When we put together a pool of reviewers, we want people who adventure big but also live normal lives—because that’s our true audience (very few readers are running 100-mile races or summiting Everest). Enter lead watch tester Meg Healy. There’s no one better suited to deliver real-world reviews of a watch that can track all of your workouts while integrating into your 9-5. As a runner, dancer, cyclist, and world traveler, she’s as active as you can get without being sponsored, but she also lives in the real world as a mom, PTA volunteer, and soccer coach.

Healy has tested a batch of watches for şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř over the past several years and says that the , at the moment, is her clear favorite. She’s now lived with it on her wrist nearly 24/7 for six months and found that, for her, the watch strikes the perfect balance of training coach and everyday companion.

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Suunto Race

Testing Stats

• Test Locations:
  • New Mexico and Brazil
• Six months of continuous testing in a wide variety of activities:
  • 450+ miles of running and hiking with more than 40,000 feet of elevation gain
  • 100+ hours of yoga
  • 60+ hours of martial arts training
  • Hours of rollerblading, stand-up paddleboarding, kayaking, horseback riding, swimming, and more

Suunto Race Training Tracking Performance

Healy said the Race became her favorite workout companion for a number of reasons. First, the watch, which works with all the major satellite systems—GPS, GLONASS, GALILEO, QZSS, BEIDOU, and on both L1 and L5 GPS frequencies—grabs a GPS signal faster than any watch she’s tested. That was important for Healy who’s always busy and wants her workout to start as soon as possible.

“As you can imagine, people like me who like to run don’t like to wait,” she said. “It’s a pain to be waiting around on your doorstep, or at a trailhead in the wilderness of the Brazilian jungle before you can head out. But I never had that problem with the Race.”

She also loved the watch’s ability to track a wide range of activities. With other watches, Healy couldn’t always find the appropriate activity tracker for what she was doing, given her interests are as diverse as horseback riding, yoga, and martial arts. But the Race, which tracks nearly 100 activities, never left her hanging. Plus, on a day when she might do three or four different workouts, or a month where she does eight or 10 different activities, the watch kept up and, via the Suunto app, succinctly reported her overall fitness and provided useful feedback.

“I loved seeing that no matter what I was doing, there was clearly a time during my day when I felt best and had the best pace, no matter what,” she said.

Most of the time Healy knew where she was going on her runs, but she still appreciated the Race’s ability to download offline topo maps specific to where she was adventuring. Using the app, you can set a route that the watch will follow on screen and offer turn-by-turn instructions. If you get lost, the watch will point you back to wherever you started.

The battery on the Race is so good that Healy pretty much forgot about it. She estimates that she only charged it once every 10 days. According to official stats, Suunto says the watch will last up to 26 days if just used as a regular watch and give you up to 40 hours of continuous use with every tracking metric turned on. Or you can go for five days in “Tour” mode in which the GPS is tracking with lower accuracy.

Healy wore the watch at all times (except for the rare occasions when it was charging). She used the watch to track her sleep and said integrating that data into her overall fitness picture proved to be useful, helping her identify which days she was ready for a bigger and more taxing workout. (She did, however, say that the sleep tracking was not as accurate as some other watches she’s used, noting that the data occasionally said she was awake during times when she knew she was asleep.)

The only other problem Healy ran into with the watch was when she tried to track her blood oxygen. It’s not a metric she regularly monitors, but her dad had to check his for medical reasons so she decided to try the feature on the Race. Too often, however, an error code popped up saying it couldn’t provide any info.

Suunto Race Everyday Performance

Healy is 5 foot, 5 inches tall, and fit, so the 1.43-inch high-definition AMOLED screen sat a little big on her wrist (she might be more comfortable with the “S” version that has a smaller face). Nonetheless, she was glad to have all that real estate to display useful stats she’d check while working out. And over time she got used to the size and said it never got in the way when she was moving.

At night, Healy, who is light sensitive, liked that the watch could be set accordingly. When she raised her wrist to look at the screen, just a dim display of the time appeared rather than the full, bright screen. She also enjoyed using the watch as an alarm so that she didn’t have to sleep with her phone next to her bed, and found the flashlight feature helpful to navigate around the house in the dark.

Healy had nothing but praise for the watch’s durability. After months of using the watch hard without a care, she said it still looked almost new. “After looking this thing over I can’t see a single scratch on the face or a single mark on the body,” she said. One minor complaint: Healy prefers lighter colors, so she wished the titanium version she tested came in a white instead of just a metallic or purple colorway. Suunto does, however, offer a number of bright wristbands to liven things up.

Finally, she appreciated the Suunto Race’s price point. The titanium version Healy tested costs $549, significantly less than the $839 you’ll pay for the titanium and solar-charging top-of-the-line Suunto Vertical Titanium Solar or other comparable watches. For that extra money, the Vertical gets you a better battery life (up to 85 hours of continuous GPS use with solar recharging) and it’s made in Finland instead of China. Those differences are important, and will matter to some folks, but for many other everyday users, including Healy, they’re not worth the extra $300.

“The Race was everything I needed and it’s been an incredible training partner no matter where I’ve been,” Healy said.

See our full guide to the best sports watches we’ve tested.

The post The Best Sports Watch for Everyday, Do-Everything Athletes appeared first on şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Online.

When we started tallying up how many miles our group covered while testing watches, we ended somewhere around 4,000 miles. That’s like running and cycling from New York to San Francisco, then turning around and making it back to Nebraska. Throughout all those miles, a diverse group of testers—from everyday moms and dads to former Olympic Trials athletes—obsessed over the features of a big batch of watches to find the very best.

At a Glance

• Best Overall:
• Best for Runners:
• Best for Weekend Warriors:
• Best for Small Wrists:
• Best for Everyday Use:
• Best for a Budget:
• How to Choose a Sports Watch
• How We Test
• Meet Our Lead Testers

If you buy through our links, we may earn an affiliate commission. This supports our mission to get more people active and outside. Learn more.

Best Overall

Garmin Enduro 3

Weight: 2.2 oz with elastic nylon strap
Face Diameter: 51 mm

Pros and Cons
⊕ Big but light
⊕ Phenomenal battery life
⊕ Feature rich
⊕ Strap is the most comfortable on the market
⊗ Pricey

After months of running and skiing, the Garmin Enduro 3 rose to the top of the test group and is possibly the best sports watch we’ve ever tested, thanks to the feature-rich setup and a huge 51-millimeter screen.

The screen isn’t AMOLED, but while bright AMOLED screens beam workout info at you in ultra high-def, over years of testing we’ve come to love non-AMOLED screens both for their less-glaring brightness and because they have a much smaller energy draw and allow for mind-boggling battery life.

Case in point: The Enduro 3 allows for up to 36 days of smartwatch use (where you’re just using the watch for notifications and other non-workout features) and up to 120 hours of GPS use. Throw in some solar charging and the watch will keep ticking for a reported 90 days of general smartwatch use (up from 46 days for the Enduro 2), and a staggering 320 hours (that’s 13+ days) of GPS tracking. One tester said he went over a month between charges (longer during the abundant summer sun) with 24/7 daily use and about an hour of activity tracking per day.

In addition to tracking nearly every sport or exercise imaginable (as diverse as wakesurfing and rugby), the Enduro 3 also comes with plenty of space for downloaded maps plus turn-by-turn directions so backcountry skiers or trail runners will never get lost. I have several hundred songs downloaded, which has helped me stay motivated on long, grueling road runs. Plus, the elastic nylon strap is the most comfortable we’ve ever used; not once did testers get a rash and they raved that the adjustability created the perfect fit.

A 10 percent reduction in weight between the Enduro 2 and Enduro 3—or about seven grams—does not seem like a lot. But damn if I didn’t notice that it was the lightest 51-millimeter watch I’ve ever worn, which made a big difference, even if just mentally, when covering a lot of miles.

Like other top-end Garmin watches, the Enduro 3 comes with an ultra-bright flashlight that was equally helpful when peeing at night as it was one evening when I had to navigate a dark section of trail and didn’t have a headlamp.

Garmin’s software interface is not as good as Apple’s—and likely never will be—but it’s way better than what we’ve seen from other competitors. Tester Jonathan Beverly found the mobile app’s daily dashboard that tracked both fitness progress and training readiness to be intuitive, accurate, and valuable. “Whenever I ignored its recommendations to rest, I’d pay for it on subsequent days,” he said.

Best for Runners

Coros Pace Pro

Weight: 1.7 oz with silicone band, 1.3 oz with nylon band
Face Diameter: 33 mm

Pros and Cons
⊕ Small but mighty
⊕ The screen is beautiful
⊕ Fairly priced
⊕ Ultra-quick GPS location
⊗ Wake time isn’t immediate with arm rise

Back in college, Jesse Armijo ran the USA Olympic Marathon Trials. More recently he had a streak of winning the Duke City Half Marathon four times in a row. He’s currently training for the Black Canyon 100k Ultra in Arizona, and he organizes a youth running club for kids in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In other words, he’s a talented and dedicated runner and was the perfect tester for the Pace Pro, which bills itself as the smart choice for serious athletes (especially those who pound the pavement or trails).

Jesse put hundreds of running miles on the watch and found that it was an excellent training partner during every one of them. It picked up a GPS signal almost as soon as he stepped out of his house so that he could get up and go, and he liked the small 1.3-inch face that gave him all the info he needed—in a bright, beautiful AMOLED display— without looking ostentatious (he’s a humble guy).

In high-quality GPS mode, the watch lasts up to 38 hours, which Jesse said was more than plenty, even for an athlete of his caliber who’s often out training 10 or 20 hours per week. He found the software reasonably easy to navigate and liked built-in features like the effort-pace screen. This feature allowed him to see an adjusted pace that factored in hills and compared how hard he was working to his historical performances with similar conditions and terrain.

