add any discrepancy in time to the predicted time on the watch. 

Another Garmin tool you can use is PacePro, which will give you a target time for each mile or kilometer of your race based on the elevation profile of the course, your overall goal and race strategy, as in whether you want to run even splits, or a negative split where you run the second half of the marathon faster than the first. 

I’d advise against this though. PacePro is brilliant but will be rendered near useless by GPS inaccuracy and is most useful on hilly courses like the Boston Marathon where your pace per split will rise and fall with the hills. PacePro can help you stick to target pace in the first half of the London Marathon, which has good GPS accuracy with few tall buildings, but once you hit Canary Wharf inaccurate pace readings will throw it off.

The most complicated and most accurate option you can use is a ConnectIQ app that allows you to correct the distance readings on the watch. I have used one called Peter’s (Race) Pacer to do this (Peter’s (Hi-Viz) Pacer is a simpler app that does the same thing). When you pass a marker on the course, hit the lap button and it rounds the distance measured by the watch up or down to be exact.

So if your watch reads 5.12km at the 5K marker, hit the lap button and it will correct to 5.00km, and then adjust the average pace and other stats on the watch. You can also set a target time with Peter’s Race Pacer and it will tell you how far ahead or behind you are.

I’m hoping Garmin will eventually make this a native feature on its watches—as it is on the Wahoo ELEMNT Rival watch—because Peter’s (Race) Pacer isn’t the most attractive data screen, but it has worked well for me in the past when GPS readings have gone wonky. Just make sure you try the app out in a training run to get used to the info being shown.

Any of the best running watches can help you pace a marathon, as long as the GPS accuracy is on point. By using the lap pace in particular you can judge your pace for each mile or kilometer split and ensure it’s in line with your overall goals, and stop yourself from going out too fast at the start.

However, Garmin’s PacePro tool goes beyond this by offering a pacing guide that’s tailored to your target time, the way you want to run the race and the course you’re going to run. That last part in particular makes it perfect for the Boston Marathon.

That’s because the Boston Marathon route is not the pancake flat course you get at other major marathons like London, Berlin and Chicago. Boston has hills, with the most famous being Heartbreak Hill in mile 20, and you need to judge your effort on the uphill and downhill sections of the course carefully to hit your target time.

With Garmin’s PacePro tool you set the course you’re going to run and an overall target time, then you choose one of three race strategies and how hard you want to run any uphills. The race strategies are even pacing, a negative split (where you run the second half of the marathon faster than the first), or a positive split. 

If picking a negative or positive split, you also choose how much of a difference you want between the two halves of the race. You could start slowly and set yourself up to sprint home, for example, or just aim for a minute or two difference across the two halves. You also select how hard you want to run uphills, but if you ease off you’ll have to make the time up on flats and downhills.

This is the magic of PacePro, in that it will give you target times for each mile or kilometer split of the race based on your preferences, target time and the elevation of the course during that exact split. For example, if you set up a target time 2hrs 50min for Boston, plus a negative split where you take it easy on uphills, you’ll be given your fastest split targets for the downhills that come after the famous Newton Hills, with a slower target for the mile that includes Heartbreak Hill, or any other incline.

This allows you to ease off in the early stages of the race, and on any uphills, knowing that the race plan will have you hitting your overall target time by attacking the easier downhill miles on the course. The Boston Marathon has a lot of downhills, so you can judge how much time to make up in those sections well to allow you to be slower on the uphills.

During the race the PacePro screen will show your target time for the exact mile or kilometer split you’re running, plus your current split pace, how much distance is left in the split and the total time you are ahead, or behind, your overall goal.

You will need to use a Boston Marathon route within the Garmin Connect app to get a PacePro strategy, but these are easy to find in the app or on the website by searching for Hopkinton, the town where the race starts. There are several Boston Marathon routes to pick between and you can use them to create your PacePro strategy and then send it to your watch. 

The routes are all slightly longer than the exact marathon distance, because they are probably created from the routes people actually ran—it’s hard to run the perfect racing line at a big marathon because of the crowds.

Most of Garmin’s current range is compatible with PacePro, even if the watch doesn’t have maps or breadcrumb navigation as a feature. The Garmin Forerunner 55 is the cheapest watch to have the feature, and you can be assured that any more expensive watch launched in the past couple of years will also have it. You can check if your watch is compatible on the Garmin website by typing it in and selecting your watch.

Garmin’s PacePro tool is useful for lots of races, but is best for hilly courses and also those that don’t spend much time in the center of big cities with tall buildings, because the GPS accuracy that dictates the pacing info on the watch is affected when you’re in the heart of London or New York, for example. It’s perfect for the Boston Marathon as a result, and may well be just the thing for getting you up and over Heartbreak Hill still on course for your PR.

How To Set Up PacePro For The Boston Marathon 

1. Go to Training & Planning>Courses
2. Search for Hopkinton and select a Boston Marathon course from the list
3. Click ‘create a PacePro strategy’
4. Pick your target time or pace
5. Choose between mile and kilometer splits
6. Choose your race strategy and uphill effort
7. Check the individual splits to see if they make sense for you, then hit save
8. Send the route to your device

You can find the PacePro strategy in the training and workouts section of the running app on your watch. Make sure you select it before you start the race. You can also create a PacePro strategy on the watch for any route you have saved on there, but it’s easier to do it in the Garmin Connect app or on the website.

Garmin has rolled out a free software update to many of its watches, including the Garmin Fenix 7 and Epix 2.

The headline new feature is automatic transitions during multisport activities such as triathlons and duathlons. When using these modes, compatible Garmins will sense when you transition between swimming, cycling and running, and automatically record the transition and switch your data screen to the correct sport mode.

This is a feature that is already available on Wahoo and Apple sports watches, and it means you won’t have to remember to hit any buttons during your transition. If you’re worried that the watch might transition incorrectly, there are methods to undo it, like long-pressing the lap button, and you can also turn the feature off and manually transition.

Another feature in the update is a new database of over 10,000 running tracks being added to watches, which will be used when you select track mode for your runs. The database means you won’t have to calibrate the watch by running a few laps to get accurate distance data during your run—the watch will already know you’re at a track. 

I use track mode regularly on my Garmin and the highly-accurate distance data makes it easier to pace long reps. Not having to calibrate a new track will be a small but useful quality-of-life improvement.

As will another new feature—Lap Undo. If you hit the lap button by mistake during an activity you have eight seconds to undo it by pressing the down button (bottom left). This only works for manual laps for now, you can’t undo automatic laps or use the feature when following a structured workout on the watch.

Other new features included in the update are a jump rope activity mode, and Garmin’s sleep coach, which recommends the amount of sleep you need that day based on sleep history and your activity levels. The watch will only recommend between seven and nine hours of sleep, so it’s not going to suggest wild changes to your routine, but it might be a useful prompt to sleep more when training a lot.

Which Garmin Devices Receive This Update?

The following devices receive all of the new software features detailed above:

• Garmin Fenix 7
• Garmin Fenix 7 Pro
• Garmin Epix 2
• Garmin Epix Pro
• Garmin Enduro 2
• Garmin Forerunner 255, 265, 955 and 965
• Garmin Tactix 7
• Garmin Tactix 7 AMOLED
• Garmin Marq 2
• Garmin Quatix 7
• Garmin Quatix 7 Pro
• Garmin D2 Mach 1
• Garmin D2 Mach 1 Pro

The Garmin Venu 3 and Vivoactive 5 already have the sleep coach feature, and gains the jump rope activity. 

The Garmin Lily 2 has the jump rope activity added. 

The new Garmin Forerunner 165 will soon receive all the updates, bar the multisport automatic transition feature.

How To Download The New Software 

These features have been available as part of Garmin’s public beta testing program, but will now be rolling out across all compatible watches automatically. 

Software updates automatically when your device connects to the Garmin Connect app, but this may not happen immediately. The Garmin website states that it may take a few days.

The Forerunner 255 and Forerunner 165 are among the best sports watches and offer better value than most devices in Garmin’s range. The Forerunner 255 is a full multisport watch with more training analysis features than the Forerunner 165, which is cheaper and has a bright AMOLED display as its star feature.

Forerunner 255 vs Forerunner 165: Price And Availability

The Forerunner 165 launched in February 2024 and there are two models: the 165 Music and standard 165. The Forerunner 165 is $249.99 in the US and £249.99 in the UK, and the Forerunner 165 Music is $299.99/£289.99.

There are also music and non-music models of the Forerunner 255, which launched in June 2022, and they come in two sizes. The Forerunner 255 is $349.99/£299.99 and the Forerunner 255 Music is $399.99/£349.99, with the smaller 255S variant available at the same price with both models. As an older watch, however, the Forerunner 255 is usually available for much less than its list price.

How I Tested These Watches

I tested the Forerunner 165 Music and Forerunner 255S Music for my reviews on Coach, using them for several weeks to track my workouts, general activity and sleep. I usually run 50-80 miles a week, as well as doing regular yoga and some strength sessions and bike rides. I tested the watches for heart rate accuracy against a Polar H10 chest strap and for GPS accuracy against the Garmin Epix 2 or Garmin Epix Pro, both of which I’ve found accurate for GPS distance and pacing.

• Garmin Forerunner 165 review
• Garmin Forerunner 255 review

Design

The main difference in design is obvious as soon as you look at the two watches. The Forerunner 165 has a 1.2in AMOLED display while the Forerunner 255 has Garmin’s traditional memory-in-pixel LCD (1.1in on the Forerunner 255S and 1.3in on the Forerunner 255).

I prefer the AMOLED display, which is more vivid and easier to read inside and when under tree or cloud cover. In bright sunlight the screens offer equal visibility, though overall the AMOLED is superior—making the Forerunner more engaging and enjoyable to use as a general watch, outside of training.

The Forerunner 165 comes in only one size, with a 43mm case. The Forerunner 255S has a 41mm case, and the Forerunner 255 a 46mm case. Both watches have a plastic build, but the screen is stronger on the Forerunner 255, using Gorilla glass, whereas the Forerunner 165 features chemically strengthened glass.

The watches have the same sensors, including a barometric altimeter, and use Garmin’s Elevate V4 heart rate sensors. They can connect to external sensors using Bluetooth and ANT+, but the Forerunner 255 can connect to cycling power sensors, something that isn’t available on the more running-focused Forerunner 165. The Forerunner 255 also provides more accurate dual-band GPS tracking, which isn’t available on the Forerunner 165.

Sports Tracking And Training Analysis

The Forerunner 165 tracks a range of sports, including open-water swimming and the other parts of a triathlon individually, but it doesn’t have a multisport mode where you can record a full triathlon, including your transition. It’s more of a running watch, while the Forerunner 255 is a full triathlon watch.

You can also display more information during activities on the Forerunner 255, which allows up to six data fields at once on screen, whereas the max you can show on the Forerunner 165 is four. The Forerunner 255 offers more analysis, including Garmin’s training status, which provides insight into whether your training is balanced and productive. Both watches lack the Forerunner 265’s training readiness feature.

You do still get some useful training insights from the Forerunner 165, which will tell you how your workouts benefitted your aerobic or anaerobic fitness and give a VO2 max estimate, plus estimated race times for 5K, 10K, half marathon and marathon events.

GPS And HR Accuracy

One big difference between the watches is that the Forerunner 255 offers dual-band GPS tracking, whereas the most accurate mode on the Forerunner 165 is all-systems-on, which uses multiple satellite systems at once. In my testing the GPS accuracy of the Forerunner 165 was good and mostly comparable to that of the Garmin Epix Pro. However, dual-band tracking on the Forerunner 255 is more reliable when in tough GPS conditions, such as when running under tall buildings or tree cover. It reduces battery life, though, and the accuracy of the Forerunner 165 is good enough to judge your runs.

The optical heart rate accuracy was comparable across the watches, which is to say it’s not something I’d rely on entirely. It was mostly OK, especially in warm conditions, but I often saw heart rate readings that were incorrect when compared to a chest strap. If you’re intending to use heart rate in workouts, or to use the training analysis on the watches to shape your training plans, I’d link one of the best heart rate monitors to the watches for peace of mind.

Battery Life

The difference in battery life isn’t huge, especially if you set the 165’s screen to raise-to-wake rather than always-on, though the standard Forerunner 255 is the longest-lasting watch in watch mode and during activities. The smaller Forerunner 255S still slightly outlasts the Forerunner 165.

With the screen always-on I found the Forerunner 165 lasted four or five days when running daily, while the smaller Forerunner 255S lasted six days on a charge.

The Amazon Big Spring Sale has arrived and it features some great Garmin deals on the best sports watches. I’ve been testing and reviewing Garmins for several years and have tried all of the watches on sale, and the standout pick for me is the Garmin Forerunner 255.

There are two sizes of the watch and two models—one with music and one without—and all of them are discounted in the US. The top model in the range is the Garmin Forerunner 255 Music (or smaller 255S Music), which has music storage as an extra feature that will be worth having for anyone who owns wireless headphones but doesn’t like to run with their phone.

Although an older watch, the Garmin Forerunner 255 Music remains one of the best value options available, especially at the reduced price of $299.99 (or $249.99, if you don’t need the music feature). It’s a full multisport watch for runners and triathletes with accurate dual-band GPS tracking, and offers useful training insights to help you improve.

The newer Garmin Forerunner 265 has an AMOLED screen plus Garmin’s training readiness feature, but it’s a lot more expensive (you can read more about the differences in my Garmin Forerunner 265 vs Garmin Forerunner 255 comparison). The recently-released Garmin Forerunner 165 is around the same price as the Forerunner 255 and has an AMOLED screen, but doesn’t have a multisport mode or dual-band GPS tracking.

The Polar Grit X2 Pro has been unveiled, and the updates Polar has made should see it compete with the best sports watches on the market. The AMOLED watch has a durable design tested to military standards and is packed full of the best features Polar has to offer.

These features include topographical maps with turn-by-turn directions from Komoot (the ability to sync with Strava routes is also on the way), dual-band GPS tracking with a new signal-boosting antenna under the watch’s bezel, and a handy built-in flashlight.

Many of these features were introduced on the Polar Vantage V3, which came out in late 2023, but the Grit X2 Pro sets itself apart with some unique features such as vertical speed and average ascent speed—useful stats for those running and hiking in the mountains.

The Grit X2 Pro comes preloaded with maps for Europe and the US, with other regions available to download for free, and it will show a breadcrumb trail of your route during activities, a useful feature for retracing your steps that has been strangely absent since Polar first launched maps on the Vantage V3.

The 1.39in AMOLED touchscreen is the same dimensions as the display on the Vantage V3, while using sapphire crystal to be more durable than the Vantage’s gorilla glass display. It will be a major upgrade for the Grit X2 Pro and the battery life on the watch is still strong despite the new display. The Grit X2 Pro will last up to 10 days in watch mode and offers 43 hours of activity tracking in its performance mode using dual-band GPS, with an eco training mode extending the battery life to 140 hours.

There is also a built-in compass on the watch and an array of sensors to track things like your heart rate and blood oxygen saturation. The Grit X2 Pro can also take an ECG (though it’s not medically certified) and measure your skin temperature.

The Polar Grit X2 Pro will be available to pre-order on the Polar US and Polar UK websites from today until Tuesday, April 2, with the watch then going on general sale on Wednesday, April 3. 

The standard steel version of the watch comes in black or gray and costs $749.90/£649, while the titanium Polar Grit X2 Pro Titan is $869.90/£749. 

The Garmin Forerunner 955 is available at a great price in the Amazon Big Spring Sale, with a $100 discount available on what is one of the best sports watches. Garmin is also offering the deal directly, which is handy as stock is already low on Amazon.

 While the Garmin Forerunner 955 is an older watch and has been superseded by the Garmin Forerunner 965, it is still up to date with Garmin’s key features. The main difference between it and the 965 is the AMOLED screen on the latter, so if you’re happy with the LCD screen of the 955, which does help to boost battery life, then the older watch is the better value pick.

That’s especially the case when it’s reduced by $100, so it’s no surprise that the stock is already low on Amazon. If you’re looking for a great multisport watch in the sales and want maps on board to help with navigation, this is the best deal I expect to see.

The Garmin Forerunner 165 and Garmin Forerunner 265 are among the best sports watches. Both have bright AMOLED screens and offer accurate tracking and insightful training analysis. You get more features with the Forerunner 265, which is a full triathlon watch, but the Forerunner 165 represents better value for runners.

Garmin Forerunner 265 vs Garmin Forerunner 165: Price And Availability

The Garmin Forerunner 265 launched in March 2023 and costs $449.99 in the US and £429.99 in the UK. There are two sizes available—the standard Forerunner 265 and smaller Forerunner 265S—but both have the same features and price. 

The Garmin Forerunner 165 launched in February 2024 and there are two models: one with music, one without. The standard Garmin Forerunner 165 is $249.99/£249.99 and the Garmin Forerunner 165 Music is $299.99/£289.99.

How I Tested These Watches

I tested the standard Forerunner 265 and Forerunner 165 Music for our full reviews, using both for several weeks to track my training and daily activity. I usually run 50-70 miles a week and have also done yoga and strength sessions with both watches. To test GPS and HR accuracy I used each watch at the same time as the Garmin Epix Pro (which I’ve found accurate for GPS) linked to a Polar H10 chest strap, which I consider one of the best heart rate monitors.

• Garmin Forerunner 265 review
• Garmin Forerunner 165 review

Design

The Forerunner 265 and Forerunner 165 have similar designs, with a plastic case, five buttons and AMOLED touchscreens. The Forerunner 265 uses more durable Gorilla glass for its screen, whereas the 165 has chemically strengthened glass. The Forerunner 265 comes in two sizes: The 265S has a 1.1in screen and the 265 a 1.3in screen. The Forerunner 165 only comes in one size, with a 1.2in screen.

Both watches have barometric altimeters and Garmin’s Elevate V4 optical heart rate sensor. There’s no major difference between the internal sensors, and both link to external sensors via both Bluetooth and ANT+. However, the Forerunner 265 can link to cycling power meters where the Forerunner 165 can’t, which marks the latter as more of a running watch than a multisport one.

Sports Tracking And Training Analysis

The main difference with the sports tracking on the two watches is that the Forerunner 265 has a multisport mode, whereas the 165 doesn’t. You can track all the individual sports of a triathlon with the 165, including open-water swimming, but it doesn’t have the multisport mode.

During activities the Forerunner 265 can display more data fields at a time than the 165; there’s a maximum of six on the 265 and four on the 165. Both are clear and easy to read during activities, even in sunny conditions. 

There are more differences between the training analysis offered by the watches. The Forerunner 265 provides Garmin’s training status insights (which tell you if your training is proving productive or not) and a training readiness score that rates how ready you are to train. This is out of 100, and based on factors like sleep, training history and heart rate variability (HRV) overnight.

The Forerunner 165 provides a more basic experience, though it does give your HRV status overnight, as well as estimating your VO2 max and race times. It also advises you on how long it will take to recover after a workout.

At times, the more extensive training analysis on the Forerunner 265 is useful, but it’s the multisport features that are probably more important in determining which is the right choice for you.

GPS And HR Accuracy

The Forerunner 265 has dual-band GPS, which is the most accurate option, whereas the Forerunner 165 has only all-systems-on GPS. I say “only” but all-systems-on is still accurate—and during my testing of the 165, the distance tracking matched up well to the stats from the Garmin Epix Pro in dual-band mode. You still get an improvement with the dual-band on the 265, especially when running amid tall buildings in cities, but it reduces battery life to use the dual-band mode. 

Both watches have the same optical heart rate sensor and I experienced mixed results with its accuracy during testing. If you want the most accurate results, pair one of the best heart rate monitors with either the Forerunner 165 or 265. If you intend on using the training analysis on either watch, using a chest strap is advisable because this will help avoid poor data coming into the watch from workouts where the optical sensor has proved inaccurate.

Battery Life

The longest-lasting watch in the Forerunner 165 and 265 ranges is the Forerunner 265S. Overall, the differences in battery life between the Forerunner 165 and 265 are not big enough to make it a significant factor, but the 265 lasts longer between charges. Both lasted around four or five days for me with the screen set to always-on, tracking runs every day, though listening to music via the watch brings that number down quickly.

More Garmin Forerunner 265 Versus

• Garmin Forerunner 265 Vs Garmin Forerunner 255
• Garmin Forerunner 965 Vs Garmin Forerunner 265

The Garmin Forerunner 165 is a new AMOLED option within Garmin’s extensive range of sports watches, coming in significantly cheaper than the Garmin Forerunner 265, though it’s not as affordable as Garmin’s true entry-level running watch, the Garmin Forerunner 55.

While you miss out on some useful features that are on the Forerunner 265 (and indeed the non-AMOLED Garmin Forerunner 255) like a triathlon mode and dual-band GPS tracking, the Forerunner 165 is an excellent option for runners who want a watch with an AMOLED screen. It’s certainly one of the best running watches available, and I’d say the only better-value options are non-AMOLED watches like the Coros Pace 3 and Garmin Forerunner 255.

Garmin Forerunner 165: Price And Availability

The Garmin Forerunner 165 launched in February 2024 and costs $249.99/£249.99 for the standard version of the watch, while the Garmin Forerunner 165 Music is $299.99/£289.99. It is available to buy now from Garmin US and Garmin UK and ships in five to eight weeks.

This is considerably cheaper than the Garmin Forerunner 265, which is $449.99/£429.99, and also cheaper than the Forerunner 255’s list price, though as an older watch it’s usually possible to find the 255 in sales for a lot less. Our coverage of 2023’s Black Friday Garmin deals found it for as low as $299.99.

How I Tested This Watch

I have been wearing the Garmin Forerunner 165 Music for two weeks, using it to track around 150 miles of running in that time along with other workouts including yoga and strength sessions. During that time I also wore the Garmin Epix Pro linked with a Polar H10 heart rate monitor to check the GPS and HR accuracy of the Forerunner 165. I have also tested the rest of Garmin’s Forerunner range, and all the best sports watches on the market.

Design And Hardware

The star feature of the Forerunner 165’s design is the 1.2in AMOLED display, which is as bright and vibrant as the screens on other AMOLED Forerunner watches such as the 265 and 965. The watch has Garmin’s usual five-button set-up, with two buttons on the right side and three on the left, and you can also use the touchscreen to navigate its menus. The screen is made from chemically strengthened glass rather than the Gorilla glass used on the Forerunner 265.

Unlike the Garmin Forerunner 255 and 265, the Forerunner 165 only comes in one size, which sits between the 265 and 265S sizes. The only differences between the 165 and 165 Music are the music feature and audio prompts during workouts on the latter.

It is a small and light plastic watch that I found comfortable to wear at all times. It uses a 20mm band, which you can replace on the watch easily, either with another Garmin strap or a third-party band.

The watch uses Garmin’s Elevate V4 optical heart rate sensor, which is not the latest Elevate V5 sensor found on watches such as the Garmin Fenix 7 Pro and Epix Pro. It has a barometric altimeter for elevation tracking during activities and counting your floors climbed each day, and also has a pulse oximeter for measuring blood oxygen saturation.

You can link to external sensors via both Bluetooth and ANT+, but the Forerunner 165 won’t connect to cycling power meters, which marks it out as a running watch rather than one aimed at triathletes or cyclists.

Sports Tracking And Training Analysis

The Garmin Forerunner 165 is not a triathlon watch with a dedicated multisport mode, but it does have sports modes to cover pretty much everything else, including pool and open-water swimming and a dedicated track run mode.

