When Garmin announced the Edge 1060, they noted the the majority of features would come to existing Edge x50 series devices (Edge 550/850/1050), as well as a handful of features going to older x40 series devices (Edge 540/840/1040/1040 Solar). Heck, even the Edge MTB gets new tricks too.

The good news is that we don’t have to wait long, at least for some of the new features. Garmin has already started rolling out a portion of the new features in public beta, and I’ve got an outline for all the remaining features and which devices are getting what.

Which Features Go To Which Units:

Now, in my Edge 1060 post I explain all the new features in a bit more detail, but in short, these are the key software features that can be ported back (voice features like voice control and voice messaging require a microphone, which simply isn’t in older Garmin Edge hardware). Here’s what we’re looking at:

Strava Live Segment Updates: This essentially has three components to it. The first is allowing for collapsible portions within the Strava Live Segment page (e.g., resizing the different chunks, or getting rid of certain ones). Next, you can now see competitor icons on the map & elevation profiles (e.g. KOM position). And finally – the biggie, you can now do Strava Live Segments on *any* route (previously it was just Strava Routes). [Coming to Edge x50 & Edge MTB in Q1 2027]

Structured Workout Page Updates: Seen above, this allows for collapsible portions of the workout page, just like with the Strava Live Segment page above. [Coming to Edge x50 & Edge MTB in Q1 2027]

Alternate Data Fields: This allows you to specify alternate/secondary data fields for any sensor data field, if that sensor isn’t available. For example, you have power data fields in your data pages, but then ride a bike without power, this will let you swap out that data field for anything else you want (e.g. calories). Same goes for navigation-related data fields (like distance to end of course) if not riding a course. [Now available to Edge x50 & Edge MTB in Q4 public beta]

GroupRide Advertising Capability: This will automatically prompt you to create a GroupRide if it detects other Garmin Edge devices near you at the start of a ride. Think of it like AirDrop contact sharing for the Peloton, except to start a group session. This feature is optionally enabled, but makes it silly-easy to start this, versus the messier past. [Now available to Edge x40, Edge x50 & Edge MTB in Q4 public beta]

Hazards & Road Closures: This is an extension to the community reporting page for hazards (such as potholes and such) that now allows for reporting and seeing road closures. [Coming to Edge x40, Edge x50 & Edge MTB in Q1 2027]

Garmin Messenger Support: This will add support for the Edge unit to see messages coming in from Garmin Messenger, including even playing those messages back on devices with a proper speaker (Edge 850/1050). You can also send text messages from all units (including quick replies). Finally, it also allows it to participate in Garmin Locate, which is vaguely like a FindMy feature. [Now available to Edge x50 & Edge MTB in Q4 public beta]

Garmin Link: If you have a Garmin wearable, this will make the heart rate broadcasting feature a bit more seamless – automatically starting that broadcast on your wearable (if enabled), rather than having to futz around and end up with either dual recordings or manually remembering each time. My wife will very much appreciate this (assuming she remembers to charge her watch). This is actually not yet on the Edge 1060. [Coming to Edge 1060, Edge x50 & Edge MTB in Q1 2027]

There are also two features coming via Garmin Connect Edge x40/x50/1060/Edge Explore 3 users that aren’t dependent on firmware on the unit itself. These roll out Tuesday, November 3rd to all users. They are:

Android Google Maps Support: For Android users, you can now send a pin/shared location from Google Maps straight to your Edge (via Garmin Connect app). iPhone users have been able to do this for a long while with Apple Maps instead.

Garmin Coaching Challenger Plans: Historically Garmin coach cycling plans have required a power meter, these ones do not. They are going to all users Edge x40/x50/MTB/etc users.

When it comes to a few features not going back to existing units, it’s essentially one bucket of map-specific features. I’ve broken them down as follows (I’ve covered both of these in my Edge 1060 post, and also show them in the video above towards the back half of the video):

Course hazard and closures preview page: When you load up a course on the unit, this shows expected hazards and road closures on the course page, like below.

Route Options (for routing): When creating a route on the unit (either point to point, or round-trip), this will add a small elevation profile at the top, as well as calculate the estimated time, and show total ascent and distance (all in tiny consolidated screen).

Up Ahead POI: This shows nearby/upcoming points of interest (POI) on your planned route as you ride, within the two categories you specify (e.g. cafe, or toilets, or a bunch of others). Further, there’s also a general page to see nearby/nearest POI even without a route loaded.

FreeFlow Routing: This offers routes that have less stop & go bits (e.g. less lights or other traffic-induced slowness).

QWERTY Keyboard & Predictive Text: This adds a new Qwerty keyboard option, as well as type-ahead predictive text when doing things like typing an address into the unit.

Ride Readiness Checklist Page: This is a bit of a redesigned UI element that shows a checklist of things to ensure are how you want them, like sensor status and more.

Carbon Savings: This will show your carbon savings from a bike commute/ride. It is not a calculator to determine how much of your savings you need for that new carbon bike.

Got all that? Good.

Going Forward:

Both the Edge 1060 launch and the Garmin Fenix 9 launch represent a clear turning point for Garmin in how they deal with older unit software updates. Prior to these launches, Garmin generally speaking left behind the prior generation units. In the case of the Edge 1050 two years go, Garmin did do a better job at bringing features of the x40 series for quite some time (because they felt as though the Edge 1040 Solar was still cohesive part of their longer-battery life offerings).

In the case of both the Fenix 9 and the Edge 1060, the rough line in the sand here appears to be tied to mapping and navigation related features. In the case of the Fenix 9 the was because Garmin said new processor and increased RAM were needed for the new mapping engine. They didn’t say that was the case here, but appeared to sorta meet halfway on things for x50 users. For x40 users, there’s a few quality of life enhancements. For competitive context, Wahoo has essentially ditched all non-V3 bike computers for new features since launching those. COROS just launched the Dura 2 last week, and the future of the Dura 1 software updates seems somewhat mixed (my gut says it’ll be similar to what Garmin is doing here).

Either way, this is good to see this shift in thinking – and hope it continues to other product groups.

Thanks for reading!

Roughly six months after acquiring Rouvy, Zwift is starting to do things with it. Or at least, starting to emulate it. In this case, Zwift is rolling out a two-component premium tier called Zwift Plus, which includes both an adaptive coaching feature and a new video routes function. Those video routes are like Rouvy, but…umm…not Rouvy.

Instead, they’re completely newly shot routes in ‘iconic cycling locations’, yet with the social aspect of Zwift riding built atop it. Zwift says all of this began before they acquired Rouvy, hence everything not being Rouvy at all. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

In terms of pricing, the new Zwift Plus is $29.99/€29.99/£26.99 per month (instead of the existing $19/month), and there are annual plans that are $299 (instead of $199/year). Existing Zwift stays, and as we saw this past Monday, continues to get big expansions. This is purely focused on the new Zwift Coach and Zwift Video Routes pieces.

In any case, I’ve been riding it the past few weeks, so let’s dive into things.

Zwift Video Routes:

Firstly, no, this is not Rouvy merged into Zwift. It’s so much not Rouvy that Zwift literally went out and filmed every one of these routes by themselves, with their own team and their own equipment. One could (and probably should) have a solid debate about the logic in doing that, but nonetheless, they are indeed different videos…even if the places/locations near 100% overlap.

Zwift says their intent is to keep the company/videos/etc. separate. Rouvy keeps being Rouvy, and Zwift keeps being Zwift. By having a more curated selection, Zwift says it “maintains the social density Zwift is known for”. Further, all the routes are lap-able, though at launch there’s no support for meet-ups or organized events. However, it sounds like both are “fast-follows”, meaning they’re expected to launch quickly.