Jesse is a new dad, so affordability is important, and at just half the price of the Enduro 3, the Pace Pro is something he’s happy to invest in. Our only niggle: Jesse wished the watch lit up its screen more quickly when he raised his wrist.

Best for Weekend Warriors

Apple Watch Ultra 2

Weight: 2.2 oz
Face Diameter: 49 mm

Pros and Cons
⊕ The best interface on the market
⊕ Intuitive lifestyle functions
⊗ Lousy battery life

Category manager Jakob Schiller is not as hardcore an athlete as the other testers in this year’s group and found that the Ultra 2 was perfect for a weekend warrior like him. He loved how the watch integrated into his everyday life, allowing him to quickly answer texts with Siri, easily control his AirPods, and answer a call on the watch just by double-tapping his pointer finger and thumb. But he was also impressed with the bright screen, detailed stats for every activity from skiing to swimming, and the well-designed watch faces that presented data and info in smart, easy-to-read displays. “The watch faces that launched with the Ultra 2 are not only a pleasure to look at but are also damn good at presenting both everyday and workout information—plus they’re easily customizable,” he said.

This version of the Ultra is also carbon-neutral, and Apple is sharing the environmentally-friendly manufacturing technology it developed to help other companies build better products. Jakob, like everyone else, was disappointed, however, with the 36-hour battery life (with regular use, up to 72 hours in low power mode) but says he’s rarely away from a charger for that long, so it isn’t a deal-breaker.

PAID ADVERTISEMENT BY AMAZFIT
Amazfit T-Rex 3 ($279.99)

With 170+ built-in workout modes and AI-generated personalized training plans, the T-Rex 3 smartwatch from Amazfit is the perfect partner for the gym, pool, road, or trail. Track reps, sets, and rest time in strength training mode, and easily see all your workout data and sleep recovery information on the big, bright face. Plus, stay focused on your workout by fully controlling your watch with your voice and sending speech-to-text messages. With more than 3 weeks of battery life and a rugged body, the T-Rex 3 is always ready to go.

Best for Small Wrists

Suunto Race S Titanium Courtney

Weight: 1.87 oz with silicone band
Face Diameter: 33.5 mm

Pros and Cons
⊕ Versatile functionality
⊕ Tough as nails
⊕ Perfect for small wrists
⊗ Heart rate takes time to settle in

We’ll be honest: Wearing a pro-model watch from Courtney Dauwalter is its own form of motivation. Just like wearing a pair of Jordans and being inspired by the GOAT himself, wearing Dauwalter’s watch always gave us a little extra motivation, channeling the strength that she used to become the first person, man or woman, to win the Western States 100, Hardrock 100, and the Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc trail running races all in the same year.

Meg Healy was the principal tester, and as an ultra-fit woman who’s just about five-feet tall, she said the 45 millimeter form factor was perfect for her smaller wrists but never once lacked info thanks to the 1.32-inch screen that broadcast all the info she needed, no matter the workout. Healy, who loves to pack in multiple sports every day, said she also appreciated the wide variety of activity trackers built into the software that allowed her to keep track of everything from running to martial arts to horseback riding.

Healy’s favorite part, however, was that the watch restarted her workout when she resumed after a pause, even if she didn’t remember to manually do it herself. “This saved me from not tracking large chunks of many bike rides, hikes, and runs after I’d stopped for traffic or to pick up after the dog,” she said. The battery on the Race S is respectable, lasting up to 30 hours when talking to multiple satellites. You can get a less expensive steel Race S, but we loved the feathery weight of the nearly indestructible titanium.

One potential ding: Healy noticed that the heart rate monitor wasn’t accurate at times and had trouble settling in, especially at the beginning of a workout. I didn’t put as many miles in with the Race S as Healy, but had much better luck and found the heart rate to be as accurate as those of other watches.

See our extended review of the full-size Suunto Race.

Best for Everyday Use

Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra

Weight: 2.1 oz for just the watch
Face Diameter: 37.3 mm

Pros and Cons
⊕ Battery lasts multiple days
⊕ Delivers tons of information
⊕ Pretty on the eye
⊗ Just for Android users
⊗ Watch strap is sub-par

Ever since Apple and Samsung launched beefed up sports watches we’ve been waiting for these companies to put other sports watch manufacturers out of business. It hasn’t happened because both Apple and Samsung have focused more on ultra bright screens, phone connectivity, and information delivery and less on battery life. That means everyone who’s running ultras or exploring for multiple days at a time is still very loyal to the likes of Garmin, Suunto, and Coros.

The Galaxy Watch Ultra, however, gives us a glimpse of what could be coming because it’s a big, flashy, daily watch that lets you track your workouts (from running and cycling to table tennis and orienteering), play music, control your thermostat—and its battery actually lasts a couple days. Tester Andy Dean, who used the watch for over 1,000 miles, said he could track his bike commute to work in the morning, his run at lunch, and his bike commute home for two days without running out of battery. Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 7 couldn’t do that, nor could the Apple Watch Ultra 2 (which didn’t get an update this year).

Those of you who can handle information displayed in your face all day will love the Ultra’s sharp 37.3-millimeter AMOLED screen with 480 x 480 resolution that beams your calendar appointments, bank info, and a wide array of workouts at you in high-def.

We recommend buyinga third-party watch band for the Ultra because the one that comes with the watch is, frankly, junk. Dean found it to be highly uncomfortable when it was synched down, even just slightly to get accurate heart-rate readings. The band’s silicone material also irritated his skin so much it forced him to leave the watch off for hours at a time, sometimes a full day.

Best for a Budget

Garmin Forerunner 165 Music

Weight: 1.4 oz with the silicone band
Face Diameter: 30.4 mm

Pros and Cons
⊕ Feature-rich for the price
⊕ Large music storage capacity
⊕ Bright, easy-to-read screen
⊕ Small and light
⊗ Battery life limited

For those of us who need a playlist to keep ourselves going when things stretch past 30 minutes, and can attest that Run the Jewels and Avicii sound great at the 45-minute mark, the Forerunner 165 Music stands out as a top training companion. Lower on the price spectrum at $300, it still comes with 4GB of music storage so we can jam for an entire workout. For that price you also get a bright AMOLED screen, accurate GPS and multi-band connection, great phone connectivity, and a comfy strap that didn’t chafe.

Meg Healy used the watch for multiple sports every day, putting in well over 1,000 miles. For her, the running metrics and coaching suggestions that Garmin provided were especially useful. Information about vertical ratio, stride length, and ground contact time helped her monitor her running form, and as a busybody she liked that the watch was not shy about recommending recovery days. “This watch is like having an opinionated but indulgent nanny who thinks you are very talented and dedicated but always working too hard. Honestly, it feels kind of nice to have that support and feedback as an adult.”

Garmin says the watch should give users 19 hours of GPS use, and Healy said she was able to get several days of use at a time before charging. But on one multi-day backpacking trip, she said the watch died, leaving her without metrics, and firming up her opinion that the watch is designed for everyday runners and cyclists and not multi-day adventurers. She also wished the activity menu included recreational sports like soccer.

How to Choose a Sports Watch

When buying a sports watch you need to decide who you really are. That sounds like some kind of spiritual question you’d ponder at a retreat, but it’s absolutely the best way to sort out what you need. Can you admit to yourself that you’re a weekend warrior because you have a job and family? Or are you totally in and going to the top as an athlete? Maybe you disappear into the backcountry for a week whenever you get the chance.

It’s necessary to categorize yourself because this will help you pick the watch that meets your goals. If your workouts are squeezed into lunch-hour work breaks, you don’t need a watch that lasts for weeks on end without charging. If you’re dedicated to really improving in your chosen sport, a higher-end watch with complex training options can be a real aid in achieving your goal. If you dabble in a variety of sports, you’ll need a watch with a robust workout menu. And if you’re an adventurer who regularly returns from trips with torn apparel and broken equipment, you need to prioritize a bullet-proof build.

Next, make sure you play with the watch you think you want—at a local retailer, if possible, or borrow one from a friend—before making a purchase. Spend time pressing buttons, and see how much effort it takes to find features and customize the watch to your preferences. All the top-end sports watches have menus that are fairly well organized, but each one is different. Little tweaks in how a watch allows you to access a workout or track data can be big motivators—or frustrations—when you’re using the thing all day every day. Note: The menus used across a specific watch brand’s line tend to be similar, so even if you don’t find the exact model you want at your local retailer, you can still get a sense of how a brand organizes its software by playing with a different watch.

How We Test

• Number of Testers: 9
• Number of Products Tested: 12
• Number of Miles: 4,000+

Over the years we’ve discovered that the best sports watch testers are adventurers who are absolutely obsessed with being outside, but come at their chosen sport without much of an ego. They love sport for sport and aren’t trying to prove anything. This balance is important because mild-mannered testers are great at digging into the features of a watch and providing in-depth feedback, but also know how to keep an everyday user in mind. There’s no mansplaining, or sportsplaining, in our tester group.

In terms of breadth, the watches we tested for this round traveled the country and saw the tops of peaks, spent hot days in the desert, and were with us during the day as our testers did everything from training troops and teaching kids to counting fish and coaching sports.

Meet Our Lead Testers

Category manager Jakob Schiller was a gear editor at şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř and is now a columnist. The father of four kids and two dogs, he’s a bit pinned down but still manages to run, ski, or bike every day and loves a good weekend-long adventure in the woods chasing elk, peak tops, or fresh turns.

One of the routes Jakob used when testing sports watches:

Jesse Armijo is a PE coach and also founded the Albuquerque, New Mexico-based Dukes Track Club, an all-ages organization that coaches kids and organizes a variety of races. He’s the most unassuming runner you’ll ever meet and is more than happy to sit in the group but can put everyone in the ground if he turns on the burners.

Meghan Healy does data management for the publishing industry and is also one of New Mexico’s most high-energy athletes. She runs races, is passionate about martial arts, rides horses, cycles around town with her kids, helps coach soccer, and is the true definition of someone who benefits from a trusted, function-rich sports watch.

