GPS Watches

I have a fenix 6 and I love it. I wanted a GPS watch with a long battery life and the ability to store music and play via bluetooth headphones for road bike rides. It has worked a charm and when not using the tracking/GPS, the battery will last 10+ days. My brother had a suunto which was not as accurate and would need to be charged daily (he now also has a fenix 6). It is a lot of money, but has a shit ton of features and hasn't once gone wrong. It has survived the mud and falls of mtb with no issue. If you intend keeping it for years then it's a worthwhile investment. Fenix 7 seems like a good choice if you are buying your first watch, although I'm sure you could pick up the fenix 6 a fair bit cheaper now.

^ Nic, can you run the watch by itself, without a phone paired to it? (Or with a paired phone left in the car, for instance?)

Personally, I am using a less hardcore/sport focused and more day to day Garmin vivoactive. For me it was sufficient as I just wanted to track my rides,activities etc.
Sincerely, I find it to be a good value for the money: accurate enough, quite good battery (though with GPS on I must admit it's more limited but good enough), quite tough also !
And as you mentioned, this watch is great as it doesn't need a phone to work the GPS.

I've got about 4 years on a Fenix 5. Garmin even sent me a refurbished one at a steep discount after it died. The Garmin stuff is solid but pricey. Almost bought a Coros watch prior to Garmin replacing my dead watch though. Those look pretty nice, especially for the price.

using a garmin instinct for a few years now. I seem to have the same issue where after 18 months or so battery life falls of a cliff, Garmin are fantastic and give a new replacement watch no questions asked delivered within a week. Can't fault their service at all, and I like the watch too.

Only issues I've had with Garmins is the battery life after 18 months when it just dies and it also seems to burn my wrist because of the heart rate monitor.

i think the battery issues as mostly with the vivoactive series, as mentioned they warranty them without question.

i have a fenix 3 that i have abused for quite some time (used all the time for mtb, road, cross, hiking, skiing, backcountry, blah blah blah). it is a tank. battery is still great. to me features are attractive but be real about what you want out of it - that will save you a lot of money. i personally only use HR, GPS, altitude, timer... and the watch. but even on my old AF model there are a lot of other features. maybe there are new old gen garmin's out there for cheap?? highly recommend.

I’ve had a Garmin Fenix 5 for years, battery life is still great. Perfect for ride and run tracking. You can set up workouts on it for running etc. I can’t see myself ever bothering to upgrade it unless it dies, expensive but worth the money. Only weak point is the interface with Garmin Connect which takes forever, but not a big deal in the grand scheme of things.

I've had a Garmin Fenix 5S for the last few years, and I love it. It is however, way more than i need. Previously I had a Suunto Spartan which I found to be perfect, but the strap bar (not sure if that's the right term) ripped out of the body. Before that I had the original vivoactive which was good but found it was more of a casual smart watch as its battery life sucked. In comparison I can get 3-5 average rides out of a charge on the Fenix. Mine is the Saffire so I can smash it into stuff all day and at 4 years old it still looks nearly new.

Currently I'm eyeing up the new Instinct 2 Solar as a replacement to the Fenix. Basically all the Fenix features at less than half the price and near unlimited battery life, it just doesn't have that hyper polished look.

Watches and their features aside, there's also the apps and environment they use to consider. Garmin's Connect app is clean, easy to use and connects to other apps easily. So it auto uploads to Strava if you want, as well as other apps. I use my fitness pal to track stuff as well so I make sure I'm eating enough. I remember Suunto's app being great also, but since I also use a Garmin Edge for road, keeping all my stuff in a single app started to make sense as Suunto's app didn't connect to others as well as Garmin's.

I have a Garmin Forerunner 45. It’s simple, it works, and is pretty accurate GPS wise. Add a heart rate strap and you’re good to go. Doesn’t have all the fancy features of the Fénix series but costs hundreds of dollars less

I wanted a basic watch so I've bought Coros Pace 2, its the cheapest watch with Barometric altitude sensor and so far I have no complains, small and really light, sensors are accurate, usually I only get a climb/descend difference of +- 1 or 2m in 1000m of climbing, batery life is great, app is ok, you also get auto upload to variery of other apps including strava. It does not play music or connects to the phone for messages/calls but I've never wanted that so for 200 bucks (€/$) its been great so far, probably best budged buy there is.