It will offer suggested workouts each day based on your past training, and you can link the Forerunner 165 with a Garmin Coach training plan for a 5K, 10K or half marathon, which will be customized to your fitness level and goals. It’s also easy to create and add your own structured workouts to the watch to follow on your wrist, and the Forerunner 165 can measure running power and running dynamics like ground contact time from the wrist without needing to link up with an external sensor.

The training analysis on the watch is not as extensive as on the Forerunner 265, which has Garmin’s training readiness stat and gives you your training status, but the Forerunner 165 does estimate your VO2 max and recovery time after a workout. It will also tell you the aerobic and anaerobic training effect of your run, as well as predicting your race times for 5K, 10K, half marathon and marathon distances.

During workouts the screen is only large enough to show four stats, but it’s bright and easy to see even in sunny conditions, and clearer than the LCD screens of watches like the Coros Pace 3 and Forerunner 255 when under cloud or tree cover.

While it lacks some of the insights you get on Garmin’s more expensive watches, the Forerunner 165 is a good sports tracker that covers the essentials for runners well, and also includes some extras like running power and technique stats.

GPS And HR Accuracy

While the Forerunner 165 does not offer Garmin’s dual-band GPS tracking, which I have found to be the most accurate from any brand, it does have an all-systems-on tracking mode as well as a basic GPS-only mode which can extend battery life.

I used the all-systems-on mode throughout my testing, comparing it against the Garmin Epix Pro in multi-band mode. Overall the Forerunner 165 was highly accurate, closely matching the Epix Pro on every run including some under tree cover.

I found it tended to overestimate distance slightly and was a little generous with my pace as a result, and looking at GPS tracks this would be down to it tracking a wider path around corners at times, but overall this was marginal. In a week where I logged 77.1 miles on the Epix Pro, the Forerunner 165 logged 77.6 miles.

The heart rate tracking, unfortunately, was less impressive. On most of my runs the Forerunner 165’s optical heart rate sensor would log an erroneously high heart rate compared with the Polar H10 chest strap, including for the entirety of a 20-mile run where it locked on to my cadence instead of my heart rate. 

This skews the limited training analysis on the watch, so if you intend on using that or to train using heart rate, it would be best to link a chest strap.

Navigation

The Forerunner 165 offers breadcrumb navigation, which is a feature you don’t get on the cheaper Forerunner 55 running watch. Create a course in the Garmin Connect and send it to the watch to get a line and pointer, plus turn-by-turn directions. You can also activate the back-to-start feature during an outdoor activity to get a pointer and the distance back to your start point.

I have always found Garmin’s breadcrumb navigation sufficient to guide me through runs in unfamiliar places. It’s not as easy to follow the route as when using a Garmin watch with full maps, but those are much more expensive.

Battery Life

Both Forerunner 165 models are listed as lasting up to 11 days in watch mode, and offer 19 hours of GPS. Judging by my testing, this GPS stat is based on using the more energy-intensive all-systems-on tracking, because I found the watch drained by around 5% an hour when tracking runs in that mode.

The battery life comes down if you turn the screen to always-on, which I did during my testing. My Forerunner 165 lasted four to five days on a charge when running, on average, for at least an hour a day—but I didn’t have notifications coming into the watch, which will reduce battery life a little. 

Setting the screen to raise-to-wake outside workouts will extend the battery life considerably, and the screen does wake quite quickly and reliably with a turn of the wrist.

Even with the screen always on and running every day, the battery life on the Forerunner 165 is pretty impressive for a small watch with a bright AMOLED display. Even with heavy use, it outlasts the best fitness smartwatches by a couple of days. If charging every four or five days is too much for you it’s easy to extend the life beyond that by disabling the always-on screen.

Smart Features

Both models of the Garmin Forerunner 165 offer notifications, access to the Connect IQ app store and NFC payments through Garmin Pay, and the Forerunner 165 Music also has music storage. 

As with all Garmins with music, the Forerunner 165 works with paid-for Spotify, Deezer and Amazon Music accounts, allowing you to wirelessly sync across your music for offline playback on the watch. It has 4GB of storage available, half the 8GB on the Forerunner 265, but still enough room for a lot of music.

The app store is limited and the Forerunner 165 doesn’t offer cellular connectivity, so it’s not a true smartwatch like the Apple Watch Series 9, but the smart features here are better than you get from any other sports watch. 

Activity And Sleep Tracking

The Garmin Forerunner 165 is very good as a daily activity tracker, logging your steps, calories, floors climbed and active minutes each day. It also has a pulse oximeter to measure your blood oxygen saturation, and will track your heart rate variability at night and plot it against your baseline once this has been established.

It also tracks naps as well as sleep, and gives you a sleep score for the latter plus your sleep stages and time in REM, deep and light sleep. While it doesn’t offer Garmin’s training readiness score, the Forerunner 165 does have the brand’s body battery feature, which rates your energy levels out of 100.

As with all Garmin watches I’ve tested, I found the Forerunner 165 was a little generous with its sleep tracking, missing periods where I was awake during the night and logging them as light sleep. I usually found it logged 30-60 more minutes as time asleep in total than the third-generation Oura ring measured, but the heart rate variability tracking numbers did largely agree with the Oura ring each night, and you can use those to judge the overall state of your body and your readiness to train each morning.

Is The Garmin Forerunner 165 Worth It?

The Garmin Forerunner 165 is an excellent running watch and while it’s not exactly cheap, it is a lot more affordable than Garmin’s other AMOLED sports watches. Whether it’s the best value sports watch for runners or not depends on how highly you value its bright display.

The main competition for the 165 comes from the Coros Pace 3 and Garmin Forerunner 255, but both have LCD screens. However, both those watches are a little cheaper and offer dual-band GPS and more insightful training analysis, and the Coros has significantly longer battery life too. The GPS tracking and training analysis on the Forerunner 165 was good enough in my testing, and I didn’t find its battery life annoyingly short, so I’d say the value you place on the screen and price are the key considerations. Unless you’re a triathlete, that is—the Pace 3 and Forerunner 255 have a multisport mode and the 165 doesn’t.

The Forerunner 165 is certainly a compelling alternative to the Forerunner 265, which is a lot more expensive. The 265 is undoubtedly a better watch and offers different size options and additional features like training readiness, but the extras it offers over the 165 won’t be required by everyone.

Compared with the Garmin Vivoactive 5 and Venu 3 smartwatches, the Forerunner 165 offers more sports features and training analysis, as well as more buttons for ease of use during workouts. I found the Vivoactive 5 a good sporty smartwatch, but the Forerunner 165 has proven more accurate and useful as a sports watch and has similar smart features.

Smart rings can be more comfortable and unobtrusive to wear than the best fitness trackers, and when I tested the Oura Ring I was impressed by the higher level of accuracy it offered for sleep tracking when compared to sports watches.

I hoped that the Circular Smart Ring Slim might be similarly effective and become a rival to the Oura but, after a month of testing, the Circular Slim has failed to wow me, with the design and the accuracy of its tracking falling short.

Circular Smart Ring Slim: Price And Availability

The Circular Ring Slim launched in November 2023 and costs £225 in the UK and €259 in Europe. This is cheaper than the Circular Pro 1 (€364), which is larger and comes in one of four finishes versus the Slim’s one. The ring ships worldwide, so can be purchased in the US. 

The Oura Ring 3 costs $299/£229, though you need to have a subscription to unlock many of its best features, which you don’t with the Circular rings. 

At the time of writing the Circular Ring Slim was out of stock, but it’s possible to sign up for notifications as to when it’s next available. 

How I Tested This Smart Ring

I’ve worn the Circular Ring Slim day and night for a month, only taking it off to charge it—though this was quite often. During testing I also wore the Oura Ring 3 to compare the readings, as well as the Garmin Epix Pro and Apple Watch Ultra 2. Aside from the past two versions of the Oura Ring, this is the only smart ring I’ve tested.

Design

The Slim in the ring’s name is justified. Where the Oura Ring is 2.55mm thick, the Slim is just 2.2mm; it’s also light, at 2g, and comfortable to wear day and night. It is 8.8mm wide and has a small white logo on the top that shows which way up it’s meant to be worn. To me, this isn’t an appealing or subtle design feature, though the bigger design issue is the materials used. The Circular Slim is made from a mix of aluminum and carbon fiber, rather than a hardier material, like titanium, and the result is that it scratches easily and has a plastic feel when compared with the titanium Oura Ring.

The ring became scuffed within days of starting to wear it, with silver scratches showing through the black exterior and reducing the appeal of its design further. The ring isn’t waterproof, just water-resistant enough to withstand splashing when washing your hands or showering. For now, it’s also only available in one color: matte black.

As with other smart rings, you are sent a sizing kit when you order to ensure you get the right fit. The ring needs to be tight so the sensors take an accurate reading and it’s wise to wear the sizing kit rings 24/7 to see how they feel when your fingers swell. The Slim is packed with sensors to track your sleep and daily activity. It has infrared, red and green LED sensors, a surface temperature sensor and a three-axis accelerometer. There’s a haptic button where the logo shows on the top of the ring that you can use to turn off features like the vibrating alarm powered by the motor in the ring.

In the box is a charger that plugs into a USB-C port on which the ring sits. The charger is neat and has a keyring on it, but the way the ring has to sit on it means it’s hard to use the charger when plugging it into a computer on a desk.

Sleep And Activity Tracking

The Circular Slim tracks a lot of data about you. On-board sensors monitoring heart rate, heart rate variability (HRV), sleep stages, blood oxygen saturation, stress levels and a lot more. There’s a 14-day calibration period to set your baselines, so it’s only after two weeks that you start getting useful insights into the state of your body. 

The headline stats are delivered in the app through “Circles”, which give sleep score, energy score (similar to the readiness score you get on other devices) and stress levels. You can also take a live measurement with the ring to show your heart rate, HRV and blood oxygen saturation.

You can then click on the Circles for detailed information about sleep and energy levels. As with other smart rings, I found sleep analysis the most interesting aspect of the tracking, with information on how long it took me to go to sleep, my overall sleep debt, and how restless I was overnight, along more common features like sleep stages. The Slim also tracks HRV and temperature and plots them against your baseline.

During the day the ring tracks steps, calories burned and heart rate, awarding “cardio points” for when you’re active as well as monitoring stress levels. I found the step tracking generally showed totals lower than the watches I wore that day, but not by much. The ring can’t track workouts, nor can it pull workout data from Apple Health or Google Fit to fill in this data in the app, unlike the Oura Ring.

Unfortunately, the accuracy problems I saw with the ring’s overnight tracking were extensive. My temperature fluctuated a bizarre amount throughout testing, including one night where it was shown as 7.3°C (approximately 12°F) below normal, while other trackers and the Oura ring showed normal readings.

I’ve barely had a minute of deep sleep throughout the month, according to the ring, again when other trackers have observed I usually get 40-50 minutes a night. My sleep scores have sometimes failed to tally up with reality too: I was getting 90+ scores for a week despite being regularly woken by a baby and staying up late and drinking alcohol one night. My resting heart rate data is also higher than with other devices, and some nights I get no sleep data at all from the Slim, or no sleep stages.

Some data has been accurate, or at least in line with other devices, such as the times I fell asleep and woke up, though the Circular Slim missed times I woke in the night occasionally, and the HRV measurements have been similar to those of the Oura Ring and Garmin watch.

The App

The Circular app is busy-looking, which isn’t surprising given the amount of data the ring collects, but it’s a bit cluttered and once you look beyond the Circles at the top of the app the data is overwhelming. The Oura app is cleaner and more enjoyable to use, though at least the Circular app doesn’t require a subscription to use it.

It takes time to sync the ring with the app though, and sometimes I couldn’t find the time to wait for the data to show up in the morning. The ring stores 20 days of data so you can do a catch-up sync at another point, but this slow sync is again worse than the experience with the Oura Ring, which flashes up sleep and readiness scores shortly after you open the app in the morning. 

There were also bugs with the Circular app, such as frequent notifications that I was offline (when I wasn’t), and that I couldn’t rename the ring (after it told me I could rename the ring when I first set it up).

One novel feature with the Circular Slim is the AI assistant Kira+, which offers daily recommendations based on the data tracked by the ring. Unfortunately, this wasn’t as smart as I’d initially hoped. Kira+’s suggestions were a long stream of text telling me, once more, the data the ring has tracked, plus basic advice like doing breathing exercises and keeping your bedroom cool and comfortable at night.

You can set an alarm clock in the app, including a smart alarm feature that wakes you in a window of time based on your sleep patterns. The ring vibrates to do this, and you turn off the vibration by tapping the logo. It’s an unobtrusive way to wake up when others are in bed with you.

Battery Life

The Slim is listed as lasting up to five days on a charge, but this is in Eco mode, which reduces how often it takes heart rate readings and doesn’t track your sleep stages. In Performance mode the ring lasted two days (at most), which is less than the four days I typically get from the Oura ring.

Is The Circular Smart Ring Slim Worth It?

I’d steer clear of the Circular Slim. To me, the design isn’t particularly nice and it scratches easily, and I’ve reservations about the accuracy of its tracking. The battery life is short and the Oura Ring is simply a better all-round product. I’ve not yet tested other rings like the Ultrahuman Ring or RingConn Smart Ring, which may be better alternatives to Oura than the Circular Slim.

The Apple Watch has long been one of the best fitness smartwatches, and over the past couple of years the native sports tracking has been improved significantly through watchOS 9 and 10 software updates. This means the Apple Watch Ultra 2 and Apple Watch Series 9 can be considered among the best sports watches. 

Even if you’ve owned one of the watches for a long time you may not have taken advantage of all the features. One of these is the pacer mode for runners. I’ve tested every model of the Apple Watch extensively, and pacer mode is something you’ll only have call to use on rare occasions, though it’s invaluable when you do. Those occasions are races, when the virtual pacer on your wrist can help you hit your target times and set new PRs.

Pacer mode is easy to set up. You hit the three dots on the right of the Outdoor Run sports mode in the Workout app (see image above) and scroll down to the pacer setting. Hit the little pen in the corner there and you can choose the distance and time you are planning on running.

Once that’s set up, you start the run by hitting start workout and are given a data screen that shows your current and average pace, and a dial that indicates how you are doing with your target time at that point.

I used pacer mode for a test run aiming for a 10K in 50 minutes. Throughout the run it’s easy to see how much time you have to make up to hit your goal, or how much time you have in the bank. Using this feature you can pace your races with precision, and it’s especially useful for ensuring you don’t go out too hard at the start of a long race. If you’re two miles into a marathon and see that you’re already tracking 45 seconds ahead of your overall time goal, then hopefully you’ll register that you need to ease off and settle into your actual race pace.

Pacer modes like these are not new features for sports watches and I’ve used the same mode on Garmin watches for years. Garmin’s mode is a little more developed and gives an estimate of your finish time that updates throughout the race based on your pace up until that point, and the distance left to go.

Whatever watch you use, I find that having a simple data screen like this is ideal for races, when you’re often focused on one thing: hitting that goal time. Just be aware that the mode will still be relying on GPS, so if the distance on your watch starts to fall out of line with the mile or kilometer markers on your course, you’ll have to do quick mental math to work out how far or ahead of your target time you are. 

Given that I’ve found the GPS on the Apple Watch Ultra 2 to be among the most accurate available this will probably only be a few seconds out from what the pacer mode is saying, but it’s worth being aware of—especially in built-up urban areas where tall buildings negatively affect GPS accuracy.

I wear a chest strap heart rate monitor when running year round, because the native optical tracking on even the best sports watches is often unreliable. The wrist is a tough place to get an accurate reading during workouts, so the best heart rate monitors are all chest straps like the Polar H10.

The accuracy of optical sensors only gets worse in cold weather, so if you’ve noticed that the readings from your running watch has become increasingly erratic of late, that may be why.

To get a reading, optical sensors measure the pulse under your skin, as Polar research center director Jyrki Schroderus explained to us when we asked him how the sensors work.

“It uses LED lights and a sensor,” says Schroderus. “Light penetrates into your skin and when it’s under your skin, your blood pulse changes the power of the light which comes back to the sensor.”

The blood vessels on the peripheries of your body get narrower in cold weather, a process known as vasoconstriction. It means there is less blood flowing through the wrist near the skin and it’s harder for optical sensors to get a reading.

Often I find optical heart rate monitors lock onto my running cadence instead of my pulse. Cadence is the number of steps you take per minute while running, which is usually 180-plus for me, a number that’s higher than my max heart rate.

This means if I rely on the optical sensor I end up with readings that suggest every run I do is a maximum effort, which then skews the training analysis on the watch. 

A chest strap heart rate sensor is a far more accurate option, especially in the winter. These don’t have to be expensive—most of the best cheap heart rate monitors are chest straps—and they use electrical signals directly from the heart to measure heart rate, making them much more accurate.

That said, chest straps do also find it a bit harder to read heart rate in cold, dry conditions than when it’s warm. That’s because when you sweat more it’s easier for the electrical signals to travel into the sensor on the strap. 

Fortunately, there’s a simple and quick solution to this, which is to wet the chest strap before wearing it. You can run it under a tap, lick it, or use special electrode gel for the most reliable fix.

Withings is the dominant force in the hybrid smartwatch market, which is partly because of how good its watches are and partly because it’s a niche market other brands have largely left alone. The Garmin Vivomove range provides rivals, but the style and battery life of the Withings’ watches set them apart.

The Withings ScanWatch 2 is now the top option for those who want a hybrid that combines analogue looks with health and fitness tracking. It’s one of the best fitness trackers available and an upgrade on the original ScanWatch, although that and the ScanWatch Light still have appeal as cheaper options.

Withings ScanWatch 2: Price And Availability

The ScanWatch 2 launched in August 2023 and costs $349.95 in the US and £319.95 in the UK. Withings also has the cheaper ScanWatch Light in its range, which is $249.95/£229.95, though it doesn’t offer the advanced health tracking of the ScanWatch 2. External competition mainly comes from the Garmin Vivomove range, which is cheaper, and better for sports tracking, but not as advanced on the health tracking front.

How I Tested This Watch

I’ve been wearing the Withing ScanWatch 2 for six weeks, tracking all my daily activity and sleep in that period. I have also tested the Withings ScanWatch and a range of the best fitness trackers and best sports watches from other brands.

Design And Hardware

The Withings ScanWatch 2 comes in 38mm and 42mm sizes, with black and white faces with a silver bezel available in both, and then two extra colors in the 38mm: blue with a gold bezel, and sand with a gold bezel.

I tested a 38mm watch with the black face and loved its simple, elegant design. It’s small and light, and sits snugly against the wrist. The silicone wristband it came with has been comfortable to wear at all times, including workouts, and there’s a range of bands made from other materials you can buy from Withings and third parties.

On the top half of the analogue screen is a small, circular monochrome screen. This lights up when you raise your wrist or press the button on the watch, and you can scroll through it to see daily activity stats, or start a workout or health measurement, such as an electrocardiogram (ECG). Notifications are also displayed on this screen, but since it is only 0.63in, you’ll be waiting a while for a message to scroll across.

There’s a dial on the bottom half of the watch that shows progress towards your step goal. I’d prefer the option to show progress towards another goal like active minutes or calories, since steps feel a bit old hat, but people do like steps.

The ScanWatch 2 has a 5ATM waterproof rating, so you can be confident taking it swimming or into the shower, and also has a optical heart rate sensor and an altimeter. It can measure your skin temperature, take an ECG and track blood oxygen saturation—features that separate the ScanWatch 2 from the cheaper ScanWatch Light.

Health and Activity Tracking

The ScanWatch 2 tracks steps, calories, elevation and distance throughout each day, along with your heart rate and skin temperature. The skin temperature tracking is a new feature for the watch, and shows your temperature zones during workouts plus variations on your normal baseline, which you can see on a dial on the watch.

There’s more to come here, including temperature zones throughout the day and recovery temperature after a workout, which Withings says will arrive late in 2024. I also hope Withings makes it easier to track the temperature readings over time because it’s not readily available in the app yet. I had COVID while wearing the watch and a fever of 102°F, but I couldn’t see my temperature over time in the app—something I could do when I had COVID while wearing an Apple Watch.

The watch can take ECG and SpO2 (blood oxygen) measurements, and you can set high and low heart rate notifications. Irregular heart rate notifications will also be available in the future, as with overnight heart rate variability. That the watch launched without these features isn’t great, especially heart rate variability, which Withings says has been delayed until the end of 2024. It’s a feature already widely available on other sports watches and fitness trackers.

I found step tracking was accurate on the ScanWatch 2, or at least comparable to the results I got from the Garmin Epix Pro sports watch on my other wrist. The Withings tended to underestimate steps, but not by much.

Sleep Tracking

Aside from the lack of HRV tracking, the ScanWatch 2 is a good sleep tracker that offers plenty of detail on your night’s rest. This includes a graph of your sleep stages and a rating of the depth, regularity and duration of your sleep, as well as seeing your overnight blood oxygen saturation. You can track any breathing disturbances you experience in the night, but turning this on reduces battery life.

It’s hard to be sure about sleep tracking accuracy, but the ScanWatch 2 was hit and miss for me. There were many nights it tallied up well with the reading of an Oura ring, which I rate highly for accuracy, but the ScanWatch 2 regularly overestimated how well I slept. Nights when I was disturbed by my baby, and one when I stayed up late socializing, both got too high a rating, and the night when I had a fever with COVID went untracked by the watch.

The ScanWatch 2 is a good sleep tracker overall, yet the lack of more detailed recovery tracking using HRV is a shame on a health-focused watch such as this. It feels like an area where Withings could compete with the likes of Whoop and Oura, but perhaps it would hit the battery life on the watch too hard to do more comprehensive sleep tracking.

Sports Tracking

You can track workouts on the ScanWatch 2 by starting them manually, which means you can then see live stats during your session, though these are not easy to scroll through and read on the small screen. There’s no built-in GPS for outdoor activities, though if you start the workout on the watch manually and carry your phone with you, it will use your phone’s GPS for distance and pace tracking and provide a map of your activity afterwards. The watch detects and tracks workouts automatically.

The heart rate tracking during workouts was almost always incorrect, unfortunately, especially during runs where the readings were too high compared with a chest strap heart rate monitor. 

It’s not a watch that keen athletes will use to record and guide their training, because its sports tracking is basic. The automatic tracking is handy to have running in the background as a general record of your activities, though it often said I had gone for a cycle when I’d been pushing a stroller.

You get a VO2 max estimate from the ScanWatch 2, which the watch calls your fitness level, and the body temperature readings during workouts are mildly interesting at first, though I quickly stopped checking them. If I was training in a much hotter country than the UK they may be more useful for ensuring you don’t spend too long in the “high” temperature zone, rather than in the “warming up” or “performance” zones.

Battery Life

Long battery life is a central selling point of Withings’ watches, and the ScanWatch 2 delivers on this front. The 30-day listed battery life seems achievable. I only had to charge it once in six weeks with fairly heavy use—although there are a lot of features that will see that number come down significantly. If you turn on the breathing tracking at night it reduces the battery life, as does turning on notifications with vibrations. If you track a lot of workouts on the watch, rather than using the automatic activity recognition, it reduces battery life to more like 10-15 days, though this is still impressive.

Smart Features

There aren’t many smart features on the ScanWatch 2, which is unsurprising given the small screen and long battery life. You get notifications from your phone and can choose the exact apps that send these to your watch, which is useful, but there are no music controls, NFC payments or even a weather forecast.

Is The Withings ScanWatch 2 Worth It?

The Withings ScanWatch 2 is the best hybrid smartwatch, but there are cheaper options that offer most of its key features for less, such as the Garmin Vivomove series—which includes watches that are better sports trackers—and Withings’ ScanWatch Light. 

