Is the Apple watch any good for running?

KyleS1

I’ve got a Garmin Vivoactive HR 2 at the moment that I primarily bought for swimming. I use it more for running now and it also works well. However I really fancy an Apple watch. Are they good for running and general sport? Are they as good as the Garmin for sports?

p9ul

I'm curious to know what the current battery life of an apple watch is (running with gps tracking)

Inked

I run with mine a fair bit, generally 5k or 10k on a given day ( or running as often now it’s cold and wet though) and find it great.

Love being able to have Apple music via my AirPods without bringing my phone, seems to track well and the battery life is fine (I have all sensors running all the time, but you can turn off the heart monitor to conserve battery when running if you prefer to)

No idea whether it’s better or worse than the Garmin as I’ve never used one

mr:w

Not really imo. They're a lifestyle watch that share some features of a dedicated sports watch. That's not to say they're not good, but they're not a dedicated sports watch.

Garmins are designed specifically for sports. They'll last a week (weeks in some cases) on a single charge, even if used daily for a couple of hours with loads of devices connected, they'll connect via ANT  to anything - heart rate monitors, foot pods, bike power meters and more. They feed masses of data into Garmin Connect which gives you useful meaningful insights in to your performance - aerobic & anaerobic training effect, training load, training status, VO2 stats, recovery details and loads more. Sounds geeky and initially you'll think it's way beyond your needs, but you'll soon start to really benefit from having visibility of it.

I'm a little biased, having used Garmins for about 6 years now (910XT, 920XT and currently an FR935). My wife said she wanted something to encourage her with her fitness and said she'd like an apple watch. Bought her one, within a month she'd swapped it for a Garmin Fenix 5S which she loves, mainly because of the poor charge life of the apple watch and the stats she saw I was getting out of garmin connect.

New Garmins can download from spotify for music on the move, and have Garmin Pay with NFC, so they match the apple watch on those features, as well as acting as a smart watch (notifications for emails, texts, calls etc).

Marvt74

I use an Apple Watch 3 for running and much prefer it to a Garmin Vivoactive 3, although the Garmin was at release and a lot of features were lacking.

Battery life is far better than expected and i charge it every 3 days or so. If i go for a run, then playing music from the watch to BT headphones and GPS tracking tends to lose around 7% per hour. I did the Manchester marathon at a fairly slow time of 4:55 and when i got home it was at 68% remaining and started the day at 92%. It tracked at 26.4miles so was fairly accurate around the course.

KyleS1

Awesome, good to know.

Rog69

Purely from a fitness tracker perspective, is there much difference between the different generations of Apple watch?

danwel

Depends what you want from the watch. I won a Tag Connected and the only thing i use my apple watch series 2 for is running. All i want is for it to track my runs which i do using Strava and listen to music again which it does and i can leave my phone at home and connect my headphones directly to the watch.

KyleS1

That's the one thing that is attracting me to the apple watch, and that is leaving the phone at home (the XR is a tight fit in my running shorts zip pocket) and listening to podcasts through the watch.

mr:w

Just playing devil's advocate, Garmin offer several models which play music - Vivoactive3, 245, 645, 945, Fenix 5 etc. The higher levels - 645, 945 & Fenix 5 - also have Garmin Pay / NFC.

If you're into Strava, simply pair your Garmin Connect account with your Strava account and your activities automatically transfer from Garmin to Strava. You'll get way better stats from Garmin Connect though