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 șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű 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 șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű 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 șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű 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 șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű 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:Ìę

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 șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

When photographer and his wife, , went on their first date, they climbed a mountain together. With snowshoes on and ice axes in hand, they tagged the snowy summit of Mount Superior, outside of Salt Lake City. The Moons discovered they are the best and happiest versions of themselves when they spend a lot of time outside, so that’s what they did. Since then, their life together has been infused with adventure and far-flung trips.Ìę

Their values didn’t change when their daughter, Zoey, was born six years ago. After years of working as a travel nurse, with ample stints of time off between gigs, Moon took a job as full-time nurse at a hospital. But he quickly realized the job wasn’t a fit because it didn’t allow for his nonnegotiable: the ability to be outside with his family as much as possible. He quit the job and leaned into photography.

The first year of Zoey’s life on planet Earth was epic—a camping trip to Jade Lake in Washington at three weeks old, a backpacking trip in Montana, a road trip down the West Coast, and a van trip in New Zealand. She saw the redwoods, the ocean, and tall jagged peaks. Getting out there was less about stunning vistas and picture-perfect landscapes—though those certainly didn’t hurt—and more about prioritizing spending time together in nature, away from life’s distractions.

“We wanted to give her the best life that we knew how,” says Moon. “That’s a life outdoors.” Moon didn’t get hooked on the outdoors himself until he was 26. Even though he’d long stared at the Wasatch Front and wanted to hike a mountain, none of his friends did outdoorsy things, so he never felt like he had the chance. One day, he decided to go for it. Moon grabbed his dad’s camera and hiked to the top of Utah’s Mount Timpanogos by himself. “From there, it seems like everything totally did a 180,” he says. He started spending all his time outside learning new things—ice climbing, rock climbing, backcountry skiing—and loved every minute of it.Ìę

Today, the Moon family spends eight months a year on the road. Zoey loves when the family drives the van down to Baja, where they spend their days splashing in the water, learning to swim, and paddleboarding. She also has a soft spot for slot canyons and the otherworldly sandstone towers in Utah’s Goblin Valley State Park.

Zoey learned to crawl in New Zealand. She took her first step in Death Valley. Her first bike ride was on a dry lake bed in Utah. There were a lot of firsts along the way for Moon, too. “You get to experience things again for the first time through her eyes,” he says. “When we took her to the Washington coast, we were like, ‘Here are clouds, here are wildflowers, here’s a tree, here’s moss.’ It’s really cool to experience things for the first time and share them with somebody you really love.”Ìę

While Moon takes the concept of “adventure dad” to the extreme, he believes anyone can tap into the joy he’s found—and he hopes they do. He encourages folks to start small like he did. When he and Natasha took Zoey camping at three weeks old, they brought a “gigantic 12-person tent, massive cots, and massive chairs.” All that gear helped them feel safe and comfortable. It also helped them realize camping wasn’t that scary and they probably didn’t need all that stuff the next time they went. “You don’t have to go that far to have a new experience outdoors,” Moon says. “Get away from electronics and distractions, and focus on time together.”Ìę

 

View this post on Instagram

 

Moon sometimes worries that sharing his grand adventures might make other parents feel like they could never do it, but that’s not true. “You just have to build up to it. Start simple, go ahead and take everything but the kitchen sink with you, learn how to take care of a kid outdoors, and then move up to bigger adventures,” Moon says. “The end goal is just spending uninterrupted time together in whatever fashion.”

, a pioneer in watchmaking and innovation since 1918, promotes excellence in quality and design with a deep-rooted respect for craftsmanship. Citizen was an early pioneer in advocating for the environment, launching the first light-powered watches with proprietary Eco-Drive technology in 1976, thus adding “eco-mindful” as a core company value. The brand’s diverse portfolio of high-performance and eco-mindful watches is accessibly priced and ranges from professional-grade, sport-inspired designs to sophisticated, timeless designs that are beautiful as well as collectible.

The post Make Time for șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű This Father’s Day appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

I get asked a lot of questions when people find out that I write about outdoor gear for a living. Do I have any free gear I can give them? (Sure). Have I heard of overlanding? (Once or twice). Why don’t outdoor companies make ski pants and mountain bike shorts that actually fit women well? (I don’t know.) But the number one question I get from friends and strangers alike? Which GPS watches do I like better, Garmin or Suunto?