The post The Best Sports Watches (2025) appeared first on şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Online.

In the last few years, the gulf that divides smartwatches and sports watches has shrunk considerably. Pure sports watches have added smartwatch features like phone notifications, music, and bright OLED touchscreens, while smartwatches have gotten more rugged and put a greater emphasis on fitness and sport tracking. The closest option to achieve best-of-both-worlds status has been the Apple Watch, but that left Android users out in the cold with subpar substitutes.

Finally, the is here for the green-bubble crowd, promising to compete with the Apple Watch’s excellence at both day-to-day tasks as well as athletic tracking. As the name suggests, the Pixel Watch 3 is the third iteration of Google’s flagship smartwatch, and its second with all kinds of Fitbit smarts and tracking built-in (Google bought Fitbit in 2021). After testing the new version for five weeks, I can affirm that as a smartwatch, it’s pretty fantastic, but as a sports and adventure watch, it still has room for improvement.

If you buy through our links, we may earn an affiliate commission. This supports our mission to get more people active and outside. Learn more.

Updates to the Google Pixel Watch 3

Let’s start with what’s new, and there’s plenty. For starters, you can now choose from two sizes: 41mm and 45mm. Both sizes come in versions with and without LTE cellular radios. I tested the 45mm LTE version, and it sits beautifully on my wrist.

It’s perfectly circular and smooth like a river pebble, except for the dial that protrudes from the right side. The watch bands are easy to swap out, too, so you can quickly change between bands for high-activity or high-society.

The bezels have been shrunk down at the edges by 16-percent, which gives the 45mm size a 40 percent larger screen than the last version. It pumps out 2,000 nits of light, twice as powerful as the last version, the colors are bright and the contrast is excellent. That makes reading on it better than any watch I’ve used, by a long shot. Not only is a full text message likely to fit on the screen, sometimes I’ll skim a whole email on it, scrolling down with the mechanical dial as I go. I have no issues reading the details when stealing a glance at my stats as I run, either.

As with the previous version, the watch is equipped with GPS, a compass, altimeter, barometer, and it’s waterproof to 5ATM (50 meters deep), for all your aquatic endeavors.

On the back of the watch is an updated suite of sensors for monitoring your heart rate (active and resting heart rate as well as heart rate variability), breathing rate, oxygen saturation, and skin temperature (which can be useful for period tracking). All told, it’s Google and Fitbit’s most advanced sensor setup yet, and I found the accuracy to be excellent when comparing my stats to a chest strap and other wrist-based sports watch sensors. You can also use the watch as a heart rate monitor while using other exercise equipment such as stationary bikes, syncing the watch to display metrics on the other device.

You’ll also find some new Fitbit-powered health tracking metrics. The Readiness score factors in all of your body’s biometrics as well as recent activity levels and sleep to give you an estimate of your recovery, plus it advises you on how much activity you should look to do each day, based on your stated goals. This is basically Fitbit’s version of the Whoop Score or Garmin’s Body Battery, and I generally found it to be pretty well aligned with how I felt.

Two other new metrics are Cardio Load and Target Load. Cardio Load tracks your training and heart rate throughout the day (updating in realtime) to measure how much work your heart has done, using training impulse models (or TRIMP). Target Load is essentially the range of exercise the watch advises you to try and meet during the day. All these calculations are designed to work in tandem to help prevent overtraining or undertraining, and I was generally impressed with how they worked.

Every morning within half an hour of waking you get a Morning Brief on your watch, which gives you a quick snapshot of your sleep, recovery, exercise goals for the day, as well as weather and appointments from your Google Calendar. It’s a really nice way to get up to speed and prepare for the day ahead.

Standout smartwatch features

Where this watch really excels, however, is as a smartwatch. It’s simply a fantastic companion to your Android phone. You can read and respond to texts and emails (by voice or a surprisingly good onscreen keyboard), and download or stream music (using 32GB of built in storage). It has a fantastic Recorder app for voice notes, which can be automatically backed up to your phone and the cloud. It has a speaker and mic so you can even take calls in a pinch (like when I got an important call while I was in the shower), though you’ll probably want earbuds for longer calls because the speaker isn’t the loudest. It also features an excellent version of Google Maps, with turn-by-turn navigation and offline maps, and it integrates Google Pay, which allows you to pay with a tap of your wrist pretty much anywhere now.

One feature lets the watch work as a remote shutter for your phone’s camera (and even streams the live video to your watch so you can check your framing). Plus, the watch has fantastic smart home features. For example, if you use Google’s latest Nest Cameras, you can get real time video directly on the watch to see who’s at your door. You can quickly adjust your connected lights, thermostat, or speakers, and if you have a Chromecast or a TV powered by Google, you can use your watch as a remote control. It also has a built-in AI assistant so you can tell it to add things to your calendar or shopping list, start apps, timers, or activities, send messages, or just answer your dumb questions.

I tested the Pixel Watch 3 paired with the new Pixel 9 Pro smartphone, and while the Pixel Watch 3 will work well with virtually any Android phone, it works especially well with Google’s own Pixel line. You get a deeper integration of features–like syncing of Do Not Disturb, Bedtime modes, alarms, Recorder voice notes–and it’s pretty seamless. The Pixel 9 Pro is especially good for the outdoor crowd because it’s one of the first Android phones to offer Satellite SOS, enabling you to contact emergency services when you don’t have cell signal or Wi-Fi connection. Plus, it has the best low-light photo and video of any phone I’ve tested. And when I don’t have my phone with me I’ve found the LTE on the watch to be reliable, and even slightly magical feeling to retain so much functionality and messaging ability while phoneless.

How it fares on runs and other athletic activities

This year Google and Fitbit have put a lot more functionality into the new watch as a running companion. It now features daily run recommendations as well as a run-builder, so you can customize your workout. The Pixel Watch 3 will give you real time guidance as you go, alerting you to intervals, and keeping your pace or heart rate in the right zone. Once you’re done you get advanced stride analytics, such as cadence, ground contact time, stride length, vertical ratio, and vertical oscillation.

I will say, though, that the real time run experience could be improved. While you’re actually running it doesn’t display that much data. You get distance, elapsed time, heart rate, and current pace on one screen, and a heart rate zone page on the second—and that’s it. No real-time information about your elevation gained or lost, no info on your cadence until you’re done. You can’t add new fields or additional screens either. Most tragically, there isn’t any integration with that wonderful Google Maps app. It would be amazing if it had a track-back feature, or a way to load running routes, but there’s just no map screen.

Other activities are even more limited, with Swimming being the worst offender. You can input the length of the pool and it will keep count of your laps in the background, but while you’re actually swimming, the only data it shows you is your elapsed time. That’s it. You can’t even manually mark intervals to designate sets, and it certainly doesn’t count your strokes or differentiate types of stroke like most modern sports watches. And there’s no open water swim mode, either.

If you’re surfing with it, it tracks your total distance, it doesn’t know the difference between when you’re paddling, drifting, or surfing. It can’t count waves or integrate with Surfline to help you find webcam clips of your waves ridden, something which both Apple Watch and Garmin watches can do.

These limitations are very frustrating because this watch has all the right sensors and processors to go head-to-head or even exceed sports watch heavyweights like Garmin and Suunto, but nobody built the software to do so. The good news is that means Google/Fitbit could easily fix that with an update, but whether or not they will remains to be seen.

That said, I’ve found the daily activity tracking (such as heart metrics and sleep) to be excellent, and as a smartwatch it’s peerless for the Android crowd. The crowning achievement is that the battery almost always lasts me more than 36 hours, sometimes as much as 48 (if I’m using it less and not using GPS). It also recharges from 0 to 100-percent in 80 minutes (just 60 minutes for the 41mm version). This means that you will wear this watch more of the time (usually through two full sleeps before you have to recharge), likely resulting in better health metrics.

Is the Google Pixel Watch 3 worth it?

As it is, for Android users who want a robust smartwatch with excellent health tracking features, this is absolutely the one to get. For the more hardcore outdoors types, you’ll be left wishing that someone at Fitbit had just taken a Garmin Fenix 8 and copied all of the outdoor activity modes. Who knows, maybe they still will—and if they did it would probably be my favorite watch ever.

The is available in 41mm for $350 ($450 for the LTE version) and 45mm for $400 ($500 for LTE), in several color combinations. Personally, I think the LTE is worth it, as you can go phone-free and retain almost all the smartwatch functionality (though you will have to add it to your mobile plan, which will incur a monthly fee that varies by carrier). Ultimately, this is the best Android-powered smartwatch yet.

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Polar has long made some of the more affordable sports/adventure watches, but this year the Finnish company decided to swing for the fences and make a true flagship watch. It’s Polar’s most expensive wearable—starting at $750—but the has the nicest hardware ever featured in one of its watches. It’s just too bad the software can’t keep up.

The is being marketed as a “Premium Outdoor Watch.” You might think of it as a direct competitor to line. It features a 1.39-inch touchscreen display with a generous 454 x 454-pixel resolution. The case and bezel are made of sturdy and attractive stainless steel, and the screen is a an ultra-hard sapphire glass, which is known for its strength and scratch resistance. It’s water resistant to 100 meters and it features Polar’s latest for heart rate monitoring, pulse oximetry, and even skin temperature. Over three months, I put the watch through its paces running, surfing, hiking, swimming, and wearing it 24/7.

Here’s what I found.

