On Garmin and Coros

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It’s easy to fall into the trap of looking at expensive Garmin watches and thinking that maps are a premium feature, when, in fact they are not. Suunto and Coros offer them on affordable devices, should you require that feature for trail running, hiking, and more.

If you want to use the Coros Nomad for navigation while cycling then it’s bad. I tested it when cycling from Morges to Cossonay a few weeks ago. The problem is that it tells you “straight ahead” or turn left, but not in a cycling/driving context, so it’s unreliable for that.

For running the Garmin Forerunner 570 map is just a line so you see that there is a bend soon, and then you see if you turned in the right place, but without sufficient context. A right navigation is confirmed by you still being on the line, rather than via context.

Having said this, hiking towards Leukerbad, using the Forerunner 570 worked well. I was able to intuit the right direction from the GPS, even in deep valleys on steep slopes heading towards Leukerbad. I would trust it, if I was walking solo, rather than a hike organised by someone else.

If you’re running with a group, either Décathlon or other, if they provide the planned course ahead of time, we can download and follow the route on the Nomad with great ease. It shows you the streets, the buildings, roundabouts and more, so you know ahead of time where to turn. The nomad is larger than the Pace 3. The pace 3 is suited to everyday wear and the Nomad is better when you’re hiking and trail running, if you know the course ahead of time.

Sleeping, HRV and Battery

My reason for switching from the Instinct to the Instinct 2, was to get more data, and because I noticed that the battery was lasting a shorter amount of time. My reason for switching from the Instinct 2 to the Forerunner 570 was because I wanted better features, and to see if it tracked sleep better.

After several months of using the Forerunner 570, and Garmin in general I came to the conlusion that it is deeply pessimistic, from a few points of view. The first is that it’s bad at tracking sleep if you wake during the night, either for relief, or because of summer heat, or other reasons.

More than once during the Canicule (heat wave) the watch has said that I had an awful night of sleep, that my HRV is low and that my training readiness is low. In other words it was telling me to hibernate.

The problem with Garmin is that it wants sleep to be excellent for the battery status to be great, and it wants HRV to be within a certain range. If any of these are out of range, then it gives a gloomy preparedness status.

Heat Acclimation

I noticed that getting heat acclimation to one hundred percent was very easy, but that it also dropped very fast if you don’t keep working out. I think the feature is interesting but dangerous. It’s interesting to have such a metric because it’s another goal to aim for. It’s dangerous because we shouldn’t be encouraged to acclimate to heat during a heatwave.

It should also look at sleeping environment, having said that. I’m sleeping in an environment at 30°c and yet heat acclimation doesn’t take into account that my sleeping environment is much warmer than the outside air, especially when there is a refreshing breeze.

Coros Minimalism

I like Coros, first because it’s affordable, but also because it’s less bloated. Garmin has added so many bells and whistles that you tend to look at the app all the time, to see how you slept, how your body battery is doing, and more. With Coros you do a workout. It tells you “It will take 43 hours to recover, and that’s when the countdown to recovery begins, without looking at HRV and sleep.

We have seen that Coros, Garmin, Apple and more are designed for young people who sleep from 2200-0600 or so, in a single burst. As soon as you’re a bit older sleep is more broken up so Apple, Garmin, Suunto and Coros say “You slept like crap” but we just slept in two or three bursts, rather than one. With Garmin you’re penalised for poor sleep. With Coros sleep is not fitness, so you might not “sleep” well, but recovery is still recovery.

### Less Demanding

One of the nice things about Coros is that it is less demanding, and less distracting. It presents you with run or ride data, current fatigue and other info, without encouraging you to check the app all the time. It’s designed for you to do the workout, look at the data, and move on with your day. It is also far more forgiving of you not wearing the watch all day, every day, for years. You could wear it for sleep for HRV status, and workouts, and forget about it for the rest of the time.

Summary

Whilst Garmin is meant to be more advanced, and provide far more data, by being too detail oriented about what it wants almost always gives negative feedback about sleep, HRV, and more. In the end it becomes too negative to be usable. In contrast, Coros tracks an activity, gives some info, and then leaves you alone.

In the age of never-ending feedback it is nice to be left alone to enjoy running, cycling and more. The only niggle I noticed is that the heart rate, recently was 20bpm higher on Coros than on Garmin. In theory an HR band, or strap, solves this issue.