It’s a difficult question to answer, and the truth is that both Suunto and Garmin make really, really good smart watches with GPS capabilities. Both companies make models that outperform the Apple Watch for outdoor use, in my opinion. I stress “opinion” here, because which watch is better comes down to the person wearing it and what they want to do with it.

But to leave it at that—a matter of opinion—would be a cop out. So I got top-of-the-line models from each company, Garmin’s Fenix 7X Sapphire Solar ($999) and Suunto’s 9 Peak Pro ($549) in an effort to determine, once and for all, which brand makes a better adventure watch.

How I Tested

I wore the Garmin Fenix for three months straight, using it daily to train for a big gravel cycling race. Then I switched to the Suunto for a couple of months, using it daily in the gym, on runs, biking trips, and a backcountry ski trip in Colorado. Each watch accompanied me on various explorations of national parks and forests. I’ve worn them day and night, tracking my sleep, activities, calories burned, steps—everything. Still unable to pick a favorite, I wore both watches at the same time for the past three weeks in an attempt to objectively determine which watch is the most accurate, comfortable, and feature rich. Needless to say, I’ve gotten some weird looks on group rides.

Similarities

Both the Garmin Fenix 7x Sapphire Solar and Suunto 9 Peak Pro are solid smart watches that sync seamlessly with my iPhone, delivering messages and allowing me to control music and podcasts from my wrist. They each offer real-time and accurate GPS capabilities, plus fitness tracking, from heart rate monitoring to calories burned. They also have sleep tracking and ridiculously long battery life, even in full-on GPS mode. Both touchscreens are responsive and feature locking screens when you’re in exercise mode, so you have to use the buttons (Garmin has five, Suunto three) to scroll through screens and features when you’re working out. (After using an Apple Watch, I find the locking screen and actual buttons really helpful, because I sweat a lot and wet fingers and touch screens don’t mix.) Both watches are waterproof up to 100 meters.

The Garmin Fenix 7X Sapphire Solar is huge, with a 55 millimeter face. It’s so big that people comment on its size. (There are 42 and 47-millimeter options available for those that want less of a behemoth). It also looks like an adventure piece, something akin to a diver’s watch. By comparison, the Suunto 9 Peak Pro is downright demure, with a “normal” size watch face (43 millimeters) and understated black band and bezel, though you can choose different casings and bands, like the flashier titanium casing with a tan band ($699). The Garmin weighs 89 grams; the Suunto weighs 64 grams.

Battery Life

Charging a watch every night means it’s useless if you want to wear it on a multi-day adventure, not to mention that it makes it difficult to track sleep metrics. Suunto claims the Peak Pro 9 has a 21-day battery life in regular smart watch mode and can run for 40 hours in continuous GPS mode. Garmin claims the Fenix 7x Sapphire Solar can run for 28 days in regular mode and 89 hours in GPS mode. In the field, I never felt limited by the battery life of either watch. In fact, when I wore both at the same time for nine days, the Suunto kept up with the much larger Garmin. After all that off-and-on GPS use, including a couple of multi-hour gravel bike rides, the Suunto had 29 percent battery life left while the Garmin had 37 percent left. Honestly, both battery life claims might be slightly inflated, but neither watch fell short of my needs. And both watches charge very quickly: Suunto from empty to full in an hour, while the Garmin charges completely in two hours.

The Fenix 7x Sapphire Solar features solar charging glass that Garmin claims extends the battery life of the watch by 33 hours under optimal conditions. For three days during the two-watch trial, I was riding bikes in the very sunny desert, which likely accounts for the extra battery savings. But is that solar capability necessary?ÌęI live in the tree-covered Southern Appalachians where direct sun is hard to come by, so I wouldn’t get much out of the Fenix’s solar capabilities in the long run. A good question to ask yourself would be: What are you doing that you need to add a few hours of juice to the already impressive battery life of the Suunto or less expensive non-solar Garmin?

Advantage: Garmin, but not by much—and you’ll pay for it

GPS and Navigation

This is one category where there really is noticeable separation between the two watches. The GPS capabilities are similar, as both use multiple global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) to track your location. Each watch is a hell of a lot more accurate than, say, tracking a ride on Strava on your phone. When I wore both at the same time, the total distance and elevation gains of my rides and runs were nearly identical. You can also upload routes to both devices, and your watch will give you turn-by-turn directions.