Those watches don’t offer the advanced health tracking of the ScanWatch 2, though, which are probably of more use on a hybrid watch than sports tracking. If you want the latter then you’re better off getting one of the best sports watches with a bigger screen and built-in GPS.

It’s a similar story if you want real smarts. The ScanWatch 2 doesn’t get close to matching the features of the best fitness smartwatches, like the Apple Watch Series 9, which has an app store, NFC payments and music storage.

The ScanWatch 2 doesn’t try to compete on those fronts, of course, but it’s just a way to show that it’s a niche watch with appeal only to those who want the analogue look. Within that niche, it’s the best you can get, but it’s not without problems, not least the fact that Withings launched it without many advertised features that have still not arrived on the watch.

Garmin has today announced the release of a chest strap heart rate monitor that’s designed for women. The Garmin HRM-Fit clips to the underband so you can wear it with your favorite running bra.

It’s an important development because electrocardiogram (ECG) chest strap heart rate monitors are much more accurate than the optical wrist monitors found in even the best sports watches, but wearing one with a sports bra is a less-than-ideal arrangement. Wearing two tight bands around the ribcage is a recipe for friction and discomfort. “Whichever way I tried it was annoying,” says ultra runner Rhalou Allerhand about her attempts to wear a chest strap.

While there are sports bras that have built-in connections for ECG heart rate monitors, they’re few and far between. MyZone sells a sports bra that’s compatible with several of its HRMs, but the bra only offers medium support and comes in basic sizes (S-XL) with no adjustability to the shoulder straps. A heart rate monitor that works with any sports bra means you can prioritize getting the right fit.

The Garmin HRM-Fit uses three anchor points to clip onto the underband of any medium- or high-support bra, and transmits your heart rate data to the device of your choice, whether that’s a running watch, cycling computer or a connected cardio machine such as a treadmill or spin bike. There’s no limit to the number of ANT connections, and it can have three Bluetooth connections.

The Garmin HRM-Fit can also measure your heart rate variability, which can indicate if you’re getting ill or overtraining. The monitor tracks running dynamics like cadence and vertical oscillation, as well as tracking running pace and distance, on indoor as well as outdoor runs.

While we haven’t tested this HRM yet, Coach’s senior writer Nick Harris-Fry found the Garmin HRM Pro Plus to be accurate at tracking heart rate and liked the extra running stats tracked, although as with the HRM-Fit these extra stats only work with a compatible Garmin watch.

The HRM-Fit has a 3ATM waterproof rating so it can be used for swimming, with the device storing your data and sending it to compatible devices afterward. 

Garmin says the coin battery will last a year of daily use and you won’t need a screwdriver to change it, it opens with a coin.

The HRM-Fit has a suggested retail price of $149.99 in the US and £139.99 in the UK. That’s a little more expensive than Garmin’s HRM Pro Plus ($129.99 / £119.99), and quite a lot more than most other HRMs on the market. 

If you’re looking for a cheaper alternative that’s almost as accurate and won’t argue with your sports bra, consider the armband-style optical monitors worn on the upper arm such as the Coros Heart Rate Monitor, which features in Coach’s recommendations of the best heart rate monitors.

Launched four years ago, the Garmin Swim 2 was the brand’s second attempt at a dedicated swimming watch. As well as a sleeker, more contemporary design and a color screen, it added cycling, running and cardio tracking—making it an attractive option for swimmers looking to dabble in cross-training without investing in a triathlon watch.

Its specs made it look like it could challenge its significantly more expensive rivals. As well as recording and logging swimming metrics in the pool or open water (via GPS), it tracked general fitness such as steps and calories burned like the best of them, while offering features (phone notifications, calendar reminders) common on other smartwatches.

But, years on from its release, does it still hold its own among the best swimming watches or has it been knocked into the slow lane by newer, flashier alternatives?

Garmin Swim 2: Price And Availability

The Garmin Swim 2 was released in October 2019 and costs $249 in the US and £219.99 in the UK. The next cheapest smartwatch in Garmin’s range that features similar pool and open-water swimming capabilities is the Instinct 2 ($299.99/£249.99), while its most affordable triathlon watch is the Garmin Forerunner 255 ($349.99/£299.99). The Coros Pace 3 and Polar Ignite 3 offer a multisport alternative for a similar price.

How I Tested This Watch

I’ve used the Garmin Swim 2 as my main watch for four weeks, which has included two 1,500-2,000m swims a week in a 50m lido and 25m indoor pool. I also tested the Swim 2 in open water and put its workout functions through their paces while completing pool-based drills and training sessions. I have experience with some of the best triathlon watches, including the Garmin Forerunner 955 Solar, which I used alongside the Garmin Swim 2 to check its accuracy.

Set-Up And Design

The Swim 2 has a 1.04in glass color display enclosed in a robust plastic case with a silicone strap. While on the small side compared to other smartwatches and fitness trackers, its bright backlight makes the screen easy to see at a glance, and it’s also clear when used in the pool.

You navigate the watch using five buttons that are on the sides of its base. Each button performs a different function in general smartwatch mode and during an activity, and while it is quite intuitive, there are small labels on the screen to make its functionality that bit easier.

As with other Garmin watches and bike computers, setting up is straightforward. Out of the box, you’re prompted to download the Garmin Connect app (available on Google Play and the Apple App Store) and connect to your smartphone via Bluetooth. From here, it’s possible to set up preferences, such as Do Not Disturb timings (the hours when you won’t receive notifications on the watch), while Garmin Connect is also the place where you’ll be able to delve into activities and keep track of your general fitness metrics and sleep score.

Swimming Features

The Swim 2 is packed with all the swimming features you could possibly want. Distance, pace, stroke count, stroke type and SWOLF (score that measures your swimming efficiency) can be displayed on the watch mid-activity and analyzed post-swim, while the built-in heart rate monitor logs the intensity of effort and how hard you’re working.

In practice, the Swim 2 correctly analyzed the type and number of strokes when I was swimming lengths, but it wasn’t 100% accurate on distance and, therefore, pace. On several occasions when completing a general endurance-focused swim, it over-estimated the number of lengths I’d swum, slightly skewing the average and fastest paces in the process. While this is an issue I’ve encountered with the Garmin Forerunner 955, I expected closer to 100% accuracy from a dedicated swimming watch.

When completing drills or equipment-based sessions, the Swim 2 fared much better. After syncing a workout I’d created via the Garmin Connect app, the watch seamlessly took me through the steps during each stage and at no point cut an interval short. In open water, it appeared to log activities accurately via its built-in GPS (well, as accurately as the Garmin Forerunner 955), and the only issue I found was the drain this caused on the battery. When used for pool swims, the Swim 2 lasted around a week between charges, though open-water swims required more frequent charging.

Fitness Tracking And General Features

One of the biggest upgrades to the Swim 2 over its predecessor was the addition of running, cycling and cardio logging. In testing, it was fine for the basics, but fell short on the more advanced metrics that you’d get on a multi-sport watch, or even a newer smartwatch.

For running and cycling it tracked heart rate, distance and pace/speed in line with the Garmin Forerunner 955, but the inability to add a power meter as another sensor limits its multi-sport potential. Also, it doesn’t have a separate triathlon activity mode, which means you’d have to get creative with the watch if you wanted to use it for an event.

Its general features are passable compared with other, newer models. Smartphone syncing is limited to messages and calendar notifications (no Garmin Pay here), while its small screen makes it more of a pager than something you could read a full email on.

Is The Garmin Swim 2 Worth It?

The Garmin Swim 2 does what it’s designed to do well, will elevate your swimming training to new data-fueled heights, and has the benefit of the user-friendly Garmin Connect interface. 

At its price, the Swim 2 is an affordable option relative to the rest of Garmin’s range, particularly if you’re only after a way of tracking time in the pool or open water.

Unfortunately, its general fitness and smartwatch features haven’t aged well outside the water, and I’d want more from a modern smartwatch—particularly with cross-training on my workout agenda. You’ll get more for your money by plumping for the new Coros Pace 3 or Garmin Instinct 2.

The Garmin Fenix 7 Pro and Epix Pro are among the best sports watches available, and sit at the top of Garmin’s impressive range. They are also fairly new watches, having only come out in late May this year, so it was a pleasant surprise to find them included in the Garmin Black Friday sale reduced by $200.

It’s even more surprising that Garmin is still offering the deal as part of its holiday sale, and if you’re planning on being incredibly generous this Christmas, one of the Fenix or Epix would make for an outstanding gift for runners or other keen athletes (although it will arrive after December 25th, but no-one receiving a watch this good is in a position to complain). In Garmin’s sale you can get $200 off the standard Fenix 7 and Fenix 7 Pro ranges, as well as the Epix Pro range.

• Need help deciding between the two? My Garmin Fenix 7 Vs Garmin Fenix 7 Pro comparison will help.

• I put these two watches head to head in my Garmin Fenix 7 Pro vs Garmin Epix Pro 2 face-off.

The best value to be found is in the standard Fenix 7 range, which has the same software features as the Pro watches, though lacks the built-in flashlight (aside from the larger Fenix 7X) and improved heart rate monitor you get on the Fenix 7 Pro range. The Pro watches also have multi-band GPS as standard, while it’s only available on sapphire Fenix 7 watches. 

Garmin has not reduced the standard Epix 2 watch unfortunately, which would be the cheaper alternative to the Epix Pro and was available for just $449.99 at Amazon during the Black Friday sales. However, you can get the sapphire titanium version of the Epix 2 in the sale for $599.99, and this is the model that has multi-band GPS.

The $300 saving is an even bigger saving than the $200 you get on other watches in Garmin’s sale, and Walmart has topped this deal by offering the white Epix 2 sapphire model for $579.99, a $320 saving on its listed price.

There’s no disputing that the Apple Watch Ultra 2 is one of the best sports watches available, and the Apple Watch Series 9 is among the top fitness smartwatches. That’s partly down to Apple continuing to update the software on the watches to improve its sports features.

One of the major updates in watchOS 10 was Apple opening up the native Workout app to third parties, so it’s possible to sync structured workouts from other platforms to the Workout app to use with an Apple Watch.

When Apple announced the feature, one of the services Apple chose to illustrate the possibilities this change opened up was TrainingPeaks, and for good reason. TrainingPeaks is an advanced and incredibly popular training platform, used by tens of thousands of coaches to set plans for their clients, and many more athletes who use the workout builder and training analysis tools TrainingPeaks provides.

The TrainingPeaks integration with Apple Watch is now live, and I have been testing it out for a week ahead of its launch. I’m a keen runner who has worked with a coach for several years, but this is the first time I’ve used TrainingPeaks (although I have experienced its training analysis before because Suunto uses it in its watches, such as the Suunto Race).

At first, TrainingPeaks can feel a little overwhelming. The user interface isn’t the most elegant and not especially intuitive. Once you get your eye in, however, keen athletes will welcome the depth of features available.

If you manage your own training load you can create all your workouts on TrainingPeaks, fine-tuned to the last details, using targets based on things like your heart rate, power or threshold pace zones.

These workouts can now be set to automatically (or manually) sync over to the Apple Watch, where they appear in the Workout app as a structured workout. On the day you’ve planned to do the workout it will appear at the top of the app, and you can also see upcoming and past workouts from TrainingPeaks in the Workout app. Tap the workout to start and follow it exactly as if you were following a structured workout created in Apple’s app.

When I tested the integration I could send running and cycling workouts over, and in time you’ll be able to do this with any sports profile in the Workout app that allows structured workouts. Notably this doesn’t currently include swimming, so you won’t be able to send swimming workouts from TrainingPeaks.

The integration with TrainingPeaks means that it’s now much easier to use the Apple Watch with one of the most sophisticated training platforms out there and will help the Apple Watch Ultra 2 in particular continue to establish itself as a rival to top sports watches like the Garmin Fenix 7.

One area where Apple does not attempt to compete with sports brands directly is through training analysis, and so linking up the watch to TrainingPeaks, which does extensive training analysis, adds an important and useful feature to the watch.

You can also find coaches and training plans on the platform to guide your training, in which case the scheduled workouts will automatically fill your calendar and be sent to the Apple Watch to follow each day.

You will need a premium account on TrainingPeaks to get the most from the service, which costs $19.95 a month or $124.99 a year, but there is a 14-day free trial you can try first. If you have an Apple Watch and are a keen runner or triathlete, it’s definitely worth trying this out to see if the extra tools and analysis you get from TrainingPeaks will improve your sports tracking experience on the watch.

The combination of value and accuracy makes the 4iiii Viiiiva one of the best heart rate monitors, and it goes above and beyond with a clever bridging feature, which transmits ANT+ signals from other devices through a Bluetooth connection.

While its battery life is subpar compared with newer devices, the 4iiii Viiiiva is still worth considering as one of the best cheap heart rate monitors, even if you don’t need the bridging feature.

4iiii Viiiiva Heart Rate Monitor: Price And Availability

The 4iiii Viiiiva originally launched in 2012 and it is testament to the quality of the monitor that you can still buy it today. The price has dropped in that time and the list price of the 4iiii Viiiiva is now $49.99/£49.99.

How I Tested This Heart Rate Monitor

I have been wearing the 4iiii Viiiiva to track my workouts for several weeks, either by itself or at the same time as wearing the Polar H10 chest strap to check the Viiiiva’s accuracy. I have used it mostly for running, along with a couple of strength sessions.

Design

The 4iiii Viiiiva is a lightweight sensor with a plastic main unit that clips into an adjustable fabric strap, with the pod acting as the fastener for the strap. The sensor uses a CR2032 battery and connects to other devices through both Bluetooth and ANT+. It can only support one Bluetooth connection at a time, whereas many heart rate straps can now support two or three.

Once the sensor is clipped into place it’s easy to pair it to another device, though you don’t get any sound or light signal from the pod itself to indicate it’s connected. The strap can be adjusted from 23in to 52in (57-132cm) and I found once you set the desired length it stays in place reliably and comfortably during long workouts.

The Viiiiva has an IPX7 waterproof rating and can be used to track your heart rate during swimming since it is waterproof to depths of 3m and can store workout data in its internal memory to download later. 

The internal storage can log up to 65 hours of heart rate data in .fit files you can download from the partner app. If you connect other sensors like power meters to the Viiiiva it will record that data too (though this reduces the number of hours it can store), which makes it a handy back-up in case your watch or bike computer crashes or runs out of battery during a workout.

Sports Performance

For all its clever tricks the 4iiii Viiiiva wouldn’t be much use if it wasn’t an accurate heart rate monitor, so I’m happy to report it has been flawless throughout my testing. It reliably logged the same heart rate as the Polar H10, which I have found to be the most accurate HRM available through years of testing.

I did several hard interval runs wearing both the 4iiii Viiiiva and the Polar H10 connected to different watches. Both during the sessions and when looking at the heart rate graph afterward, I did not see any differences in the readings of the two HRMs.

During the weeks I used the 4iiii Viiiiva I was able to link it to a variety of watches and apps easily, though the fact it only connects to one Bluetooth device at a time meant I had to disconnect it from one to link it to another. It also means if you’re using the Viiiiva with a Bluetooth-only sports watch and Zwift on a Bluetooth-only device at the same time, only the watch or Zwift can show your heart rate.

ANT+ Bridging Feature

While ANT+ bridging is not a feature I need, it’s something that will be invaluable to some and it’s the chief reason to choose the 4iiii Viiiiva over other heart rate monitors.

To use the feature, connect the 4iiii Viiiiva to the partner app, link ANT+ devices to the heart rate monitor in there and then broadcast to an external device. 

When the 4iiii Viiiiva originally launched, its ability to link ANT+ devices to Bluetooth ones was a much bigger deal. Since then Bluetooth connectivity has become a standard feature on sports sensors.

However, the bridging feature still has its uses, notably for anyone with an older sensor or indoor bike trainer that uses ANT+ only. One other use for the bridging feature is that it can bundle several ANT+ signals up into one Bluetooth signal, which is useful when connecting to Zwift or other apps on a device that can handle only two Bluetooth signals, such as Apple TV.

Battery Life

4iiii says the Viiiiva will last up to 160 hours on one battery, which is significantly less than most HRMs that use coin batteries. The Polar H10 lasts 400 hours on a coin battery, for example, and the Wahoo TICKR lasts 500.

I found the battery drained faster than this 160-hour estimate. You can see the battery life of your device in the partner app and mine has dropped to 64% after around 30-40 hours of use.

Is The 4iiii Viiiiva Worth It?

The 4iiii Viiiiva is an accurate heart rate monitor at a great price and if you have a use for the bridging feature then buy it. If not, you can get accurate heart rate monitors for less, such as the Coospo H9Z, which has a rechargeable battery and can handle two Bluetooth connections at once, though it can’t store workouts or track swimming.

If you upgrade to more expensive models such as the Polar H10 and Garmin HRM-Pro Plus you get longer battery life and more comfortable straps, and some extra features like running technique stats on the Garmin, but you don’t get a more accurate device for your money.

The Suunto Race is the best sports watch Suunto has made and the best alternative to Garmin at the top end of the market. It’s an excellent watch, which looks good thanks to the AMOLED display, has accurate multi-band GPS and color maps, and great battery life for an AMOLED watch.

Garmin’s best AMOLED watches like the Forerunner 965 and Epix 2 have notable advantages over the Race, but Suunto has priced the watch so it comes in cheaper than significant rivals like the Garmins and the recently-released Polar Vantage V3. It’s one of the best sports watches available, and you’ll be hard pressed to find better at its price without looking at older models.

Suunto Race: Price And Availability

The Suunto Race launched in October 2023 and in the US costs $449 for the steel model, and $549 for the titanium watch. In the UK it’s £389/£479. It’s cheaper than the Suunto Vertical (from $629/£545) despite having the same software and a brighter AMOLED display, and also costs less than its main rivals, the Polar Vantage V3 and Garmin Forerunner 965.

How I Tested This Watch

I’ve been testing the Race titanium model for a month, using it to track around 220 miles of running in that time, as well as workouts like strength and yoga sessions, along with my daily activity and sleep. During the test, I’ve also worn the Polar Vantage V3, Garmin Forerunner 965 and Garmin Epix Pro to compare the watches. I have also tested the Suunto Vertical and a range of the best sports watches from all brands.

Design And Hardware

The Race is a big watch, with a 49mm case that is 13.3mm deep. It sits well on the wrist, though, and the titanium model I tested is light at 69g (the stainless steel watch is 83g). Both models have a glass fiber reinforced plastic case and a sapphire crystal display, with the difference being the bezel and back case material.

There are two designs in the range: the all-black steel watch and the black-and-silver titanium watch, which both come with 22mm silicone straps that can be easily swapped for other designs and materials. The use of sapphire screens and a titanium bezel helps the Race stand out at its price—these durable materials usually cost a lot more, and the Race is hardier than the Forerunner 965 and Vantage V3.

The bezel has attractive detailing on the edges, though the star of the show with regards to design is the 1.43in AMOLED touchscreen display. This is bright and clear to read in all conditions, including bright sunlight, and makes using the maps on the watch easier.

You can set the screen to always-on, though all it displays in that mode is the time—in contrast with Garmin and Apple watches, where you can still see dimmed data in always-on mode. Suunto is also yet to make full use of the screen by adding in brighter, more interesting watch faces, and you can’t click through to the full widgets for things like weather by tapping on the main face, which you can do with Garmin and Polar watches.

However, my main complaint with the screen is that it lags in waking when you turn your wrist. At first, it took a second or two to wake up, which feels like an eternity compared with the speed of the Apple Watch or Garmin’s AMOLED watches. Fortunately, Suunto has improved this with a recent software update. It’s still slower than other devices to wake, but the Race is no longer annoying me on this front.

There are three buttons on the right side of the watch, with one being a digital dial. Navigating the menus is easy using either the buttons or the touchscreen, and I didn’t have significant lag when doing this throughout testing.

The Race offers multi-band GPS and tracks your blood oxygen saturation and heart rate variability overnight. It also tracks your heart rate 24/7, has an altimeter, and is waterproof to 100m. You can pair external sensors via Bluetooth, but not ANT+.

Sports Tracking And Training Analysis

The Race is a comprehensive sports tracker and offers a high level of detail when tracking running, cycling and swimming in particular. There’s nothing drastically wrong with its tracking, but there are things Suunto does that are confusing, and annoying, compared with other brands. One is that what are usually native features—like structured workouts or a hill climb screen—are treated as apps or guides with Suunto, and you can only use two apps or one guide with each workout, rather than using them all concurrently, which you can do when these are native features with Garmin or Polar.

You also can’t customize the existing sports modes on the watch, only create new ones, which means you have to add an extra running mode to see the stats you want rather than just tweaking the running mode already there. Again, this is different from every other brand.

Another frustration is that when pairing external sensors these are named by their type, so “heart rate sensor”, rather than giving the details on which sensor that is like, eg Polar H10. It can also pair only one sensor of each type. Once again, you can get by with this approach, but it makes life harder than when using a Garmin or Polar.

Suunto’s training analysis is powered by TrainingPeaks and shows your training load over the past 42 days (chronic training load or CTL) and your seven-day load (acute training load or ATL), which are based on the training stress score (TSS) of each workout you do. Your CTL is also called your Fitness in the app, while the CTL is your Fatigue, and the balance of these is called your training stress balance (TSB). You want your TSB to be productive to get fitter, or at least be maintaining fitness, as opposed to going too hard.

It’s confusing at first—unless you’ve used TrainingPeaks before—but for all the acronyms and names, it’s fairly simple and useful training analysis once you get used to it. You can see the key details of your training analysis on the watch, or get more detail and graphs in the Suunto app.

The Race also tracks heart rate variability at night, which you can use to judge the state of your body, though it doesn’t have a readiness stat like Garmin, or suggest workouts. It will estimate your VO2 max and give race predictions, which will hopefully be more accurate the longer you use the watch. Mine are still quite wrong after a month of use.

One other concern I have about the sports tracking is that the watch simply stopped tracking two workouts during the month I used it. One happened to be a 10K race, and it was incredibly annoying that the watch ended the workout unprompted at around 5.5km. This hasn’t happened in the last two weeks and I don’t think it’s a problem other reviewers have experienced, so I don’t believe it to be a widespread or long-term issue, but it is worth mentioning.

GPS And HR Accuracy

The Suunto Vertical introduced multi-band GPS to Suunto’s range, and it was an accurate watch on that front. The same is true of the Race, which has barely put a foot wrong on GPS tracking throughout the month I’ve been using it. The pace and distance have been accurate, as far as I can tell, and the GPS traces show few errors, and only mild ones at that.

I’ve compared it with the reliable Garmin Epix Pro and Forerunner 965 in that time, and the Race has matched them for accuracy, while outperforming the Polar Vantage V3. It’s up there with the best multi-band watches available. The heart rate tracking, however, has been poor. This has not just been during workouts, when I find most optical heart rate sensors can go wrong, but I’ve also noticed incorrect heart rate readings on the Race throughout the day. 

During workouts I’d advise using an external heart rate sensor for more accurate data, especially if you have any interest in using the training analysis on the watch. There’s not much you can do outside workouts, but at least then the Race has not been wildly wrong, and the overnight HRV readings have been in line with the data from the Polar Vantage V3 and other watches.

Most sports watches struggle to be consistently accurate when using the optical heart rate sensors alone, but the Race is worse than others. The sensor seems more basic than the ones on Garmin and Polar watches, with fewer LEDs, which perhaps help save power but reduces accuracy.

Navigation

Your navigation journey with the Race begins with spending a long time downloading the maps you need over Wi-Fi. Adding just a couple of areas near me in England took an hour, as did adding Scotland when I went on the trip there—so make sure you do it in advance of any trips rather than relying on hotel Wi-Fi.