I've got a Garmin Forerunner 245 music.
Does everything I need. All the sports watch functions including built in heart rate and will run trailforks and audio through my Bluetooth headphones and about half the price of a Fenix.

I am going on 2.5 years with an Instinct. I have had no issues with the battery life falling off. It is exactly where it has always been. It is pretty accurate. HR varies like with any wrist device. When I want precise data, I put on the chest strap. I do not wear it daily though. I wear it for a few hours a day a couple days a week. I do not like wearing a "smart" watch daily.

Ive had a Suunto Spartan Trainer w/ GPS for over 2 years now and it looks like a dog has tried to eat it because I've beaten the ever loving crap out of it.

They have a repair/replace program & just sent mine in b/c the battery is starting not to hold a charge like all rechargeable batteries do. They'll quote me the repair cost before doing the work. They paid for it to be 2 Day shipped back to them even though it's out of warranty.

I like it because it's not massive. It has about a dozen different types of exercise to choose from so that the GPS waypoint "crumbs" match the activity. So with MTB, it tracks my activities way more accurately than a phone can.

Has the option to sync w/ my phone for text/notifications, but I keep that garbage turned off. It's my watch. It looks like it. Feels like it. Acts like it. Then when I go on a ride, 2 presses of buttons & I'm recording. Keeps my battery from murdering itself on my phone too. Also pairs with an external heart rate chest strap that I've never used.
I just use the generic sensor on the back.

I'd recommend the Suunto 9. Plus if you're either a USACycling member or an IMBA member (even through a local chapter), you get a HEFTY discount on ExpertVoice of 30-40%.

EDIT: Going into the functions, the setting to not have it monitor steps or heart rate when not doing an activity is something that saves a ton of battery and I love. Wife leaves her stupid FitBit HR monitor on 24/7 and I HATE that light zapping me in the eyes when she goes to bed.

I always defer to this DC Rainmaker site. He has the some of the best info I have found regarding sports watches and comparing features.

Seconding this; bought a used Fenix 3 Sapphire and have beaten the crap out of it for a couple years and it just keeps going. They are pretty cheap to get now so I don't feel bad about abusing it.

Curious to hear the OPs thoughts on the 7 once they've had it for a while, that's a LOT of watch!

i have an older garmin vivoctive HR (now discontinued). several years old. at the time i was looking i chose it because it was waterproof, had good battery life (i usually get about a week out of it) and was compatible with some of the basic sensors used for biking (speed, cadence, and chest strap hear monitor). it has actually be replaced twice now because the waterproof casing failed (come to find out it was a design flaw from what i read online) and both times was replaced despite being out of the official warranty period.

i had been considering upgrading to a newer watch (which i still plan to do eventually), but i wound up getting a garmin edge 830 instead and have been very happy with it. i can use it with my indoor trainer, road bike, xc bike, enduro bike, and DH bike. it has some cool bike specific features such as "air time" aka jump detection which I believe is only available on the Edge x30 series and not on any of the watches.

edit: meant to add that the edge x30 series come with trailforks built in.

and to answer one of the earlier questions - most, if not all, of garmin's modern watches have GPS built in, so no need to carry a phone. they store the data and will load it to the phone app once connection is re-established. even my older vivoactive HR does this.

I am currently running a Coros Apex. I have previously run the garmin 45s as well. I will probably only run coros going forward. This is for several reasons.

First, coros watches typically come at a lower cost than others when they have the same features and I find that their GPS is more accurate than some others. I just want to basic watch so I don't need music or anything and the Apex fits the bill. That being said, it does have the option to do messages and stuff that I have that turned off.

The battery on this watch is also incredible. It lasting apparently longer than my 45s ever did. Even now it's older than my significant others. 45S and the battery lasts close to a week longer, and I work out more. I think this is best manifested in the idea that coros watches are semi-common with ultramarathoners because they have a long battery life which can track their GPS for an entire 24-hour race in a certain mode.

Has the best service. Coros consistently updates their software, so new futures are constantly loaded onto old watches, which I know Garmin does not do. I'm not sure when the last DC rainmaker review was, but in the last two years for software features have changed a lot on my Apex. In the event that your old watch does not actually compatible with the new features, I know that they do offer an exchange policy for one of the updated watches. One of my friends did that last year. They also have lots of sports which is a great option if your multi-sport athlete and don't want to spend a million dollars to get your odd sports.

