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Which Sports Watch Is Right For You?

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Which Sports Watch Is Right For You?

After signing up for the Ironman 70.3 in Indian Wella – my first triathlon since my surgery – I knew it was time to get serious about my training. I had a basic sports watch, but I needed to step up my game for the serious training ahead. Eventually, I found the perfect watch for me, but it was a very personal decision, based on my unique needs, budget, and required features. No single watch will likely tick off all your boxes, there will need to be some compromise. I created the below guide to hopefully help you zero in on the best sports watch for you.

I broke down my guide into three areas: 

  • Sports Needs: Different sports have radically different needs. This section breaks down major sports, identifying their specific requirements, along with advanced considerations and irrelevant features.
  • Budget: We all have a price range – I’ve included some considerations for watches typical to various price ranges.
  • Features: A breakdown of features found on sports watches and relevant considerations.

Sports Needs

The sports you intend to track are critical in choosing the right watch for you. Whether you’re interested in tracking your daily activity levels, or looking for advanced feedback to dial in your training – your sporting needs will ultimately determine which sport watch will be right for you.

Running

All runners will want to track time, distance and speed. Some features intermediate runners may be interested in, include heart rate monitoring (to track how hard you’re pushing), interval training, and elevation tracking (to monitor elevation gain and loss). Advanced features include the ability to program custom workouts, customizable display options, and virtual trainers. Built-in music, smartphone notifications, and extended battery life are not necessary, but appreciated features. If your focus is running, you can avoid water resistance, and swimming and biking metrics.

Cycling

Similar to running, all cyclists will want to track time, distance and speed. Additional intermediate features include heart rate monitoring and interval training. Additional advanced features include custom workouts, customizable display options, virtual trainers, and the ability to connect external sensors for monitoring heart rate, bike speed, power (wattage), and cadence. Appreciated features depending on your budget include built in music, smartphone notifications, and extended battery life. If your focus is cycling, you can avoid water resistance, and swimming metrics.

Swimming

Swimmers need water resistant sports watches – look for water-resistance to 50 meters. All swimmers will want to track time, distance, speed, and heart rate. More advanced watches will include metrics for stroke speed, and the ability to work both in pools of all sizes, and open water environments – through the addition of accelerometers, and GPS. If your focus is swimming you can avoid extended battery life, built-in music, and advanced running and cycling metrics.

Multi-Sport/Triathlons

All multi-sport athletes have the same set of requirements – metrics for all environments. Ensure the watch includes all of the recommended features for each sport you wish to track. Multi-sport watches also include the ability to quickly transition from one sport to another, think built-in triathlon mode. Some advanced features can include external bike accessories, and built-in music to keep you company during those long training sessions. Extended battery life, while not crucial, is nice to have – often included in more costly models.

Camping, Advanced Hiking/Alpine, Ultra Distances

I have grouped these activities as they all share a few things in common – exposure to the elements, and the premium they put on battery life. Beyond the basic metrics (speed, distance, heart monitoring), of unique interest to these watches is the accuracy of the GPS, elevation and temperature readings, and ruggedness of the watch itself. If your focus is one of these sports, you can avoid water-resistance, and advanced metrics related to running, cycling and swimming.

Budget

Entry-Level Watches

  • Typically priced under $200
  • Ideal for weekend warriors, people looking to motivate themselves towards being more active, and new runners looking for basic metrics.
  • Basic functionality
  • Average battery life

Mid-Level Watches

  • Typically available for $200 – $500
  • Ideal for intermediate runners, cyclists and athletes looking to gather more detailed metrics
  • Intermediate functionality
  • GPS functionality standard
  • Longer battery life

Advanced/Specialized/Multi-Sport Watches

  • $500 and up
  • Ideal for serious and specialized athletes looking for advanced metrics, across multiple sports
  • Advanced features (music controls, navigation, smartphone notifications, smart training, live tracking) will add to the price.
  • Advanced GPS functionality
  • Longest battery life
  • External accessories (heart rate monitor, running and bike accessories), will also add to the price, and likely not included.