What Zwift is aiming for here is a more curated selection of routes, meeting a certain quality bar (both in terms of resolution, but also avoiding various road furniture, etc.), and then a continual drumbeat of new route drops every month (ideally looking at 5-10 routes per month). Further, the routes here tend to be a bit shorter (all but one can be completed in an hour), though all also support looping back to the start for continual riding. And of course, all of them will ‘feel’ like being in Zwift, as Zwift overlays various things onto the roads/etc. (which Zwift says they started working on before they acquired Rouvy).

In any case, to select a Zwift Video Route, you’ll choose ‘Routes’ at the top, and then use the gigantic Toggle to switch to video routes.

Once toggled, here’s what you see:

There are a few more routes if you scroll down; here’s what else there is – 21 routes in total today, covering 385km of roads:

As you can see above, there’s a good variety in this starter pack, covering Europe, the US, and South Africa. They say they wanted to aim for “cycling icons” in terms of routes, and I’d generally agree with that. These routes are the definition of that.

If I hover over a route, I’ll see the elevation profile:

And then if I click it, I’ll see basically the same thing but with a short one-sentence description. I do feel like these descriptions could use a bit more love.

Nonetheless, once you’ve decided on where to route, you’ll simply tap ‘Start Ride’, and you’ll be brought to the starting area (just ahead of the start banners). For some routes, they have more of a start corral, and others don’t.

At this point, you’ll just pedal like normal. You’ll notice that there’s plenty of augmented reality bits, just like in Rouvy. For example, arches/banners for Sprint/KOM finishes, bits on the road, and even occasional Zwift vans.

You’ll even see rider shadows on the boards too (just like you do in Rouvy):

Here you can see the green painting on the road surface, plus the boards, plus the Zwift van:

They’ve done a seemingly creative job at occasionally using these augmented reality bits to hide or conceal things like construction, some sketchy car situations, and more. It’s super well done. That orange van you see ahead is actually an augmented reality Zwift van. And only at the very last second did I realize it wasn’t real traffic.

Likewise, I didn’t even notice that this van here waiting to cross this bridge was an augmented reality Zwift van, until I was capturing these screenshots from my recorded rides:

Now, there are different quality levels you can choose for the video streaming portion. Which is *different* than the resolution of the Zwift app on your display. In other words, you could choose 1080p video routes, but then have a 4K resolution from Zwift (which would be things like the metrics displayed/etc). I found 1080p on a MacBook totally fine in terms of resolution, but if I were on a bigger screen, I’d choose the higher resolution video streams:

It’ll do some initial buffering at the beginning, but as I found out on one ride where I tried to do 4K streaming, the hopscotch internet connection I had to where my bikes are in a shed-like place didn’t quite work out. If you go beyond the buffer, you get orange roads:

The Zwift game and other people and all the rest still work; you just lose the route video until it catches up. Meaning the whole thing doesn’t stop from a riding perspective. You can keep on riding just fine.

In terms of riding with other people, most of that works as expected. There are some minor quirks. For example, steering around others seems a bit wonky at times. Or rather, just the automatic steering around others doesn’t seem as fluid/normal as I’m used to in Zwift. Sometimes there are hard and random swerves. However, they do a really good job of effectively ‘fencing’ portions of the road when there’s oncoming traffic, so you can’t have your avatar get hit by a car. Both Shane and I seemed to have the same idea here, trying to steer into this car, but you couldn’t. The ‘viable steering area’ was reduced as the car neared (as I was on the left edge of the road until shortly beforehand).

Likewise, when riders go far ahead of you, their avatar properly gets smaller and slowly fades away at normal human vision distances. All of this feels spot-on.

However, one thing that isn’t super ideal is that you’re always plowing through someone’s ass.

The fade effect is perfectly fine, but rather, it’s the issue that they filmed this to be roughly the same level as you would have your head on a bicycle (which makes sense). But that means when you add all these extra riders, you end up just looking at a lot of people’s butts all the time. An effect that’s gonna be even bigger when you have bigger packs. Whereas in normal Zwift, the camera angle is higher, so you’re not in butt-cam mode.

Meanwhile, you can do HUD-free mode (where you get rid of all the metrics), though not in ERG/structured workout mode. But for regular riding you can:

Now, when you reach the end of the route, it’ll simply ‘loop’ back to the start. You’ll basically teleport back for just continual riding over and over again. It would be cool to be able to ‘stack’ routes together, akin to what Peloton does for workouts (where you basically add things to a queue, and it just iterates through them without forcing you back to a menu). Here you can see me being looped back to the beginning of the route (note the time at 50-minutes, but starting me back at the beginning of the route):

Meanwhile, shifting topics entirely, you’ve got structured workouts. These worked exactly as you’d expect in regular Zwift, but now with Video Routes with your structured workouts overlaid. I did a few structured workouts this way without any issue.

This is where you start to get into some of the obvious differences to Rouvy, in that Rouvy has a gazillion courses, but also caters to specific race routes – such as Ironman routes and more. So this is where there’s still a solid gap there in that Zwift is targeting cycling icons, whereas Rouvy is targeting basically everything, including race/event routes. So if a coach wanted to create a structured workout (e.g. a race plan) on a specific race route, you’re lacking those routes in Zwift.

Here you can see just a tiny sliver of those categories in Rouvy:

And again, looking at the quality of certain routes, those on Zwift just seem higher, if I compare them side-by-side. Whether it be the weather conditions (e.g., sunny on Zwift vs. sometimes grey/overcast on Rouvy). A good example is Sa Calobra, which both platforms have. Zwift is a blue-bird sunny day, while Rouvy has two variants, one solidly overcast and one with some clouds. But even then, the video quality on Zwift is clearly higher – both in resolution and in general clarity. To be super clear: Rouvy isn’t bad here by any means, but Zwift feels sharp.

It does feel like Zwift is likely doing some color grading, which makes them all pop a bit more. More on that down below, though, in the Zwift Video Routes shooting behind-the-scenes section.

Which again, I’m definitely not crapping on Rouvy’s routes. Rouvy has a *far* bigger library of routes here. It’s not even remotely close. And in order to have such a massive library, you often need to make trade-offs. You can’t sit around an extra few days to wait for perfect weather conditions. Whereas Zwift has said they’ll re-film multiple times, and then pick the best one. They’re choosing a slightly premium quality experience, which you may or may not care about.

Either way, on the whole I’d say that Zwift’s implementation here is super well done, and makes it feel very Zwift-like, despite being outdoor videos.

Zwift Coach:

Next up there are the new Zwift Coach pieces. It’d probably be easy to say this is just another customized AI coaching platform, and to a certain extent that’d be true. Perhaps I’ve become jaded with the never-ending attempts at AI coaching that almost always suck. However, this actually isn’t leveraging AI for the coaching specifically, which probably makes it more interesting to me.

Instead, it’s leveraging work from one of the creators behind BestBikeSplit, to assign also-human made workouts to athletes using existing models they have on choosing the right workout intensity and duration based on a given athlete’s historical data. Where AI comes into it is simply for assigning which Zwift ‘thing’ to do (e.g., which Zwift route, Video Route, structured workout, Pacer Group, etc.) to fulfill that training load/intensity/duration requirement. It uses AI to look at components like whether or not you’ve done that route before, if you tend to do more routes than structured workouts, and so on.

But first, to get started, you’ll fill out a bit of an onboarding questionnaire with your goals. You can have different targets, including specific races on specific days at specific lengths. All of this is relatively straightforward, to be honest:

From there, you’ll see in your companion app (and on the Zwift main app) your upcoming schedule. This schedule is dynamic and responsive to other things you do off-plan. For example, yesterday I ignored the schedule and did about an hour of riding with DesFit & GPLama. Some of that was chill, and some of that was…unchill. As a result, when I opened things up today, it offered to adapt my schedule a bit. Specifically, it cut out some of my weekend riding to allow for more recovery before an interval run on Saturday:

One quirky thing here though, is that while I have TrainerRoad connected to my account (which then pushes a workout of the day each day based on my training load), that can’t be temporarily disabled when I have a Zwift plan. Though at the same time, Zwift says those planned workouts are ignored by Zwift Coach, unless I actually do one. Then they get accounted for.