Once the maps are on the watch you can create routes in the Suunto app or import them from elsewhere and follow them on the watch. If you toggle on turn-by-turn directions in the app those will flash up during routes though, even if you don’t, a blue arrow on your route shows where you’re going next.

The maps are bright and clear on the AMOLED screen, and while they’re not routable maps, like on Garmin, which allow you to create routes on the fly rather than just overlaying a trail on the map, I had no problems following directions with the Race. There is an elevation screen that shows the overall profile of your route during a workout, which is useful, though not as impressive as Garmin’s ClimbPro feature, which guides you through each individual climb and descent on your route.

Activity And Sleep Tracking

The Race logs your steps and calories and also monitors your “resources”, which is essentially an estimation of your energy levels based on sleep and activity. The fitness tracking is a minor feature on the watch relative to sports, but the data is there if you want it. There is more to the sleep tracking, which monitors your sleep stages as well as blood oxygen and heart rate variability overnight. It shows a seven-day rolling average plotted against your personal baseline, which takes 14 nights to establish, to monitor your recovery. This picked up periods where I was less recovered very well.

The Race is the first Suunto to track HRV and it does it well. It was accurate during my testing and shows information that can help guide your training in estimating your recovery status. The sleep tracking also seems accurate in gauging when I was awake and when I wasn’t, though it misses periods of time awake in the night on occasion (which may not be a problem if you don’t have a young child).

Smart Features

Despite the AMOLED display, the Suunto is not a smartwatch, and lags behind what you get from Garmin, in that it doesn’t store music or offer NFC payments. It does show notifications, and has music controls and a weather forecast, and you can use the latter during workouts, which is useful to have on long and adventurous activities.

A few small things could be improved to make the Race feel “smarter”, even if adding music and NFC payments is unlikely. For one, it’s great to be able to tap data on the watch face to then see full widgets, which you can do with Polar and Garmin devices. More watch face customisation would be a strong addition to make better use of the AMOLED display.

Battery Life

The Race offers outstanding battery life for an AMOLED watch. Suunto lists it as offering up to 12 days of use with 24/7 tracking enabled, which drops to seven days with the always-on screen. You get 40 hours of GPS tracking in the most accurate mode using multi-band GPS, which is extraordinary—even the larger Garmin Epix Pro 51mm only lasts 30 hours in multi-band mode.

During my testing, the Race lasted seven days on a charge with the screen set to always-on, running almost every day and with notifications coming in. That’s around the same as the Garmin Forerunner 965 and slightly less than the Epix Pro 51mm, though the Race will last longer than both of those when tracking an individual activity and will suit people tackling multi-day events well. It also easily outperforms the Polar Vantage V3 on battery life.

Is The Suunto Race Worth It?

The Suunto Race is outstanding value for the materials used and the quality of the sports tracking, as long as you’re happy to link to an external heart rate sensor. It doesn’t match the breadth and depth of the features you get on top Garmins, but comes in cheaper and the build quality matches up to sapphire models of the Epix and Fenix range.

You could pay more to get the Forerunner 965, which I think is a better watch with extra smart features, a slightly sleeker design and more impressive navigation tools and training analysis. But the Race has a more durable design and matches the Garmin on the most important sports tracking features.

The most significant competition to the watch could be older Garmin watches in sales, especially the Garmin Epix 2, which dropped as low as $449.99 in the recent Garmin Black Friday sales. Garmin still has the edge on many fronts, so at the same price I’d get one of its top AMOLED watches with maps, but on MSRP there’s no doubt the Race is worth considering, and it bodes well for Suunto’s future that it has produced such a great watch at this price.

Even the best Polar watches have fallen short of the standards set by Garmin in recent years, and Coros’s watches have also caught up with and then overhauled Polar’s. So Polar needed to aim high with the Vantage V3. It has duly done that, making an AMOLED watch with features including maps and multi-band GPS.

The Polar Vantage V3 is one of the best sports watches and certainly the best Polar has made, though I wish the price wasn’t so high. For the money the Garmin Forerunner 965 is simply a better watch with more features, while the new Suunto Race is also an excellent AMOLED sports watch and is much cheaper (£100+ cheaper) than the Vantage V3.

Polar Vantage V3 Review: Price And Availability

The Polar Vantage V3 launched in October 2023 and costs $599.90 in the US and £519 in the UK. The price has risen compared with the Vantage V2, which cost $499.99/£449 at launch, which is justifiable considering the V3 is a major upgrade on the V2. However, what’s a concern is the fact the V3 is the same price as the Garmin Forerunner 965 in the US (though cheaper in the UK), and more expensive than the Suunto Race, which is $449/£389 for the steel version.

How I Tested This Sports Watch

I’ve been testing the Polar Vantage V3 for a month, during which time I used two watches because the screen on the first had a problem. During the month, I tested the Vantage V3 against other top sports watches including the Suunto Race and Garmin Epix Pro, and I’ve also tested most of Polar’s range in the past, including previous Vantage generations. Here’s my Polar Vantage V2 review and Polar Vantage review.

Design And Hardware

Garmin has shown with the Epix Pro, Forerunner 965 and Forerunner 265 watches that it’s possible to make brilliant sports watches with AMOLED displays without the battery life suffering too much, so it was inevitable other brands would follow suit. 

Polar’s first AMOLED watch was the Ignite 3, but the Vantage V3 should be seen as its first proper sports watch with an AMOLED display—and it’s fantastic. The 1.39in touchscreen is bright and clear in all conditions, and responded quickly to touches and swipes during my testing. You can set the screen to always-on, although this just shows a basic analogue watch face rather than a dimmer version of your chosen watch face.

In general, the watch is attractive and lightweight, weighing 57g with the silicone band it comes with. It has an aluminum case and bezel that you can get in black or silver, and has five buttons for navigating features, if you prefer to use them instead of the touchscreen.

Polar has upgraded the GPS chip and heart rate sensor on the watch compared with the Vantage V2. The V3 has multi-band GPS, which should result in more accuracy (though it didn’t with the Polar Ignite 3’s multi-band), and has a new Gen 4 optical heart rate sensor, also aimed at increasing accuracy. Other new sensors allow the watch to take electrocardiogram (ECG) readings (though it’s not certified as a medical device) and measure your skin temperature and blood oxygen saturation. 

The Vantage V3 is waterproof to 50m and has a barometric altimeter. You can pair external sensors to the watch using Bluetooth, but not ANT+.

Sports Tracking And Training Analysis

For all the watch’s new features, the sports tracking and training analysis remains the same as on the Vantage V2. While a few updates would have been welcomed—you can show only four stats on a data screen during activities and the structured workout builder is clumsy compared with those of Garmin, Suunto and Coros—it’s still an excellent multisport watch.

Most sports modes you could want are available, with the notable exception of a proper track run mode, which is available on Garmin, Coros and the Apple Watch and uses algorithms to log more accurate distance and pace when running on a 400m track. The Polar track mode just uses GPS, so it isn’t as accurate on a tight loop like a track. 

Your data feeds into Polar’s detailed training and recovery analysis. You can use the sleep tracking on the watch to supplement your recovery advice through Nightly Recharge, or take orthostatic tests each day using the Recovery Pro feature. These tests used to require the use of a heart rate chest strap but can now be done on the watch using the ECG hardware. You can’t use Recovery Pro as well as Nightly Recharge to judge your recovery; the watch makes you choose. I prefer the automatic Nightly Recharge feature as opposed to making time to take the tests regularly.

It takes a few weeks for the training analysis to be useful, as the Vantage V3 needs time to get used to how much you train. There are graphs and details of your training load in the Polar Flow app, and there’s a widget on the watch giving basic information, plus more detail on the Polar Flow website. I’d prefer more info on the watch, but others will enjoy diving into their stats on a website.

GPS And HR Accuracy

The addition, in recent years, of multi-band GPS to sports watches has resulted in the most accurate trackers ever, but not all multi-band is created equal. Garmin and Suunto devices with multi-band are highly accurate. The Polar Ignite 3, however, was not.

Fortunately, Polar has fixed this with the Vantage V3, which is the most accurate Polar watch I’ve tested. Throughout my testing I compared it with the Garmin Epix Pro and Suunto Race and while I’d say the Polar made a few more errors than those watches—smoothing corners or veering of course more often—it’s still an accurate GPS tracker. 

The heart rate accuracy wasn’t good for me, however. I saw significant errors on most runs, with readings both higher and lower than that on a chest strap. This skews the training analysis you get from the watch, and your activity tracking, so I eventually paired a Polar H10 to the Vantage V3 for improved accuracy.

Navigation

The Vantage V3 has color maps which you can use offline once you’ve loaded them onto the watch. To do this you need to download the areas of the world you want on the Polar Flow website and then drag and drop them on the watch. It’s complicated, but you won’t need to do it often and it’s faster than downloading them wirelessly because map files are large—the Vantage V3 has 32GB of storage to accommodate them.

Once they’re on the watch you can add maps to any activity that uses GPS, and you see a map screen among your data screens. Strangely, you don’t see a track of where you’ve been in an activity unless you have a route loaded. With any other brand that has maps, a trail is laid, which can be handy for retracing your steps; with Polar you just see a pointer to show where you are at that moment. Hopefully, this is something Polar will add to the watch in due course.

To add routes you need to get them into the Polar Flow app or website and then select them as a favorite you want to see on the watch. You can manually add any route created with a third-party app or website, but if you want turn-by-turn directions you need to use Komoot, which syncs routes automatically across to Polar.

I used several routes on the watch, with and without turn-by-turn directions, and it is easy to follow them with the maps on the bright AMOLED display. The watch also shows the elevation profile for your route, though it doesn’t have anything as smart as Garmin’s ClimbPro, which analyzes each climb and descent on your route and shows them individually when you’re tackling them so you can judge your effort accordingly.

Polar doesn’t have “routable” maps like Garmin, which allow you to create routes on the fly rather than just follow trails loaded over the map, but the new navigation features are still a plus point for the Vantage V3.

Activity And Sleep Tracking

The Vantage V3 tracks the usual daily activity stats like steps, active calories and floors climbed. However, it does steps in an unusual way—any activity adds steps. So bike rides and swims, or vigorous hand waving, will add to your step target, which means the totals you get from the Vantage V3 are higher than from other watches. The watch also breaks down your calories burned by your metabolism, your general activity and any training done that day.

There are three activity levels you can set as your general goal and these are designed to suit different lifestyles, with level 1 being for mostly sedentary people and level 3 for active people. The goals are based on active time and intensity, so to hit 100% of level 2, for example, requires nine hours and 19 minutes of low-intensity activity, two hours and 48 minutes of medium intensity, or one hour and 13 minutes at high intensity.

The watch’s sleep tracking is detailed and accurate as far as I can tell, but only when it actually logs a night of rest. My sleep is broken up at the moment owing to a rambunctious six-month-old and, on several occasions, I didn’t log enough continuous sleep to get my Nightly Recharge information from Polar.

If you have a more consistent bedtime schedule, Polar’s sleep tracking is useful in the detail it provides, and more accurate than what I’ve experienced with Garmin watches. You also get a Boost From Sleep graph for the next day that shows when you’re going to have the most energy. It’s a good idea and could be used to time training sessions, although if you’re sleeping well it looks similar each day, and when not sleeping well it’s just depressing to see you have no periods with significant boost from sleep, which I had a couple of times.

Overall, I think the Vantage V3 is a good sleep and activity tracker, though it’s a shame it doesn’t have any kind of “training readiness” stat, which I find useful on Garmin watches.

Smart Features

The Polar Vantage V3 offers notifications, has a weather forecast widget, and can control music playback on a linked phone, but it’s otherwise not a smart device. There’s no music storage or NFC payments and throughout my testing it struggled to stay linked to my phone reliably, which scuppers notifications. It looks great with its AMOLED display, but if you want smarts you’re better off with Garmin, or even Coros devices, let alone true smartwatches with app stores and cellular (phone connection) like the Apple Watch.

Battery Life

With any AMOLED watch the battery life is a concern, and I found when I enabled the always-on screen and used the Vantage V3 for runs every day it lasted only three or four days on a charge. With the always-on screen turned off outside of activities, it lasts a week, but still needs charging more often than the Forerunner 965 and Suunto Race with always-on enabled on those watches.

The GPS battery life is strong at more than 40 hours, even when using the most accurate multi-band mode. This matches well to rival watches, but it’s outside activities where the Vantage V3 seems to drain much faster than watches like the Race and 965—perhaps because the more detailed sleep tracking Polar offers requires more intense use of sensors overnight.

I’d say the battery life is good enough for an AMOLED watch that does as much as the Vantage V3 in terms of sports and general activity tracking, but you can get more juice from rivals.

Is The Polar Vantage V3 Worth It?

I really enjoyed using the Polar Vantage V3 and it’s a great sports watch, but it’s also a hard sell because there’s nothing here that I think Polar does significantly better than Garmin, or Suunto with the Race watch—and you get more features on top Garmins.

With the Vantage V3 the same price as the Garmin Forerunner 965 in the US that’s an easy choice. The Garmin is a better sports tracker in my experience, and has extra features like music storage, NFC payments and improved navigation, and lasts longer on a charge.

The Suunto Race is another strong alternative with an AMOLED screen that’s cheaper even if you opt for a titanium model with a sapphire screen, which will be more durable than the materials used on the Vantage V3. The Race has its own problems but has better battery life than the Polar and more impressive GPS accuracy, and Suunto has been smart in undercutting Garmin and Polar with its pricing.

The Apple Watch Ultra 2 and Garmin Epix Pro are two of the best sports watches available, and both are reduced in the Cyber Monday sales. You can get the standard Epix Pro for $699.99 down from $899.99 at both Garmin and Amazon, while Amazon has reduced the Apple Watch Ultra 2 from $799 to $739.

Both are outstanding watches, but which should you get? I used both watches for several weeks when testing them for my reviews on Coach and have continued to use them since then. In my mind the choice will depend on how much you value the smarts of the Apple Watch versus the training analysis, battery life and navigation tools you get from the Garmin.

The Garmin Epix Pro has a bright AMOLED display and Garmin’s best smart features, including NFC payments through Garmin Pay and music storage with the ability to link up to streaming services including Spotify to wirelessly transfer your playlists across to the watch.

However, it isn’t a true smartwatch, with the Connect IQ app store being mostly limited to watch faces and data fields rather than useful third-party apps, and it doesn’t have cellular capabilities. Garmin Pay is also less easy to set up and use than Apple Pay, especially outside the USA.

The Apple Watch Ultra 2 obviously is a proper smartwatch, the best on the market in fact, with the most impressive App Store and cellular capabilities. Within the App Store you can also find loads of brilliant sports tracking and navigation apps, so while the native tracking on the watch isn’t quite as good as Garmin’s, you can get a Garmin-level experience from apps like WorkOutDoors and others.

However, what you can’t get from the Apple Watch Ultra 2 is more than two days of battery life, or the detailed training analysis you get from the Garmin Epix Pro. Garmin is also well ahead of all other watch brands with regards to its navigation tools. The Epix Pro has color maps on the watch and can create routes on the fly, or you can load routes onto it to follow from your wrist.

I used both watches side by side during testing and I’d say they are among the best watches available with regards to GPS and heart rate accuracy, with both having multi-band GPS, though on both counts I’d just give the edge to the Garmin Epix Pro as the slightly more accurate watch.

Normally the Apple Watch Ultra 2 has another advantage in being cheaper, but that has been turned on its head during the Cyber Monday sales, because the Epix Pro is reduced by $200 and comes in $40 less than the Apple Watch.

I’d say unless you really need the cellular capabilities of the Apple Watch Ultra 2 in particular, the Epix Pro is the smarter buy in the sales. It’s a little larger on the wrist than the Apple Watch Ultra 2, but the latter is not a small watch either, and as an added bonus the Epix Pro has built-in flashlight so you always have a light handy for your adventures.

The Black Friday And Cyber Monday Garmin deals started in early November this year and there have been big savings available across Garmin’s range of watches. Two surprise deals have cropped up late in the month though, a $50 discount to be had on both the Garmin Venu 3 and Garmin Vivoactive 5.

Both watches are among the newest in Garmin’s range—the Venu 3 came out in August and the Vivoactive 5 in September, so getting any kind of discount is a surprise this Cyber Monday, and the Vivoactive 5 is now just $249.99 on both Amazon and Garmin.

The Vivoactive 5 is missing a few features compared with the Venu 3, such as a microphone and speaker and an altimeter, and it also has an older heart rate sensor than the Venu 3, which is $399.99 in the sales down from $449.99. The Venu 3 also comes in two sizes and has slightly longer battery life, but the core features are the same across both watches and the Vivoactive 5 is $200 cheaper.

Neither the Venu 3 or Vivoactive 5 are true smartwatches like the Apple Watch Series 9 or Google Pixel Watch 2, both of which have access to proper app stores and have cellular models in their ranges, but they do have key smart features and better native sports tracking through Garmin. 

I have been a regular visitor to the SportsShoes website in recent days to check its Black Friday sale for deals on the best running shoes. What I did not expect to find there was the best deal available on the Garmin Forerunner 955, which is available for £359.99 down from £479.99.

The Forerunner 955 was always due to be reduced this Black Friday after the Garmin Forerunner 965 came out earlier this year, but the older watch has been updated with all of Garmin’s latest software features, and while it doesn’t have the bright AMOLED display of the 965, its LCD screen means it offers longer battery life compared with the 965. (Read my Garmin Forerunner 965 Vs Garmin Forerunner 955 comparison for more.)

It’s the best value watch for those who want Garmin's top features like maps and extensive training analysis on top of accurate and detailed sports tracking, coming in cheaper than the likes of the Garmin Fenix and Epix ranges.

Amazon currently doesn’t have a discount available on the Forerunner 955, and the cheapest I’ve found the watch elsewhere in the sales is £399.99, so you save an extra £40 at SportsShoes.

The Cyber Monday Garmin deals have been coming thick and fast throughout November, and now, as the big day is finally upon us, I hope they will build to a crescendo of savings. I’ve been hunting for deals on the Garmin Fenix in particular, with three generations of the sports watch worth looking out for in the sales.

Originally released in 2019, the Garmin Fenix 6 Pro is old, but still an excellent sports watch with maps and music storage—the standard Fenix 6 is also good, but lacks maps, which I consider a key part of the Fenix line’s appeal.

The Garmin Fenix 7 came out in early 2022 and is still up to date with all of Garmin’s software features, some of which launched with the Garmin Fenix 7 Pro in 2023 but then rolled back to the 7. 

There are some hardware differences between the Fenix 7 and 7 Pro though. The Fenix 7 Pro has a better heart rate sensor than the Fenix 7, and all sizes and versions of the Pro have built-in flashlights and multi-band GPS, whereas with the 7 only the 7X has a flashlight and only sapphire models have multi-band GPS.

All three watches—the Fenix 6 Pro, Fenix 7 and Fenix 7 Pro—are discounted in the sales, and the savings are considerable. However, this is the first Cyber Monday where deals on the Fenix 6 Pro have started to drop off, presumably because stocks are running low.

US Garmin Fenix Cyber Monday Deals

Garmin Fenix 6 Pro Cyber Monday Deals

You can get the Fenix 6 Pro for $499.99 on Amazon, or pay just $329.99 for a renewed version of the watch if you’re happy to go for a refurbished product. However, the best deal I’ve seen is on the larger Fenix 6X Pro Solar, which is reduced to $399.98 at Bass Pro.

Garmin Fenix 7 Cyber Monday Deals

The deals on the Fenix 7 are pretty standard across retailers, with Garmin leading the charge itself by knocking the price of the standard Fenix 7 model down to $449.99, which is as good a price as you’ll find anywhere. It’s worth considering upgrading to a sapphire model though, because they have more accurate multi-band GPS as well as using more durable materials. The Fenix 7 Sapphire Solar is $599.99 in sales, though for that price you can get the standard model of the Fenix 7 Pro instead if you’d rather have a built-in flashlight than a sapphire screen and titanium bezel.

Garmin Fenix 7 Pro Cyber Monday Deals

I didn’t expect the Fenix 7 Pro to be heavily discounted this year, but you can get $200 off any model in the range in the Garmin sales, or at Amazon if you prefer. That means it’s $599.99 for the standard Fenix 7 Pro, or $699.99 for a sapphire solar model with a titanium bezel.

UK Garmin Fenix Cyber Monday Deals

Garmin Fenix 7 Cyber Monday Deals

It’s a similar story with the deals available in the UK, where the Fenix 6 Pro is no longer easy to find at substantial discounts, unless you opt for a renewed model on Amazon, which means you can get a Fenix 6X Pro for £447.74. A new Fenix 6 Pro is £549.99 on Amazon, which is a lot more than you’ll pay for a Fenix 7 in the sales, and no other retailers are picking up the slack, so it’s definitely worth upgrading to a Fenix 7 at least.

You can get the standard Fenix 7 for £399 at Amazon, which is £50 cheaper than it is in Garmin’s own sale, or the larger Fenix 7X Solar model for £499.99. Finding a sapphire solar model in the sales is trickier, but Blacks has reduced the Fenix 7 Sapphire model to £579.

Garmin Fenix 7 Pro Cyber Monday Deals

Amazon and Currys have slightly undercut Garmin with their sales on the Fenix 7 Pro, which has been reduced to £629 at both retailers. However, the cheapest Fenix 7 Pro in the Cyber Monday sales is the smaller Fenix 7S Pro, which is reduced to £599 at Amazon. The smaller size means the Fenix 7S fits thinner wrists better, but you get less battery life and a smaller screen, so if you don’t mind a slightly bigger watch I’d pay the £30 extra for the Fenix 7 Pro.

The sleek and attractive Fitbit Luxe is by far the most elegant fitness tracker around. It’s also currently reduced in Amazon’s Black Friday sale—a deal that makes this tracker even more desirable than usual. 

The Luxe offers a useful combination of activity, health and sleep tracking. I wore it for my Fitbit Luxe review and found it gave me the nudge I needed to be more active every day. The AMOLED screen may be small but it’s bright and colorful, and the Luxe also has stress tracking and provides mindfulness breathing exercises that you can follow on the tracker.

UK readers will be pleased to know they can enjoy a similar saving.

Amazon gives the RRP as $129.95/£129.95 but that’s no longer true, as Fitbit now has the MSRP set at $99.95/£99.99. Regardless of the starting price, the sale price represents good value. Plus, you’ll get six months of Fitbit Premium membership included, which costs $80/£80 for a year. 

The silicon strap the Luxe comes with is comfortable and unobtrusive, but I’d opt to pair it with a stylish mesh strap, reduced to $6.39, for a more stylish look.

Fitbit is offering a bigger discount on the special edition gorjana soft gold stainless steel parker link bracelet, taking $80 off the MSRP. 

It’s a great tracker for daily activity and health stats, but the Luxe doesn’t have built-in GPS (it uses your phone’s signal), and the screen is a little small to work as a running watch. If that’s a dealbreaker but your heart is set on a Fitbit, look at the Fitbit Versa 4, currently reduced to $149 on Amazon. It’s a great all-round tracker that will track your runs and other outside activities with built-in GPS.

Keep up with the latest discounts with our coverage of the best Fitbit Black Friday deals.

Two of the best Garmin Black Friday deals this year are the discounts on the Garmin Forerunner 255 and Forerunner 245. The music versions of both watches are substantially reduced, so you can get the Forerunner 245 for $199.99 on Amazon and Forerunner 255 for $299.99 on Garmin.

