Fitness/GPS watch input wanted

[LittleLebowski]

What's your budget and use case?

$300-ish, my wife wants to track her fitness.

[Default.mp3]

$300-ish, my wife wants to track her fitness.

I would say look at one of the older Garmin Forerunners, or perhaps the Garmin Venu (new Forerunners might be out your price range). The Instinct is more outdoorsy, IMO, but could also fit the bill okay. Suuntos are kinda behind, the newest models are suppose to be quite nice as they're trying to bring themselves on parity with Garmin, COROS, and Polar, but might be out of your budget. I don't know enough about the current COROS and Polar offerings to give any advice on those, but they're pretty reputable, worth a look-see to see if they have anything that matches your budget and use case.

[DallasBronco]

$300-ish, my wife wants to track her fitness.

The Coros Pace 2 runs about $200 and every review says it worth way more. That may be a good option depending on the type of activities your wife does.

[Casey]

Also, take a look at the DC Rainmaker YouTube channel. He does excellent reviews of fitness watches.

[LittleLebowski]

The Coros Pace 2 runs about $200 and every review says it worth way more. That may be a good option depending on the type of activities your wife does.

Really tempting. She's very petite, hope it doesn't look huge on her wrist.

[LittleLebowski]

Coros is gaining traction among trail runners. I know a couple of serious runners that chose it over Garmin.

https://coros.com/watches

Polar and Suunto have been left by the wayside, it seems.

Thanks to this post, I've been really enjoying my Coros Apex 2, so here's a free year's Site Supporter membership. This watch does everything I want and last nearly a week on a charge, very tough too. Fantastic purchase for me.

[Duelist]

$300-ish, my wife wants to track her fitness.

I would say look at one of the older Garmin Forerunners, or perhaps the Garmin Venu (new Forerunners might be out your price range). The Instinct is more outdoorsy, IMO, but could also fit the bill okay. Suuntos are kinda behind, the newest models are suppose to be quite nice as they're trying to bring themselves on parity with Garmin, COROS, and Polar, but might be out of your budget. I don't know enough about the current COROS and Polar offerings to give any advice on those, but they're pretty reputable, worth a look-see to see if they have anything that matches your budget and use case.

I used a Fitbit Charge 4 for a couple of years. Durability of the watchband sucked, utility as a watch sucked, and the Fitbit app updates destroyed the utility of it.

Moved on in November 2023 to a Garmin Forerunner 55. It’s pretty awesome - not expensive (well under LL’s budget stated above), 14 day battery life, accurate data, auto syncs with the Garmin Connect app (w/o sucking down the battery on the iPhone like the Fitbit did for GPS purposes), tracks my walks and cycling (primary cardio these days), and isn’t a huge technological terror attached to my wrist. Have become a fan.

[Rocky Racoon]

Thanks to this post, I've been really enjoying my Coros Apex 2, so here's a free year's Site Supporter membership. This watch does everything I want and last nearly a week on a charge, very tough too. Fantastic purchase for me.

Thank you. Glad you are enjoying it.

[45dotACP]

I used a Fitbit Charge 4 for a couple of years. Durability of the watchband sucked, utility as a watch sucked, and the Fitbit app updates destroyed the utility of it.

Moved on in November 2023 to a Garmin Forerunner 55. It’s pretty awesome - not expensive (well under LL’s budget stated above), 14 day battery life, accurate data, auto syncs with the Garmin Connect app (w/o sucking down the battery on the iPhone like the Fitbit did for GPS purposes), tracks my walks and cycling (primary cardio these days), and isn’t a huge technological terror attached to my wrist. Have become a fan.

I tend to run a Vivoactive my wife got me (its Captain America Themed and it's awesome, but I think the standard versions are less expensive). She did use a fit bit, but unfortunately as we'd later find out, they suck. My brother used a Samsung of some type and of the three, my Garmin was the most accurate and tracking distances (even in city runs in Chicago, where the large buildings make GPS tracking inaccurate.

After we ran the Chicago Marathon, it was accurate to within plus or minus 0.4 miles, and in the training leading up to the Marathon, it was able to track the longer runs easily and whenever we do something like a 5k or 10k it tracks well even around skyscrapers.

Because most of our training runs are not in big cities and my wife doesn't do a lot of heart rate zone training, she just uses Strava nowadays.

[BehindBlueI's]

I tend to run a Vivoactive my wife got me (its Captain America Themed and it's awesome, but I think the standard versions are less expensive). She did use a fit bit, but unfortunately as we'd later find out, they suck. My brother used a Samsung of some type and of the three, my Garmin was the most accurate and tracking distances (even in city runs in Chicago, where the large buildings make GPS tracking inaccurate.

After we ran the Chicago Marathon, it was accurate to within plus or minus 0.4 miles, and in the training leading up to the Marathon, it was able to track the longer runs easily and whenever we do something like a 5k or 10k it tracks well even around skyscrapers.

Because most of our training runs are not in big cities and my wife doesn't do a lot of heart rate zone training, she just uses Strava nowadays.

Garmin Fenix 5x showed me at 26.28 miles for the Bataan. I figure that's plenty accurate enough. Only time I see accuracy issues is with a lot of tight turns and switchbacks under tree cover.