As you can see above, when it comes to things that Zwift will prescribe, it’s actually not just structured workouts. It can be anything. You can see it’s telling me to just go ride for an hour today on the California Roll route. Other days it’s a structured workout. But it can also give me a Pacer Group to go follow, or a Video Route. Eventually it sounds like outdoor ride options are in the cards too, but not today.

You’ll see the planned workout shown in Zwift when you open it up, with the little robot head next to it:

In terms of doing the workouts, it’s just like doing any other structured workout (if you were assigned a structured workout). There’s no difference there once you start that workout (you can select what route to do, or a video route in my case). Here’s a workout it had me do:

Then, after the workout, it’ll give some brief comments in the Zwift Companion app to check out:

As you might expect, it’s a bit hard for me to judge any workout/training plan system without spending months with it. And given I’ve only spent a week or so with it, it’d be far too early. Plus, I find testing training plans tends to work best when you actually give it a specific race goal, and then let life get in the way. Thus far though, as I’ve ignored it roughly half the time, it’s zigged and zagged appropriately to try and keep the ship on course. That’s a good start.

Zwift Video Routes Tech Tidbits:

As always, I’m curious about some of the tech behind the tech. This isn’t a super long section, but there are some things I thought were interesting when it came to how they filmed the Zwift Video Routes.

First up, as noted above, they have a team that travels around and shoots these. They aren’t using some fancy car, these all just look like random rental cars. Instead, they have a suction cup-mounted system they travel with that just pops onto the car:

That system looks like they’re using:

– Two GoPro Hero 13 Black cameras
– Neewer CA013 suction cup mounts (three of them)
– Custom rig/cross-bar for mounting the camera
– Two V-mount battery packs
– A few 3D-printed camera mounting brackets
– Extra straps for stability/safety (seen below going horizontal, or above going vertical)

Each of those suction cups supports 110LBS/50KG of weight. Here you can see the rig out on the road, with all the straps, and a slightly different battery placement (my guess is this has evolved over time):

And again here:

Meanwhile, inside the car they’ve got a few things going on. You’ll see two tablets (upper) at left with feeds from each of the cameras. They’re shooting at 4K/120fPS in the ‘Wide’ profile. They’ve then got a Hammerhead Karoo 3 that’s recording the ride, from which they’d leverage the GPS track & barometric altimeter data later to create the route. And then you can see the course down below on the laptop with RideWithGPS pulled up.

All of this seems pretty logical to me. In the above photo, it looks like they were trying a variant with the cameras out wide for two different perspectives. All of the other BTS shots they sent had them close together. While there are reasons you’d use dual cameras for 3D-type video later, I can’t imagine that’s the case here. That’s been tried and failed countless times for all sorts of reasons (mainly sweat kills most headsets).

Instead, I suspect the reason is much simpler here: It costs a lot to reshoot things, whereas a GoPro costs $400 once, and you can ensure you’ve got a backup. Even if it’s because a bee landed on the camera lens:

Speaking of which, they often reshoot things. They said for Sa Calobra they reshot it 5 times. However, not to piece it together, but to find the single continuous take that had the least problematic things in it. Other takes could be ‘ruined’ by vehicles/drivers doing weird things, unexpected checkpoints…or just sheep and cows. Both of these are actual outtakes from Zwift Video attempts:

Zwift says all of them are continuous shots, noting:

“We don’t currently splice different sections of footage together – we want the highest quality continuous footage only as a bar for high quality for this product. So there does end up being lots of footage on the cutting room floor that cannot be used.”

In terms of the speed they were shot, Zwift says they had a bit of a model for gradient and then matched that to a certain speed. Meaning, they didn’t have a car driving at 20MPH/30KPH up at 10% grade. Instead, the car would slow down as much as viable for steeper hills, and then try to match cyclist speeds on other grades (such as going downhill).

The closer you can get the original footage to a real cyclist’s speeds, the better, as all other things seen in the video (passing cars, people, other real-world cyclists in the video), will feel ‘right’. Otherwise, they leverage the footage being shot at 120FPS in order to speed up/slow down the footage in real time as you ride it.

Anyway, I thought all the above was kinda interesting. I’ve seen lots of filming rigs over 15+ years of watching companies shoot various real-world style videos. Many have used motorcycles, since that tends to give other drivers a bit more flexibility. But conversely, using cars tends to force other vehicles ‘further’ away from the camera, which results in a safer-feeling video when you ride it on your computer. Some companies also shoot it on regular bicycles, which can work out, but is really hard to get right/perfect for long stretches. And many companies will splice video together from multiple attempts to deal with road randomness. So it’s kinda interesting that Zwift is aiming for the ‘one-shot-wonder’ approach here.

Going Forward:

In an era of ever-expanding subscription costs and AI-driven coaching things, I suppose it’s only time before Zwift was going to jump in on it. Though, I didn’t exactly expect Zwift to ‘combine Rouvy without actually combining Rouvy’. Nonetheless, here we are, where it’ll cost you an extra $10/month (or an extra $100/year). For folks who wanted occasional video access akin to Rouvy, but didn’t quite want to pay that much extra atop their Zwift subscription, this probably makes sense.

But first, looking at Zwift Coach, this is largely what I expected Zwift to eventually do. Though admittedly, I thought they’d do it a decade ago, either through partnerships with Xert or TrainerRoad. But what they’ve put forth here is roughly in line with what most other platforms offer in terms of adaptive cycling training plans. The key difference is giving you more than just a structured workout, but rather lots of options to get that training load in (regular rides, video routes, etc.). That’s unique in this space.

Meanwhile, looking at the Video Routes, it’s clear they spent some time ensuring that *all* of the routes met their given quality bar. This kinda reminds me of what FulGaz was aiming for back in the day. Certainly, there are many high-quality videos on Rouvy, but Rouvy’s goal was always more variety (thousands of routes) with sometimes varying quality. Here on Zwift Routes, it’s more curation over quantity. Still, one has to look at this and struggle to wonder how this all plays out for Rouvy in a few years. By Zwift’s own hopes, they want to have at least 100 routes within a year, still a fraction of Rouvy’s 6,000 routes. Nonetheless, the fact that Zwift didn’t use Rouvy people to film these routes says a lot (either organizationally/directionally, or just Zwift’s long-known penchant for spending money).

That said, as a consumer, setting aside branding, if Zwift ends up having all the same features and routes as Rouvy, do we actually care where it ends up? It’s an uncomfortable question to ask, but certainly one I’d imagine Zwift is pondering.

Anyway, in the meantime, if you want to spend an extra $10 for routes and coaching, go forth. While I don’t tend to be a video routes person most of the time, I will say the way Zwift has executed these makes them feel premium, and also feel like Zwift, and thus, makes the experience seem more akin to what I tend to gravitate to. But again, to each their own. I’m on the fence about whether I’ll upgrade my membership.

With that – thanks for reading!

The Fitbit Edge could most easily be called the Fitbit Charge 7, but sometimes switching things up is a good refresh for companies and brands, and so here we are. In many ways, the Fitbit Edge will feel very familiar to Fitbit Charge users, yet it’ll concurrently feel very much like a recent Google Pixel Watch. That’s both good and bad. There are a lot of good things coming from the Pixel Watch 5 & Fitbit Air that have landed here. Yet equally, having used it the past few weeks, there are a number of smaller things that aren’t quite what we had on the very popular Fitbit Charge series.