But the navigation features are far superior on the Garmin Fenix 7x, which features preloaded TopoActive maps, so you can follow your track through a detailed, colored topographic map—and the 55-millimeter version is large enough that you can actually navigate using the watch. The 9 Peak Pro has a map screen that shows your track, but there’s no elevation detail so you don’t know where you are in relation to the landscape. And the topo maps on the Fenix 7X came in handy multiple times while in the backcountry. I actually used the map during an off-trail hike in Joshua Tree National Park to make sure I wasn’t going too far off course while trying to find a cave. I never found the cave, but I found my way back to the car largely thanks to my watch.

Advantage: Garmin

Fitness Tracking

The Suunto has presets for 95 different sports, so chances are, whatever activity you’re trying to record, you can find it and track it on the 9 Peak Pro. There’s even paragliding and something called “mermaiding.” I don’t know what that is, but I’d love to know how many calories a mermaid burns in an hour.

The Garmin isn’t as user-friendly for gym-based or city-based athletes because it has limited pre-loaded sports modes, leaning heavily on adventure sports like kayaking and backcountry skiing, but not basic sports like cycling or running. You can add just about any activity you want (breathwork is an option; so is horseback riding), but they don’t come preloaded—I had to go into the settings to add “running” and “cycling.”

After a typical gym workout, the Garmin gives me a summary of the effort with my max heart rate, average heart rate, and calories burned. Then it shows me how much time I spent in each heart rate zone, gives me my training status, and tells me how many hours before I should work out again depending on that training status. After a typical gym workout, the Suunto tells me how long I worked out, my average heart rate, then shows me the max heart rate, calories burned and recovery time. Both watches work seamlessly with Strava, with activities uploading automatically (you have to connect the watches to Strava first).

The data you see on each watch during a workout or GPS-based activity is highly customizable on both units. I had to consult the user’s manual to figure it out for both watches, but you can dial each watch in to prioritize the metrics you’re most interested in viewing while you’re in the midst of a workout.Ìę For instance, you can see your heart rate, distance, speed, and duration of the exercise on the main screen of the Garmin, then use the buttons to scroll through the screens to access other data like lap distance, top speed, and time of day. In this respect, both watches are similar, but because the Garmin’s watch face is so large, it’s easier to read those numbers on the fly compared to the Suunto. This fact has eliminated my need for a bike computer when I’m wearing the Garmin.

In my opinion, the most important data of it all is the heart rate info, because that’s the number that tells me how hard I worked during the effort. Chest-based heart rate monitors are still considered the most accurate way to measure your beats per minute, but wrist-based tech keeps getting better. A 2021 in Research Quarterly for Exercise and SportÌęshowed Garmin Fenix’s heart rate monitor and blood oxygen monitor to be accurate and “a viable method to monitor blood ox and heart rate under most ambient environmental conditions.” Suunto claims its heart rate monitor is accurate within five percent of the chest-based monitors roughly 90 percent of the time. I use heart rate data to gauge how much effort I put into each workout, so I don’t need it to be super accurate. I’m not worried about heart murmurs or an underlying medical condition; I just want to know if I earned an IPA or not. While wearing both watches at the same time, I noticed that the heart rates were usually within 5 to 10 beats of each other. They were both consistent without any weird spikes or super long delays in the readings.

Advantage: Suunto—it’s well-suited for both gym- and outdoor-based activities largely thanks to a wider array of preloaded options

Sleep Tracking

Some people think it’s weird to wear a watch while you sleep, but I like to know why I’m so tired in the morning using actual biometric data.ÌęSuunto’s sleep tracking tells you how much deep sleep you get, your average heart rate, how often you were awake, and gives you an overall sleep quality score. It also tells you the average amount of sleep you’ve gotten in the last seven days.

Garmin goes a little deeper into the data, giving you all of the same metrics as the Suunto, but includes a bar graph that charts the time of your deep sleep, light sleep, and awake periods throughout the night—you know exactly when you’re getting your best sleep. Like the Suunto, it charts your sleep for a seven-day period, giving you an overall sleep score, and shows you which night you got the best sleep. In theory, you can use that info to recreate optimal sleep routines.