Both watches are older devices, the Garmin Forerunner 265 being the newer of the two, but both the Forerunner 245 and 255 are still excellent options at their reduced prices. 

The Forerunner 245 hasn’t received new features via software updates from Garmin in a while, but it still offers accurate and detailed sports tracking and some training analysis. It also has breadcrumb navigation and music storage, and lasted me a week on a charge quite reliably even when running every day.

Naturally the Garmin Forerunner 255 is an upgrade on the older watch, with notable new features including a multisport mode for triathletes and multi-band GPS, which is more accurate than the tracking available on the 245.

Other new features include more detailed training analysis, a race calendar widget, a morning report and heart rate variability tracking, which can help you judge how ready your body is to train each day (though the Forerunner 255 does not get Garmin’s training readiness measurement, which is on the 265).

There are also two sizes of the Forerunner 255. The smaller Forerunner 255S is a great option for those with smaller wrists, even if the smaller case means less battery life. The 255S still lasted me five or six days when running most days using the multi-band GPS, which uses more battery than standard GPS.

If you don’t need music features, you can actually get the Forerunner 255 for $249.99 at Amazon in the Black Friday sale, so if you carry your phone with you when training or just don’t need any audio encouragement during workouts, that’s the better deal for sure.

As a keen runner who doesn’t do triathlons, I’d say the Forerunner 245 Music would be the better watch for me to grab in the sales. I’d miss the multi-band GPS on the 255 for sure, but the 245 is a simple and reliable watch that I’ve happily trained with in the past, and it does everything I need for $100 less.

If you want a more detailed comparison, read my Garmin Forerunner vs Garmin Forerunner 255 article, and my Garmin Forerunner 265 vs Garmin Forerunner 255 article. You can also read more about my experience with each watch in my Garmin Forerunner 255 review and my Garmin Forerunner 245 review. 

There are a lot of great Black Friday Garmin deals available right now, with discounted watches to suit all budgets. However, having tested almost every watch in Garmin’s current range, the deal that stands out the most to me is the $350 saving you can get on the Garmin Epix 2.

That brings the watch down to $449, which is still a lot of money, but considering that the Garmin Epix 2 is one of the best sports watches available and usually $799.99, it’s an excellent price.

With an attractive and durable design, color maps, music storage, a bright AMOLED display and all of Garmin’s top sports tracking and training analysis features, the Epix 2 will satisfy runners and triathletes of all levels. I used the sapphire version of the Epix 2 for most of last year while training for and running four marathons, and it’s a brilliant watch.

The Garmin Epix Pro came out this year but the Epix 2 was updated with all the new software on the Pro. The differences between the Epix Pro and the Epix 2 are that the Pro comes in three sizes, all of which have an upgraded optical heart rate monitor and a built-in flashlight, which you don’t get on the Epix 2.

Having tested both extensively I’d say that unless you plan on using the flashlight regularly or want a smaller or larger watch, the Epix 2 is better value than the Pro, even with the latter reduced to $699.99 in the Black Friday sales.

However, there is one feature that is not on the Garmin Epix 2 available in the sale which I would miss. The deal is on the steel version of the watch, which doesn’t have multi-band GPS, a feature that Garmin limited to the sapphire version of the Epix 2.

I love the extra accuracy you get from multi-band GPS, but it is true to say the all-systems-on GPS tracking you do get on the Epix 2 steel version is still highly accurate. Unless you’re a GPS obsessive like myself you probably won’t notice the difference. 

If you must have multi-band GPS, it’s standard on the Epix Pro, and also available on the Forerunner 955, which is down to $399 this Black Friday and also has Garmin’s latest software, in a lighter, plastic case. 

It’s hard to say a $449 sports watch is good value, but given the quality of the Epix 2 and the size of the discount you’re getting in Amazon’s sale, this is one of the standout Garmin deals of Black Friday so far for me. The best price I can see on the watch elsewhere is $499 at Best Buy, while Garmin hasn’t included the Epix 2 in its sale at all.

The Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2023 sales are now over but we've taken note of what deals were available on each Garmin device so you can work out what discounts are worth your time when the sales roll around again.

The standout deal was $200 off the Garmin Epix Pro, which is probably the best sports watch in the world—taking it to its lowest ever price. The Fenix range also got a chunky $200 discount.

Welcome $50 discounts on the fairly recent Forerunner 965 and Forerunner 265 made these excellent multisports watches even better value. 

It was a similar story in the UK, although the discounts didn't feel quite as generous across the board. Having said that, across the products we highlighted the average saving was $90 in the US, and in the UK the average saving was £95.

Garmin Black Friday Quick Links

Check in with the major retailers to see what’s on offer right now.

US Quick Links

• Amazon: Garmin deals updated daily
• Bass Pro: Deals on Garmin watches and accessories
• Best Buy: $100 off the Garmin Instinct 2 Solar, plus other deals
• Dick's Sporting Goods: Save on Garmin watches
• Garmin: Check for discounts direct from Garmin
• REI: 25% off the Garmin Flux S Smart Trainer
• Walmart: $320 off Garmin Fenix 7X Solar

UK Quick Links

• Amazon: The latest Garmin deals, updated daily
• Chain Reaction Cycles: Savings on Garmin devices
• Currys: The latest deals on Garmin watches
• Decathlon: 22% off the Garmin Forerunner 55 and other deals
• Garmin: Check for deals, with Garmin’s holiday sale now live
• John Lewis: Deals on Garmin watches and bike computers
• Sigma Sports: Save 22% on the Fenix 7, plus other Garmin deals
• Wiggle: Discounts on Garmin watches, bike computers and accessories

US Black Friday Garmin Deals: Editor Picks

These deals are over, but we’ve summarized them below to help you to assess subsequent deals on the same devices.

• Garmin Epix Pro: Sale price $699.99, saving $200
• Garmin Fenix 7 Pro: Sale price $599.99, saving $200
• Garmin Fenix 7: Sale price $499.99, saving $200
• Garmin Epix 2: Sale price $449.99, saving $350
• Garmin Forerunner 265: Sale price $399.99, saving $50
• Garmin Forerunner 965: Sale price $549.99, saving $50
• Garmin Forerunner 255 Music: Sale price $299, saving $100
• Garmin Forerunner 955: Sale price $399, saving $100
• Garmin Instinct 2X Solar: Sale price $349, saving $100
• Garmin Enduro 2: Sale price $799.99, saving $200
• Garmin Forerunner 245 Music: Sale price $199, saving $100
• Garmin Forerunner 55: Sale price $169, saving $30
• Garmin Instinct Crossover: Sale price $299, saving $100

UK Black Friday Garmin Deals: Editor Picks

These deals are over but we've logged the offers for Black Friday 2023 so you can compare them next time there's a discount on offer.

• Garmin Epix Pro: Sale price £716, saving £114
• Garmin Fenix 7 Pro: Sale price £628.34, saving £121
• Garmin Fenix 7: Sale price £449.99, saving £110
• Garmin Forerunner 55: Sale price £119.28, saving £65
• Garmin Swim 2: Sale price £219, saving £70
• Garmin Venu 2: Sale price £244.99, saving £105
• Garmin Enduro 2: Sale price £799, saving £130
• Garmin Instinct Crossover: Sale price £299.99, saving £50

Best Black Friday Garmin Deals By Line

Our deals tool scans the web and retailers’s databases to bring you a selection of the top Garmin deals available today. We’ve divided your options by Garmin line.

Garmin Forerunner Deals

Garmin Fenix Deals

Garmin Epix Deals

Garmin Enduro Deals

Garmin Venu Deals

Garmin Vivoactive Deals

Garmin Instinct Deals

Garmin Black Friday FAQs

Black Friday 2023 might not be until November 24th, but the Fitbit deals are already cropping up, with a $60 discount at Amazon on the recently released Fitbit Charge 6 the standout so far. We’ll be keeping an eye out for all the best Black Friday Fitbit deals throughout November, and rounding them up here.

The Fitbit Sense 2 has also been reduced by $50 on Amazon, which is not surprising given that Google, which owns Fitbit, has recently launched the Pixel 2 smartwatch, which now stands out as the best fitness smartwatch with Fitbit health tracking. The Fitbit Charge 5 is another tracker we expect to be in the sales, as well as the Fitbit Versa 4 smartwatch.

Quick Links

🇺🇸 US Links 

Amazon: Save $50 on the Fitbit Sense 2 and $20 on the Fitbit Luxe

Best Buy: Grab the same deals on the Sense 2 and Luxe

Fitbit: Deals on the Sense 2 and Luxe direct from Fitbit

Target: Discounts on the Luxe and Sense 2

Walmart: Deals across the Fitbit range

🇬🇧 UK Links

Amazon: Fitbit deals updated daily

Fitbit: Check for deals direct from Fitbit

Currys PC World: Discounts on the Fitbit Versa 3 and more

John Lewis: Check for Fitbit deals

Argos: Discounts across the Fitbit range

US Black Friday Fitbit Deals: Editor’s Picks

UK Black Friday Fitbit Deals: Editor’s Picks

FAQs

The Garmin Forerunner 955 and Garmin Forerunner 255 have been superseded in 2023, but the main update you get with the newer Forerunner 965 and 265 watches is an AMOLED screen, which isn’t something everyone wants on a sports watch.

That means the 255 and 955 remain among the best sports watches, and they’re also now the best-value options in Garmin’s range because they are old enough to appear in sales. If you’re picking between the two, you’re getting good value either way, and the choice largely depends on whether you want to pay the extra for the color maps on the 955, plus a couple of other useful training analysis features.

Garmin Forerunner 955 vs Garmin Forerunner 255: Price And Availability

Garmin launched the Forerunner 955 in April 2022 and while there is only one size, you can choose between non-solar and solar versions. The standard Forerunner 955 costs $499.99 in the US and £479.99 in the UK. It’s $599.99/£549.99 for the solar version.

The Garmin Forerunner 255 launched in June 2022 and it comes in two sizes, and there are music and non-music options. The music versions of the watch cost $399.99/£349.99 and the non-music watches are $349.99/£299.99. 

The watches are frequently available for less than their RRP, especially in big sales periods like Black Friday. Price drops of $50-$80 are common for all models of both watches.

How I Tested These Watches

I tested the Garmin Forerunner 255 and Garmin Forerunner 955 for several weeks before writing my reviews for Coach, tracking all my workouts, everyday activity and sleep with the watches. I tested the smaller Forerunner 255S and Forerunner 955 Solar. My main sport is running and I usually log 50-70 miles a week, as well as tracking the one or two cycles, yoga sessions and strength workouts each week.

• Read my Garmin Forerunner 255 review
• Read my Garmin Forerunner 955 review

Design

The Forerunner 955 and 255 are plastic watches with Gorilla glass memory-in-pixel LCD screens and five buttons, with the only real upgrade on the 955 being that it has a touchscreen, as well as a solar option.

The Forerunner 955 is a larger watch than both versions of the 255, but the standard 255 has the same size screen at 1.3in, while the smaller 255S has a 1.1in screen. The Forerunner 255 is lighter than the 955: The standard 255 is 49g, the 255S is 39g and the 955 is 52g. Both watches have a 5ATM water-resistance rating.

Both watches offer multi-band GPS tracking, as well as less accurate, less power-intensive options like all-systems-on, and have the same array of sensors on board, including a barometric altimeter. They can connect to external devices via Bluetooth and ANT+, and have the same smart features: music storage (only on the music versions of the 255) and Garmin Pay.

Sports Tracking And Training Analysis

I found the watches’ GPS tracking impressively accurate, with Garmin’s multi-band mode the most reliable. The heart rate tracking was more hit-and-miss, and to get the best data feeding into the training analysis on the watches, I would use a chest strap heart rate monitor.

This is particularly important with the Forerunner 955, since it offers more extensive training analysis, including Garmin’s useful training readiness feature. This gives you a score out of 100 that rates how ready you are to train based on factors like recent training, sleep and heart rate variability readings.

The Forerunner 265 offers most of the data underlying this score, including tracking your heart rate variability each night, but doesn’t give the readiness score. It also misses out some other training analysis from the 955, such as heat and altitude acclimation. 

You also get more sports modes on the Forerunner 955, and it is a full golf watch with more than 42,000 courses loaded on the watch to help you navigate your round.

Battery Life

The Garmin Forerunner 955 offers longer battery life than the smaller 255, as you would expect, but in practice the difference was not huge for me. During my testing, the Forerunner 255S lasted around six days on a charge, and the Forerunner 955 Solar lasted seven to eight days. I was running almost every day with the multi-band mode enabled on both watches, and had notifications coming in.

If you live in a sunny climate and are outdoors for several hours each day, the solar version of the 955 will extend your time between charges, but this wasn’t a notable upgrade for me when testing in the UK and only going outside for one or two hours each day. If you’d like more detail, I've written about my experience with Garmin’s solar charging.

Navigation

The Garmin Forerunner 255 doesn’t offer maps, but does have breadcrumb navigation with turn-by-turn directions, so you can still follow routes on the watch easily enough. It also has a back-to-start feature that guides you back to where you began your activity with a pointer.

While breadcrumb navigation is usually good enough, the maps on the Forerunner 955 are one of the biggest reasons to consider upgrading. The color maps are clear and make navigation much easier, and they are routable, so you can create routes on the fly because the watch knows where you are, rather than just overlaying your route or position over a map.

With the Forerunner 955 you also get one of my favorite Garmin features. ClimbPro analyzes the elevation on your route and picks out the climbs and descents so you can see the details on them individually during your activities. This means you can gauge your effort on climbs more easily, since you know how much longer you’re going to be running uphill.

More Versus

See how the Garmin Forerunner 955 stacks up against other Garmin watches.

• Garmin Forerunner 955 vs Garmin Forerunner 965
• Garmin Forerunner 955 Vs Garmin Forerunner 945
• Garmin Forerunner 955 Vs Garmin Fenix 7

See how the Garmin Forerunner 255 compares with earlier and later generations.

• Garmin Forerunner 255 vs Garmin Forerunner 265
• Garmin Forerunner 255 vs Garmin Forerunner 245

The Google Pixel Watch 2 has been upgraded in a few key areas compared with the original Pixel Watch and, importantly, it now lasts a day on a charge reliably with the screen always-on. However, it still falls short of the standard of the best fitness smartwatches, with basic sports tracking a drawback in particular. 

Google Pixel Watch 2: Price And Availability

The Google Pixel Watch 2 launched in October 2023 and costs $349 in the US and £349 in the UK for the standard model and $399/£399 for a cellular (phone network) watch. That’s the same price as the original Pixel Watch in the US, while in the UK both the standard and cellular models have increased in price. There are three colors to choose from and it comes with a six-month subscription to Fitbit Premium.

How I Tested This Watch

I’ve been wearing the Google Pixel Watch 2 for two weeks, using it to track all my daily activity and sleep, as well as workouts. I run almost every day and have tracked bike rides, strength sessions and yoga with the watch. I have also tested the original Pixel Watch, every generation of the Apple Watch, and other fitness smartwatches from Samsung and Huawei.

Design And Hardware

I love the design of the Google Pixel Watch 2, which is light and comfortable to wear at all times and has a bright 1.2in AMOLED screen. The 41mm (1.6in) circular case is sleek and it’s easy to navigate the watch’s menus using the button and rotating dial—there was no lag during my testing.

The watch is now made from recycled aluminum rather than steel, which brings the weight down to 31g without the band (the original Pixel Watch was 36g). The watch has a 5ATM water-resistance rating, so it’s waterproof to depths of 50m.

One major update is the new multipath optical heart rate sensor, which has more LEDs and diodes than the sensor on the original Pixel Watch, with Google claiming greater accuracy as a result.

The Pixel Watch 2 has a compass and altimeter and offers GPS tracking via multiple satellite systems (GPS, Galileo, GLONASS, Beidou and QZSS). It can measure blood oxygen saturation and take an electrocardiogram (ECG), and it adds the continuous electrodermal activity (cEDA) sensor on Fitbit smartwatches, which measure tiny amounts of sweat on your skin to estimate stress levels.

You need a phone running Android 9.0 or newer to use the Pixel Watch 2, which won’t work with iPhones. 

Health, Activity And Sleep Tracking

The activity and health tracking is excellent, since it has essentially been outsourced to Fitbit. You can take ECG measurements and your blood oxygen saturation and skin temperature is measured at night, and the watch checks your electrodermal activity throughout the day, alerting you when it detects a period where you seem stressed, so you can log factors that may be causing it.

The watch tracks steps, calories, floors climbed and active zone minutes, and will prompt you to move each hour. It’s the same highly useful set-up as on top Fitbits like the Charge 6 and Sense 2. 

The Pixel Watch 2 also gives you a daily readiness score taking into account factors such as recent activity and sleep, and a stress management score based on the EDA scans and your sleep and activity. 

There’s an overlap between these scores, though I found the stress management score more consistent and useful: Fitbit’s readiness score is always low for me, based on the amount of running I do (even though this activity level is normal for me) and it’s skewed if you have poor heart rate readings during a workout, which I often did.

The sleep tracking on the Pixel Watch 2 is detailed and fairly accurate. However, it did sometimes break my night into two blocks of sleep if I was awake for a long spell in the middle of the night. This resulted in a low sleep score for one 4hr 40min block of sleep, even though if this was combined with the second 2hr 20min block it measured I would have had an OK night overall.

A drawback with the Pixel Watch 2’s health and sleep tracking is that several of the advanced features are behind the Fitbit Premium paywall. These include readiness and a detailed look at your sleep and stress management scores. You receive six months of Premium when you buy the watch, but thereafter it’s $9.99/£7.99 a month, or $80/£79.99 a year.

Sports Tracking And Accuracy

The native sports tracking on the Pixel Watch 2 is provided by the Fitbit Exercise app, rather than the Google Fit app, though the latter is available in the Google Play store. The Fitbit app is basic, with limited customisation of sports modes, and it doesn’t provide the breadth of stats you can get elsewhere. You can’t see split pace during runs, for example, let alone get advanced running technique stats or running power, which are available on sports watches and the Apple Watch.

Unlike the Apple Watch, there are not fantastic third-party apps available that can turn the Pixel Watch 2 into a sportier device. I tried a couple and found Ghostrunner OK, though it’s nothing like as impressive as WorkOutDoors on the Apple Watch. You can get popular apps like Strava and Nike Run Club, but they are somewhat basic, and no more advanced than the native Fitbit app.

For casual sports tracking the native app is fine with regards to the info available, but I did have accuracy problems with the watch. The new heart rate sensor was far from infallible: Often, during runs in particular, my heart rate reading would be too high throughout the workout when compared with the reading from a Polar H10 chest strap.

The reading was more accurate during strength sessions and yoga. On runs it sometimes had an incorrect spike in heart rate in the first five to 10 minutes and then settled down to be fairly accurate for the rest of the run. The heart rate tracking is on par for an optical sensor on a watch, but it’s not something I’d feel comfortable relying on to judge efforts during workouts. This is a shame because the Pixel Watch 2 offers targets in workouts, including for heart rate, so you can set the heart rate zone you want to be in and it will buzz at you to help you stay there during your session. If the HR is accurate, this is a handy feature; if it isn’t, it’s annoying.

I had mixed results with the GPS accuracy. Unlike the Fitbit Charge 6, the Pixel Watch 2 was able to lock on to GPS satellites at the start of an outdoor activity relatively quickly each time, but I had mid-run drop-outs a couple of times. This then affects the accuracy of the distance and pace tracking throughout the rest of the run, though the watch still uses its accelerometer to judge distance fairly well.

Overall, the GPS accuracy wasn’t too bad when it stayed locked on, with the Pixel Watch 2’s readings reasonably close to that of the Garmin Epix Pro in its most accurate tracking mode. The Epix Pro and other watches with multi-band GPS like the Apple Watch Ultra 2 or Coros Pace 3 are more accurate than the Pixel Watch 2, but it’s not wildly inaccurate, unlike other Fitbit watches and trackers I’ve tested.

Battery Life

One of the major problems with the original Pixel Watch was that it didn’t reliably last a day when the screen was in always-on mode, which fortunately is no longer the case with the Pixel Watch 2. I charged the watch in the evening just before going to sleep, then wore it to track my sleep and, in the morning, it usually had 83%-85% left for the day ahead (this is with the watch in night mode overnight). Even with a long run using the GPS and the screen always-on, the Pixel Watch lasted through to the evening in my testing.

This is the same experience as with the Apple Watch Series 9, and it’s sometimes stressful trying to find a time to charge either watch before going to sleep so you can use them to track your rest. It’s not great, but for a performance-focused smartwatch like the Pixel Watch 2, one day of juice is the best I’d expect.

Smart Features

The Google Pixel Watch 2 is a smartwatch, with cellular (phone network) capabilities that mean you can receive and reply to a variety of notifications, make calls and stream music without your phone, if you have a plan. The Google Play app store is also loaded with useful apps, even if the sports tracking section is not as impressive as with Apple’s App Store.

There is a new safety feature on the watch, which requires a cellular connection. With this you set a certain amount of time for an activity and if you don’t check in to say you’ve completed the activity within that time, the watch will alert your emergency contacts and give them your real-time location.

There is close integration with Google apps, like Wallet, Gmail and Maps, which makes for a seamless smartwatch experience. You can stream music and sync playlists to the watch through a variety of providers, including Spotify, and not just Google-owned YouTube Music.

The smarts on the Google Pixel Watch 2 are central to its appeal and help it to stand out from Android devices made by brands like Huawei, which may be better sports trackers but are not as smart as the Pixel Watch 2.

Is The Google Pixel Watch 2 Worth It?

The Google Pixel Watch 2 is a great activity tracker and smartwatch, and a poor sports watch. If you have an iPhone or are picking between iOS and Android in general, the Apple Watch Series 9 is a better option, but if you’re on Android and want improved sports tracking then a semi-smartwatch like the Amazfit T-Rex 2 or Garmin Vivoactive 5 is a better bet than the Pixel Watch 2.

If sports tracking isn’t that important to you, the Pixel Watch 2 is a good pick and it’s the best watch within the Fitbit line-up. It has an attractive design and the improved battery life makes a big difference to the day-to-day experience of using it compared with the original Pixel Watch. I also preferred it to Samsung watches I’ve tested, though the Galaxy series contains some attractive options for those who like chunky watches.

I’d still say Google needs to do a lot with the watch to make it comparable to the Apple Watch. Using the Pixel Watch 2 feels familiar to the experience of using an early generation Apple Watch, and it certainly lacks the smarts and sports tracking available on the Series 9. However, if you are on Android and want the best smartwatch available, as long as sports tracking isn’t a priority, the Google Pixel Watch 2 should be at the top of your list.

Garmin and Polar make some of the best sports watches and are established as the two biggest brands for the seriously sporty, though Coros has made inroads into that market of late, and Suunto has a dedicated following too.

If you’re choosing between Garmin and Polar, you have decisions to make at pretty much any level—whether you’re a beginner looking for your first watch or an athlete needing the best of everything. Here, I’ll go through the key differences between the brands, though from the outset I’ll say that Garmin is clearly the better pick for most people right now.

How I’ve Tested These Watches

I’ve been testing sports watches from all the major brands for several years and have reviewed almost every device in Garmin and Polar’s current ranges. When testing watches I use them for two to three weeks, tracking all of my everyday activity and sleep, as well as my workouts, with my main sport being running—I usually log around 50-70 miles (30km-43km) a week. I check the accuracy of the GPS and heart rate sensor on the watch, looking at the usefulness of the training analysis and smart features, such as navigation, as well as battery life.

Garmin vs Polar: The Range

Garmin makes a lot of watches and its range can be confusing to navigate. There are the Forerunner watches, which are mainly aimed at runners and triathletes, while the Vivoactive and Venu watches are designed to feel more like smartwatches and to be suitable for general activity and workout tracking.