Speaking of which, both my wife and I have been using Fitbit Edge units over this last while on all of our workouts. Runs, rides, hikes, walks, gym stuff, and everything in between. With that, let’s dive into what’s new, and then all my daily and workout usage experiences.

What’s New:

The Fitbit Edge is the next version of the Fitbit Charge 6, which came out in 2023. Here’s how it’s different:

– Increased screen/display by 46% (has 1.34” display)
– Case thickness is 11.5mm
– Added physical side button that actually clicks (previous was just a touch area)
– Added altimeter (for stair tracking, as well as elevation tracking)
– Added automatic workout detection (now supports 100 sports)
– Increased supported manual workout profiles to 50 workout profiles
– Made user-replaceable/serviceable battery (the first Fitbit-branded product to do so)
– GPS accuracy improvement claimed at 40% more accurate (via new GPS chipset, and new aluminum case design)
– Switched to a more modern user interface, matching the Pixel Watch 5 series
– Added structured workout support
– Added support for dual usage with Pixel Watch and Fitbit Air (e.g., switching back and forth seamlessly)
– Added fast charging (5 minutes gets you 1 day of usage)
– Removed Google Pay (NFC Contactless payments)
– Removed EDA Scan feature (but does have continuous stress monitoring in the background)
– Changed the band attachment mechanism (old Fitbit habits die hard)
– Switched the charger to the same charger as the Fitbit Air (hey, at least they picked something else they already had this time)
– Added a bunch of band accessory types
– Price increased to $179 (officially the Charge 6 was $159 previously, but realistically it sat between $99 and $129 virtually all the time)
– Also a Stephen Curry model at $219 (US, Canada, EMEA)

In terms of some other general specs, just for recap purposes:

– Same claimed 7-day battery life
– Still has heart rate broadcasting feature via Bluetooth (though it can be a bit funky in terms of compatibility)
– Still has music control of your phone’s music (no onboard music storage)
– Still has Google Maps turn-by-turn directions (with phone)
– Still has smartphone notifications (more integration on Android than iOS)
– Still has full sleep tracking
– Still has continuous heart rate monitoring (background and workout)
– Still supports high & low heart rate alerts
– Supports the Google Health Guardian features announced a few months ago
– You can do quick replies on Android, though not on iOS devices
– Has FDA/EU approved medical ECG functionality, including background Afib detection
– Includes skin temperature sensor
– Supports Steps, Distance, Active Zone Minutes, VO2Max, Floor/elevation, Cardio Load, and many more metrics
– Two sizes of bands (see specs below)
– Water resistance level is 5ATM, and IP68 for dust protection

So that covers the piles of new stuff, and some of the bits that were there before. But there are still numerous color schemes/models to choose from.

Model Options & Detailed Specs:

The Fitbit Air case comes in 5 different colorways, and then with that, a huge slate of band options. Starting off with the core options you can buy, they are as follows:

– Matte Black Aluminum case / Obsidian Active Band
– Polished Silver Aluminum case / Fog Active Band
– Satin Pyrite Aluminum case / Olive Active Band
– Champagne Gold case / Canyon Active Band
– Satin Pyrite Aluminum case / Stephen Curry Special Edition

From there, you’ve got the following band types/options:

– Active Band
– Active Sport band
– Metal Link band
– Magnet band
– Performance Loop

Now, for most of our testing (my wife and I), we’ve been wearing the relatively basic/default Active band, which works perfectly fine and is easy to adjust/etc.

Still, we both wore other bands as well. Yesterday we had a fancy afternoon thing to go to, and swapped out to the Metal Link band. Hers was the champagne gold, and mine the brushed silver. Obviously neither quite perfectly matched with the models we had, but…well…that’s the models we had:

My only complaint here is that I found the clasp release button could actually get reasonably easily pressed. Ironically, it didn’t happen all day during most of the day, and then towards the end of the day, it was triggering constantly. My wife didn’t have this issue, so….yeah.

I’ve also worn the Active Sport band a bit, though I didn’t honestly find it all that meaningfully different than the Active band, in terms of sport wearability.

And finally, I have the Magnet Band, which is super cool and just snaps tight/shut.

Finally, looking at the tech specs, here’s a whole slate of things that may or may not be interesting to you:

– Display is 1.34”/34mm AMOLED display, supporting an always-on configuration
– Display supports adjustable brightness
– Bluetooth 5.4
– Processor: Ambiq AP5 MCU
– GPS chipset supports GPS+Galileo in US, and GPS+Galileo+GLONASS+BeiDou+QZSS outside of US
– Onboard memory: 64MB NOR flash memory, 7 days of detailed motion data (minute intervals), 30 days of daily totals, heart rate at 2-second intervals
– Internal sensors: Altimeter, Accelerometer, Gyroscope, Red and infrared sensors for oxygen saturation (SpO2), Multipurpose electrical sensors compatible with ECG app, Photoplethysmography (PPG) optical heart rate sensor, Ambient light sensor, Far-field skin temperature sensor
– Battery is 65mAh
– Fully end-user replaceable battery
– Charging speed: 5 minutes of fast charging for 1 day of battery life, or 100% in 90 minutes
– Requires iOS 16.4 or newer, and Android 11 or newer
– Fitbit Edge Weight: 17.7g without band
– Fitbit Edge Dimensions: 39.22 x 25.56 mm
– Fitbit Edge Height/Thickness: 11.58mm
– Case is made from 100% recycled aluminum
– Active band: Silicone with “soft-touch coating”
– Active Band Sizing: Small fits wrists 130-170mm around, Large fits 170-210mm around
– Stephen Curry band: “Recycled polyester yarns with water-repellent coating and stainless steel lugs, as well as a raised interior print for increased airflow.”
– Stephen Curry band sizing (US): Small fits wrists 135-170mm around, Large fits 170-210mm around
– Stephen Curry band sizing (EU/Canada): Single-size fits wrists 150-195mm around
– Water resistance: 5ATM/50 meters
– Dust immersion resistance: IP68

Phew, got all that? Good, let’s roll right into the basics of the unit day to day.

The Daily Usage Basics:

In this section, I’ll go through all the daily usage basics of the Fitbit Edge, like activity/step tracking, sleep tracking, and general health bits. Then after this I’ll cover workout pieces.

First up is interacting with the device. The Fitbit Edge gained a physical button on the right side, which quickly opens the apps menu, for things like accessing the alarms, ECG, exercise, media controls, and weather. Previously on the Fitbit Charge 6, this was a touch-sensitive area, but not a clicking button:

The button is great, and I’ve been super happy with it. Note that at present, long-pressing it doesn’t do anything.

Instead, for most other interactions, you’ll use the touchscreen, which allows you to swipe left/right/up/down, and tap it for what you need. Of course, the first thing you’ll see is your watch face:

You can customize these in the Google Health App, allowing you to save multiple watch faces to the Fitbit Edge for quick swapping between them. You can customize each of the complications (data bits) on the watch face, as well as the coloring. There’s roughly a dozen watch faces to choose from:

You can swipe down anytime to access the controls menu. This includes things like the flashlight, do-not-disturb mode, heart rate broadcasting, and more. I’ll cover some of these in more depth throughout the review.

Instead, if we swipe from the right, we’ll get the quick start menu for workouts, allowing us to access the most recent sport profiles:

Swipe again, and we’ve got a high-level overview of the Focus Metrics panel:

This one (above) is kinda odd, though, in that you have to tap into it again to get to a longer list of focus metrics:

However, the oddest part here is that you can’t tap any of these metrics to see more details on-device. For example, want to see what time it thinks you went to sleep or woke up? Can’t do that here. Have to go to the phone. Want to see why your Readiness Score is what it is? Can’t do that here. Have to go to the phone.