Advantage: Garmin

Comfort and Ease of Use

As much as I like the look of the Garmin, the large size does cause some problems. It’s constantly getting caught in the sleeves of shirts and jackets, and I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve bumped it on doorways, tables, and chairs. (Both watches are built to take a beating though, each using Sapphire glass, which is a chemically-engineered crystal that’s really hard to scratch. I’ve experienced no dents or dings on either.) You can, of course, get a smaller size with the same performance, though you will lose some battery life; the 47 millimeter Fenix 7 Sapphire Solar claims 57 hours in GPS mode without factoring in the solar bonus. In contrast, the Suunto is lighter and feels less obtrusive to wear.

I also find the three-button system of the Suunto more intuitive than Garmin’s five-button system. Sometimes, I find myself randomly pushing buttons on the Garmin trying to get it to do the thing I want.

Advantage: Suunto

Winner: Garmin Fenix 7X Sapphire Solar

A couple of Garmin’s features take it over the edge for me, personally, and I’m not talking about the solar-charging capabilities. The solar boost probably doesn’t help me out enough to justify the extra cost. But the larger face of Garmin’s Fenix 7x makes it much easier to read the data on the fly, and I found the pre-loaded maps incredibly useful in multiple situations. Put it all together, and I think it’s a more useful watch for tracking adventures. If you want a capable, rugged GPS watch that can do all of the things, this is the watch for you. One other random thing I love about the Garmin Fenix 7x Sapphire Solar: there’s a built-in LED flashlight on the casing of the watch. It’s bright enough to light your way out of your tent for a midnight bathroom break, or to help you find your dawn patrol socks without waking your partner. It’s also worth noting that the Fenix 7X is available without solar capabilities for $300 less.

That said, the Suunto 9 Peak Pro is a badass watch. It’s super capable and is probably more than enough watch for most people’s daily lives and weekend adventures. If you just want a fitness tracker with solid GPS capabilities and aren’t worried about having every little extra feature, the Suunto 9 Peak Pro might be the smarter choice based on $450 price difference alone.

The post șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Watch Showdown: Garmin Versus Suunto appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű 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 șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű 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 șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű 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 workoutÌęmode will give even more training/racing time, but with fewer GPS and heart-rate data points.

• New case –ÌęThe 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 –ÌęOn 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. șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű 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 batteryÌęand 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 youÌęa 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 șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

It’s been a while since I’ve been up this early.Ìę

3:32 a.m. As I get out of bed I glance at my watch, its glow-in-the-dark hands showing me the ungodly hour and reminding me that, quite literally, the clock is ticking. I need an early start to have any chance of getting from my house to the top of Mount Sneffels and back before today’s summer monsoon. There’s not really any time to take it slow.

4:04 a.m. After another quick bite of my breakfast sandwich, I roll my bike out of the garage. My goal for today is to ride the 16 miles and 2,300 vertical feet to the trailhead on the other side of the small Colorado town of Ridgway, where I’ve lived for the past two years. Sneffels is the tallest peak I can see from my house; its 14,157-foot summit tops a toothy ridgeline rising like a fortress wall above town. The climb up Sneffels is a rite of passage for locals, and the ascent is challenging even if you drive to the trailhead. But since moving here I’ve been dreaming of making it a door-to-peak journey, biking from my front yard to the trailhead, then climbing six miles and nearly 5,000 feet to the peak.Ìę

The moon is bright enough for me to just barely make out the ridgeline I’m biking toward. Two hours to the trailhead is my goal. Let’s get riding.

5:10 a.m. I’m not sure why I expected the road up to the trailhead to be smoother. Forest roads like this—with deep canyonlike washboarding and potholes that could swallow a whole tire—are rarely comfortable in a car, let alone a suspensionless bike.Ìę

It’s slow going, so I have plenty of time to ponder this micro-adventure. Thinking rationally, I admit it feels somewhat contrived—an insane wakeup for a gravel ride that’s really nothing special on its own—but biking to the trailhead boosts the reward as well as the effort. I’ve climbed Sneffels before, but I know I’ll enjoy the view of the mountain from my back porch all the more knowing I can cover the terrain between here and there without the help of a motor. And there’s something valuable about hyperlocal epics no matter where you live. Finding adventure near home—whether on a fourteener or in a local park—changes the way we look at our surroundings.Ìę

6:14 a.m. At the trailhead, the dawn light has just started to illuminate the north face of my objective. From this angle, Sneffels looks like the spiky, bristled back of a dragon. My objective, the peak’s Southwest Ridge, rises in a mass of sharp talus punctuated with gendarmes and outcroppings. Up close, they feel like they could both slice you in two and crumble to dust at the same time.

