Of Apple, Casio, Garmin and Suunto Wearing

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There was a time, for decades, if not centuries, when a watch provided us with the time. We would wear it in a pocket, attached to a chain, we would stare up at a clock tower and we would see the time. We might even hear church bells to indicate every quarter, half and full hour. In the last decade we have gone from wearing watches to tell time, to watches that quantify us.

They quantify our heart rate, our step count, our position in the world, our altitude, the barometric pressure, our speed, our climb rate, our depth underwater, our tissue compartment saturating and safety stop requirements and more.

Wrist Default

By default we place watches on our wrists because that is where watches have traditionally gone, and when I say watches I mean one at a time. I don’t mean that we would wear four at once. Normal people wear one watch, if they wear a watch in the first place.

A Collection of Wrist Worn Watches

In the age of the quantified self, via wrist watch, so each brand, whether Suunto, Garmin, Apple, Casio, Xiaomi and others collect and feed their own DB. As a result, if you buy a watch from a new brand than you usually wear, you feed a new database. If you don’t want a gap in your history you need to wear the new watch, and the old one, to feed both databases.

In light of this, it makes sense to move where watches are worn. Some manufacturers have moved data acquisition to our fingers. In other cases people wear a heart rate belt. This is especially useful in winter when sleeves make watches hard to access. If we wear a watch over our jacket sleeve it is easy to access.

Tracking Activities From the App

Xiaomi made the interesting decision, unique to them, in so far as I have seen, to allow you to start tracking an activity from the mobile phone app, rather than from the device. This allows you to wear the tracker on your ankle hidden under a sock, for example, rather than on your wrist.

In so doing you can quantify your walks, bike rides, and more, without having a fitness tracker on your wrist. It gives you the opportunity to wear a "normal" watch instead.

When watches got 24/7 HR tracking, and step counting and more, I was excited to play with the new features but now, years later, I find that smart watches tracking our sleep, heart rate, step count, stress and more is more of a distraction than a useful feature.

Cyclists and Duplicated Workouts

I have observed that cyclists often have duplicate cycling workouts. This is because they have their ‘head unit’ tracking a workout, as well as their sports watch. Both are automatically uploaded to Garmin and Strava so one workout is often deleted to favour the other. At least in this regard, I am normal.

The Clingy Lovers

Garmin and Apple both require you to wear a device 24/7 for two to four weeks with new devices, to give you certain types of data, and this is invasive. We shouldn’t have to wear a device for 8 or more hours a day to get standing stats, and when we sleep for sleeping stats.

We shouldn’t have to wear four devices to feed four databases because none of them are friends with each other. Ironically Xiaomi and Suunto are the best behaved, because xiaomi feeds the Suunto app with ease. Garmin, Suunto and Apple do not play well with each other. Each one is siloed. With Garmin you need to wear an Apple watch at the same time, for Apple to recognise the workout. If you do a workout with Garmin, then Apple ignores it.

For the Self

Garmin, Suunto, Sportstracker, Apple and Garmin are private, so the data is only seen by us, the users, so whether we feed one database or the other reflects our mental and emotional state, rather than social standing. Since no one, or almost can see the raw data across the platforms above it doesn’t matter what we wear because Strava and Komoot are the public facing platforms

For Others – Strava and Komoot

In an ideal world Sports Tracker would be the pinnacle sharing sports app but in this day and age Strava is. Komoot was a contender for a while but people favour Strava, for now, so it makes sense to focus on Strava.

Suunto, Garmin, Xiaomi, Apple and more all feed to Strava natively. If you’re happy with Strava being dominant, then a single device is fine.

And Finally

For 30-50 CHF the Xiaomi Smart bands are excellent. They can feed Strava and Suunto with ease, and the app provides us with interesting data as well. I would be happy to dump Apple because I think it’s expensive for what it is, and the battery doesn’t last long enough. Suunto is good, if you have the budget to buy their watches, and if you don’t then Xiaomi is a good choice.

If I was to limit myself to wearing one watch it would be the Garmin Instinct 2 because it’s the most capable watch I have, within an affordable price range. Interestingly I noticed that watches seem to better at tracking sleep, when they’re worn on an ankle at night.

My Apple Watch SE 2nd gen recently had a battery change, and I changed one or two settings so it lasts for entire bike rides, which is positive.

And finally I allow myself to wear a fitness watch and a smart watch simultaneously because I feel that this can be justified. They serve different niches. My passion/interest in this subject is as a result of years of using these devices every single day to track walks, climbs, via ferrata, runs, swims, bike rides, snowshoeing, skateboarding, rollerblading and more. Ironically I don’t remember tracking snowboarding.