In discussions with Google/Fitbit, they seem to hint that changes are coming here in this area. I sure hope so, as this seems pretty half-finished at best.

In any case, as you keep swiping through these to the left/right, you’ll essentially see other data metrics for stuff I already showed in the Focus Metrics. For example, swipe again, and you’ll see the very small sleep tidbits. You can’t tap into this, though, for any additional details beyond what you see below:

Same goes for heart metrics:

And then there’s weather, showing current weather in your area, and then another page for quick access to the timers:

And finally, there’s another page for media controls. There is no music storage on the Fitbit Edge, which seems logical/fine to me. However, what’s less logical is the lack of NFC/payment support. This was in the Fitbit Charge 6 and has been in countless cheaper Fitbit devices over the years, yet it’s not here. Given Google doesn’t support the higher-end Pixel Watch series on iOS, this means there’s really no option for iOS users to use a Google device if they want contactless payments. And as both Google and Apple know well, very few people are going to change phone platforms merely to support a wearable. That ship sailed long, long ago.

Google did provide a bit of color as to why they cut the contactless payment support, saying:

“Fitbit Edge does not offer NFC for payments. It was not widely used by our Charge 6 users – in fact, less than 1% used the feature on Charge 6 – so we prioritized other top features such as adding a sleek design, altimeter and week long battery.” – Andy Abramson (Head of Product at Google Health)

And to be fair, I wouldn’t necessarily disagree with that line of thinking, though ultimately, I still think the lack of iOS option for higher-end Google wearables is really the core issue here.

In any case, since we can’t see many details on the screen itself beyond core metrics, a lot of that is shifted to your phone and the Google Health app (the Fitbit app is dead; long live the Fitbit app!). Here you can see your summary at the top for the day, in terms of steps, readiness scores, sleep, and cardio load for the week. This is all free. However, anytime you see lots of descriptive text, that’ll be part of Google’s Premium subscription. In other words, the data is free, but the wordy analysis requires a subscription.

Looking at my sleep metrics, for example from last night, those look accurate and have been consistently accurate over the last few weeks. The only one that caused many wearables to stumble was yesterday’s daylight saving time change, which seemed to truncate an hour of sleep. However, otherwise the times I woke up and went to sleep have been spot-on.

Note that I don’t compare accuracy of sleep stages/phases, as that’s simply not an accurate metric. In a best-case setting for so-called gold-standard devices, those basically top out in the mid-80% accuracy range, which is pretty poor for a gold-standard device to compare against. Thus, I’m not going to mislead you here.

Instead, I will get annoyed at one sleep-related thing that Google/Fitbit lacks on the Fitbit Edge, which is automatic sleep mode toggles. Specifically, while you can set up sleep schedules and do-not-disturb schedules, that actually won’t prevent the screen from illuminating all crazy-pants in the middle of the night (or, perhaps lack of pants in the middle of the night). Instead, anytime the sheets or you brush the screen, it’ll light up. Same goes for raise-to-wake. Which is both annoying and a long-solved problem on wearables.

Instead, you need to tap the bed icon each night to force it into sleep mode. That by itself isn’t actually as annoying to me as remembering again in the morning to un-tap that bed icon, so that things like raise-to-wake actually work. Again, like the other details piece, I get the impression there’s a fast-follow to enable this on the Fitbit Edge, but it does feel like the Google/Fitbit team is just a bit behind on getting this device fully baked.

In any case, beyond that, within the Google Health app you’ve also got the Health Status panel, which shows your trending metrics over the course of longer time periods:

There does appear to be a bug here in that my Blood Oxygen levels have been updating nightly, both on the Fitbit Edge since putting it on, as well as for months on other devices, but since wearing the Fitbit Edge, it’s stopped trending for me. This is a minor nit for me, though it does make my metrics ‘4 out of 5’, instead of ‘5 out of 5’.

When it comes to text notifications, note that you’ll see those come in on the device, though on iOS you’ll be unable to respond to them. But you can read them and clear them:

Finally, in terms of charging, you’ve got the same charger as the Fitbit Air, so kudos to the Google/Fitbit team for managing to keep the same charger for more than one product. I can only assume they had a grand celebration for finally unlocking that accomplishment, complete with Haribo gummy bears and rosé wine. Well deserved.

Indeed, you can fast-charge silly-quick to get you through the day/night. And in terms of battery life, if you leave it with the default gesture-based display, it seems to be on trend for the week-long battery life. However, I quickly changed it to always-on display, and that pulls things back real-quick to basically two days of battery life. Again, all dependent on how much GPS-outside workout time you have. With that, let’s talk sweaty stuff.

Sports & Workouts:

The Fitbit Edge takes virtually all of the best features from the recently launched screenless Fitbit Air (which is basically a Whoop competitor), and rolls them into the Fitbit Edge. This means that you’ve got equal parts manual activity/workout controls, as well as the ability to just totally ignore the unit on your wrist, and know that it’ll track things behind the scenes automatically. Both my wife and I have done both. Sometimes manually starting a workout, and other times just letting it figure it out.

Starting off with the manual side, to begin a workout you’ll tap either from the watch face (if the complication is enabled), or just swipe once from the right to the sport menu:

Here you can choose from your most recently used sports, or one of the ones in the list. On the manual workout profile side, here are the workout profiles that are supported on the Fitbit Edge. Note these are a subset of the automatic detection list, which is around 100 activities (see following this):

Manually Selectable Sport Profiles

Aerobics
Badminton
Baseball
Basketball
Bike
Bootcamp
Boxing
Canoeing
Circuit training
Core training
Cricket
Cross-country ski
CrossFit
Dancing
Elliptical
Field hockey
Football
Golf
HIIT
Hike
Indoor climbing
Kayaking
Kickboxing
Martial arts
Mountain bike
Open swim
Outdoor workout
Paddleboarding
Padel
Pickleball
Pilates
Pool swim
Powerlifting
Rollerblading
Rowing machine
Rugby
Run
Skating
Skiing
Snowboarding
Soccer
Spinning
Sport
Stair climber
Strength training
Surfing
Swim
Tennis
Treadmill run
Walk
Weightlifting
Weights
Workout
Yoga

I definitely appreciate having all of these profiles available on-device, rather than just a very basic set. Which I suppose is the general trend in watches/wearables the last year or two: More workout profile options is better.

Once you’ve selected a sport profile, there are a few options you can choose, such as any targets or goals like distance, pace (high/low), calories, etc.

Additionally, there’s the option for GPS usage. This allows you to leverage GPS internal to the Fitbit Edge, or to use it from your phone. The choice is honestly pretty simple: Which device’s battery do you want to burn? By default, even when you toggle GPS on for an activity (like a run), it’ll default to using your phone’s GPS (via Bluetooth).

However, within the settings of the Google Health app, you can choose to instead use the device’s GPS. By default, it’ll be on ‘Dynamic’, which Google has confirmed actually translates to “use the phone unless the phone isn’t there”.

In my case, as seen above, I switched to ‘Built-in’. This is the configuration I mostly used it within. In my testing, I’d burn the Fitbit Edge battery at about 15%/hour, for outdoor GPS workouts with the screen in always-on display.

However, if you want to save some battery, in gesture-based mode, I got a fair bit longer. Basically twice as much for this 5-hour ride in the mountains, burning at roughly 8%/hour:

In the above example, the battery started at 90%, though it ended at 50%.

Speaking of which, the Google Health app does support mirroring of data from the Fitbit Edge to your phone, if you want to use it as a bike computer or just generally see your workout data metrics on your phone in real time. This isn’t super detailed, nor does it show as much data as on the device itself, but it’s an option for the core bits.

Still, circling all the way back to the start of the workout, you’ll see your GPS status icon at the top:

Once you start, you’ll see your data details across a few different data pages:

That said, quirkily, you can’t change/modify any of the data pages from a sports standpoint. They are what they are.