7:55 a.m. The three gemlike Blue Lakes sit at the bottom of the Southwest Ridge, and passing the first one signals the end of the forest and the beginning of the alpine. The first lake’s color is especially rich. I’m guessing a little rain last night washed some sediment into it, darkening the water and enhancing its green-blue color.Ìę

Afternoon rain is the norm around here this time of year. Colorado’s monsoon season, which has felt stormier than normal this year, stretches from July through August and strikes like clockwork in the midafternoons. That was my biggest motivator getting out of bed this morning. The monsoon storms, which can unload lightning like a bombing raid, aren’t something you want to experience in the alpine. Reaching the summit and getting back down before the storms roll in is the goal today.

That’s why I’m so tuned in to the time—and the reliability of my watch. No batteries or finicky electronics to worry about. The Khaki Field winds itself with the movements of my arm as I hike, helping me keep precise track of my progress. (Plus, it has a 60-hour power reserve.)

9:45 a.m. Blue Lakes Pass is where my route leaves the trail and starts up the scree-choked ridgeline. This is where the real climbing starts.

10:29 a.m. The crux of the route is a series of near-vertical steps in the narrow couloirs I’ll have to link together to climb the ridge. Climbing through them requires all the contact possible with the rock—both hands and both feet. I work my way up, hold by hold, trying to ignore the exposure below me. One move at a time, I pull through the crux and have only the jaunt up the exposed ridgeline to the summit.

11:44 a.m. I don’t let myself celebrate too much on top—I’m only halfway, of course—but I do take a moment to appreciate the view of the town where I started well below and the sweeping peaks all around. But the summit break is the first opportunity I have to notice the clouds starting to fill up the sky. At this point, they’re relatively benign-looking: fluffy, small, and white. But I know from experience that it’s only a matter of time before they turn into storm clouds.Ìę

I swallow some snacks, snap a couple photos of the surrounding peaks, and start back down within 15 minutes.

2:22 p.m. Things are moving a little more quickly now as I race by the Blue Lakes. Since starting my descent, the clouds have accumulated and I’m beginning to hear some distant thunder. But I’m close to relative safety and well below the exposed ridgeline. I still have a long way to get home, but the hard part is over and as I cross below treeline, I let myself breathe and appreciate the adventure.

5:04 p.m. I roll into the driveway—coming down is a whole lot faster than going up. The monsoon rain comes as I’m riding back home, but getting wet is welcome at this point. I check my watch once more: the timing couldn’t be better.

Founded in Lancaster, Pennsylvania in 1892. Hamilton creates timepieces with a unique balance of authenticity and innovation. With a solid reputation for craftsmanship and prominent movie, military, and aviation heritage, Hamilton’s current collections combine its American spirit with true Swiss precision. Learn more at and follow us on , , and .

The post Time to Go Big appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

I’ve switched between my Apple Watch and a Garmin Fenix watch for several years, depending on the day. The Apple Watch has been my go-to for daily life because it’s great at motivating me to get out for a run, keeps me up to date on notifications, stores a ton of music, and works seamlessly with my iPhone and AirPods.

Out in the backcountry, I needed the Fenix because the battery lasts for weeks, it comes with a genuinely robust GPS and great tracking features, and you’d need a hammer to break the thing. On days when I was adventuring—backpacking, skiing, out on a bikepacking trip—I would always swap the Apple Watch for my Garmin because we all know that the regular Apple Watch isn’t very robust. The battery lasts a day at most, and the face tends to shatter if you bang the watch around.

This announcement from Apple, however, changes everything. I was in the Steve Jobs Theater at Apple Headquarters in Cupertino, California, today to hear that the brand will be launching the ($800) for those of us who need more than just a daily driver.