Features

Hardware

  • Battery Life: Most sports watches can last up to half a day in GPS mode. One of the biggest differentiators when it comes to cost, is often battery life. There are also features you can disable/adjust to increase battery life – like disabling smartphone notifications, turning down the backlight intensity, reducing GPS refresh rate, and disabling auto-sync.
  • Waterproof Vs. Water-Resistant: All sports watches can deal with sweat and rain. In order to safely track your swimming, your watch should be water-resistant up to 50m.
  • Touchscreen: Having a touch-based interface doesn’t add value. In fact, they can be a distraction, more trouble than they’re worth.
  • Accessories: Some sport watches can sync wirelessly to external accessories like body scales, heart rate monitors, bike accessories, and temperatures sensors. Unless these are essential to your needs, they can be ignored as nice-to-haves.

Syncing

  • Downloading Workouts: Practically all sports watches have an accompanying application for downloading your workouts to your computer or smartphone for further analysis. Syncing can be manual or automatic.
  • 3rd-Party Applications: Some sports watches are compatible with 3rd party applications.

Wayfinding

  • GPS Accuracy: Most GPS watches have a high degree of accuracy (1-3%). Because these watches rely on satellites, you’ll need to be outdoors, with unobstructed views and clear weather. High-end GPS sports watches can also correlate data from built-in accelerometers and external sensors to improve accuracy.
  • Mapping & Navigation: Some sports watches can display the route taken during the course of the exercise, providing navigational cues along the way, as well as ‘Bring Me Home’ functionality.
  • Live Tracker: Allows your sports watch to broadcast your position to friends and family.

Sports Metrics

  • Basic Metrics: The baseline for non GPS activity trackers. Time, Steps and Cadence rely upon accelerometers to measure the number of steps taken. By comparing this to user height, basic distance and speed metrics can be generated
  • GPS Metrics: Metrics captured in real time through GPS. These include Distance, Time, Elevation and Speed.
  • Calories: This represents the estimated amount of calories typically burned during the current exercise. It is calculated through comparing profile data points (age, height, weight, level of fitness) against exertion levels (heart rate, length of activity) and activity types (interval training, stretching, running).
  • Advanced Running Metrics available through combining accelerometer readings, GPS, and external sensors: Ground Contact Time (average amount of time each foot spends on the ground), Ground Contact Balance (the balance of GCT between your right and left foot), Vertical Oscillation (how much you move up and down while you run), and Running Power.
  • Advanced Cycling Metrics available through combining accelerometer readings, GPS, and external sensors: Incline, Torque Effectiveness (how effectively power applied to the pedal moves the rider forward), Pedal Smoothness (how smoothly power is delivered to the pedal throughout the revolution), as well as advanced Left Versus Right foot metrics.
  • Advanced Swimming Metrics inferred through combining accelerometer readings and GPS data: SWOLF (a swimming efficiency metric), Pace (rate of movement, expressed in minutes per 100m), Interval, and Stroke Count (total number of strokes recorded during your session).

Environmental Metrics

  • Elevation: Mostly generated through GPS, elevation gain and loss can also be determined through barometric readings.
  • Temperature: Environmental metrics. These can be gathered via internal or external sensors

Training

  • Training Alerts: Time and distance-based alerts, run/walk alerts.
  • Interval Workouts: The ability to program time, or distance-based intervals.
  • Virtual Workouts: The ability to create virtual partners, or races, and get feedback on your pace against the set goal.
  • Multi-Sport: Allows you to quickly switch between activity types on the fly, for example, swimming, biking and running, over the duration of a triathlon.
  • Recovery Suggestions: Suggestions for rest and recovery, based on your recent activities and overall level of fitness.

Customization

  • Custom Workout: The ability to create custom workouts and goals
  • Customizable Screens: The ability to choose which metrics are shown for various activities.
  • Custom Bike Settings: The ability to pre-program different bikes into your smart watch so that your metrics are always in sync (e.g., different bike types, sizes, and tire sizes and pressures – think road bike versus mountain bike).

Summary

While it’s tempting to purchase based on looks and ease of use, it’s crucial to carefully consider exactly what features you’ll need, as well as what functions may become useful to you in the future. No one watch is perfect, but hopefully this guide has provided a starting point for finding the perfect sports watch for you.

SOURCES

Picture of Daniel

Daniel

Daniel is an extremely curious person, a wealth of random knowledge and facts. Extremely passionate about a vast array of interests ranging from health to history, science to athletics, everything culinary and the list goes on. Trust us, you would want to be on his team for Trivial Pursuit. Daniel is also years into his battle with brain cancer. He experienced a seizure while on a Zoom call at work in late 2020 and quite literally, his life changed within minutes. After his operation he started to talk about his story but had always known it was more than just him. From then, More Than Our Story became a PROJECT that has evolved into the starting point it is today.

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