Polar Grit X2 Pro Review

Weight: 2.8 oz (including wristband)
Display size: 1.39 in
Display resolution: 454 Ă— 454

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Polar Grit X2 Pro at a Glance

Pros

• Good-looking hardware
• Accurate GPS tracking
• Excellent battery life
• Downloadable maps for offline use
• Comfortable to wear

Cons

• Menus and features aren’t intuitive to navigate
• Software has some major bugs
• Lacks powerful multisport functionality
• Expensive

Aesthetics

The watch comes together in a nice-looking package. The metal bezel looks absolutely great whether you’re wearing it on a trail or at a fancy dinner, and I’ve had zero issues with scratching despite scrambling over boulders and haphazardly throwing it into a backpack filled with other metal electronics. The screen has a high maximum brightness, with excellent contrast, and it’s easy to read even in blazing direct sunlight. You can choose low or medium brightness if you want to save battery-life, and you can also choose between having the watch face constantly illuminated or for it to just come on when you lift up your wrist to look at it or touch a button (which will save even more battery). Personally, I kept it in high brightness and kept “Display always off” turned off. Polar has a somewhat limited amount of watch faces to choose from (and you can’t download more, unlike with Garmin), but they’re attractive and they can be customized to display the information that’s most important to you at a glance.

User Experience

From the home screen, swiping to the left or right brings you to various widgets for your activity, sleep, cardio load, week at a glance, today’s training suggestions, navigation, sunrise/sunset times, weather, and media controls. These are generally well thought-out and display the information in easy-to-read layouts. There are even explainers for some of the metrics, which can be helpful because there’s a lot to sort through. The watch can give you suggestions for training or recovery, based on your sleep and the workouts you’ve had. It will also tell you if you’re overtraining or undertraining, and the workout suggestions will be specifically tailored to you. (Though, the accuracy of these kinds of technologies is still hotly debated.) I was testing this watch as I was just getting back into running after a knee injury. The workouts it suggested tended to be lower intensity than I probably would have chosen for myself, but it helped me get back on the horse without re-injuring myself.

I’m not a big fan of the way the buttons are configured. The watch features three buttons on the right side and two on the left, but I found it to be a bit unintuitive. For example, rather than the common start/stop button for activities, you have to start on the right middle, and stop on the left bottom. Pressing once pauses the activity. If you want to stop it you have to press and hold for another three seconds. I often found myself hitting the wrong button during activities, which could be frustrating.

The menu layout also took some getting used to, as did discerning which features are accessible via watch. Sometimes, I found myself zeroing in on the correct feature, only to have the watch tell me the thing you seek can only be found on the app, which sent me on another quest. Unfortunately, the app isn’t very intuitive, either, and overall you’re left with fewer options for customization than you get with Garmin or Suunto watches.

Activity Tracking

When it comes to activities, the watch can store 20 different sport types at a time, which sounds like plenty, but I found this to be a bit misleading. A lot of the activities have the same exact data fields, even when it doesn’t make any sense. Surfing, for example, includes elevation data fields. Why? It would be really nice if it could recognize the difference between when you’re riding a wave and when you’re paddling back out and give you different metrics on it, which the Apple Watch and both do. In fact, both of those watches will sync with Surfline which will allow you to easily find videos of you surfing (if you’re at a spot with a webcam). It also just doesn’t have as many activities to choose from as those competitors, which have more than 80.

That being said, if you’re running, specifically, the watch is really quite good. You can easily flip through current stats, maps, and music controls, and it even has some unique features such as , making it a sort of wrist-worn power meter. Running Power is a mechanical work rate, measured in watts, similar to what you’d get on a power meter on a bike. I also found Polar’s recommended workouts to be good, and the coaching (which comes through your phone) was helpful, too, which can help you set your pace and manage intervals based on time or distance. One really nice feature is that you can use the watch as a Bluetooth Heart Rate Monitor (HRM) and have it send live data to other apps or devices, like Strava, MapMyRun, or stationary bikes or treadmills.

TheThe watch’s heart rate monitoring feature also performed admirably, though not perfectly. I compared it on several workouts to my trusty Wahoo Trackr HRM Chest Strap and most of the time it matched pretty evenly, putting it on the upper end of par with other smartwatches I’ve tested.

Navigation

One of Polar Grit X2 Pro’s other banner features is navigation. The map is bright and colorful, and it’s easy to use your fingers to scroll around and zoom. It comes pre-loaded with very basic maps of North America, but you can download detailed maps in more specific regions through the Polar website. You just have to plug your watch into your computer to transfer it over.

You can download routes through Komoot and Strava Routes which work when you’re offline, which is convenient. But when using navigation modes this watch wants you to calibrate, and then re-calibrate the compass over and over again. This is liable to happen not just every hike, but sometimes multiple times per hike, and it involves twisting your wrist around into various uncomfortable positions until you have appeased the magnetic demons that live inside. Most other adventure watches do not ask you to do this ever, so this is definitely an oddity. (It’s also a known issue with the Grit X2 Pro, which means a software fix may be on the way.)

Guided Workouts

The Polar Grit X2 Pro doesn’t support importing workouts from apps like . That’s a pretty big deal for more competitive athletes, especially those working with coaches. You can export your workouts to TrainingPeaks and Strava after you’re done, but you can’t import them. Both Garmin and Apple Watches make this pretty seamless. Polar does have some of its own workouts pre-loaded that it kind of guides you through with animations, but if you need instructions it takes more button presses to get to the relevant info than you would think, meanwhile the timer keeps going. The animations aren’t as nuanced as those you find on Garmin or Fitbit watches, either. When in activity tracking, you’re limited to four data fields per page (e.g. elapsed time, distance, pace, heart rate, etc), which is fewer than most watches I’ve tested (the Epix allows up to seven). The numbers are large and easily visible, but I prefer information density to scrolling through pages while I’m trying to keep my pace up.

Storage and Battery LifeĚý

The watch is also somewhat more limited as an autonomous gadget than a lot of other flagship models. For example, despite the watch having 32GB of storage, you can’t download music to it and play it directly through a paired set of earbuds, which is unfortunate. That said, if you’re playing music off your phone the Grit X2 Pro does allow you to play/pause and skip tracks from your wrist, which is handy. Unlike other smartwatches, there’s also no mobile payment option—a bummer if you get caught out on a long run and need to grab a bite to eat or a taxi home.

I’m glad to say that battery life is excellent on this Grit X2 Pro. I kept the screen in high brightness and in the gesture-based wake-up mode (i.e. the screen isn’t always on, but it turns on when you raise your wrist or press a button), and doing that allowed me to average 10 days of battery life, which squares with Polar’s claims. Of course, that’s best-case-scenario. If you’re doing a lot of activities that use the GPS your battery life will drop considerably, but still, here it performed at least as well as my .

Polar Grit X2 Pro: Who Is It For?

Ultimately, this is a watch that I really wanted to like, and I did like it enough to wear it for three months, but I never came to love it, and the little annoyances never stopped being annoying. In my opinion, the UI and overall user experience falls short of other premium watches like the Garmin Fenix or Epix. And at $750 (or $870 for the that includes a leather wristband), I found the cost a little hard to stomach.

The hardware is really fantastic, however, and the watch is comfortable to wear. If you’re the kind of user who puts aesthetics first, want basic smartwatch functionality in an attractive package, and don’t mind the high price tag, this could make sense for you. But if you tend to prioritize function over fashion—and want even more features at a lower cost—you may want to look elsewhere.

The post Tested: The New Polar Grit X2 Pro Watch appeared first on şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Online.

Here are some features I genuinely never thought I’d see on a watch: subaquatic topo maps; a dive-readiness tracker; underwater text messaging. Shockingly, all of these features exist on the , the most lusted-after top-of-the-line smartwatch and dive computer on the market. After two months of using the Mk3i for running, hiking, and diving, I can confidently say it’s the only watch I’ll ever need for the foreseeable future, and, apart from the significant pricetag hurdle, a no-brainer for anyone who spends time underwater.

How Is It as a Regular Smartwatch?

I’ve found that most dive watches that also profess to work as daily smartwatches are not worth the cost. There are almost always tradeoffs, like poor app integration, bulky or technical looks, and hard-to-read screens, especially underwater. (Luxury “dive watches” are not helpful for fitness on land or underwater).

The Mk3i has the same operating system and features as Garmin’s high-end smartwatches, like şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř favorite Fenix 7X, or the extra-fancy epix Pro. It has outstanding GPS accuracy and comes with preloaded maps, excellent fitness tracking, painless integration with third-party apps like Spotify, and easy-to-navigate menus. Importantly, it also looks sleek: apart from the larger, 51-millimeter face, the Mk3i wouldn’t look out-of-place at an upscale restaurant.

Welcome to the Future

As a basic dive computer, it does everything exceptionally well. Its BĂĽhlmann ZHL-16C decompression algorithm works as it should. Air integration (in the “i” models) using Garmin’s new T2 transceiver never skipped a beat or lost connection. Setting bearings and navigating underwater are easy with the compass. Critically, screen brightness and sharpness are next-level. The Mk3i has a 454×454 pixel AMOLED color touch-screen display, an upgrade from the , which had a light-reflecting MIPS display. Even for a far-sighted person, I had no trouble reading my watch sitting on a dive boat in midday sun.

Now to the James Bond stuff. Yes, you can send messages underwater. Six basic preloaded messages (“Are you okay?,” “Come to me,” etc.) travel via “Subwave” sonar to anyone else using a T2 transceiver. I didn’t have the chance to test it out since my dive partner was using an older Mk2 and T1 transceiver, but fellow divers tell me it works as advertised. It seems mostly helpful in low-visibility scenarios where hand signals are impossible, but for regular dive buddies who invest in the equipment, it’s a very cool perk.

Despite the inability to message my partner, I was still able to see his tank pressure, distance, and depth on my watch, which meant I never had to worry if he was running low on air or drifting too far away. The ability to track up to eight different transceivers is a game-changer for dive instructors with big groups.

Other futuristic features? DiveView Maps, a highly detailed topographic underwater map that lets you see exactly where you’re jumping in (it doesn’t track you below the surface, unfortunately). A “readiness score,” similar to a training recovery score on other tracking devices, judges your alertness and physical health for diving based on how well you’ve been sleeping, heart rate, jet lag, and other indicators. This was, however, the only Mk3i perk I found superfluous. If I refused to dive after every red-eye, I’d never dive at all. Lastly, the watch has a super bright flashlight that I initially thought was a bit gimmicky, but proved very useful for peering into dark nooks and crannies for octopuses and other reclusive creatures.

