Smart watch - fitness tracking

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Dan Ferris

Über Member
sorry in advance if this is in the wrong place.

I’m looking for some opinions on the below watches. Through my health insurance i can get all either discounted or they pay for the device if I hit a certain number of activity points.

I’ll be using the watch for running, swimming, indoor gym (classes and kettlebell style workouts). For cycling I shall continue to use my Garmin computer. I’ll also likely wear it during the day for general fitness / step tracking. Smart functionality I’m a little unsure about at the moment.

The options I have is a Garmin forerunner or vivoactive 3 or an Apple Watch series 4.

All have varying plus and negatives to them from reading the reviews - has anyone any experience for using either the Garmin or apple devices for the activities I mentioned above?
 

si_c

Guru
Location
Wirral
Which Forerunner are you looking at - there are quite a few!

I've got a Forerunner 35, does step counting, sleep tracking and the usual fitness gubbins. It's pretty much the most basic of the forerunner series - it doesn't do swim tracking or gym based activities for example. In terms of how it works I'm very happy, not had a single issue with it and the battery life has been pretty much spot on - I get about a 5 days of moderate use and activity tracking. It integrates very well with the other garmin devices that I have - so that's a consideration.
 

vickster

Legendary Member
Presumably you have an iPhone compatible with the watch and don’t intend to ever move to Android?
 

tom73

Guru
Location
Yorkshire
Apple watch all day long simple, easy to use and sync and proved to be as accurate as you can get. Use it daily for tacking and at the gym without issue. Don't go swimming but my mate go's and has no problems. Auto workout is useful too if you forgetting to start it saved me a few times.
 

dodgy

Guest
Don't forget, the Apple Watch 5 is probably out in September.
I have recently bought an Apple Watch 4, on a bit of an impulse if I'm being honest. But I've been really surprised by the data/metrics it can record, sleep tracking is the big surprise, I'm starting to get a detailed insight to my habits now and I'm trying to improve.

The Garmins were recently very highly discounted, probably better value overall there.
 

tom73

Guru
Location
Yorkshire
@dodgy is right you really can drill into the numbers. Not forgetting watch OS 6 is due soon adding even more features.
Even with possible new watch coming the 4 and even the 3 are still cracking bits of kit.
 

nickAKA

Über Member
Location
Manchester
I discounted the apple on battery life tbh. Seems to be a similar drain to the Garmins when in full GPS mode but day-to-day it eats power. Not an issue if you only wear it whilst exercising of course...
 

Mo1959

Legendary Member
I discounted the apple on battery life tbh. Seems to be a similar drain to the Garmins when in full GPS mode but day-to-day it eats power. Not an issue if you only wear it whilst exercising of course...
This is what put me off them too. Very poor battery life. I have the Garmin Forerunner 935 which can be used for multi sports including swimming plus does the sleep and continual heart rate monitoring. I wear it 24/7 and, even using gps for two or three runs it lasts about a week.
 
Location
South East
I find AW4 battery life good enough for a day, and charge at breakfast time. It takes half an hour. I use the activities frequently. You’ll need an iPhone too.
 

dodgy

Guest
I get three full days out of my Apple watch 4, that's with everything on and recording usually one bike ride and wearing 24x7
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 
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