The upper echelons of the range contain the Fenix, Enduro and Epix watches, which are packed with the brand’s top features, and have more rugged, outdoorsy designs than the Forerunners, while also offering longer battery life. There is also the ultra-expensive Marq range, which has watches with distinctive designs, though these mostly run the same software as Garmin’s other top sports watches.

Whichever Garmin watch you get, the core user interface and sports tracking has many similarities. The foundations are always strong, and you fine-tune your choice based on the features you deem essential and the price you’re willing to pay.

Things are simpler with Polar’s range, which contains fewer watches. The budget option is the Unite, a basic fitness tracker, while the Pacer and Pacer Pro are the cheaper sports watches available.

The Polar Ignite 3 stands out in the range because of its AMOLED screen, which makes it the best-looking Polar available, and it also has good sports tracking. At the top of Polar’s tree are the Vantage V2 and Grit X Pro sports watches: The Grit has a hardier design for outdoor adventures, while the Vantage V2 is sleeker and lighter for those focused on performance. (The Vantage V3 has been announced but I have yet to test it.)

There are older Polar watches available as well, like the Vantage M2 and Grit X. The Vantage M2 has effectively been replaced by the Pacer Pro, which has more features and is cheaper. The Grit X is still worth investigating as a cheaper alternative to the Grit X Pro, though the latter has extra features.

Design

For the most part, Garmin and Polar stick to a similar formula for their sports watches, which have plastic bodies and three to five buttons. However, the amount of buttons varies, and the smartwatch-style devices in both ranges have fewer. Touchscreens are becoming more common across the ranges, and both brands have watches with bright AMOLED displays, as well as some with the classic LCD screens that are better for battery life.

In Polar's range the Ignite 3 is the only watch with an AMOLED display, while Garmin has the Venu and Epix ranges, plus the Vivoactive 5, Forerunner 265 and Forerunner 965 watches, and the Marq 2.

Garmin also has many watches that use metal in their design, with steel or titanium bezels and case backs. Most of these are found in the Fenix, Epix, Enduro and Marq ranges, though the Forerunner 965 has a thin titanium bezel on its otherwise plastic design. Within Polar’s range the Grit X Pro Titan and Polar Ignite 3 Titan models have titanium bezels, while the standard Grit X Pro has a steel bezel, and the Vantage V2 has an aluminum case.

Overall, Garmin’s devices look more modern than Polar’s. Many Polar watches have a thick black bezel that surrounds the screen and makes them look somewhat dated. 

Sports Tracking

Both brands successfully manage the basics of sports tracking, with lots of customisable sports modes and a structured workout-builder, and offer training plans you can follow from your wrist, along with suggested workouts each day.

One area where Garmin has moved ahead in recent years is GPS accuracy. Garmin has many devices that offer multi-band GPS, and its watches with this mode have proved the most accurate for distance and pace tracking of all the brands I’ve tested. 

Polar only has one watch with multi-band GPS, which is the Ignite 3, and in my testing it didn’t perform well for GPS accuracy, delivering frequent errors during runs. I hope Polar will address this with the next generation of the Vantage V watch, because currently Garmin’s superiority is clear.

With regards to heart rate accuracy, the optical sensors in both brands’ watches are good most of the time, though I still spotted errors and lag compared with the readings from a chest strap. Garmin launched a new heart rate sensor with the Epix Pro and Fenix 7 Pro watches and this has proved more accurate during my testing, but with both brands I’d opt for an external chest strap or armband to get the best results on heart rate. 

One notable difference between them is that Garmin watches link to external sensors via Bluetooth and ANT+, while Polar’s latest watches use Bluetooth only.

Training Analysis

Polar once led the way for training analysis, but in recent years this is another area where Garmin has moved ahead. Polar’s training analysis is still extensive and useful, though you need to use the Polar Flow website to get the most detail on your training load and recovery, but Garmin offers the same features and more.

One of the major additions to Garmin watches over the past two years is training readiness. This is a simple rating out of 100 that says how ready you are to train, based on factors including your recent training and sleep, and heart rate variability. It’s a great distillation of the data being tracked by the watch that’s clear and easy to use. The underlying data is available too, if you want to dive into more detail.

Garmin has added interesting new ratings to its top watches in hill score and endurance score, which rate your proficiency in those areas. I’ve found Garmin's VO2 max estimates and race predictions to be more accurate than Polar’s, which tend to be somewhat optimistic for me. I will say, though, that Garmin is less accurate with some tracking than Polar, notably sleep, and this feeds into other training analysis.

Smart Features And Navigation

Garmin has also moved ahead of Polar in smart features. While Garmin doesn’t have access to an app store as impressive as Apple’s or Google Play, it offers a range of watches with key smart features like music storage and NFC payments. Its music watches can link to streaming services including Spotify and Amazon Music, and the Garmin Venu 2 Plus and Venu 3 can make calls.

By contrast, Polar’s smart features are limited to mirroring notifications, showing a weather forecast and controlling music playback on a connected phone. Garmin also has its Connect IQ app store, which for now mostly contains watch faces and extra data fields, but has useful third-party apps including a parkrun barcode app, so you can have it on your watch.

Garmin leads the way on navigation features. Its top watches have fully routable color maps with turn-by-turn directions and extra features like ClimbPro, which analyzes all the climbs and descents on your route so you can judge each one. You pay a lot for a Garmin watch with maps: Its mid-range watches have breadcrumb navigation, with a line and pointer on the watch to follow, plus a back-to-start feature.

Polar offers breadcrumb navigation with turn-by-turn directions on several of its watches, which is good enough in most situations, and it has a back-to-start feature, though it doesn’t have maps on any watch yet.

Activity And Sleep Tracking

All Garmin and Polar watches track everyday activity and sleep. For activity, your steps, calories burned and active time are recorded. With Garmin you can set a step goal or have it automatically adjust to your activity levels, so the target is always appropriate for you. 

With Polar you choose from three overall activity targets, and each day aim to hit 100% of that goal. The targets combine all your activity and the three levels are aimed at different levels of activity, where the hardest goal should be a challenge—even for those running every day, in my experience.

Polar’s sleep tracking is more advanced than Garmin’s, and more accurate. With Polar you get a detailed breakdown of your sleep focused on three areas (amount, solidity and regeneration) and Polar graphs out the day after your sleep, showing when you’re likely to be most alert and giving you a sleep window to aim for the following day.

Garmin graphs out your sleep stages through the night and gives you a sleep score, and the accuracy of its tracking has improved of late, but I’ve often found Garmin logs periods where I’m awake but lying still as light sleep, and so overestimates my total sleep. I’ve tested some Polar watches that haven’t logged any sleep at all, though when they do it’s usually more in line with how I actually slept than Garmin’s logs.

Battery Life

The battery life on Garmin watches varies throughout its range. Some of the Fenix and Enduro watches last weeks on a charge. It also has several watches with solar panels, which can extend the battery life considerably in the appropriate conditions, though these are not that easy to find if you live in the UK and mostly work indoors.

The longest-lasting watch is the Garmin Enduro 2, which can go three weeks between charges even with heavy use. How long the battery lasts depends on factors such as whether it has an AMOLED screen and whether you use multi-band GPS, which is the most power-intensive mode. Smaller watches like the Garmin Forerunner 55 last around a week.

Polar’s watches don’t vary much in battery life, and in general offer far less than Garmin. The Vantage V2 and Grit X Pro will last five to seven days with my use, while the Polar Ignite 3 with its AMOLED screen lasts just one to two days if the screen is always-on, and three to four if not. Polar watches drain faster at night than Garmin, perhaps because of the extra detail they offer for sleep tracking.

With regards to GPS battery life, Polar’s top devices offer about 40 hours of tracking (without multi-band). Garmin’s devices vary depending on the watch size and GPS mode, but the Enduro 2 offers 110 hours of GPS-only tracking, or 68 hours of multi-band.

Verdict: Best Garmin and Polar Watches To Buy

If you want to buy a Polar watch, the Pacer Pro is the model to go for, since it has all the key features you get from the Vantage V2 and Grit X Pro watches and costs less. However, for a similar price you could get the Garmin Forerunner 255, which is a more accurate and accomplished watch.

I’d say this is the case throughout the two ranges, with Garmin offering better options at every price. The Garmin Forerunner 55 is the best beginner running watch, though if you find the Pacer Pro in a sale for a similar price it is a full multisport watch, whereas the Forerunner 55 doesn’t have a triathlon mode.

If you want a sporty watch with some smarts, Garmin is the clear pick, whether you opt for a Venu or an AMOLED Forerunner, like the 265. The best mid-range multi-sport watch from either brand is the Forerunner 255, or the 265 if you are happy to pay more for an AMOLED screen.

At the top end of the range, Garmin leads once more: Every watch from the Forerunner 955 and 965 up offers all its best features, many of which you won’t find on any Polar watches, like maps, music, training readiness and multi-band GPS. The Forerunner 955 or AMOLED 965 are good value for a top-end watch, while the Epix, Fenix and Enduro ranges offer more rugged metal designs and longer battery life.

The best heart rate monitors don’t need to be expensive and, at first glance, I thought this might be the case for the Kalenji Dual HRM from Decathlon. It’s a mainly accurate tracker that costs significantly less than the top chest straps, such as the Polar H10 and Garmin HRM-Pro Plus.

However, in my testing I found the Kalenji HRM delivered more errors than other chest straps. It also lacks features available on pricier picks, like swim tracking and a rechargeable battery. I think it’s worth paying extra for a more reliable experience: The best cheap heart rate monitor I’ve tested so far is the Coospo H9Z, which is only a little more expensive than the Kalenji.

Kalenji Dual HRM: Price And Availability

The Kalenji Dual HRM has been available for several years and costs £34.99 in the UK. It is not currently available on Decathlon’s US website, but costs CA$55 in Canada. 

How I Tested This Heart Rate Monitor

I used the Kalenji Dual to track a variety of runs over a three-week period, including hard sessions on a treadmill and outside, as well as an indoor strength workout. For the most part, I wore it at the same time as a Polar H10 HRM to compare the results, wearing both around my chest. I also wore the Kalenji Dual by itself for a few runs.

Design

The Kalenji Dual has a stretchy fabric belt with a sensor strip on the inside that you moisten before wearing. There is a plastic pod that clips into the front of the belt, powered by a CR2032 battery (included) that needs replacing when it runs out, as opposed to the rechargeable batteries that are becoming more common on chest straps.

You can adjust the length and there is a hook clasp to secure the belt around your chest. I found the belt stayed in place well during long, sweaty activities, though it’s more scratchy and noticeable than other belts such as the Polar H9 and H10. The Kalenji Dual connects to external devices via ANT+ and Bluetooth 4.0 and I was able to link it up easily with three different watches, an iPad and my phone at various points during my testing.

There is no internal memory on the Kalenji Dual so it can’t record workouts; it just broadcasts your heart rate to external devices and apps. It has a 1ATM water-resistance rating, so it’s waterproof to depths of 10m. It isn’t suitable for swimming because it’s unable to store any data tracked in the water to send to a watch later.

Sports Performance

Almost all fitness trackers and sports watches now have a built-in optical heart rate monitor, so the only reason to use a chest strap is because they are more accurate than optical sensors, or because you don’t use a watch or tracker. 

With that in mind, I have a high standard for the accuracy of chest straps. They need to be right 99% of the time to be worthwhile, in my opinion, since they are an extra cost and can be annoying to use. The Kalenji Dual heart rate monitor was spot-on in its tracking most of the time, matching a Polar H10 chest strap beat for beat in most workouts. However, “most” is the key word because I had some problems with it. 

One problem was connectivity. When I linked it to Zwift on an iPad the connection didn’t seem stable and my heart rate readings on screen leapt about, even though the Dual was sending more accurate data to my watch. The bigger problem was significant accuracy errors. During one track workout in particular the Kalenji Dual dropped out entirely during a rep, and in the next rep it was jumping up and down incorrectly. It also spiked incorrectly in the first kilometer of the workout, when I was warming up.

I’ve seen other spikes in runs too. While it was mostly accurate, and was perfect during an indoor intervals session, I’d be less willing to rely on the Kalenji Dual than other chest straps when doing training based on heart rate.

Battery Life

Decathlon doesn’t list the battery life of the Kalenji Dual, but since it uses a replaceable coin battery I’d expect it to last for several months without needing replacing. To save battery life, it’s best to take the sensor out of the belt after use.

In general, coin batteries last much longer than rechargeable ones, though they are more of a pain to change once they run out—though that might be because I never seem to have a CR2032 battery handy when I need one.

Is The Kalenji Dual HRM Worth It?

The Kalenji Dual is the cheapest heart rate monitor I’ve tested and it delivers value as a mostly accurate chest strap that connects easily to a range of devices. However, for me, “mostly accurate” doesn’t cut it, especially when you can get a more accurate chest strap monitor like the Coospo H9Z for just a little more.

And that’s if you just want a no-frills heart rate monitor for activities on land. If you need support for swimming or fancy extra features, like on-board storage for workouts and running technique stats, then the Polar H10 and Garmin HRM-Pro Plus are the best monitors.

The Fitbit Charge 6 is the flagship band in Fitbit’s line-up and has most of the features you get from smartwatches; it’s like the Fitbit Sense 3 in a slimmer, less conspicuous design. It’s rich in features and one of the best fitness trackers for monitoring general activity and sleep, but its poor accuracy makes it less impressive when tracking workouts.

Fitbit Charge 6: Price And Availability

The Fitbit Charge 6 launched in September 2023 and costs $159.95 in the US and £139.99 in the UK. That’s $10/£10 more than the current RRP of the Fitbit Charge 5, though the older tracker had a higher RRP of $179.95/£169.99 when it launched.

You may well find this device included in sales, so it's worth checking Coach's Black Friday Fitbit deals page in November and our round up of Amazon Prime Day Fitbit deals in July and October.

How I Tested This Fitness Tracker

I’ve worn the Fitbit Charge 6 for two weeks, using it to track all my daily activity, sleep and workouts in that time. I’m a keen runner and have recorded runs most days with the Charge 6, as well as tracking strength workouts, yoga and a couple of bike rides. I’ve also tested several previous versions of the Charge, including the Charge 5, and other Fitbit devices including the Sense and Versa smartwatches.

Design And Hardware

The Fitbit Charge 6 has a similar look to the Charge 5, with a 1.04in AMOLED touchscreen on a slim silicone band that comes in three colors: black, gold/coral, and silver/white. You can replace this band with a variety of options made from different materials available from Fitbit and third parties.

I found the screen reasonably easy to read, even during activities, though it lacks the clarity of a smartwatch display. I also found that the always-on display was too dim when exercising outdoors, so I opted for raise-to-wake mode because I had to turn my wrist and wake the screen to see any stats on the move anyway.

There are two important changes to the hardware on the Charge 6. One is the new haptic button, which makes it easier to wake the device and navigate the menus. The other is the new heart rate sensor, which Fitbit says will be 60% more accurate during vigorous exercise sessions.

The Fitbit Charge 6 has built-in GPS that uses GPS and GLONASS satellite systems to track outdoor activities without your phone, along with sensors that allow it to take ECG scans and measure your electrodermal activity (EDA), skin temperature and heart rate variability. It doesn’t have a barometric altimeter, so it can’t track the floors you climb.

With a water-resistance rating of 5ATM, the Fitbit Charge 6 can withstand depths of up to 50m and it is suitable for pool swimming.

Activity, Health And Sleep Tracking

The Fitbit Charge 6 is a capable fitness tracker loaded with features that provide insights into your body. Your daily activity is monitored and you can see things like your step count, active minutes, active time and calories burned by swiping down from the main watch face. You are also prompted to tackle 250 steps each hour to stay active throughout the day.

If you’re a Fitbit Premium member you are also given a daily readiness score based on factors like your recent workouts, sleep and heart rate variability, which is measured each night. This is similar to features you get from the Oura ring and Whoop trackers, as well as Garmin watches that have the brand’s training readiness feature.

With the Charge 6, however, the readiness score was rarely of any use, since doing pretty much any kind of workout the day before would see a low readiness rating the following day. Given that I run almost daily and have done for years, I consistently got low readiness ratings even when I was fresh, though these were also skewed by the inaccurate heart rate readings during activities.

The health tracking features are more impressive. By holding the device on either side with your thumb and forefinger, you can take ECG measurements and EDA scans. The latter detects small amounts of sweat on your skin and measures your stress levels. There’s also a stress-management score in the app you can use to judge the state of your body, which overlaps somewhat with the readiness score.

In the partner app you receive insights into your skin temperature, blood oxygen saturation, breathing rate and heart rate variability, which are compared with your baseline so you can see if there are any variations outside your normal range.

There’s a lot of data to dive into and it’s impressive that such a small device can measure so much while still offering long battery life. It can be overwhelming, however, which is why it’s a shame the readiness score has been so useless for me, because it’s a good way for this data to be distilled into a simple score that indicates the state of your body. That said, getting the hard numbers on each stat and noting how they differ from your baseline is likely more accurate than relying on a combined score if you have the time.

The Charge 6 offers a high level of detail regarding your night’s rest. It struggled to track my sleep patterns accurately because I’m frequently awake in the night for longish periods with a baby. As a result, the Charge 6 often logged my sleep in multiple parts, so rather than an eight-hour period broken up with awake periods, I was logged as having slept for three hours, then another two hours, in the same night.

This seemed to negatively affect my overall sleep ratings, with low sleep scores for two stints of sleep that might add up to something better if considered as a whole. But overall, I’m not sleeping well at the moment and the Fitbit Charge 6’s ratings reflected that.

Sports Tracking And Accuracy

The Fitbit Charge 6 is loaded with sports modes, including new ones like CrossFit and HIIT, and has built-in GPS for outdoor activities. It can, though, also be set to use your phone’s GPS or, in dynamic mode, to use your phone’s GPS when available and then switch to built-in if you go out of range of your phone.

It won’t be a useful GPS tracker unless you carry your phone with you, because the built-in GPS is useless. Not only does it take ages to lock on at the start of a run or ride—to the point where I often had to start without it locking on because it was a waste of time—but when using the built-in GPS, the distance and pace tracking were inaccurate too. The GPS trace often had me running through buildings and the overall distance was wrong compared with accurate sports watches. When using my phone’s GPS the Charge 6 was more useful in tracking runs, even if it was still less accurate than sports watches with all-systems or multi-band GPS.

I found the heart rate tracking disappointing during runs, especially given the new sensor. The readings I got during almost every run were too high when compared with a chest strap, which then skewed other stats on the watch, like readiness and active minutes.

The accuracy was better during other kinds of workouts, such as strength workouts, walks and yoga. For the most part, the readings matched a chest strap during low-intensity indoor workouts, but if I did something more vigorous I found the accuracy dropped.

The Charge 6 automatically recognizes certain activities and prompts you to start a workout. Even if you dismiss this, which I did on general walks about town, so I could still see the main watch face, the activity is logged in the Fitbit app.

Another new feature is the ability to broadcast your heart rate from the Charge 6 to compatible cardio machines, like Peloton, Concept2 and NordicTrack machines, This means you can see your heart rate on screen during workouts, which can be handy, if the heart rate measured by the Charge 6 is accurate at the time.

The Fitbit Charge 6 was a disappointment for sports tracking. This isn’t its core feature, and if people are keen on sports they’ll probably buy a dedicated sports watch instead. But given what the Charge 6 suggests it’s able to do in this area, it underperforms.

Battery Life

Fitbit lists the battery life on the Charge 6 as up to seven days, with caveats that using the always-on screen and SpO2 sensor will bring that down. I tended not to use the always-on display because it wasn’t that bright, and the raise-to-wake feature was reliable. I got five to six days out of the Charge 6 between charges even with a lot of outdoor running. Given how many features the tracker has and how small it is, the battery life is impressive.

Smart Features

The Charge 6 is impressively smart, with new features including NFC payments through Google Wallet and a Google Maps app. The latter relies on your phone being nearby but can provide directions on the Charge 6 once you set it up in the phone app.

You can now control music playback on YouTube Music using the device, though this is less useful than general music controls. Google owns YouTube Music and none of the other more popular streaming services, so it makes sense, but it’s disappointing that the feature is so limited, especially because Fitbit devices offered general music controls in the past.

Is The Fitbit Charge 6 Worth It?

The Fitbit Charge 6 is a great activity tracker and the best option if you want a band, rather than a sports watch, on your wrist. It’s a subpar sports tracker, with heart rate accuracy that’s unreliable during higher-intensity activities, and the built-in GPS is essentially pointless, but if you’re mostly using it to track activity and sleep with the odd indoor workout, it will be fine.

It’s impressive how much has been crammed into the band, with an array of sensors that provide insightful health tracking and smart features that are useful at times. It’s a better all-round device than the Charge 5, though it still prompts similar frustrations, such as the poor GPS and the fact you need a Fitbit Premium subscription to get the most from the health and sleep tracking.

Having tested almost every watch that Garmin has released over the past five years, and worked several Black Fridays and other major sales, I usually have a good idea about which Garmins are likely to be reduced at any given time.

However, I didn’t see this £150 discount on the Garmin Fenix 7 Pro coming because it’s quite a new watch that sits close to the top of Garmin’s range. It’s one of the best sports watches available, and a 20% discount like this is unlikely to be bettered—even in the upcoming Black Friday period.

The Garmin Fenix 7 Pro has all of the brand’s top sports tracking, navigation and smart features. Along with offering best-in-class tracking, training analysis and maps, those smart features include NFC payments and music storage. 

It also has a built-in flashlight, which is one of the big hardware upgrades on the standard Fenix 7, along with a new heart rate monitor that I found accurate during workouts, and which can also take ECG measurements.

The battery life on the Fenix 7 Pro is great and this is the main reason to get it ahead of the Garmin Epix Pro, which has the same features but a bright AMOLED display. The AMOLED screen is great and more vibrant than the LCD screen on the Fenix 7 Pro, but the Fenix’s display is still easy to read in all conditions and preserves battery life.

Black Friday is fast approaching and I expect there to be great deals available on the Fenix 7, which is an excellent watch in its own right, but if you want the latest and greatest Fenix this deal is undoubtedly worth checking right now.

The Apple Watch has consistently been one of the best fitness smartwatches available and the only reason the Apple Watch Series 8 got knocked off top spot last year was because of the launch of the Apple Watch Ultra, which has longer battery life and extra features such as more accurate multi-band GPS and the Action button.

Apple hasn’t made huge updates to either the Series or Ultra watches in 2023, but both new models are upgrades on their predecessors. The Apple Watch Series 9 has a new processor and a brighter screen than the Series 8, adds Double Tap (a gesture control), and is more environmentally friendly. It’s an excellent alternative to the Apple Watch Ultra 2 for those who want a sporty smartwatch and don’t want to pay $799/£799.

Apple Watch Series 9: Price And Availability

The Apple Watch Series 9 launched in September 2023 and costs from $399 in the US and £399 in the UK for the 41mm watch, while the 45mm costs from $429/£429. The price has dropped in the UK for both sizes. This is for the standard version of the watch, and if you want a cellular (connects to a mobile network) model it costs an extra $100/£100.

How I Tested This Watch

I’ve used the Apple Watch Series 9 for several weeks, tracking my workouts, daily activity and sleep. During that time, I tested it against the Apple Watch Ultra 2, along with other watches and accessories during runs to check the GPS and HR accuracy. I have tested every generation of the Apple Watch to date, along with many fitness smartwatches from other brands.