In general, I find that the hardware is great. As far as GPS, heart rate, accuracy, and durability goes. It also has lots of high-end features without the high end touch screen which I do not want because it cracked touch screen would break the watch. I've been running mine for two years of mountain biking, rock climbing, and many other rough sports with no damage to the watch. It has been through water, mud, rocks and sand and it's doing great.

The only issue I see with this watch is that the sleep tracking is not great but that's more of a software issue with coros rather than an issue with the watch.

I started off with a Xiaomi/Amazfit Stratos 2. It was fine, but then I wished for something maybe more sport oriented. I went with the Garmin Instinct Solar, which was a great watch, except that the barometer simply did not work. Apparently the issue is the fact that the port is on the underside, where it gets covered by the skin... Instinct 2 solves this.

I'm not running a Coros Apex 46 mm.

Preface, I wanted to offload GPS tracking duties from my phone for battery reasons (and for accuracy, running the phone in the pocket under my thigh didn't give a good GPS reception). Once I got the Stratos, I started using it for notifications as well with my phone on silent/vibrate 24/7 for the past few years. Plus the 247/ HR monitoring and sleep tracking.

The Stratos, as mentioned, was fine, but at the end the battery died on me (I left it on the charger for a few weeks when COVID started off and I was working from home, my bad) and I did wish it had more battery life.

Other than the mentioned barometer issues, the Instinct was great, no touchscreen, black and white screen, good battery life (~2 weeks of notifications and daily HR monitoring with 0 activities, charged it once on Madeira when I did Trans Madeira, consisting of all the travel and 5 full-day bike days), button interface, etc. But the barometer not working (and I mean _NOT_ _WORKING_ for me) brought me over the edge.

Took the plunge with the Coros and I'm really happy. For 350-ish € you get a sapphire screen, Ti bezel (and back) and a plastic casing (very little of it showing), a button interface and, no activities, about 18 days of battery life (half of the battery was eaten up by the backlight last time I checked the stats while not having any activities on it). The tracking appears to be good on it, it shows notifications, has a timer so I know when to pull out the tea bag, etc. And it's quite slim, which fits my noodly arms/wrists nicely.
The best 'review' for it would be that I don't notice it, it just works. Same goes for the Instinct bar the barometer issue.

App wise (checking the 24/7, sleep and activity data, though for the latter I use Strava...) the Coros is the worst, has the least details in the data and is the most clunky. Garmin's was nice, but it did not connect to Google Fit, but Coros' app doesn't as well - Xiaomi's/Amazfit's is the only one that did. App wise it was also OK, easy to use, can't say much over it.

Always Garmin. Currently a Fenix 3 as its cheap and does what i want it to. I still use a 13 year old Forerunner 310 XT, it just wont die. I use hear rate straps, as i have collected a few of them over them over the years.

Isn’t the watch going bye bye cause cell phones have all the same technology?

Apple watch 7 works great with Strava.

Eh I used to do that. It was fine when my phone was small. New phones are big and expensive.

Also, if you are a strava racer (unfortunately, like myself) dedicated units are supposed to be better. They sample GPS at a constant rate whereas, *from what I have read on the internet*, strava tries to use your accelerometer and velocity to determine when it needs to sample your location because it could tell you changed direction.

I have a VivoActive3 that I have been using for a few years and has been great, I had to get a woven band since the original band was irritating my wrist. I am only looking for a new watch since the battery life has started to diminish and more and more newer apps(trailforks specifically) are not supported on it.

I stopped using my apple watch because even when running the strava app on it I was getting miles more than my riding buddies on the exact same route at the exact same time. I heard I was not the only one to experience this. I switched back to the Garmin Edge 130 mounted to my bike.

Had a fenix 6 these last 18months. I probably only use 1/4 of it's functionality.

I had a suunto ambit 2 since 2014 and it still works great, but they effectively "bricked" it by dropping the desktop software and going over to the app only. Which is a really gimmicky thing that seems like it was made by a marketing dept.

The fenix lasts 4 or 5 rides without a charge, really good for backcountry trips with the phone turned off.
I like that it has trailforks, so when I'm riding new places, I can chose a route to explore on the phone, which then syncs to the watch and you dont have to pull the phone out at every trail intersection.

HR isnt the most accurate when it's sweaty. It's okay, but for the likes of zwift, best to use a chest strap.