The Ultra is a significant upgrade because it goes a long way toward solving all three problems I mentioned above. The battery now lasts up to 36 hours, so you’ll be able to take it on multi-day adventures and not worry about dying. The outside is made of lightweight and robust titanium, and the watch face is made from sapphire (similar to what you’d find on some other high-end adventure watches), so if you go over the handlebars on your bike or yard sale on your skis, the watch should be fine. The Ultra now has an enhanced GPS feature where you can use the Compass app to leave waypoints while you’re out, and the watch can guide you back along them if you get lost—something that’s extremely useful while exploring any new backcountry area. Apple says their GPS is also optimized to connect even when next to tall trees and high-rise buildings.

Other adventure features I’m excited to test include:

• 86-decibel siren for emergency rescue situations
• A digital crown that is bigger and easier to operate with gloves on
• A three-microphone array that helps you make calls in windy conditions,
• Temperature rating that allows the watch to operate from -4 to 131 degrees Fahrenheit
• If you’re also a scuba diver, you should scroll through the features because Apple claims the Ultra is a full-featured dive computer

Based on these stats, the Apple Watch Ultra is still not as robust as a top-end adventure watch like the Garmin Fenix 7X Solar (which I’ve been testing for the past year), so there will still be core users out there that prefer their Garmin, Suunto, or Coros watch. But for those who adventure and love the usability of the Apple Watch and other Apple Products, the Ultra finds an excellent middle ground. Watch this space for further testing of the Apple Watch Ultra, available to order now and arrives on Sept. 23.

The post The New Apple Watch Ultra Might Replace Your Garmin, Sleep Tracker, and Dive Computer All at Once appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

For most of my life, I didn’t consider myself a watch person. Sure, I appreciated being able to control my AirPods with my Apple Watch, but it never hooked me because the battery was—and still is—too small to power big adventures. I tested several older Garmin and Suunto watches years ago, but they ended up in the closet because I found the software clunky and nearly impossible to navigate.

Then, about two years ago, I started wearing the Fenix 6 Pro Solar, which finally converted me. The Fenix 6 Pro does so many things wellÌęthat I started relying on it regularly and felt naked without it on my wrist.

Fast forward to today, and after months of testing the 6’s new big brother—the ($900)—my watch bond is rock solid. The 7X Solar is now an essential tool that motivates me to move daily and gives me peace of mind in the backcountry, and I don’t have to worry about it getting damaged or the battery running out.

Fenix 7X Solar: Likes

I’m not an Insta-famous adventurer so I originally felt like the 7X might be overkill—or that I would look like a poser with the watch on—but have quickly realized the watch is for anyone who can put it to good use.

Tracking

I use it daily to track my exercise and am impressed with how many options I get. Take cycling as an example: I normally choose the standard bike ride feature, but if I want to get really specific I can also ask the watch to track stats for indoor, gravel, and cyclocross rides, as well as commuting and touring. For runners, it Ìętracks everything from treadmill workouts to ultras. It also tracks kiteboarding, snowshoeing,Ìę bouldering, yoga, and pickleball (yes, pickleball). The watch will give you plenty of sleep data, too.

When tracking, the GPS connects quickly and is incredibly accurate. I recently went on two big backcountry ski tours in the Elk Range outside Aspen, Colorado and was able to look back at my tracks on a satellite map and see exactly where I skied. Those data points included the tiny little pullouts in a big, steep chute where I stationed myself to stay out of a possible avalanche path while the other people in my party took turns skiing the line.

One feature I’ve never had to use (thankfully) but still enable when out in the backcountry is called TracBack, which leaves a digital breadcrumb trail as I move through the mountains. The watch can then use the map and compass features to guide me back along that path to my car if I get turned around or lost. It’s an important insurance policy and one that makes me feel a lot more comfortable tackling new terrain.

Flashlight

I called it gimmicky in my first look at the 7X, but the watch’s built-in flashlight is wildly useful (the flashlight only comes on the 7X, not the regular 7). To create this feature, Garmin included three LEDs—two white and one red—that sit at 12:00 between the bezel and watch strap. Two quick taps of the upper left button turn on the flashlight, and you can then control the intensity or switch from white to red light. The flashlight is just ten lumens but I’ve already used it to do everything from finding dog poopÌęto navigating dark sidewalks. If needed, the light would be just bright enough to get me down a trail if I forgot my headlamp. Runners can also create a de facto blinking light by programming the watch lights to flash white as your wrist moves forward and red as your wrist flies back.