Design And Hardware

The biggest updates to the Apple Watch Series 9 are a brighter screen and a more powerful processor. The screen’s maximum brightness is now 2,000 nits, up from 1,000, and it goes as dim as 1 nit in sleep mode, which helps to preserve battery life.

It’s a fantastic display, and while it’s not as bright as the 3,000 nits you get from the Apple Watch Ultra 2’s screen, I’ve no complaints about it. It’s easy to read in all conditions and responds quickly to get brighter when you turn your wrist.

Apple’s new S9 SiP chip makes the watch faster and enables the inclusion of several new features, the most noteworthy of which is Double Tap. This is a new form of gesture control whereby you turn the watch to face you, then tap your index finger and thumb together twice. It can do things like open your Smart Stack of apps, play/pause music, answer/end calls and turn off alarms.

During my testing, the occasions when Double Tap came in handy were few, but it is useful when one or both hands are full pushing a pram or holding a baby, or when cooking, since bringing up the Smart Stack allows you to do things like check the weather or a timer.

The Apple Watch Series 9 looks almost identical to the Series 8, with the edge-to-edge display and digital crown and button on one side. However, Apple is now using more recycled materials and any aluminum Series 9 paired with a Sport Loop is carbon neutral.

Another update is the Ultra Wideband chip, which makes for a more precise experience when using the Find My iPhone feature, and allows for more interaction between the watch and an Apple HomePod if you have one.

Other key hardware remains the same. The watch has an optical heart rate sensor and can take ECG and blood oxygen saturation measurement. It has a barometric altimeter and is water-resistant to 50m. Unlike the Apple Watch Ultra 2 the Series 9 doesn’t offer multi-band GPS tracking but will track outdoor activities using GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, QZSS, and BeiDou satellite systems simultaneously.

Sports Tracking

The Apple Watch has improved as a sports tracker since the original iteration, and that has continued in 2023 thanks to the watchOS 10 software update. This brings in new features for cyclists, including the ability to link up with power sensors.

The native Workout app is now detailed and useful enough to satisfy most users, with all the stats you really need, structured workouts you can set up and follow on the watch, and data field customization so you can show the info you want during training sessions. You can now import workouts and training plans from third-party apps like TrainingPeaks into the Workout app.

The native app is just part of the appeal of an Apple Watch because there are many excellent sports tracking apps in the App Store. Two of my stand-outs are WorkOutDoors, which effectively turns the Series 9 into a full sports watch (minus the battery life) and has maps you can see during workouts, and Footpath, a great navigation app with workout tracking.

GPS And HR Accuracy

The Apple Watch Series 9 doesn’t offer multi-band GPS like the Apple Watch Ultra 2, and this noticeably affects the accuracy of its tracking. After using the devices side by side on runs and looking at the GPS trace, it was evident that the Series 9 cut more corners, and wobbled more, leading to different distance and pace stats. However, the differences aren’t drastic, and the fact Apple also uses the pedometer on the watch to calibrate pace and distance in tricky GPS areas—like under tree cover and amid tall buildings—means the Series 9 is an accurate device. 

These pedometer-calibrated readings won’t work for everyone, though: I’ve found they often come up short compared with the GPS tracking from an accurate multi-band watch like the Garmin Epix Pro—perhaps because I change shoes and terrain a lot during my weekly training.

As an obsessive runner who uses a watch to pace one or two workouts each week, I find the multi-band GPS on the Apple Watch Ultra 2 and other devices to be a noticeable and useful improvement, though the Apple Watch Series 9 is more than accurate enough for most users.

The heart rate readings were mostly accurate during my testing. For me, the Apple Watch Series range has been one of the better watches for heart rate accuracy for several years, and while the readings drop out occasionally they are almost never flat wrong for long sections of workouts. 

You can pair an external sensor, like a chest strap, via Bluetooth. I tend to do this for peace of mind because chest straps are more accurate than optical monitors. Yet, for the most part, the Series 9 is accurate enough on HR to rely on when judging your effort during workouts.

Health, Activity And Sleep Tracking

The Apple Watch Series 9 is an excellent health and activity tracker, with Apple’s engaging rings system a continuous motivation to keep active each and every day. The watch takes ECG and blood oxygen saturation readings on demand, and measures your skin temperature at night and compares it with your baseline. Wild deviations from the norm can indicate you’re getting ill, as I found out when I got COVID while wearing an Apple Watch.

Since the Series 9 lasts only a day on a charge, sleep tracking is tricky. It charges quickly, though, so I usually found time each day to charge it so I could wear it at night. However, on busy days when I was out of the house late into the evening, I had to charge it overnight. 

If you do wear it to sleep, the Series 9 is a pretty accurate tracker, just not the most detailed. With a baby, I’m awake a lot in the night at the moment and the Apple Watch Series 9 was more reliable than a couple of Garmin watches and the Fitbit Charge 6 in spotting these awake periods. The Charge 6, and Fitbits in general, are still accurate and give you more detail about your sleep, as do Polar and Huawei devices.

Battery Life

The Apple Watch Series 9, like the eight generations before it, lasts a day on a charge. It’s reliable in getting through the day, even if you do a long workout using GPS and listen to music through the watch at times, but it’s not as long-lived as most of the best sports watches or the Apple Watch Ultra 2.

Each year Apple opts to make performance improvements to the watch while maintaining the listed 18 hours battery life—rather than increasing the battery life—and that’s a fair decision. People buy the Apple Watch for its high level of performance, and if you need longer battery life then a sports watch is going to be a better bet. The likes of the Garmin Forerunner 965 and Epix Pro have AMOLED screens and last more than a week on a charge.

Smart Features And Navigation

The Apple Watch Series 9 is as smart as watches get, with the best app store and the easiest-to-use smart features, like NFC payments and music. While some sports watches now offer music and NFC payments, none match Apple’s App Store, and if you have the cellular version of the watch you can leave your phone behind during workouts and stay connected.

For the most part, the Series 9 offers the same array of smarts as the Series 8, but Siri has improved with the new watch. Many queries are now answered “on device”, so the watch doesn’t have to relay your query to your phone, which speeds up responses. You can now ask Siri health-related questions, such as how you slept last night.

Is The Apple Watch Series 9 Worth It?

The Apple Watch Series 9 is a brilliant smartwatch, though if you have a recent model of the Apple Watch there’s no one particularly compelling reason to upgrade, just a series of small improvements that may tempt you to do so.

If you’re an iPhone user and want a sporty smartwatch it’s the obvious choice, though if you’re especially sporty and value things like a lap button, longer battery and more accurate GPS, the Apple Watch Ultra 2 is a better pick.

Garmin’s range of smart sports watches contain good alternatives to the Series 9, like the Venu 3 and Vivoactive 5. Both have great native sports tracking and smarts like music storage, and work with iOS and Android devices. They’re not as technical as the Apple Watch, but offer more training analysis.

I’ve yet to be impressed by a WearOS device with regards to the native sports tracking they offer, and the third-party app market for Android watches doesn’t contain any particularly good sports tracking apps in my experience. The Google Pixel Watch is an attractive watch and great general activity tracker, but its sports tracking falls short of what you get from the Apple Watch.

My first experience of Coospo came when testing the Coospo H9Z chest strap, which I rate as  an accurate, good- value option that’s one of the best heart rate monitors. I was hoping to be similarly impressed by the Coospo HW9 armband monitor, but while it was mostly OK for accuracy during my testing, it’s wasn’t as foolproof as the likes of the Coros HRM and Polar Verity Sense, which don’t cost that much more and have more features. 

The Coospo HW9 is one of the best cheap heart rate monitors, but if you can stretch to either the Coros or Polar band it’s worth doing, and if you don’t mind using a chest strap you’ll find more accurate and affordable options than the HW9.

Coospo HW9 Armband HRM: Price And Availability

The Coospo HW9 armband launched in June 2023 and costs $59.90 in the US and £49.90 in the UK. That undercuts the price of the Coros HRM ($79/£69) and Polar Verity Sense ($99.95/£86.50). Coospo also has cheaper armbands in its range that I’ve not tested.

How I Tested This Heart Rate Monitor

I’ve used the Coospo HW9 armband to track several runs, as well as a strength workout. To check its accuracy, I also used a Polar H10 chest strap and compared the readings of the two heart rate monitors during and then after the workouts. I have also tested the Coros HRM and Polar Verity Sense armbands.

Design

The Coospo HW9 is a lightweight, square heart rate monitor that sits in a stretchy nylon strap. The sensor has two green LEDs on the back, as well as a color-coded light on the front that shows what heart rate zone you’re working in. The sensor has fewer LEDs than those of the Coros HRM and Polar Verity Sense, which can affect accuracy.

This is a rechargeable monitor with a proprietary cable, and is listed as lasting 35 hours on a charge. You can connect external devices via Bluetooth and ANT+, and two simultaneous Bluetooth connections are supported.

The HW9 has an IP67 water-resistance rating, so it’s waterproof to depths of one meter. However, it’s not designed for swimming and can’t store any data internally, so it’s of no use in the pool. This rating is also lower than other armbands, which are at least 1ATM so can be immersed to depths of 10m.

There is a button on top of the sensor that turns it on, and it buzzes to indicate when it is on. It will also buzz if you take it off your arm without remembering to turn it off by pressing the button.

Sports Performance

The Coospo HW9 monitor is easy to adjust to the right length and comfortable to wear for long workouts. The on/off button and loud, strong buzzing also mean you definitely know when it’s on, so you won’t waste battery by leaving it on after a training session.

Throughout my runs with it I was wearing two watches, one showing the live readings of the HW9 and one the Polar H10, and I could frequently see that the HW9 was a few beats off the highly accurate Polar chest strap. There were no glaring errors, but when testing other armbands, like the Coros HRM, they were more accurate in matching the chest strap throughout runs.

I noticed during a track session that the HW9 lagged behind the reading of a chest strap when starting and finishing intervals. It still logged all the spikes and dips in my heart rate though. Overall, I’d say it was accurate enough to be useful when training by heart rate, just less impressive than other armband HRMs I’ve tested.

The light on the front of the sensor showing your heart rate could be useful, at times, but it’s not that convenient to twist and see it during a workout, especially when lifting weights. You also can’t customize your heart rate zones fully in the partner Heartool app, only change your max heart rate, which changes the other zones but not with real precision. For example, when I performed a lab test to measure my VO2 max more accurately, I also found out that I have a larger zone 2 heart rate than is typical, which I can’t set up on the Coospo monitor.

You can set up an alert when you hit a certain heart rate, track your HR live during workouts, and take heart rate variability measurements in the app. If you did the latter every day at the same time it would be a useful way to check in on the stress on your body, although far less convenient than wearing a watch that takes readings every night.

Battery Life

The Coospo HW9 lasts 35 hours on a charge and has a proprietary charger that attaches magnetically to the back of the sensor. I found that the device drained faster than that listed battery life, though, with the battery percentage at 67% after about seven hours of use. The buzzing helped remind me to turn it off after workouts, though this was less convenient than the Coros HRM, which turns itself on and off automatically when you put it on and take it off.

Is The Coospo HW9 Armband Worth It?

The Coospo HW9 is cheaper than the best heart rate monitors you wear on your arm, and accurate enough, so it does offer value if you want to spend less than you would on the Coros HRM or Polar Verity Sense. 

However, those monitors are not vastly more expensive, and the Polar is often available in sales. Both proved more accurate for me during my testing, and the Coros is more convenient and comfortable, while the Polar has features such as internal storage for workouts and a swimming mode. I’d pay the extra for either of those, but the HW9 will do a solid job at a lower price.

If you don’t mind wearing a chest strap then the Coospo H9Z is better value—both cheaper and more accurate than the HW9.

Garmin first rolled out electrocardiogram (ECG) measurements on the Venu 2 Plus in January 2023, and now after a surprisingly long wait four more watches have got this feature: the Epix Pro, Fenix 7 Pro, Tactix 7 AMOLED and Venu 3/3S.

The feature is only available in the USA, because Garmin has FDA approval for its ECG measurements but is not yet certified anywhere else. You need to be in the USA to enable the feature, but according to DC Rainmaker once you activate it in the US you can then take ECG measurements anywhere in the world.

Only watches with Garmin’s latest optical heart rate sensor—the Elevate V5—are able to take ECG measurements, so it’s not going to be rolled out to other watches. The feature also requires a wire connected internally to the bezel on the watch, where you place your finger and thumb to take the measurement.

To set up the feature you need to go to the settings for your device within the Garmin Connect app and click on ‘Finish Setup’, where enabling the ECG measurements is now a new option. From there you’ll be guided through the process of adding the measurements to your watch.

Then to take a measurement you have to fire up the ECG app and hold your finger and thumb on the bezel for 30 seconds. You’ll see a waveform of your heart rate during this time, and if you move around too much or remove your fingers the reading will fail.

Like all ECG features on watches, Garmin’s measurement will tell you if it detected normal sinus rhythm or atrial fibrillation (Afib). If you get the latter result it’s something you should check with your doctor. As the watch will remind you during the measurement process, it cannot detect heart attacks.

ECG measurements have become a common feature on smartwatches and sports watches since Apple added it to the Apple Watch Series 4 in 2018. Several other brands offer the feature, including Fitbit and Withings, while Polar is bringing it to its range with the new Vantage V3 watch.

The Apple Watch Ultra launched in 2022, so it was always likely that the 2023 updates to the Apple Watch Ultra 2 would be minimal. Apple has continued to improve the watch’s software and made useful upgrades to the hardware, including a brighter screen and the new double-tap feature.

While the updates don’t much change the day-to-day experience of using the watch, they help to establish the Apple Watch Ultra 2 as the best fitness smartwatch.

Apple Watch Ultra 2: Price And Availability

The Apple Watch Ultra 2 launched in September 2023 and costs $799 in the US and £799 in the UK. That’s a £50 price drop in the UK compared with the original Ultra, while the new watch is the same price as the old one in the US. The Apple Watch Series 9 is cheaper, costing from $399/£399.

How I Tested This Watch

I’ve been using the Apple Watch Ultra 2 for three weeks, tracking all my workouts, general activity and sleep. My main sport is running and I’ve been testing the GPS and HR accuracy extensively. I have also tested every generation of the Apple Watch and used the Apple Watch Ultra for long periods last year, including training for and running two marathons with it.

Design And Hardware

The only visible hardware upgrade on the Apple Watch Ultra 2 is a noticeable one: The brightness of the screen is now 3,000 nits, a 1,000-nit increase on the 2,000 of the original display. The screen brightness also drops to 1 nit instead of 2, which saves on battery life.

That saving is spent on powering the watch’s new, faster Apple Silicon S9 processor, which also has a speedier graphics processing unit and a 4-core neural engine, which is faster at doing what it does than the one in the original Ultra. This extra speed wasn’t noticeable in my initial testing, but will come into play over the lifespan of the watch.

The 49mm watch case is still made from titanium, but this is now 95% recycled titanium, whereas the original watch didn’t use recycled titanium. The case surrounds the sapphire crystal touchscreen to help protect it from impacts. The watch is waterproof to depths of 100m, and has features for diving, which now includes support for freediving.

Another upgrade is the Ultra Wideband Chip, which makes the Find My iPhone feature more precise and allows you to control playback on an Apple HomePod when you are near it. As always, it’s worth noting you need an iPhone to use any Apple Watch; it doesn’t play nice with Android.

The Apple Watch Ultra 2 has the same three buttons as the Ultra, including the digital crown. The orange Action button can be used as a lap button, something still not available on the Apple Watch Series 9. 

Perhaps the most interesting new feature is the double-tap gesture control. To use this you turn the watch to face you so the screen wakes, then tap your index finger and thumb together twice. On the main watch face this brings up the Smart Stack of apps, and within other apps double tap will do things like play/pause music, turn off timers and snooze alarms, answer/end calls, or enable reply to messages through dictation.

The feature was brought to the watch in October via a software update and works well, for me it was of limited use. During the week or so I had it available I found it useful only a couple of times, when turning off a timer while cooking and bringing up the weather forecast in my Smart Stack while pushing a buggy. 

I’d love to see double tap used in the workout app to pause a workout or even take a lap during a run. Unfortunately, since the feature uses the accelerometer, gyroscope and optical heart sensors on the watch to recognise your taps, this is unlikely because those sensors are already in use during workouts.

As with the Apple Watch Ultra, the Ultra 2 has multi-band GPS tracking for increased accuracy during outdoor activities, an important upgrade on the Apple Watch Series 9. It has three microphones and two speakers, and includes a new Modular Ultra watch face that can show your depth or elevation around the bezel. Or just seconds, if you’re a land lubber living near sea-level like me.

Battery Life

The Apple Watch Ultra 2 is listed as lasting 36 hours on a charge and, as with its predecessor, it reliably lasted me two days of use. It’s nowhere close to the battery life of a sports watch, but it’s double what you get from the Apple Watch Series 9. Even if you do a long run on both days the watch will last through to the evening of the second day, and it charges quickly.

Apple lists the GPS battery life as 12 hours with normal use, but you can extend this to 17 hours in a low-power mode, which still has full heart rate and GPS tracking but turns off other features like the always-on display. There’s a less accurate low-power mode in which the watch lasts 35 hours during activities, with fewer heart rate and GPS readings.

Sports Tracking

Apple has been steadily improving the native sports tracking on its watches through software updates in recent years. The native app now delivers a good experience, with customisable data fields and specialist stats for running and cycling, like power, and you can pair two external sensors at once, including heart rate monitors and cycling power meters.

You can also create structured workouts to follow on the watch and, as of the watchOS 10 update, use third-party apps like TrainingPeaks to import workouts into the native Workout app. Even keen sportspeople will find all they need in the native app these days, but you can still improve the sports tracking experience on the watch using the App Store.

One of my favorite apps to use for running is WorkOutDoors, which basically turns the Apple Watch into a full sports watch owing to the range of customization available, and it even has maps so you can follow routes within your workout. Another good app for navigation is Footpath, which provides turn-by-turn directions for routes while recording your workout.

GPS And HR Accuracy

The multi-band GPS on the Apple Watch Ultra 2 delivers accurate tracking for outdoor runs and bike rides. When comparing the watch with the Garmin Epix Pro in multi-band mode the tracks from both watches lined up closely throughout all my runs, with just a little more wobble in the Apple Watch Ultra 2’s track and the occasional cut corner.

With the Apple Watch, GPS is just a part of the story with distance tracking. Apple also uses the pedometer to estimate distance in an attempt to provide more accurate results when GPS struggles. The pedometer is calibrated when you run outdoors in clear spaces, but I found that when I was running, it read shorter than when using just GPS on the watch (with the WorkOutDoors app you can choose whether to use GPS or the Apple-calibrated reading for your distance). It’s undoubtedly an accurate tracker, just bear in mind you may need to calibrate the pedometer with a few runs in open conditions.

During my testing, I compared the Ultra 2’s heart rate readings with those of the Polar H10 chest strap during workouts. It mostly matched up well. There were many occasions where the reading would drop out for sections of a run, though, and sometimes the reading was wrong. If using the watch long-term and planning to judge workouts by heart rate, I think it would be worth pairing an external heart rate monitor for improved accuracy. 

Health, Activity And Sleep Tracking

Last year Apple introduced skin temperature tracking to its watches, which measures your wrist temperature at night and plots it against a baseline in the Health app. This added to the other health measurements you can take with the watch, including ECGs and blood oxygen saturation.

The activity tracking on the watch remains as engaging as ever, with Apple’s three rings representing active calories burned, active minutes and hours active. These have remained largely unchanged from the original Apple Watch, but are still a great way to help you keep moving throughout the day. You can also see floors climbed in the Activity app, which is tracked using the barometric altimeter on the watch.

The Ultra 2 doesn’t go into great depth with its sleep tracking, just showing your sleep stages in the morning and logging total time asleep. I have a five-month-old baby and am frequently up at night, and during testing, the Ultra 2 did a better job of spotting these awake periods than the Garmin Vivoactive 5 and Epix Pro watches, which logged them as light sleep.

You get greater depth of sleep tracking from devices made by Fitbit, Polar and Huawei in particular, but if you want a quick look at your night’s sleep, the Ultra 2 provides it. You may have to charge it at night occasionally though, since it’s not always easy to find time to charge it in the day.

Smart Features And Navigation

The Apple Watch has the best app store and the most useful smart features of any watch I’ve tested. Apple Pay is easy to use and works everywhere, plus you can store travel tickets and supermarket loyalty cards on the watch, and you can get music and podcasts onto it easily from a range of sources.

Siri has got smarter with the new watch because the faster processing allows Siri to deal with queries directly on the watch in many cases, rather than having to involve your phone. You can now ask Siri health-related queries, such as “how did I sleep?”, and get answers from the watch without needing your phone nearby.

The navigation features have also been improved with watchOS 10. Topographical maps are now on the watch, though these require your phone to be nearby and are only for certain regions in the US for now. 

You can create waypoints and use the BackTrack feature to trace a route you can follow back to your start point in the Compass app. However, these features and the maps can’t be used within the Workout app, which limits their usefulness. You can get maps within third-party workout apps like WorkOutDoors and Footpath, though overall the navigation features on the Apple Watch Ultra 2 still need work to rival what you get from a brand like Garmin.

Is The Apple Watch Ultra 2 Worth It?

The Apple Watch Ultra 2 is the best sporty smartwatch you can buy and a small but useful upgrade over the Apple Watch Ultra, though if you find the original watch available at a major discount that would be the smart way to spend your money. 

Whether it’s worth the extra outlay over the Apple Watch Series 9 depends on your use. If you’re particularly sporty, you’ll feel the benefit of the Ultra 2’s extra battery life, more accurate GPS and lap button daily. The Series 9 is smaller and lighter, though, and still a great activity tracker and sports watch.

The main competition from sports watches comes from Garmin, which has the Forerunner 965 and Epix 2 watches, which have vibrant AMOLED displays and the best sports tracking, training analysis and navigation features you can get. They also provide longer battery life than the Apple Watch Ultra. The Garmin Forerunner 965 is a great-looking watch too, and significantly cheaper than the Apple Watch Ultra 2 at $599.99/£599.99. 

Garmin’s top sports watches have useful smart features like music and NFC payments too, though they don’t have anything like the range of apps available for the Apple Watch, or LTE connectivity. If you want a great smartwatch that’s a good sports watch, get the Apple Watch Ultra 2; if you want a great sports watch with some smarts, get the Garmin Forerunner 965—or the Garmin Epix Pro if you want a more rugged, metal watch.

The Garmin Fenix 7 and Garmin Forerunner 955 are now frequently found in sales because they’re both older watches, having launched in 2022. Regardless of this, they remain among the best sports watches available. Since they are still up to date with Garmin’s top features, and cheaper than newer options like the Fenix 7 Pro and Forerunner 965, the Forerunner 955 and Fenix 7 offer better value for those eyeing up one of Garmin’s top devices.

Garmin Fenix 7 vs Garmin Forerunner 955: Price And Availability

The Garmin Fenix 7 range launched in January 2022 and contains watches in three sizes and a variety of designs that use different materials. The smallest watch is the Fenix 7S, the Fenix 7 is the standard model, and the largest watch is the Fenix 7X.

A steel, non-solar Fenix 7S or 7 costs $699.99 in the US and £559.99 in the UK, while the steel Fenix 7X is $899.99/£739.99 and has solar panels as standard. The sapphire solar models that have titanium bezels are more expensive at $899.99/£779.99 for the Fenix 7S or Fenix 7 and $999.99/£829.99 for the Fenix 7X.

The Garmin Forerunner 955 launched in April 2022 in one size only, though you do have the choice between non-solar and solar versions of the watch. The standard Forerunner 955 costs $499.99/479.99, and it’s $599.99/£549.99 for the solar version.