Nonetheless, all of this works reasonably well within a workout, and I had no issues there in terms of general usage. For things like rain during workouts, this made the screen pretty tough to use for swipes specifically; that was also true of other wearables I was testing at the time.

Once you’ve completed your workout, you’ll see summary data of the workout:

And then over on the Google Health app, you can see more details of it:

One of the metrics you’ve probably noticed a few times is the ‘Cardio Load’. This is essentially your training load, and it resets every week. You accumulate Cardio Load during workouts, and roughly speaking, you get more Cardio Load the higher your heart rate is. So, on an easy walk with no meaningfully raised heart rate, you might accumulate just 0 or 1 cardio load. Yet a flat-out balls-to-the-wall 5KM run might score a few hundred units of cardio load. You can see this on the Fitbit Edge itself after a workout, as well as in summary stats.

Your goal dynamically changes each week, based on your personal historical data, as well as any goals that you might have configured in the Google Coach features (those are Premium features).

Otherwise, you can simply see how it compares to your historical data within the Google Health app:

Next, as mentioned, you can push a structured workout to the Fitbit Edge. This is a notable upgrade from the Fitbit Charge 6, which didn’t support structured workouts. However, it’s a little bit different than on a Pixel Watch, where you select it on the watch. Here, you’ll need to select it from within the Google Health app. This can be workouts that Google has created for you, or ones you create yourself:

Then, you’ll choose to start it from the phone, rather than on the Fitbit Edge. All of the instructions will be on your phone, not on the Fitbit Edge. The Edge is basically just recording and showing your general data. The phone is where everything is explained. This is perfectly logical for indoor/gym/yoga/etc. workouts, but it’s kinda wonky for an interval workout outside, where you need to keep checking your phone for what you should be doing. I’m not a huge fan of this implementation, especially if you’re a runner.

Finally, and semi-unrelated, if you are indoors and want to broadcast your heart rate to other devices, you can do so with the heart rate broadcast option by swiping down from the top and activating the heart rate broadcast icon. An example here would be pairing it to a Peloton Bike to use as a heart rate sensor/strap:

Note that Fitbit’s implementation doesn’t actually follow the Secure Bluetooth pairing standard, so it won’t really work with everything else out there unless they specifically partnered with Fitbit. For example, it works with Peloton and Zwift, but not with a Garmin Edge bike computer (sadly, the two Edges can’t chat). Sigh.

Of course, everything I’ve talked about thus far is about manually starting workouts and basically interacting with your Fitbit Edge. But the other way to do workouts is just to do them, and not even touch the Fitbit Edge (of course, still wear it). That then leverages Automatic Workout Detection, which is pulled from the Fitbit Air launched earlier this year.

Within that realm, there are basically two different ways the Fitbit Edge will detect workouts. The first set of workout types are ones it “really knows” and should get right each time. Whereas the second set are ones it takes a flyer on, based on historical data, and hopes for the best with an educated guess. Here’s the first set:

Core Automatically Detected sports without any context:

Outdoor Walk
Outdoor Run
Outdoor Bike
Stationary Bike
Elliptical
Rowing Machine
Swim
Racket Sports
Rowing
Golf
Basketball
Soccer
Strength Training
Sports (generic – team sports)
‘Activity’ (generic – periods of sustained elevated HR)

Then this next set requires some sort of historical context, as well as previous confirmations of the activity in the app. In other words, if it knows that you mow the lawn every Saturday morning, and then do hoeing on Saturday evening, it’ll likely detect those automatically each weekend if it feels the movement patterns are similar enough to your past hoeing activities:

Context-required Automatic Detection Types:

Treadmill Run
Treadmill Walk
Core Workout
Yoga
Stretching
Dancing
Baseball
Football
Pickleball
Hockey
Water Aerobics
Fishing
Shooting
Cleaning
Meditating
Mowing Lawn
Gardening
Carpentry
Archery
Martial Arts
Rock Climbing
Kayaking
Skating
Snowshoeing
Skiing
Surfing
Snowboarding
Paddleboarding
Fencing
Ultimate Frisbee
Gymnastics
Horseback Riding
Orienteering
Polo
Skateboarding
Trampoline
Wrestling
Diving
Sailing
Water Skiing
Trail Run
Incline Run
Power Walking
Hiking
Rucking
Stroller Walking
Nordic Walking
Incline Walk
Walk With Weights
Mountain Biking
Spinning
Snorkeling
Hiit
Crossfit
Jump Rope
Boxing
Kickboxing
Stairclimbing
Zumba
Soccer
Basketball
Tennis
Volleyball
Badminton
Free Weights
Body Weight
Weight Machines
Power Lifting
Calisthenics
Resistance Bands
Trx
Cardio Sculpt
Circuit Training
Pilates
Barre
Tai Chi
Ballet
Softball
Cricket
Rugby
Squash
Table Tennis
Racquetball
Field Hockey
Handball
Lacrosse
Curling
Water Polo
Water Volleyball
Water Jogging
Hunting
Indoor Climbing
Canoeing
Roller Blading
Ice Skating
Roller Skating
Cross Country Skiing
Aerobic Workout
Modern Dance
Jazz Dance
Tango
Ballroom Dance
Breakdancing
Hip Hop
Karate
Jiu Jitsu
Taekwondo
Muay Thai
Musical Performance
Assault Bike
Cheerleading
Parkour
Scootering
Electric Scooter
Electric Bike
Motorcycle
Tabata Workout
Beach Volleyball
Bikram Yoga
Hatha Yoga
Power Yoga
Vinyasa Yoga
Weeding
Hoeing
Household Chores
Shoveling
Painting
Frisbee Playing
Unicycling
Croquet
Motocross

I do want to point out that I’d love to have been a fly on the wall in conference rooms at Google when they debated putting the ‘Hoeing’ activity type in there.

While I cannot attest to the Hoeing activity accuracy levels, I can say that when it comes to other things it detected, it had no problems for me or my wife, in terms of detecting walks, hikes, and indoor cycling rides. When you do these activities, it’ll show up very similar, but slightly different than a regular activity. First, there won’t be any GPS tracks associated with it (even if outdoors). It doesn’t automatically turn that on. But second, you can actually change the times if it truncates something incorrectly.

While Fitbit had some basic automatic detection in the Charge 6, it’s nowhere near what they’re doing now with the Fitbit Edge. So this is definitely a bit of a step up.

With that, let’s take a look at the workout accuracy of both heart rate and GPS.

Accuracy:

The prior-gen Fitbit Charge 6 was known as a hot mess of a dumpster fire when it came to heart rate and GPS accuracy. As a user, you basically had two options: You could loosen up the band and get decent GPS accuracy, but nonsense heart rate accuracy. Or, you could tighten the band and get no usable GPS track at all, but good heart rate accuracy. Choosing both was simply not an option, due to a design that put the GPS antenna on the underside edges of the Charge 6.

One of the big things called out by Google with the Fitbit Edge is addressing that issue. The question is, does it?

Let’s start off with an indoor trainer ride. This one isn’t too hard, with some moderate but not crazy intervals. Here we can see that it really struggled at the beginning, for no obvious reason. It wasn’t until the main set started that it locked on.

I’m a bit surprised by this, as this should have been easy-town. That said, once it started the workout, it was largely fine.

Next, looking at heart rate on a bit under a 45-minute outdoor ride (mostly pavement,  tiny bit of gravel towards the end), we can see it struggles a bit at the beginning. To be fair, this was downhill on this first section, which many wearables will struggle starting with. By around the 10-minute marker, I’ve stabilized on flat ground, and you can see it largely trends OK, until round the 35-minute marker, where it struggles a little bit.