The most miraculous thing about the Mk3i is its battery life. Garmin claims up to 66 hours in Dive Mode. I spent three full days diving in Cozumel, Mexico and another day cave diving in cenotes outside of Mérida, and still had 89 percent battery life. For reference, the Mk2 had roughly half that battery life, and some competitors can hardly make it through a day of diving. If you took the Mk3i on a two week-long liveaboard and forgot your charger, you’d probably last the entire trip.

The High Price of Perfection

Predictably, the Mk3i has one major downside: price. At $1,600 for the 51mm version (or $2,100 if you need a new transceiver), this is one of the most expensive smartwatches Garmin makes. It’s far too expensive for someone who only goes diving once or twice a year. If you need a top-end fitness-tracking watch and you’re a regular diver, however, the exceptional performance in both use cases makes it a reasonable splurge.

Need a great smartwatch and only dip your toe in the water? The Apple Ultra 2 ($800) offers a very basic dive computer via the Oceanic+ app. And, if you just need a simple, reliable dive computer separate from your watch or fitness tracker, will do the job—just don’t wear it to dinner.

The post The Garmin Descent Mk3i Is the Best Smartwatch for Divers appeared first on şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Online.

As I sat through Apple’s Keynote presentation earlier this month at Apple Park in Cupertino, California, I held my breath when the Ultra 2 was announced. What I and many adventurers wanted most was for Apple to tell us that the new watch would have an amazing battery life that lasted a full week without any compromise.

Sadly, Apple said that the watch still has 36 hours of battery life at normal use, and 72 hours when you turn off features. That’s not bad, but it’s still dwarfed by the battery life of more robust adventure watches made by companies such as Garmin and Suunto.

Battery life, however, isn’t everything, and Apple did roll out several important updates that those of us in the outdoor world will care about.

Big Story: Small Footprint

The biggest story is that both the Ultra 2 and Series 9 watches—as well as Apple’s Sports Loop and Alpine Loop watch bands—are now the company’s first carbon-neutral products.

Apple says they made a host of changes in the manufacturing and shipping process of the Ultra 2 to make it carbon neutral. The Ultra 2 is made with 30 percent recycled or renewable content by weight, it is manufactured with 100 percent clean electricity, and 50 percent of the units are shipped by boat and train instead of planes. Those three changes equate to a 75 percent reduction in product emissions for each watch model, and Apple then uses high-quality carbon credits to offset everything else, according to the company.

The Alpine Loop uses 43 percent recycled content by weight and the Sports Loop is made of 45 percent recycled content by weight, and both benefit from the same clean energy, shipping, and offset strategies.

As other journalists have , we have to take Apple’s claim of carbon neutrality with a grain of salt because the company is still selling products, adding to waste, and using fossil fuels. Plus, the carbon neutrality claim is an obvious marketing asset. That said, Apple says it is committed to full carbon neutrality across all of its products by 2030, so they’re not stopping with their watches, or limiting its scope to within its own walls. Like Patagonia, which used its corporate muscle to push Gore-Tex to manufacture a PFC-free waterproof membrane (called ePE) and is now allowing everyone to access that material, Apple says that it’s on its way to full carbon neutrality by pioneering more environmentally friendly ways to build electronics and sharing access to those technologies with other companies.

Brighter, Handier

Like the original Ultra, the Ultra 2 is, by far, the best everyday adventure watch on the market. The giant, bright screen is great for outdoor workouts (the Ultra 2’s screen is even brighter than the original’s), the compass is easy to use, topo maps are easy to read on your wrist, the watch will track your hike and help you get back to your car if you get lost, you can see a waypoint where you last had cellular connectivity in case you need to make an emergency call, and more.

What’s new? In October, Apple is launching, via a software update, something called double tap on the Ultra 2 and Series 9. By just raising your watch arm and tapping together your thumb and index (or pointer) finger of that hand, you’ll be able to tell the watch to do a number of things. For example, in their Apple shows someone rock climbing and using the double tap feature to answer a call while on the rock. If I’m bike commuting, I can double tap to answer a quick call while leaving my other hand on the bars. When I’m walking my dogs, I can double tap to send a text without letting go of the leashes.

Apple says double tap is turned off while you’re running or using any of their present workouts, but you have to think that Apple will eventually find smart ways to use double tap in a workout to create a segment, scroll through metrics you don’t see on your first screen, etc. I could also see double tap being used to start a workout so that you can head out your door, tap your fingers, and your bike or running workout will immediately start tracking.

I’ve never geeked out about the wide variety of watch faces you can put on your Ultra 2, but this year I’m a huge fan of Apple’s new Modular Ultra watch face that has the compass front and center, shows elevation increase with a fun graphic, and has tons of customizations so I can easily access everything from my texts to my email to my fitness rings. It’s a perfect blend of my everyday and outdoor worlds and has made the watch that much more of my everyday routine.

Is the Apple Watch Ultra 2 Right for You?

There will always be people, like my friend who trains special forces search and rescue teams, who will only have a Garmin, Suunto, or Polar watch on his wrist. The minor updates on the Ultra 2 aren’t going to sway that decision.

If I’m being honest with myself, however, most of the time I don’t really need a Garmin with a battery that lasts weeks at a time. That’s because as a weekend warrior, I’m usually around a charger. I have a couple hunts coming up where I’ll take my Fenix 7X Pro, but most days I’m pretty damn happy with the Apple Watch Ultra.

I suspect many of you, even as şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř readers, will fall into the same boat. The Ultra 2 is a significant upgrade from the regular Apple Watch in terms of durability, battery life, and usability. And it has all the functionality needed to track workout metrics and navigate quick overnight hiking trips. As an everyday watch, I love that it’s comfortable to wear, easy to customize, keeps me on track with both my communication and workouts, and is oh-so-pretty to look at (in true Apple style).

The post Apple’s Ultra 2 Watch Is Amazing—and a Little Disappointing appeared first on şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Online.

The Cheetah Pro ($300) is Amazfit’s best smartwatch yet—boasting a decent battery life, an AMOLED touch display, multi-band GPS, and a full slate of tri features—but it does have issues with usability and accuracy.

Pros

• Better-than-advertised battery life
• Surprisingly excellent and bright AMOLED touchscreen and watch faces
• Crazy amount of features/functions/sport modes
• Decent built-in run coaching
• Light weight
• Competitive price

Cons

• Hit-or-miss GPS/elevation accuracy
• Maybe too many functions
• Inconsistent touchscreen/bevel/buttons performance
• No running with power
• Very limited on-watch post-workout data

Amazfit Cheetah Pro Review

I’ll start this off by saying that this isn’t the first Amazfit watch I’ve tried out. I had a chance to check out one of their previous, super-affordable sport-focused smartwatches, but I didn’t rate it high enough to even warrant a review. It felt so unfinished and beta, I didn’t even know where to begin.

Amazfit is a Chinese brand, established in 2015 with very, very limited presence in North America. Most of their smartwatches are a little more “lifestyle” focused. Think: cheaper Fitbit.

As such, their limited traction in the U.S., coupled with limited interest in endurance sports—especially triathlon, with its open-water swim/tri/multisport features—means it probably isn’t on a lot of athlete’s radars. But with the release of the mostly capable Cheetah Pro, Amazfit is worth another look (with a few caveats, below).

RELATED:Ěý

The Basics

Like many “endurance sports-focused” smartwatches in the $300 price range, the Cheetah Pro ticks the multisport basics—open-water and pool swimming, cycling (though not advanced metrics), running (including only cadence and stride length as advanced metrics), triathlon, and customizable multisport mode (for brick workouts, duathlon, swimrun, etc.). It departs from the typical $300 smartwatch feature list when you get into stuff like the super-bright (and quite pretty) Gorilla glass-covered AMOLED screen, multiband GPS, offline mapping, offline music, a built-in speaker and mic, and a battery life that in our experience exceeds the 14-day published spec. Features like this you usually find in the $450+ smartwatch range.

Granted, not everything is executed perfectly (or even well), but there are so many sports and everyday, “lifestyle” features on this watch—with limited documentation and iffy on-watch navigation—it’s actually difficult to find or use them all. Read on for what works and what doesn’t.

Amazfit Cheetah Pro Review: The Good

As mentioned, there is an absolute embarrassment of riches when it comes to functions, and, while we’ll get into a few that are missing, it’s tough to find something on your smartwatch wishlist that isn’t built into the Cheetah Pro. Tri-important functions like open-water swim, triathlon mode, and multisport mode all work well enough for 95 percent of a triathlete’s needs, and we found each customizable (enough) to present the data fields you want for most training or racing applications.

In terms of hardware, the touchscreen is definitely a pleasant surprise at this price. It’s tough to find a decent AMOLED screen on a sports-capable smartwatch for under $400—the Garmin Forerunner 265 series (which also has a Gorilla Glass AMOLED touchscreen) is probably the closest, and it runs $450. We can confirm that the screen is quite responsive, with minimal ghosting, and the colors are bright and vibrant, even in direct daylight, without completely tanking the battery life. On that note, though Amazfit advertises 14 days of basic use and seven days of heavy use (read: triathlon-level training), we actually found it exceeded these projections by a good amount. We got somewhere between 15–20 days using the always-on display for everyday use, and around 10–15 days with a good slate of workouts thrown in.

The Cheetah Pro also has physiological metrics, like “performance readiness,” recovery, and workout impact—as well as AI run coaching. Further testing could confirm the accuracy of these metrics (maybe), but they were oddly different than our Garmin Enduro 2 control. The important note is that you’ll again get functions usually found on $400+ devices, on a watch that costs far less—and they’re easy to use and understand.

