Best Fitness Watch for Cycling/General?

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Shoxt3r

Active Member
Hi there,

I'm looking to get a fitness watch which will monitor my general health but also while I'm cycling. I'm completely clueless with this area to be honest so any advice would be really helpful - including that they're just a fad and of no use at all haha!

I've had a brief look into FitBit and also some Garmin watches but I'm still none the wiser. My top budget would be about £120.
I currently use Strava to track my GPS routes and would happily continue to use this if a GPS-based watch proves too expensive.

Thanks in advance!

Andrew
 

PaulSB

Legendary Member
I'd suggest you first decide what it is you want to monitor. Mine measures HR, steps, activities etc. but does little to monitor "general health."

I have a Garmin Vivoactive HR. It's reliable, good battery life and is excellent for recording activities. The HR monitoring is not very accurate - often 5-10bpm out - but I believe this is a problem common to many wrist worn devices.
 

Mo1959

Legendary Member
You’ll be hard pushed to get a decent Garmin for £120. Mostly more expensive but this is close.


View: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Garmin-Forerunner-Running-Training-Support-Black/dp/B07Q17VZG8/ref=rvi_1/259-1218616-1497358?pd_rd_w=cqOVo&pf_rd_p=1aa0e3c6-d03f-4cfa-9040-27eac2789751&pf_rd_r=8RVD6BN4KKZ61799WNJP&pd_rd_r=f7a7ec6b-9904-4df3-8d13-b8463997f9bb&pd_rd_wg=hOIzO&pd_rd_i=B07Q17VZG8&psc=1


I’ve got a Garmin Fenix which I love but it’s a lot more expensive. Most Garmins will upload to Strava so you could keep using Strava for exercising and save your phone battery when out and about.
 

HMS_Dave

Grand Old Lady
As a wildcard option, i have a Casio WSD-F21hr which my missus brought me. It is a smartwatch, but has GPS, Heart rate monitor, Maps, various cycling aids and Strava can be downloaded on it. Also, its tough...

You can get them second hand and i've seen them in the £150 range.
 

si_c

Guru
Location
Wirral
I've had a Garmin Forerunner 35 for about 3 years now, it monitors my steps, HR, sleep and general activity as well as being a GPS enabled sports tracker.

I get about 10 days of non-GPS usage out of it but if I use it to send my heart rate to another garmin cycling computer or as a GPS recording device the battery does drop correspondingly. Links to your phone via bluetooth and activities recorded are automatically uploaded to Garmin, and from there to Strava if you set it up.

Can't say I want anything more than it already does, which is everything Mrs C's fitbit does except having a colour screen and contactless payment. As an added bonus as it is no longer in Garmins' current line-up of devices it's pretty cheap, I just looked on Amazon after @Mo1959 posted the link above and it's up for under £100.

At that price I can't recommend it highly enough.

Edit to add: I've got a few Garmin devices and this is pretty much the one I would hate to lose most.
 

Mo1959

Legendary Member
I love my Apple gear owning an imac, macbook, ipad and iphone but have resisted the watch so far as the battery life is just so poor compared to my Garmin. As si says, if only used as an always on watch that monitors my steps, heart rate, stress, sleep, etc it does over a week. Even using gps to record a couple of runs per week still gives me close to a week. Most people seem to have to charge their Apple watch pretty much every day.
 

PaulSB

Legendary Member
While battery life is getting a mention my Garmin Vivoactive HR lasts for 10-12 days. I don't truly know as it's not an issue.

If used to record an activity this does have an impact on battery but not a serious one. Again I don't bother about it other than fully charging if I have a full day of recording in mind - 12-14 hours for example.
 
Have you amassed Nectar points? I found that I had enough to get £150 off a Fitbit. Worth checking if you signed up to Nectar a while ago and forgo about it
 

pawl

Legendary Member
I have an Apple Watch Battery usually lasts two days Only tend to wear it when I’m cycling or some physical activity While I was cycling yesterday it started bleeping Had to stop get my specs out It was asking me if I had a fall Dont know what that was all about
 

Nibor

Bewildered
Location
Accrington
I have a Garmin Vivoactive 3 which I am very happy with as it has GPS built in and HRM I bought mine used from CEX with a 2 year warrenty
 

AdamD1

Regular
I’ve just bought a garmin forerunner 45, having come from a polar m400. Both very good but much prefer the garmin, much more slick, better interface, seamless uploading etc., although I’m less than impressed with the battery. Heart rate monitor seems to be pretty accurate (have tested it manually whilst at rest and matches what the watch says, at least) and can be useful to have phone notifications pop up but can be highly annoying in equal measures! I would recommend it, but if going on long (3-4+ hour) cycles I’d advise taking a small battery pack and the power lead as it has a poor battery life (thought I’d bought an apple product at first!!)
 

si_c

Guru
Location
Wirral
I’ve just bought a garmin forerunner 45, having come from a polar m400. Both very good but much prefer the garmin, much more slick, better interface, seamless uploading etc., although I’m less than impressed with the battery. Heart rate monitor seems to be pretty accurate (have tested it manually whilst at rest and matches what the watch says, at least) and can be useful to have phone notifications pop up but can be highly annoying in equal measures! I would recommend it, but if going on long (3-4+ hour) cycles I’d advise taking a small battery pack and the power lead as it has a poor battery life (thought I’d bought an apple product at first!!)
Garmin reckon you should get about 13 hours of GPS recording from the watch, if getting significantly less than that there may well be a fault with your watch, certainly worth contacting them. I've found Garmin support to be very good.
 

AdamD1

Regular
Garmin reckon you should get about 13 hours of GPS recording from the watch, if getting significantly less than that there may well be a fault with your watch, certainly worth contacting them. I've found Garmin support to be very good.
Haha, 13 hours is hilarious! Try 5-6.
I’ll contact them. Or I’ll just return to amazon for a refund and re-buy, probably easier.
 
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