How I Tested These Watches

I tested the Garmin Fenix 7X Sapphire Solar and Garmin Forerunner 955 Solar for several weeks, using them to track my everyday activity and sleep alongside the workouts I did. My main sport is running and I’ve run hundreds of miles with both watches, as well as recording yoga and strength sessions, plus the occasional cycle ride. When testing the heart rate accuracy of the watches I compared their readings with those of a chest strap monitor.

• Read my Garmin Fenix 7 review
• Read my Garmin Forerunner 955 review

Design

Design is the biggest difference between the Fenix 7 and Forerunner 955. The Fenix 7 is a larger, heavier device, though also more rugged, and comes in a range of sizes and colors, whereas the Forerunner 955 has one size and is either black or white.

There is a larger bezel on the Fenix 7, which is made from either steel or titanium, as is the back of the case. This increases the weight of the watch compared with the all-plastic Forerunner 955. The weight and screen size of the Fenix 7 changes with the size you opt for.

The Forerunner 955 has a 5ATM water resistance rating, while the Fenix 7 range is rated 10ATM, and in general the Fenix 7 is a more rugged, hard-wearing watch thanks to the metal bezel and case. Opt for a sapphire Fenix 7 and you also get a more scratch-resistant sapphire crystal screen, while the Forerunner 955 and steel Fenix 7 models all use Corning Gorilla Glass.

When choosing between the Fenix 7 models it’s worth noting that only the sapphire watches offer multi-band GPS tracking, which is more accurate than the modes available on the standard Fenix 7 watches. Multi-band GPS is available on the Forerunner 955 and 955 Solar.

The Garmin Fenix 7X also has a built-in flashlight, which is not available on the smaller Fenix 7 watches or the Forerunner 955, though there is a setting that allows you to use the screen as a flashlight.

GPS And HR Accuracy

Garmin’s multi-band GPS is the most accurate I’ve tested on watches from any brand, and if you opt for a model of the Fenix 7 with multi-band then you will see no difference in overall accuracy from the Forerunner 955. It’s not infallible, but you are getting the best GPS accuracy on the market.

If you opt for a steel Fenix 7 model without multi-band, then the all-systems-on GPS tracking is still good but less impressive, especially when running under tree cover or among high buildings. 

With regard to heart rate tracking accuracy, I didn’t see a notable difference between the Forerunner 955 and Fenix 7 during my testing. With both, I would pair an external chest strap or armband heart rate monitor to get more accurate results because while the optical sensors on the Fenix 7 and Forerunner 955 are OK most of the time, I often saw errors compared with a chest strap.

Battery Life

The Garmin Fenix 7 and 7X watches offer longer battery life than the Forerunner 955, though the difference is only likely to be noticeable if you opt for the larger Fenix 7X. In my testing, the Forerunner 955 solar lasted seven to eight days on a charge, running most days with the multi-band GPS mode enabled, whereas the Fenix 7X Sapphire Solar lasted me two to three weeks in the same conditions.

With either watch the solar version will lengthen your time between charges, but only in the right conditions. In my testing, in the UK, where I spend most of my time indoors during the week, the solar versions of Garmin watches would not be worth the extra outlay. However, if you spend a lot of time outdoors in the sun they can extend your battery life considerably.

• Is Garmin’s solar charging worth paying extra for?

The Garmin Epix 2 came out in January 2022 and showed that it was possible to make a superb sports watch with a bright AMOLED display and decent battery life. Since then Garmin has launched several more excellent AMOLED watches, like the Forerunner 965 and Epix Pro, and now Polar and Suunto are following suit with two watches that sound terrific.

The Polar Vantage V3 was announced on October 11, and hot on its heels comes the Suunto Race. This is Suunto’s first proper multisport watch with an touchscreen AMOLED display, though the Suunto 7 smartwatch did have one, and it also has several features from the impressive Suunto Vertical, which launched earlier this year.

These include color maps you can download to the watch to make following routes much easier, and multi-band GPS. The Suunto Vertical’s GPS accuracy impressed me when I tested that watch, so I’d expect the Suunto Race to be similarly good on that front.

Despite the 1.43in AMOLED display and other power-intensive features like the multi-band GPS and heart rate variability tracking to help you gauge your recovery, the Suunto Race’s battery life is impressive. The watch offers 40 hours of GPS tracking in its most accurate mode and up to 10 days of general use.

The Suunto Race has a robust design with steel and titanium options. Both have a sapphire crystal display and are waterproof to 100m. The watch has three buttons, one of which is a digital crown.

To help the watch live up to its name, it has a couple of useful features to help you during races. The RaceTime feature estimates how long it will take you to finish your event in real time, based on you maintaining a current pace, and there’s a nutrition reminder feature to help you maintain your intake of fluids and carbs during longer events.

There are a few smart features on the watch too, including music controls for a connected phone and weather forecasts, though you don’t get the music storage and NFC payments available on Garmin watches.

The watch is also cheaper than both the Garmin Epix 2 and Polar Vantage V3. The steel watch costs £389 and the titanium version £479 (US prices TBC). If it delivers the performance you’d expect based on its spec sheet, that could make the Suunto Race a real bargain for an AMOLED watch with maps and multi-band GPS.

The Garmin MARQ range has always featured some of the most beautiful watches in the company’s range, and some of its most expensive too, but things have been taken to another level with the new Garmin MARQ Carbon collection.

This contains three watches—the MARQ Athlete, Commander and Golfer—made from 130 layers of fused carbon fiber that create spiral design patterns on the body of the watch. This makes the 46mm watches much lighter than previous MARQ watches, which were made from titanium or diamond-like carbon.

As you may expect, this upgrade in materials results in an increase in price, and the MARQ Carbon collection costs from $3,100 in the US and £2,799 in the UK, making even some of the best sports watches, like the Garmin Epix Pro and Fenix 7 Pro, look cheap in comparison.

The three watches in the MARQ Carbon range have distinct design features, with light green accents on the MARQ Athlete, pine green accents on the MARQ Golfer, and a stealthy all-black design on the MARQ Commander, which is designed for tactical operations. Along with the black design, the Commander’s features include a screen option that can be viewed with night vision goggles, a stealth mode that prevents the watch from storing your GPS position, and a kill switch to wipe the watch’s memory.

The MARQ Athlete is the sports-focused watch in the range and display your VO2 max and recovery time on the watch face, while the MARQ Golfer comes loaded with more 43,000 courses from around the world and has a Virtual Caddie feature, which recommends clubs to use, as well as giving advice on hazards.

The watches have AMOLED displays and are loaded with all of Garmin’s top features, like multi-band GPS, color maps and music storage. The watches will last up to six days in watch mode with the always-on screen enabled. This is all par for the course for Garmin watches from the Garmin Forerunner 965 up, though what separates the MARQ Carbon watches is design not software. 

The MARQ Carbon watches are available now. The Garmin MARQ Carbon Athlete costs $2,950/£2,599. The Garmin MARQ Carbon Golfer is $3,100/£2,699, and the Garmin MARQ Commander is $3,100/£2,799.

There are always a lot of Garmin Prime Day deals to consider if the sales event rolls around when you’re looking for a new sports watch, and perhaps the most exciting discount of all in the Prime Big Deal Days sale is the $150 that’s been knocked off the Garmin Epix 2.

I love the Garmin Epix 2 and have used it as my main sports watch for most of the time since it launched in 2022, including running a 2hr 28min marathon in Berlin and a 2hr 29min marathon in Valencia. I also used it to run the Bilbao Bizkaia Marathon and London Marathon in 2023 at more sedate paces—London was just a week after Berlin to be fair.

When the Garmin Epix Pro came out I started using that, but I only prefer the Epix Pro for the longer battery life on the 51mm edition. Otherwise the older Garmin Epix 2 is every bit as good, and it’s much cheaper, especially in the Prime Day sale.

Both the steel and titanium Epix 2 watches are reduced by $150 in the sale, but I think the one to get is the titanium model, even though it’s $100 more. The upgrade in materials is one thing—the titanium Epix 2 also has a sapphire crystal screen and is both lighter and more durable than the steel one—but the key reason for me is that only the titanium model has multi-band GPS.

Garmin’s multi-band GPS mode is the most accurate on the market and as someone who obsesses about GPS, the Epix 2’s accuracy was a key reason it was useful to me when training for and running marathons. The extra accuracy is useful when pacing the race itself, but even more important when running hard training sessions on the road and trying to stick to certain paces. Unlike race day, there are no mile or kilometer markers to help you judge your pace then, and having the best GPS accuracy you can get is invaluable.

Along with multi-band GPS, the Epix 2 also packs in all of Garmin’s other great features, including all the new software features that launched with the Epix Pro this year that have been rolled back via an update to the older watch, like hill score and endurance score.

The bright AMOLED display is what separates the Epix 2 from the Garmin Fenix 7 (also on sale and just as good if you prefer an LCD display that extends battery life), and this display is brilliant for viewing the color maps on the watch. It also has extensive training analysis, smart features like music storage and NFC payments.

I found the Epix 2 to be more or less perfect throughout my use of it, and the only thing that makes it hard to recommend is the high price, so getting $150 off its RRP in the Prime Day sale is certainly welcome.

The best Prime Day Garmin deals are usually found on the most expensive watches in the company’s range, because you can save hundreds on devices like the Garmin Epix 2 or Fenix 7. 

However, even with big discounts those watches remain too expensive for a lot of people, and overkill for what they need. If you’re looking for the best affordable watches in the sale, then I’d recommend the Garmin Forerunner 55 or Garmin Venu Sq 2 Music, both of which are available for under £200.

I’ve tested pretty much the entire range of Garmin watches and the Forerunner 55 stands out as the best entry-level running watch, while the Venu Sq 2 Music is the best cheap smartwatch. While both lack some features you find on pricier options, they both punch above their weight at the price they’re available for in the Amazon Prime Big Deal Days sale. You won’t find a better running watch than the Forerunner 55 for £120 from any brand, or a better sporty smartwatch than the Venu Sq 2 Music for £185.

One of the best features about the Forerunner 55 is the guidance it can offer new runners, with suggested workouts each day based on your recent training load. You can also follow Garmin Coach training plans for 5K, 10K and half marathon events on the watch, and these are personalized to your ability and available time to run when you set them up in the Garmin Connect app.

The Garmin Venu Sq 2 Music is a remarkably capable little watch too, and a good-looking one thanks to its bright AMOLED display. It has smart features like music storage and the ability to link with Spotify, Amazon Music and Deezer premium accounts, so you can transfer your music across wirelessly. It also offers NFC payments through Garmin Pay, and as always with Garmin, is a reliably good sports watch too. 

It also works with both Apple and Android phones and is a better sports tracker than any true smartwatch around its price. Garmin also has the more expensive Vivoactive and Venu smartwatches in its range, which are a little more elegant with their circular design, but the Venu Sq 2 Music matches them on features for the most part.

Polar has launched the latest generation of its flagship Vantage sports watch. On paper the Polar Vantage V3 offers a host of exciting hardware and software upgrades on the Vantage V2. I’ve yet to start testing the watch, but it’s safe to say if the Vantage V3 lives up to its promise in practice, it will be one of the best sports watches and a rival to the Garmin Epix 2.

I say a rival to the Epix, rather than the Garmin Fenix, because the Vantage V3 has a bright 1.39in AMOLED touchscreen rather than an LCD. This reduces battery life, but Polar says the Vantage V3 will still last up to eight days on a charge, and offer an impressive 47 hours of training time using dual-band GPS tracking, and up to 140 hours if you take advantage of all the power-saving options.

The Vantage V3 has an attractive design, with an aluminum bezel surrounding the curved Gorilla Glass display, and Polar has also upgraded the hardware on the back of the watch, claiming the new Gen 4 optical heart rate sensor on the watch is more accurate than ever before. 

The sensors on the watch, which are now packaged into the “Polar Elixir sensor fusion platform”, allow it to take ECG readings and check your blood oxygen saturation, and it also monitors your skin temperature at night. 

Another exciting update is that the Vantage V3 offers dual-band GPS tracking, which should lead to more accurate distance and pace measurements during outdoor activities. A note of caution here, however, because the Polar Ignite 3 has multi-band tracking and in my experience its GPS accuracy is middling. Hopefully the Vantage V3 can rival Garmin and Suunto’s multi-band GPS accuracy, which is excellent.

One area where Garmin has been streets ahead of its rivals for years is navigation, but the Polar Vantage V3 aims to start closing the gap with the addition of offline topographical maps. It will also offer turn-by-turn directions for routes made through Komoot. 

The Vantage V3 is still primarily a sports watch, and doesn’t offer smart features like music storage or NFC payments, which you do get on Garmin watches. However, if the new sensors and GPS prove to be highly accurate, the Vantage V3 will be a major player in the high-end watch market.

You can pre-order the Polar Vantage V3 from today. It comes in three colors—black, blue and apricot—and will ship from October 25. The watch costs $599.90 in the US and £519 in the UK, and you can buy a bundle consisting of the watch and the excellent Polar H10 chest strap heart rate monitor for $649.90/£559.

Amazon is spoiling us with Garmin deals in its Prime Big Deal Days sale, with several of the best sports watches dropping to their lowest price ever. That includes the Garmin Fenix 7, and you actually have a choice of models in the sale, with both the standard Fenix 7 and larger Fenix 7X Solar both reduced significantly in the UK.

The Garmin Fenix 7X Solar is the more eye-catching deal, because the £240 discount is huge and so is the watch, with its larger frame offering more room for a bigger screen and battery than you get with the Fenix 7, and it also has solar panels to extend its battery life further.

However, having tested and reviewed Garmins for many years, including almost all of the current range, I’d say the Fenix 7 is the better deal. For one, it’s a smaller, lighter watch that’s more comfortable to wear all the time than the Fenix 7X, and it’s also simply a lot cheaper than the larger watch in the sale at £419.99 vs £539.99.

I tested the Fenix 7X Solar Sapphire model for our review on Coach and while there are definite benefits to the bigger watch, the larger size is also a drawback at times since it is heftier and less comfortable to wear 24/7. The battery life of the 7X Solar is excellent and it will last weeks on a charge, but unless you live in a sunny place and spend hours outdoors every day, the solar panels won’t add much in the way of battery life (I've written in-depth about whether Garmin’s solar panels are worth it).

It’s also important to note that the Fenix 7X Solar is not a sapphire model, and so doesn’t have multi-band GPS, neither does the discounted Fenix 7. Both watches are still accurate GPS trackers using the all-systems-on mode, but there’s no mutli-band boost even if you opt for the pricier Fenix 7X Solar.

If you have large wrists and simply want the biggest and best battery life available in the sales, then the Garmin Fenix 7X Solar is the one to get—this is still an excellent deal—but having used a variety of Fenix models of different sizes, I think the Fenix 7 will work better for most people, and it’s £120 cheaper.

The Garmin Epix 2 was one of the watches to look out for in the Amazon Prime Big Deal Days sale, and Amazon has delivered with the biggest discount we’ve ever seen on the watch: Both the steel and titanium models are reduced by $150 in the US.

While Garmin Epix 2 is no longer the top model in the Epix line—that honor belongs to the Garmin Epix Pro, which launched this year—the Epix 2 has been updated with all the latest and best features Garmin offers. It’s undoubtedly still one of the best sports watches available from any brand, with a bright AMOLED display, music storage and maps, and the most impressive sports tracking and training analysis on the market.

We saw the Epix 2 reduced by $100 in the Prime Day sale in July, a great deal at the time, but Amazon has gone $50 better for Big Deal Days. You can get either the steel model of the Epix 2 for $549.99, reduced from $699.99, or the titanium mode for $649.99, down from $799.99.

The benefits of the titanium model extend beyond its lighter, hardier titanium bezel and sapphire crystal screen, because only the sapphire models of the Epix 2 have multi-band GPS tracking. Garmin’s multi-band tracking is the most accurate from any brand, and while the all-systems-on GPS mode on the steel Epix 2 is still good, it’s not as impressive.

Unfortunately for those hunting for deals in the UK, it’s only the steel model that’s included in the Prime Big Deal Days sale on Amazon UK. It’s an excellent deal though, with the watch reduced from £599.99 to £509.99, the cheapest we’ve seen it.

The Garmin Vivoactive 5 stands out as one of the best fitness smartwatches thanks to its attractive design and reliable sports tracking. It’s a cheaper alternative to the Garmin Venu 3, which offers most of the same key features, including a bright AMOLED display.

There are reasons to upgrade to the Venu 3, or indeed the Apple Watch Series 9, if you’re looking for a true smartwatch with great sports tracking. Garmin also has the Venu Sq 2 Music, which is often available for less than the Vivoactive 5’s RRP, and the Forerunner 255 for those who’d like something more sports-focused. 

Garmin Vivoactive 5: Price And Availability

The Garmin Vivoactive 5 launched in September 2023 and costs $299 in the US and £259.99 in the UK. That’s considerably cheaper than the Venu 3, which is $449.99/£459.99, and similar to the Garmin Venu Sq 2 Music smartwatch, which has an RRP of $299.99/£269.99, though it is now often found in sales.

How I Tested This Watch

I’ve used the Garmin Vivoactive for two weeks, tracking all my workouts, general activity and sleep with the watch in that time. I’ve run most days with the watch, as well as tracking bike rides, strength and yoga sessions. I’ve tested most of Garmin’s range of watches, as well as fitness smartwatches from a range of brands, including the latest Apple Watches.

Design

The most notable update to the Garmin Vivoactive 5 is that it now has an AMOLED display, rather than the color LCD screen used in the past. Previously, this was one of the major reasons to upgrade to the Venu over the Vivoactive, but the 1.2in AMOLED touchscreen on the Vivoactive 5 is bright and easy to see indoors and out.

The watch now comes in just one size, which has a 42mm case that’s 11mm thick and sits snugly against the wrist. The Vivoactive 4 came in two sizes—40mm and 45mm—as does the Garmin Venu 3 (41mm and 45mm). It weighs 36g with the silicone band and is a lightweight and comfortable watch to wear 24/7.

The Vivoactive 5 has an aluminum bezel, but otherwise is made from plastic. It has two buttons on the right side of the watch and comes in four colors—black, purple, blue and ivory—and ships with a 20mm silicone band. While the Garmin Venu 3 has the brand’s latest and greatest optical heart rate sensor, the Elevate V5, the Vivoactive 5 has the Elevate V4. The V5 provided an upgrade in accuracy when I tested the Epix Pro and Fenix 7 Pro watches that also have it.

The Vivoactive 5 also lacks a barometric altimeter, which is not only available on the Venu 3, but was on the Vivoactive 4, so there’s a small downgrade from the older model there. You still get elevation stats during outdoor activities through GPS, but these are less accurate, and the watch also won’t track floors climbed throughout the day.

A less surprising omission is multi-band GPS tracking. The Vivoactive 5 GPS chipset offers only all-system-on and GPS-only modes, which are less accurate than multi-band, but not by much, in my experience. And given that this is a less sports-focused watch than others in Garmin’s range, and multi-band GPS uses more battery, I can see why it has been left off.

The Vivoactive 5 has a 5ATM water-resistance rating and 4GB of storage, which you can use for music or to add apps and watch faces from the Garmin Connect IQ app store. It has a pulse oximeter to measure blood oxygen saturation either continuously or just for spot checks, which is less battery-intensive.

Sports Tracking And Accuracy

The Garmin Vivoactive 5 is not billed as a sports watch like the Forerunner range, though in practice there are more similarities across Garmin’s devices than differences. The sports tracking is always reliable, with customisable sports modes that show all the key stats you need during your workouts.

I found the Vivoactive 5 to be accurate during my testing, for the most part. The GPS tracking largely matched up well to that of the Garmin Epix Pro in multi-band mode. There were errors on the Vivoactive 5’s tracks, especially when I ran under tree cover in a forest, but the overall distance and pacing stats were close to the Epix Pro. 

The Vivoactive 5 was somewhat inaccurate on distance during a track session though, since it doesn’t have Garmin’s Track Run mode, which remains reserved for the brand’s more sports-focused watches.

I saw more errors with the optical heart rate tracking from the watch, which lagged behind the readings from a chest strap during intervals, and was wrong for the entirety of one run where it seemed to lock on to my cadence rather than my heart rate. You can connect external sensors via Bluetooth and ANT+ if you want to use a chest strap. This connectivity is a standard feature on Garmins but not always offered by smartwatches.

The training analysis on the Vivoactive 5 is less comprehensive than on the Forerunner range, though you get an estimated recovery time after workouts and a short paragraph explaining the training benefits of workouts, such as improving your VO2 max or general aerobic fitness. You won’t get insights into your overall training load or daily suggested workouts though.

Activity And Sleep Tracking

Aside from not having floors climbed, the Vivoactive 5 is a comprehensive everyday activity tracker, logging steps, active minutes and calories burned. It has Garmin’s Body Battery feature, which estimates your energy levels and shows how sleep and workouts affect them, and tracks your heart rate variability overnight. Once it has set a heart rate variability (HRV) baseline for you, deviations from the norm can indicate that your body is unduly stressed or that you’re getting ill.

During testing the sleep tracking was not particularly accurate, which coincided with a period where my five-month-old baby decided he wasn’t all that keen on sleep. I’ve had many nights with lots of time spent awake, which the Vivoactive 5 has logged as light sleep, much to my chagrin.

Naps are also tracked with the Vivoactive 5, not that I’ve had any while wearing it, unfortunately. It also has a sleep coach feature that suggests how much sleep you need each night based on activity levels, HRV and recent sleep. It’s a nice idea but undermined by inaccurate sleep tracking.

Smart Features

Now it has an AMOLED screen, the Vivoactive 5 has basically all the smartwatch-style features Garmin offers in general, aside from navigation. It has NFC payments through Garmin Pay, music storage and the ability to link with Spotify, Deezer and Amazon Music premium accounts for wireless transfers, and access to the Connect IQ app store. However, the app store falls well short of the range you get from Apple or Google Play. There’s no LTE version of the Vivoactive, so it’s not a true smartwatch, though it has useful smarts and is a great sports watch that works with Apple and Android devices. 

Battery Life

The Garmin Vivoactive 5 is listed as lasting 11 days in smartwatch mode, which drops to five days with the screen always on. It offers 17 hours of GPS tracking when in all-systems-on mode, and 21 hours if you opt for GPS-only.

In my testing, I found it lasted a week with the screen set to raise-to-wake, and four days with the screen always-on. That’s when running every day with all-systems-on mode activated, and with notifications coming into the watch. Sportier Garmins with LCD screens can last longer, but for a fitness smartwatch with an AMOLED screen the battery life on the Vivoactive 5 is good, though it’s not as long as the larger Venu 3 model.

Is The Garmin Vivoactive 5 Worth It?

The Garmin Vivoactive 5 is a great watch, and worth the price—it looks a great-value option in comparison with the Venu 3 and the Apple Watch Series 9. It offers attractive design, good sports tracking and handy smart features, and it’s a considerably better sports watch than any Android smartwatch I’ve tested.

Buying decisions become less clear when you add in all the other Garmin watches around it, however—Garmin could do with simplifying its range. The Garmin Venu Sq 2 Music in particular is similar in price, with a smaller square design and most of the same features as the Vivoactive 5, and it’s now often in sales for less than its RRP.

On the sportier side of things there is the Garmin Forerunner 255, which doesn’t have an AMOLED display, but does have a barometric altimeter and multi-band GPS tracking, plus more insightful training analysis. It’s the better option for those more focused on sports like running over tracking general activity and gym workouts.