One of the big drawbacks of Amazfit’s previous sports-focused smartwatches was their impossible-to-use user interfaces. The menus were tough to navigate, the settings abstract and not super useful. It’s worth noting that Amazfit has made amazing progress on their UI, and though it’s far from perfect, it’s at least competitive with brands like Suunto, Garmin. Polar, and Coros. The menus make sense, they’re mostly easy to navigate, and they pair well with the AMOLED touchscreen.

Amazfit Cheetah Pro Review: The OK

While the feature list is impressive, and on paper the hardware totally outperforms at this price point, a few lingering issues make the Cheetah Pro a little more “beta” than the finished product you’d see from top competitive brands such as those listed above.

To start, the multi-band GPS is somehow inconsistent when compared with other multi-band GPS smartwatches. On-land distance consistency wasn’t too bad, except in deep canyons, but in the open water we found variances of 10 to 20 percent both relative to the Cheetah Pro (same route, multiple laps, below) and when compared to traditionally excellent open-water smartwatches like the Garmin Enduro 2 or Fenix 7-series. While these variances might not seem like a lot, if you set your lap timer to go off every 500 meters during an open-water interval workout, you could be doing a 400 or you could be doing a 600 from lap to lap. That’s quite a bit.

Elsewhere, but slightly less importantly, we found the elevation gain to differ vastly from high-end smartwatches (below), with very unusual variances in steep terrain. At first, we assumed this was due to a lack of a barometric altimeter (common on smartwatches under $400), but the feature list says the Cheetah Pro is baro-equipped, so the discrepancy is a bit of a mystery.

We also found the performance of both the touchscreen and the buttons (which include a rotating bevel, oddly similar to much of ) to be slightly inconsistent—functioning most of the time, but not always. And after only a few ocean swims (with the recommended fresh water flushing), we had some rough play in the rotating bevel, though it still worked.

Finally, smaller things—like no run power (though it does have somewhat advanced running metrics like stride length and cadence), a very limited on-watch post-workout data screen (forcing you to use the Zepp app, which is actually very good), and intermittent issues with smartphone connectivity—might not be make-or-break for the Cheetah Pro, but it does show that Amazfit isn’t 100% there when it comes to their sport-focused devices.

Conclusions

When compared to the previous Amazfit models that I’ve tried (and hated), the Cheetah Pro might as well be from another brand. Clearly, Amazfit spent some serious time on this smartwatch, spoke to actual athletes, and did some R&D before releasing it into the wild. Also, more than a few menus and UI elements (along with the shape and button style) do look eerily similar to some of Coros’ stuff—if you’re going to “borrow,” you could borrow from worse. Most of the issues we had are pretty small, but some of the hardware problems—like GPS accuracy, elevation gain accuracy, and button/touchscreen inconsistencies show that Amazfit might have ticked the boxes, but still have some ways to go if they’re to compete with Garmin, Suunto, Polar, or Coros—excellent price aside.

Meanwhile, $300 is an absolute bargain for an AMOLED touchscreen smartwatch with a ridiculous amount of sports functions (and a surprising amount of great lifestyle functions that almost no one else is trying in a sports-focused smartwatch, like the speaker and mic).

We obviously only scratched the surface on all of the different features in the Cheetah Pro, but an exhaustive review would end up a tome—especially since the features and functions don’t always work quite as advertised. Bottom line: if you’re looking for a smartwatch under $400 and you need a nice, bright color touchscreen, you literally won’t find anything else that works for tri—but you might need to sacrifice some accuracy in the meantime.

The post The Bargain-Priced, Full-Function Smartwatch You’ve Never Heard Of appeared first on şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Online.

Kilian Jornet is, without dispute, one of the greatest mountain athletes in the world. He’s a living legend, that humble-yet-tenacious Spaniard who needs no introduction and doesn’t seem to be slowing down. , his seasonal skimo/run performance composite, the food he eats (lots of bread), how much he sleeps (8 hours average), and how much he strength trains (very little).

Early this month, COROS announced a new collaboration with Jornet and his year-old footwear and apparel company NNormal, with the launch of the . COROS has collaborated in the past with their athletes, including ĚýandĚý, and this has been a highly anticipated partnership ever since Jornet parted ways with Salomon and Suunto in late 2021 and teamed up with COROS last year.

“Working with COROS developers, I’ve learned a lot about creating the best tools for me to use when trail running, skimo, or out in the mountains,” said Jornet. “I believe that with this special edition APEX 2 Pro, we can keep pushing how the COROS device can help me–or anyone–improve their training.”

Jornet’s new GPS watch is a limited offering, at 5,000 units, and it not only includes some fun personalized Jornet flare, but it also arrives with an opportunity to jump-start your 2023 training with guidance from the legend himself. Here’s what we know so far:

The COROS APEX 2 Pro Kilian Jornet Edition

If you’re expecting the hardware of Jornet’s new watch to be much different from the COROS APEX 2 Pro, you might be setting yourself up for disappointment. Fortunately, there’s very little to be disappointed about because the APEX 2 Pro is a top-shelf GPS watch for any trail runner.

Here’s a quick look at the four main innovations you need to know about this watch that sets it apart from other GPS watches out there for trail runners:

1. Battery.ĚýThe APEX 2 Pro battery can now last up to 75 hours, 88 percent longer than the first generation. (It’s cool: Jornet only took 26 hours to summit Everest. No. Charge. Needed.)
2. GPS.ĚýThe APEX 2 Pro has 50 percent higher accuracy with a new GNSS chipset and an “all satellite dual frequency.”
3. Heart rate.ĚýCOROS has upgraded the advanced optical heart rate sensor with a 5-LED system.
4. Recovery.ĚýThe APEX 2 Pro upped its game on sleep tracking and recovery metrics dashboards.

First Impressions

We found the APEX 2 Pro to be about the perfect dimensions for a high-performance GPS watch, not terribly chunky or heavy but not too small, either. They’ve nailed the watch-face diameter and its thickness. The navigation is seamless and quick, too. The GPS locks in mere seconds and, after completing a workout, the data zips to the COROS app, which is about as robust and intuitive as any on the market.

The watch’s interface aesthetic can sometimes make me feel like I’m in a 90s video game, and I’m still not totally sold on the spin navigation knob, but overall, there’s little to complain about. TriathleteĚý, though they did have a few things to say about its price-to-performance ratio and its lifestyle functions.

Bottom line? The watch is an exceptional addition to any trail runner’s tech gear.

What’s New About the COROS APEX 2 Pro Kilian Jornet Edition

Some fun add-ons come with Jornet’s new watch and collaboration:

• Two watch bands. When you open the box, the watch face doesn’t have any attached band. Why? Because this watch comes with two: first, the silicone band (standard) and second, a lightweight nylon band. In my first runs with the watch, though I typically prefer the more fabric texture of nylon, I ended up settling on the unique silicone band.
• New colorways.ĚýI chose the aforementioned silicone band because it features more prominently the white and stone gray colorway inspired by Jornet’s home, the Romsdalen Valley of Norway. Call me superficial, but something about having a black-and-white two-tone watch gleefully reminds me of Cruella De Vil or cookies-and-cream gelato.
• NNormal hat.ĚýIncluded in every Kilian Jornet APEX 2 Pro package comes a NNormal tech hat. It’s light and minimal and, if you’re not careful, you might not even know it’s in the box. It’s a tall order to find a five-panel running hat that really wraps stylishly around the noggin, but this hat has already become a favorite choice in my rotation.
• Twelve-week virtual training camp with Jornet.ĚýEvery person who buys a Kilian Jornet watch becomes eligible to apply for a free, 12-week virtual training program with Jornet himself.Ěý. The camp is designed for runners of all skill levels. According to the COROS website, accepted participants will receive training tips and regular feedback from Jornet via theĚý, an interactive platform that connects athletes and coaches with data points and goal-setting. Each participant will also receive a full NNormal racing kit, a $370 value. (I wonder if that comes with another hat?!) The virtual training camp runs from March 6 – May 28, prime time for racing season fitness.

Takeaway

To connect our evolving trail community with one of the greatest athletes alive through a piece of high-performance wearable gear is a unique opportunity. Kilian’s accessibility further validates the integrity of an athlete who cares about stewarding the planet and who wishes to remain an ambassador, in contact with the many people he inspires. If you’re looking to upgrade your GPS watch experience–and are willing to pay a pretty penny for it ($549)–you may be setting yourself up for a chance to gain personalized insights from Jornet himself, and that appears, well, priceless.

Go Further

• ĚýKilian Jornet Edition
• : February 17, 2023

The post Want Kilian Jornet To Be Your Running Coach? Pick Up His New Watch. appeared first on şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Online.

When Apple announced the new in September, I wrote a story with a headline that said that the watch “might replace your Garmin.” When the story , readers went berserk claiming that we were dead wrong. Garmin, Coros, and Suunto loyalists said the Ultra would never measure up to adventure watches like those in the Fenix or Vertix series.

After six weeks of testing the Ultra, I have to say: they’re absolutely right. The Apple Watch Ultra is not as robust as my Garmin Fenix 7X Solar in several ways, but most importantly when it comes to battery life. The Ultra, while significantly better than the normal Apple Watch, falls short of top-end Garmin, Coros, and Suunto watches when it comes to longevity, which eliminates it from bigger adventures in the woods or mountains, whether you’re backpacking, hunting, backcountry skiing, or using it on some other multi-day journey.

The purpose of this review, however, is not just to point out where the Ultra falls short, but to note where it plays best, and where it has room to grow. The Apple Watch Ultra is clearly a great addition to the Apple lineup. It’s also a solid platform that will likely evolve in clever ways down the road.

Why a Garmin/Coros/Suunto vs. Ultra Comparison Is Misleading

After a few weeks of testing the Ultra I set up an interview with several top Apple executives who were involved with the development of the watch. All three had their talking points down pat, but it was useful to be able to get a little more behind-the-scenes information. One point they hammered home was that the Ultra is not just an adventure watch but an Apple product with adventure features, which I’ve come to agree with.