If we look at the GPS tracks on this, at a high level it looks very similar to the Garmin Edge 1060 and COROS Dura 2 I had on my handlebars then:

If we zoom in to a fast descent section, the Fitbit Edge (using built-in GPS), actually manages to stick on this road better than the $550 COROS Dura 2.

Though, on this much slower 20% grade climb, the Fitbit Edge wobbled a bit more than the others. It’s interesting that the section it wobbled (just below the pools), is actually the portion I had to get off the bike for a few seconds, as the recent rainstorms had basically washed away a portion of this gravel road, making brief impassable sections when trying to go up.

Lastly, if we look at the elevation profile on this, using the barometric altimeter inside the unit, it was quite close here, within just a couple of meters most of the time:

Looking at another ride, this one a 90-minute ride that was a mix of road and gravel, you can see things are…umm… a bit mixed when it comes to heart rate. Though, the Suunto Run 2 also struggled here on heart rate. Yes, you can see things ‘roughly trended’ in the right way, but overall this is a bit prickly.

On the GPS side of things, overall it was pretty good, occasionally slightly offset a meter or two from the other units when I’d do some lower-speed swerves, but still a *massive* improvement over the Fitbit Charge 6, which wouldn’t track GPS to save its life.

But you can see places like these straightaways here; it’s spot-on with the other GPS units, including $800 bike computers:

Finally, looking at a run from today, this is a simple 5KM run through both trails and pavement, split roughly evenly. Here’s the heart rate side first. This looks reasonably good. A few minor quibbles, but overall pretty solid despite being up/down on steep terrain; things are good here.

And then looking at the GPS, here’s the wide look at things:

Looking closely at some parts in the trees, and a bit of a ravine, it’s not meaningfully different than the $1,199 Garmin Fenix 9 Pro inReach model, or the $399 Suunto Run 2.

Same goes for this section here. Virtually indistinguishable.

Overall, this is a massive upgrade over the Fitbit Charge 6 for both heart rate and GPS. With the Charge 6, you had to ‘choose one’ of the two to be accurate. Here, the GPS is more than good enough for most things, and the heart rate is OK (though not great). The unit lacks the size/space to put in Google’s much better optical HR sensor found in the Pixel Watch 5, so instead it leans on a smaller sensor that fits into this case. Still, I suspect for most people interested in this device for probably more casual workout tracking, this is probably good enough.

(Note: All of the charts in these accuracy portions were created using the DCR Analyzer tool. It allows you to compare power meters/trainers, heart rate, cadence, speed/pace, running power, GPS tracks, and plenty more. You can use it as well for your own gadget comparisons; more details here.)

Final Thoughts:

For the vast majority of users, the Fitbit Edge will be a notable upgrade over the Fitbit Charge 6. Or definitely a Fitbit Charge 5. The GPS & heart rate situation is vastly improved, the user interface is cleaner and easier to understand, and I think the majority of the Google Health app is an improvement (though obviously, there are still some folks that prefer the older Fitbit app, especially if you don’t plan on being a Premium subscriber).

That said, while none of the issues I ran into were major blockers, it definitely lacks a bit of software finishing polish around the edges. Specifically, things like not having the automatic sleep mode for the display, not being able to tap into any of the metrics on the unit itself for more details, and then not being able to customize workout data pages. The way Google implemented these seems like they had grander/deeper plans, but eventually cut their losses for a holiday season launch. It sounds like some things are planned for firmware updates down the road.

Still, for a sub-$180 device targeted more at wellness than hardcore athletes, it largely fits the bill for tracking and analyzing your daily workouts, your daily health/sleep, and doing so in a tidy form factor that’s easy to understand. Having the automatic workout detection is super handy for when you don’t want to fuss with the screen, and yet it’ll properly track everything behind the scenes.

With that, thanks for reading!

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Hopefully you found this review/post useful. At the end of the day, I’m an athlete just like you looking for the most detail possible on a new purchase – so my review is written from the standpoint of how I used the device. The reviews generally take a lot of hours to put together, so it’s a fair bit of work (and labor of love). As you probably noticed by looking below, I also take time to answer all the questions posted in the comments – and there’s quite a bit of detail in there as well.

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COROS has just announced the new COROS Dura 2, a unit that more than doubles the price of the existing and now discontinued Dura 1, while still maintaining its industry-leading battery life claims. Atop that, there’s a handful of new features in here, along with a reduction of mounting hardware. I’m going to dive into everything that’s new, and more critically: Whether it actually works.

As is often the case with new products, there are both things that work super well, and things that fall short. In the case of the Dura 2, it’s not hard to figure out which things fall into which camps. So, let’s get right into it!

What’s New:

Unlike some products where you can’t tell at a glance if it’s new, there’s absolutely no denying the COROS Dura 2 is a totally different product. Heck, I’d have said it came from Motorola, not COROS. But yes, it’s both visibly new, and features-wise new. So let’s get into it:

– Completely new external design:
— Ditched the rotating Digital Crown (thank fudge!)
— Shifted solar panel to bottom of unit
— Placed two new touch areas (kinda like buttons) atop solar panel
— Added left-side button
– Added full speaker
– Added bike bell feature
– Added turn-by-turn voice prompts (e.g. Turn Left)
– Added Microphone
– Added voice control (with button held)
– Added ability to save voice pins
– Added ability to cancel manual laps
– Added power curve chart
– Added tire pressure sensor support
– Added media control page on device (e.g. to control phone music)
– Slightly revamped on-device user interface
– Revamped COROS App data page customization piece
– Increased screen size from 2.7″ to 3.5”
– Increased refresh rate to 38hz (38 times a second), claims fastest of any MIP display
– Can now do some offline re-routing (but uses/requires phone)
– Doesn’t include any mounts of any sort (even tiny cheap rubber ones)
– Price increased from $249 with mount to $549 with mount (or $499 without any mounts)
– Available to purchase November 3rd, 2026

Now, as is the trend for many products these days (Apple and Google especially), companies have shifted new features to later dates, rather than including them upfront. In this case, COROS is promising additional features coming later this year, which include:

– Will add multiple bike profile support
– Will expand support for up to 32 sensors
– Will add cycling-specific heart rate recovery metric for interval workout rest period and post-activity analysis
– Will add Campagnolo electronic drivetrain support by end of 2026

In any case, beyond all the new/coming features, here are the current battery chart claims (but see my battery section below for the real-world testing on that):

And finally, here’s all the global pricing information:

Ok, with that, let’s get into the box.

In the Box:

As you can see below, this is pretty straightforward. There’s the unit itself, a lanyard, some paper junk, and a nice braided USB-C cable. But no mounting pieces, not even cheaper rubber mounts. I’d have traded that nice braided USB-C cable for a crappier one (or none at all), and then included a pack of cheap rubber mounts.

Again, as a reminder, there are zero mounts in here. Not even simple rubber/plastic on-handlebar ones that cost pennies to make. Your best bet for finding such things is ironically a bag of Garmin mounts. You can get the Garmin-made one for $9 (pack of one), or a no-name brand pack of two for $7. I haven’t tried the no-name one in terms of durability or such, but some reviews are mixed on the long-term durability of the bands.

Either way, again, it’s ridiculous that COROS isn’t including at least one rubber-mount in the box of a $500 bike computer.

In any case, here’s the back of the unit, with the Garmin standard quarter-turn mounting hardware:

It is removable in case of breakage, which is good to see.

And for fun, here’s the thickness compared to an Edge 1050 I had handy sitting nearby at the time. They’re roughly the same length, but clearly the Dura 2 is much sleeker.

With the box bits sorted, time to ride.

