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Tracker Watches - which would I buy?
Which one would I buy? Fitness Trackers are not created equal. They vary in what they can do and how accurate they are. This is reflected in the price. My first fitness tracker was the Fitbit Surge. The actual tracker was great but problems with the bracelet and charging put me off buying another Fitbit. I am, however, now coming around to considering buying a Fitbit again. The Fitbit Surge was replaced in the Fitbit range by the Fitbit Ionic so other people possibly had the same problems that I had. As a replacement I bought a very cheap tracker that did not include GPS. The heart rate can sometimes be a bit erratic so I am not sure how accurate it is measuring distance. So what will I be looking for in my next tracker watch?
Most fitness trackers these days will monitor your heart rate and, if you wear it in bed, will monitor your sleep pattern. What I am looking for, as a runner, is distance covered, time taken, and pace. There are basically 3 methods that fitness trackers use to measure distance.
The cheapest trackers do not use GPS at all (GPS is explained further down the page). It will merely ask you how long your stride is. The tracker will then multiply the stride length by the number of strides to give the total distance covered. This is ok if you happy with just an indication of whether you are improving or not but it is not very accurate. Imagine that you believed that your stride length was 1 metre but it was actually 1.1 metres, then for every 11 km run it would tell you that you had only run 10 km. Also your actual stride length will vary depending on whether you are running up or down hill and whether you are at the start of the run or at the end of it. Accuracy is the reason that I have decided to buy a new tracker so I will not be buying another cheap one.
Mid price range trackers will still use stride length for running on a treadmill but for outdoor running it will use the GPS in your smartphone. Obviously it is of no use if you do not have a smartphone but even if you do then the accuracy depends on the phone. GPS, or Global Positioning System, uses a series of satellites around the world to give an exact location and an exact height above sea level. So if you are running from A to B it will know that you have run over a hill and how high the hill is giving the actual distance run not just the distance between the two points as if it were flat. As I said before, the accuracy of the mid price range trackers is determined by the accuracy of the phone. Some phones that say that they have GPS do not use satellites to fix the phone's location, they use telephone masts. This is not as accurate, particularly in rural areas.
Top of the range trackers, and therefore top price trackers, have GPS built into them. They still have the limitations on a treadmill but they are very accurate outdoors. Treadmills will give an accurate distance measure and so should be used. Top of the range trackers are often referred to as a smart watches.
To Summarise, the cheapest trackers are just general fitness trackers. They are good at what they do but I believe that runners will want something more. If you want to run to loose weight, just to get fitter, or just give running a try without too much expenditure then a cheap tracker may be for you. If you want to take things to the next level and be fit enough to run a 10k, half or full marathon then look at a mid price range trackers or, if your budget can stretch that far, a top of the range tracker.
Which brands should I be looking at?
If you are going for a basic tracker then brand is not really important, in fact it will probably be a brand that you have not previously heard of. If the basic tracker is what you want then I would recommend the tracker that I currently have - the ID115Plus HR Smart Bracelet. In the USA it is known as Pro-Fit Active VeryFitPro Fitness Tracker IP67. The US version has a better sounding name but it is the same tracker. There are other low prices trackers which are probably just as good.
If you are looking for a mid-range or top of the range tracker then I would go for a brand with a track record for trackers (if you will pardon the pun). For mid-range, I would restrict my search to Fitbit, Garmin, or Polar. Samsung have branched out into tracker watches, and are probably good, but I don't believe they have enough experience of trackers yet. For Top of the range trackers, Polar would have to drop out of my reckoning. They were ground-breaking when they developed the chest strap to monitor heart rate but I don't believe that they have developed their top of the range models enough. This leaves Fitbit and Garmin.
Why am I considering Fitbit after my previous bad experience and the recent battery problems with Ionic? Well partly because I know other runners who won't buy anything but Fitbit. I now accept that the problems that I had were only on the model that I was unfortunate enough to buy. Also Fitbit is now a Google company. Google acted quickly and gave a full refund when the Ionic battery problems emerged even though the Ionic was produced before Google bought the company.
Which model would I go for?
For a Fitbit, I would go for the Versa 3 or Sense but for some unknown reason, just a feeling, I am favouring Garmin.
My preferred tracker is therefore the Forerunner 45S. As of 27 February 2022, the Forerunner 45S was £142.99($154.99).
I think that this is a nice looking smart watch. It does the usual - time, distance, pace, intervals, and heart rate. You can receive notification of phone calls, and texts from your smartphone and even control the music on it. If you fall it can send your exact location to emergency contacts. The battery should last 13 hours running time. That should be plenty for even the slowest runners.
But currently, 27 February 2022, the Garmin Venu has been reduced from £329.99 to £225 ($349.99 to $199).
The Venu has a bright AMOLED display and up to five-day battery life in smartwatch mode; up to six hours in GPS and music mode. With more than 20 preloaded GPS and indoor sports apps, it has all-day health monitoring features keeping track of your respiration, stress, sleep, and estimated heart rate.
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