As with all of their products, Apple designers first made the Ultra a joy to use every single day, easy to figure out, and beautiful to look at. They then found a way to add in features that those of us in the adventure world would appreciate and use regularly.

“Honestly, the thing I love the most about Ultra is that while it really pushes the limits of Apple Watch for that endurance athlete, it’s still quintessentially at its core an Apple Watch,” says Jay Blahnik, vice president of fitness technologies. “And so the same watch that might get you through an ultramarathon is the one you can wear all day long to get you to your meetings on time and to not miss a message, to listen to music on a dog walk, and even to take an ECG.”

From this perspective, comparing the Ultra to a Garmin, Coros, or Suunto might actually be a misleading way of looking at the watch, like trying to compare offroad vehicles that are built for different uses. You could say the Ultra is a Subaru Outback that’s great for everyday driving, and pretty good in the snow and off road. The Garmin, Coros, and Suunto watches are like overland Toyota Tacomas designed to go farther and tackle more difficult terrain, but which lack some of the everyday features and comforts.

I’m not an adventure athlete, but I do spend a lot of time hiking, hunting, and skiing, and after more than a month of testing the Ultra up in the mountains and at home, I see the advantages of having a really robust Apple Watch. During the week, it stores my music, delivers my alerts on a big and bright screen, and works seamlessly with my iPhone and AirPods. And during the weekend and on adventures it can help me find my car if I get lost on a hike via the new GPS-enabled Backtrack feature, send out a siren alert if I get hurt, and function as an intro dive watch when I need one. Testers on the şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř team who are adventure athletes agree that the Ultra moves Apple into a whole of functionality.

The Ultra Is Still an Exceptionally Well-Designed Watch

I also asked the Apple team about how athletes like ultramarathoner Scott Jurek were involved in the development of the Ultra. Jurek was featured in the hero video that Apple used to announce the watch and he was also seen chatting with Tim Cook at the official launch at Apple Headquarters.

Blahnik said Apple does not sponsor athletes like other companies, but said the company worked closely with people like Jurek, as well as distance runner Ray Zahab and wildlife photographer Nadia Aly, to develop a watch that went beyond the regular Apple Watch and could realistically and consistently put up with the conditions they regularly experience.

“Of course Scott does certain kinds of events that our regular Apple Watch, our Series or SE, just simply wouldn’t be able to accommodate because of how long he’s actually out there,” Blahnik says. “Over the years we’ve had lots of great conversations with him and other athletes that we admire that love Apple products—and we are constantly listening for what they like, what they’d love to see, and those are the kinds of things we take into account for all our products.”

Stan Ng, vice president of Apple watch product marketing, emphasized that the Ultra was absolutely tortured before its release. For Apple to claim that the watch was “Tested to ,” they had to put it through a series of tests that meet standards set out for military gear. Ng said the Ultra was evaluated for metrics including drops, pressure, humidity, high and low temps, shock, and vibration.

“We realized that this was a product that would go with individuals beyond the places that Apple Watch had been before,” Ng says, so it was designed to not fail when put in more extreme conditions.” I’ve beaten my Ultra up plenty in the weeks I’ve been testing and never once worried it would crack or fail. We’ve about the Ultra only handling to -4 and up to 131 degrees Fahrenheit, but for most average-use adventurers, including myself, that range should be plenty.

Explaining more about the Ultra’s GPS features, Ron Huang, the vice president of sensing and connectivity, said that by using the L1 and L5 GPS frequencies (with the L5 being the more updated and robust frequency), the Ultra gets the same connectivity as high-end Garmin and Coros watches (that typically use language like “dual frequency” or “multi-band” to describe those two different methods for connecting with a satellite). I found it interesting, and comforting, to learn that the Ultra will also automatically connect to satellite systems run by other countries—including GLONASS, BeiDou, Galileo, QZSS—in order to ensure the best connectivity possible when traveling. In my testing, the Ultra connected to GPS almost immediately, faster than my Garmin, leaving me confident that GPS will be a tool I can count on for runs in the city or while playing in the backcountry.

Of Course, the Ultra Has Lots of Room for Improvement

The biggest failing for outdoor adventurer is obviously the Ultra’s battery life. Because the Ultra functions as an Apple watch—with a large, bright display, cellular connectivity, and an always-on screen—the energy draw is big and the watch’s battery is just a fraction of what you get with a Garmin or Coros watch. Apple is offering some workarounds to extend the battery life, but in my testing those workarounds cause major compromises.

First, here’s what Apple says about the battery life in the Ultra’s various power modes: On regular power mode the Ultra Watch will last somewhere around 36 hours. This is not 36 hours of GPS use, but instead, 36 hours of normal use where you will get notifications, make calls, go for a couple of runs with GPS, and get some sleep data. In this mode, that you can get “up to 12 hours outdoor workout with GPS.”

If you want to extend the battery life, you can turn the watch to low power mode, which turns off functions like the always-on display, reduces cellular connectivity to only update hourly, and limits certain background features such as auto-workout detection and irregular heart rate notifications. It does, however, maintain the normal heart rate and GPS features and provides enough power for someone to get through an Ironman race, which can take up to 16 hours for a normal participant.

Finally, Apple has something called “Low Power Mode Workout” with fewer GPS and heart rate readings. This is a new feature they just launched in October and it’s what you can use to extend the battery to 60 hours. In this setting, you not only have the same cutbacks as in regular low power mode, but the heart rate readings are also reduced to one time per minute, and the GPS readings are reduced to one time every two minutes. To try and maintain an accurate GPS record, the Ultra pulls Apple Maps data to fill in the gaps of where you’ve been when the GPS is not reading. (Apple says they factored in about 15 hours of GPS use when coming up with the 60-hour metric.) If Apple doesn’t have the map data for your area, Apple says “Ultra combines data from the accelerometer and gyroscope with Apple Maps’ knowledge of terrain steepness and GPS measurements to estimate how straight or windy the trail is to provide an accurate distance traveled.”

I tested the low power mode with fewer GPS and heart rate readings and came away hating the Ultra with this feature engaged. It’s impossible to go for a run with this on because you can’t get accurate heart rate or GPS readings while you’re on the move. And all the features that make the Ultra so nice to use disappear. This mode would be helpful if I were in the wilderness for three or four days and got lost and needed to get back to my car using the GPS-guided Backtrack feature, but that’s about all.

Setting up this power mode is also a pain because you have to go into the watch menu and click through several features to make it work, and then unclick those features to get your regular watch back. With that in mind, it was an easy decision a couple of weeks back to leave my Ultra at home during a five-day hunt and instead take my Garmin Fenix 7X Solar. During the hunt I tracked my entire route with the GPS by clicking one simple button. And never once did I worry about the battery running out, which gave me a lot of peace of mind, because we spent days off trail, tracking animals and might have needed Garmin’s TracBack or Route feature that would have helped me retrace my steps back to the car. Additionally, Garmin’s TracBack comes with built-in maps that would have made navigation easier, as opposed to the Ultra’s Backtrack feature, which just points me in the direction of where I started.

Where Does Apple Go from Here?

We all know that Apple is really good at two things: iteration and finding clever ways to make their hardware and software work together. The iPhone, for example, has improved in enormous ways just in the past five years. And the iPhone camera has also become a truly robust tool thanks to Apple constantly improving its hardware and then designing tailor-made software to boost that hardware.

With that in mind, we have to know that the Apple Watch Ultra versions to come will be better adventure watches than the first. They will all still be great Apple Watches, but Apple will have the chance to improve the battery life, add in a mapping feature for the backcountry, and come up with any other number of clever features that those of us who play outside will love to use.

But how long will it take Apple to land on a watch that’s as robust as the offerings from Garmin, Coros, and Suunto? When will the battery technology allow for this? Another way to ask that question might be: will the Ultra now force competitors to build their adventure watches to be more user-friendly, with brighter screens and more everyday functionality?

Either way, consumers win. Apple entering the adventure watch space pushes everything forward. Think of the Ultra as just another option, instead of the one and only option. I will continue to use the Ultra as an everyday watch that’s great for workouts and shorter adventures, and go to my Garmin for bigger days. Most people are not gear testers, however, so they’ll likely pick one, and my guess is that the choice will be pretty easy. If you value battery life and love to hammer for days, you’ll stick with the adventure watches you already love. If you want an Apple watch that has a better battery life than other versions and plays outside pretty damn well, you’ll go with the Ultra.

The post What I Love and Hate About the Apple Watch Ultra After Six Weeks Together appeared first on şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Online.

We’ve reviewed Apple watches before, and, in the past, have always told endurance athletes, “It’s a nice watch, but it’s not really for what you do.” That’s especially true for those, like triathletes, who train every day, usually twice per day, and have a particular affinity for data, accuracy, and workout organization. Apple watches have great apps, beautiful screens, and the best touchscreens in the game, but their built-in workout profiles and post-data analysis have left something to be desired. And the battery life—oh the battery life!

But now, with the release of their “adventure-focused” Apple Watch Ultra, Apple has—for better or for worse—thrown its hat in the endurance sports ring with the big boys. I wore the watch for a week of workouts—running, cycling, and swimming once or twice a day—plus during a mini-triathlon to see how it holds up to real-world endurance use. Here’s what’s new, what I liked as I spent hours using it, what I didn’t like, and my conclusions.

Apple Watch Ultra: What’s New

Before I get into the specifics that make the Apple Watch Ultra an endurance/outdoor contender, let’s quickly take a look at what’s new:

• Increased battery life – Though Apple advertises 36 hours of smartwatch use, I found that even with workouts once or twice per day, I got three days between charges with all functions on (that’s 72 hours, twice the promised duration). They’ve also told us that, using overall low-power mode, there’s enough GPS-on workout time to do a long-distance triathlon—which I haven’t had a chance to test. The overall low-power mode reduces the frequency of smartphone “check ins,” disables the always-on display, and a few other non-essential background tasks without lessening the resolution of heart rate or GPS while working out. Better yet, the Ultra will soon have a low-power workout mode that gives you 60 hours of smartphone time with 15 hours of working out. This low-power workoutĚýmode will give even more training/racing time, but with fewer GPS and heart-rate data points.