Durability

I’m not especially rough on my gear, but I’ve banged the watch around plenty while skiing and doing yard work and it’s no worse for the wear. I’ve yet to drop it on a tile floor, but I’m sure it would be just fine. My screen will eventually get a little scratched, which doesn’t bother me. If that’s something you worry about, you can upgrade to the most expensive sapphire version (an additional $100)—it comes with a screen that’s significantly more scratch resistant.

Battery Life

Many other watches out there feature some or many of the same features I’ve mentioned above, but the 7X is unique because it features all of them, does all of them well, and has a battery and charging system that keeps them running nearly forever. Garmin says the longer battery life is thanks to a more efficient GPS chip, a bigger battery, and a larger solar panel underneath the watch face (compared to the 6 Pro Solar). According to their stats, if I’m wearing the watch and it’s gathering a steady dose of sunlight (around three hours per day), it will give me up to 122 hours of GPS. If I’m not using GPS but using other features, and it’s in the sun for a couple hours each day, it can go around five weeks without a charge.

I haven’t tried to run the GPS for over 100 hours straight, but I have worked hard to test the battery. I last charged my 7X over two weeks ago and have since used the GPS to track those two different seven-hour ski tours in Aspen as well as three, 30-mile gravel rides, and a handful of neighborhood runs. The flashlight has been on for at least 15 minutes at full power, and I wear the watch every day to track my steps, get notifications, listen to music, and the watch currently says I still have six full days of use.

Fenix 7X Solar: Dislikes

Size

The Fenix 7X Solar is a big watch—it only comes in a 51-millimeter size (the 7 also comes in more modest 42- and 47-millimeter sizes but they don’t come with the flashlight). At six feet and 180 pounds, I’m a medium-sized guy, and the 51-millimeter case sits on my wrist just fine and doesn’t look out of place. The only time it gets in the way is when I’m typing in a non-ergonomic way and my wrist is tilted too far back on the keyboard. Smaller people might find the large size unruly or unattractive.

Screen

The 7 series also has a touchscreen, but I wasn’t that impressed with it. After using the 6 Pro Solar for years I was used to the buttons and haven’t found the touchscreen navigation to be that much easier. Garmin’s screen is definitely not as nice as the one on an Apple Watch, so scrolling and choosing features takes a little more intentionality and a harder touch, which pushes me right back to the buttons.

The screen on the 7X isn’t anything to rave about. I can read it in the direct sunlight and never have to work to understand the information. People who want a nicer screen should look at the Garmin Epix 2 that comes with a brighter and higher-res touchscreen OLED.

Software

Garmin’s menus have improved over the years, but I’m still not a huge fan. I was able to find my way around the 7X after a week, but it definitely took some intentionality and little Googling to make everything work the way I wanted. I’m sure there are features on the 7X I’ve never dug up partly because I don’t need them and because they’re buried too deep.

There’s a robust map feature on the 7X and you can download topo maps for every continent. I have not used any maps on the 7X, however, because trying to follow a map on a watch screen drives me crazy. I much prefer to use my phone and any number of mapping apps, including (which șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű. owns). My phone batteryÌęwill not last as long as the 7X but I’m happy to bring an extra battery charger on longer slogs just so I have more screen real estate.

Price

And finally, there’s the price. I told my friend who likes expensive bikes that I was wearing a $900 watch and he about shit himself. At nearly $1,000, the 7XÌęmight carry more of a vanity price tag than a utility one. But the more you wear the thing, the more you understand how nice it is to have such a robust tool on your wrist. Many of us are willing to spend $800 on a new iPhone and I’m guessing the 7X will be relevant for at least another five to 10 years—much longer than your phone will last.

Bottom Line: I’ll Wear Fenix 7X Every Day

Not everyone can afford a $900 watch. But if you play outside and are used to paying for quality skis, bikes, shoes, tents, etc., then you’ll understand that the 7X is an investment that will pay dividends in performance. Being able to get yourself out of a pickle in the backcountry and track everything you do all while never really having to worry about the battery will make $900 seem like a reasonable price tag to some. This assurance, and ease of use, made the 7X an indispensable part of my everyday carry.ÌęIt’s why the watch will stay on my wrist for a long time to come.

The post The Garmin Fenix 7X Solar Is the Only Watch I Want to Wear appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.