• New case –ĚýThe updated Apple Watch Ultra case is 49mm and has a raised lip around the screen—as opposed to the rounded screen on previous models—and a bigger digital crown.

• New “Action” button –ĚýOn the left of the case, Apple has added a new “action button” that can be assigned to various tasks like a quick workout start, a quick stopwatch start, and various actions within workouts—depending on the workout profile.

• “Precision Start”– This one is a little weird, but Apple (finally, finally) has a selectable mode that allows you to actually start a workout when you hit start or press the action button, as opposed to its maddening “3…2…1” countdown.
• Better sound – Though not exactly a sports-related feature, the Apple Watch Ultra has a three-microphone array that helps reduce wind noise outdoors by self-selecting a mic based on wind direction. Apple has also installed a dual speaker system (yes, on a watch) that is substantially louder than previous watches.
• Updates to watchOS 9 – Though many of these updates may end up on other watches, new workout features like triathlon (which we’ll dig into below), multisport (for bricks and nonstandard swim/bike/run events), and automatic track detection (coming soon) are huge for endurance athletes. In more general updates, Apple has included compass waypoints and backtracking, as well as a new “Siren” alarm system and a host of diving functions we won’t get into here.
• LTE – Ok, this isn’t new, but it’s included on the Watch Ultra, and unlike previous iterations, you don’t have a choice. Apple says 18 hours of “all-day LTE,” but that’s just for walking around. For working out, it’s substantially less. Apple didn’t have an exact figure, but they did say that the low power mode required to do an iron-distance triathlon would mean substantially fewer “check-ins” with LTE. So yes, you could do an event and be tracked if you wanted (with the “Find My” function), but it wouldn’t necessarily be effective in low power mode for an Ironman.

Apple Watch Ultra: What We Like

As noted before, the Apple Watch series was always a bit frustrating for athletes—the super limiting battery life meant you had to charge it pretty much every night, and you couldn’t go on super long rides, or adventures, or race long-course tri or ultraruns with it. Even if you loved everything else about the Apple Watch, that was always a deal breaker. The good news is that with the increased battery life and low-power options, you’re looking at a smartwatch that can effectively handle nearly any workout, event, or outdoor adventure that you could throw at it. Apple also teased a low-power workout mode that would give additional battery life, but with reduced resolution of GPS and heart-rate readings coming soon.

Battery life aside, the more robust build of the Apple Watch Ultra makes it feel less like a piece of fine art and more like a tool for training. And it’s not just looks—the raised lip of the case protects the precious screen better than previous models by a ton. It’s also safe to say that the “Precision Start” function and “Action” buttons are both things that pretty much every other smartwatch ever made already has, but both were gaps missing in Apple’s exhaustive function quiver.

With all of this combined, the Apple Watch Ultra is a solid watch for anyone training for a triathlon or a marathon or really any other endurance sports activity—regardless of distance. şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř of training, Apple’s “lifestyle functions”—things like text messaging, weather, music, third-party apps, contactless payment, and (way, way) more—are basically unparalleled. Yes, Fitbit has some fun stuff and a nice screen, but Apple is still lightyears ahead of any competitor when it comes to smartwatch power and integrations. As an example: The three-mic setup is nothing short of magic when making calls on the watch—no one is even remotely trying to do this stuff, except for Apple. It’s also a decent (yes, just decent, more on that below) outdoor adventure watch.

Also, let’s not forget that since the untimely demise of the Forerunner 945 LTE, this is one of the only full-function workout watches with legit batteryĚýand LTE connectivity. So if you like to go training (or racing!) untethered to your phone, like so many of us do, this is still one of the only ways to stay in touch via LTE. That’s not nothing.

Apple Watch Ultra: What Could Be Better

Many of the “outdoor” functions like navigation and mapping are still on-grid. If the Apple Watch Ultra is supposed to speak to the hardcore adventure set, the lack of offline mapping and navigation seems like nothing more than an oversight (or lack of a mapping partner, maybe), and the compass waypoints and retroactive backtracking—while cool—aren’t exactly going to save your life in the backcountry. The battery is better, for sure, but to consider this a multi-day hiking and backpacking watch over something more expedition-worthy is reckless at best. If you’re with a group of friends backpacking for a week, it’s probably not a bad choice, but if you’re doing a solo multi-day adventure or tackling an unsupported fastest known time (FKT), I wouldn’t count on the Ultra as your only navigational tool, like you could for other upper-end adventure watches like the Coros Vertix 2 or the Garmin Fenix 7/Enduro line.

In terms of more workout-specific capabilities, the battery life (finally) brings the Apple Watch into the realm of long endurance athletes like triathletes and ultra runners, but it still lacks some of the data power that both groups might really need. Triathletes should be encouraged that this is a watch they can finally do a full Ironman with (and all of the related Ironman training), but many serious long-course triathletes might be frustrated by the lack of native cycling power connectivity. The multisport crew might also complain about a lack of open-water swimming distance alerts that pretty much all open-water ready smartwatches have right now. And while native running with power is a total game changer for the ultra/trail running set, given that currently only Polar and Coros have that built-in, serious runners might take issue with how inflexible the power metrics are in the workout screens. Yes, having average power and average three-second power is great (and the ability to move those metrics around), but lap power is sometimes just as important, if not more.

Finally, there’s the Gucci-patterned elephant in the room: The price. Sometimes it feels like Apple gets a bit of a pass on pricepoint because it has so many great lifestyle integrations and really cutting-edge hardware, but because Apple wants to play with the long-distance training/adventure crowd now, they need to stand and be compared to other smartwatches in that world (see our competitive comparison below). Eight-hundred dollars gets youĚýa lot of smartwatch in the endurance/adventure realm—for instance, the Garmin Fenix 7 or Forerunner 955 series or the Coros Vertix 2. All of those watches have some very very robust training modes, loads of customizable sport functions, navigation, and insane battery life. No, none have a beautiful screen, smartphone integrations, or LTE like the Apple Watch Ultra, but in terms of working out/navigating the outdoors, they’re still on another level.

Apple Watch Ultra: For Triathletes

The best part of the Apple Watch Ultra? That triathletes, especially long-course triathletes, finally have a valid choice in the Apple lineup. Assuming you’re not interested in cycling power connectivity (most triathletes probably use a cycling computer for that), and the fact that there are no open-water distance alerts (bummer), this new watch not only goes the distance in battery life, but it has something special, just for us: Automatic triathlon transitions.

Yes, Wahoo already scooped Apple with their own automatic transition function that can tell you’re going from swim to transition to bike to transition to run—and mark each one—but Apple’s new Ultra Watch actually does it better. In our tests against the Wahoo Rival, the Ultra outperformed the Rival in accuracy between transitions every time. (Note: The Ultra also does manual transitions with the action button, as well.) Though you can’t go back and edit your transitions like you can in the Wahoo app and “fix” any mistakes in marking transitions, the Ultra did a fantastic job of knowing when I went from sport to sport to sport.

The addition of a “room” with various multisport configurations—things like run-bike-run, swim-run-swim, etc.—is also a great addition to the Apple Watch OS ecosystem, as you can finally do bricks or nonstandard multisport events, with just a little bit of preplanning.

On the note of workouts, the Apple Watch Ultra does have some cool built-in workouts that you can select when you’re feeling uninspired by your training program, and of course you can create and edit your own workouts on watch—without the need for an app. Apple also says there will be a “track detection” feature coming soon that will actually recognize—via Apple Maps data—that you’re in proximity to a track (U.S. only), and prompt you if you’re going to be running on it. If so, you’ll choose a lane, and it’ll snap the GPS tracking and distances to that track. While other brands like Garmin and Coros have something similar, no one can automatically detect that you’re near a track. For better or for worse, it’s a reminder that the Apple Watch Ultra is paying (very close) attention to you.

Conclusions

In the past, Apple watches have been a great lifestyle smartwatch that integrates incredibly with the Apple ecosystem. They play music send and receive texts, check emails—basically most things a smartphone can do now. They also let you go for casual workouts and track your “fitness” (lowercase) as you went. The Ultra still has all of that. Now, with the Ultra, Apple wants to be considered an endurance sports/adventure outdoors player up against the watches we used to buy to supplement our Apple Watch purchases—from brands like Coros and Garmin and Polar.

Now, instead of having your Apple Watch for going to the office or going out at night, and your “workout watch” for serious swims, rides, runs, hiking, and backpacking, Apple wants to be all of these things: Leave your Garmin at home, let it die. Does Apple fully pull this off? Not quite, but they’re dangerously close. For $800, you’re still not playing in the same sandbox as an $800 Garmin or Coros watch, but if this watch was $500 (with LTE), those brands would be sweating big time. Even so, the issues we have with the Apple Watch Ultra aren’t core issues—I can’t imagine it’d be a tough lift to get offline mapping, especially given that the storage is already there (32 gigabytes). It also doesn’t seem incomprehensible that Apple could somehow get cycling power in the workout app via Bluetooth or add an average lap running power data field.

Apple has proven that they do understand the multisport athlete with the Ultra. They nailed something really complex (the auto transition mode), corrected something basic (“precision timing”), and spent real money and time on something tough (the battery) that signals that endurance athletes are important to them. Having the exhaustive multisport “room” goes a long way as well.

Is this the watch that replaces all of your watches? It very well could be.

For a competitive comparison with the Garmin Fenix 7, Coros Vertix 2, Suunto 9 Peak, Garmin Forerunner 955 Solar and Wahoo Rival, see the bottom of the .

All photos taken by the author

The post The Verdict Is in: The New Apple Watch Ultra Can Handle an Ironman appeared first on şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Online.