The Basics:

With everything unboxed and mounted to your bike, you’re good to go. In my case, I have an existing Garmin-compatible mount on this bike, so I just placed it there. Though ironically, on my mountain bike I have a Garmin-branded out-front mount that I solidly stripped the screw on years ago and can’t exactly get removed without snapping it, so out of humor (and to make a point about lack of mount) I probably should have shot the review on that bike.

In any case, as you can see, the unit itself looks stunning. Mount-gate aside, this is one of the nicest-looking form factors out there. Some have compared it to a Motorola Razr phone in terms of styling, and I’d agree; I see some aspects of that. Either way, it looks nice case-wise.

Next then to discuss are the display, buttons, and solar touch area. Starting off with the buttons, there are two physical buttons on the side. The left-side one is purely for marking laps, though COROS says in a later firmware update it’ll allow customization there (which is good, cause right now other button functions would be helpful). Meanwhile, the right-side button is for start/stop/select.

Then, down at the bottom, you have the solar touch area. Basically, the solar piece that was on the older Dura 1 was on top, causing a larger ‘forehead’ look. Now it’s down at the bottom and feels much more natural, like other bike computers with a larger ‘chin’. Now, I’ve got a section entirely on solar/battery burn reality down below. Instead, I want to look at the buttons here. There are two pressure-sensitive buttons, which act as up/down buttons. These change menu items in menus, and then change data pages while riding.

Note these are *NOT* capacitive buttons, which means they work just fine with rain, gloves, etc. That’s because they feel for pressure. Once you get past one ride with them (in terms of the right amount of pressure), they’re good. But if sitting inside on a couch, you might press a bit too lightly and it won’t register.

But again, rain with gloves? Zero issues. For better or worse, all those Spain rainstorms you heard about in the news the last few weeks? Yup, I was out testing in the rain – zero issues on the pressure buttons.

However, that’s not the only touch surface. Then you’ve got the screen itself, which is also a touchscreen. And if you want to swipe-down from the top to access a menu, you *have* to do that with the touchscreen swipe. And when it comes to those same rains there? Not as awesome. Generally speaking, I found that with light rain, it was fine. However, as the rain got heavier, or in cases where water pooled a bit, then the touchscreen was mostly useless.

While touchscreens becoming useless is hardly a new thing in bike computers, the main difference is that most other bike computers still have the ability to get to every menu feature via buttons. The COROS Dura does not. So adjusting things like display brightness (because the automatic brightness feature doesn’t work well), or volume, or bike alarm, or system, or satellite settings, etc., can’t be done without the swipe-down, which brings you to this menu:

Which now seems like a good time to talk about screen clarity/brightness/etc. Overall, on a nice sunny day, it’s quite good. Zero issues there at all, easy to read, nice and large, and virtually identical to the screen size on the older Edge 1040 Solar (it’s a smidge shorter, but also a smidge wider…so a wash).

(Full sun on the screen, no problems!)

Meanwhile, on cloudy days, things are fine, or even in early evening, still fine. Sure, you can see below the Wahoo & Garmin units are (in automatic mode) brighter than the COROS Dura 2 even on its brightest setting, but I had no issues seeing any units here.

Where things fall apart, though, is anytime the unit is in the shade on a bright day. For example, when the sun is behind me and my body is blocking the screen. Here it’s unreadable:

And likewise, something like this, where you’re quickly in/out of the shade by trees), the screen is far dimmer than most others.

To be clear (because I know people will get all upset about things like this), you can still see the COROS Dura 2 display. And my better than 20/20 vision eyes can still read it. However, there is a difference there. Pretending there isn’t is silly.

The key thing is you’ll pay for that difference, though, in battery life. Those other units above were set to ‘Default’ auto backlight settings, so they adjust based on the outside brightness. No matter which backlight setting you choose, you’re gonna burn more battery on the Wahoo ROAM V3 & Garmin Edge x50 series than the COROS Dura 2. So again, there are trade-offs.

Ok, with that out of the way, let’s talk about sensor pairing. In terms of sensor types the Dura 2 supports, it’s got all of the following:

ANT+ & Bluetooth Heart Rate Sensors
ANT+ & Bluetooth Power Meters
ANT+ Radar
ANT+ Lights
ANT+ eBikes
ANT+ drivetrain/shifting Support (SRAM)
Bluetooth FTMS Smart Trainers
Shimano drivetrain/shifting support

Pairing up is pretty easy. Note that any other COROS wearables you have paired in your account will ‘count’ towards a limit of sensors. COROS automatically pulls these in, and they can’t be removed/disabled (which…is kinda annoying). This should be somewhat resolved in the upcoming update to increase it to 32 sensors.

Next up then is the bike bell, which follows Garmin, Hammerhead, and Wahoo in adding an electronic representation of a bike bell. To ding the bell, you just double-tap the screen. This works well enough, and the bike bell sounds like a legit bike bell.

Generally speaking, this is good, but it’s not quite as loud as the others. I measured it with a decibel meter, and it’s just slightly below each of the others. However, while the ‘tone’ of the bell is quite pleasant, it’s not a pitch/sound that travels well at the lower volumes of the speaker. Even when set to the highest volume, virtually nobody ever turned around due to the bell. Compare that to the Garmin Edge bike bell, and people in the next town turn around. While COROS probably can’t fix the overall volume, they could certainly change the pitch to make it more ‘piercing’, which might help the situation. Again, this is hardly a big deal, and I think it should be easy for COROS to tweak.

The other catch is that unlike those other units, COROS doesn’t have any SRAM/Shimano button integration. For example, in the case of the others, you can tie the extra buttons on your handlebars to the bike bell. Meaning a simple tap of the bonus button on my SRAM handlebars (near the shifters) will trigger the bike bell. No need to take your hands off the handlebars (especially when trying to navigate around people with dogs/etc.)

Meanwhile, we have to talk about voice control. The idea here is that you long-hold the lower left button down (side button), and then speak your mind. From there, the unit can perform certain tasks. But there are so many problems that the feature is beyond useless. Setting aside the fact that you need to hold a button for what should be a hands-free feature, once you do, you can ask it to do something:

And while that might work sitting at a desk pretending to do a review, it definitely does not work out on the road with any wind noise at all. Even just 15-20KPH renders the feature useless, never once correctly understanding basic things:

As you can see, even at just 15KPH here doing these test photos, it didn’t work. Let alone all the crazy things it thought I said at normal riding speeds. Only when I slowed down below 15KPH (10MPH), and slowly spoke one of the handful of phrases below, could it get it right.

But let’s pretend it did understand you. That’s still useless, because the list of commands that it actually knows/support is so limited, and so silly. It doesn’t support things like asking how much distance remains (in a route), or ascent remaining (in a route), or any number of other things that might not be easily on your current data page:

• Start an activity/ride
• Open navigation, End Navigation, Navigate Back to Start
• Navigate to pin
• Set Heart Rate Alert
• Set Nutrition Alert
• Media control
• Control Smart Trainer Resistance/Power

Instead, it has a few leftover options from COROS watches that you just wouldn’t do via voice control. The only one that you might use is ‘Back to start’, but as you’ll see, the last thing you want your COROS Dura 2 is off-the-cuff navigation. For example, if you were to say ‘Navigate to London’, you’d literally have no idea where in London it’s navigating you to or how it’s doing that (likely the official city center, but c’mon…). Instead, voice control features should be for things you want to know but require extra swipes, or might be messy to get to/find out.

Again, as I said in the Edge 1060 piece regarding voice control, I’m not entirely sure how often I’d use voice control. Though, at least when I asked the Edge 1060 how much distance was remaining (while descending at 50KPH), it easily and correctly understood me perfectly. And I never had to take my hands off the handlebar to hold a button down either. Point being, if a company is gonna waste our money putting voice control in a bike computer, at least make it work.

Navigation & Mapping:

When it comes to navigation, the COROS Dura 2 can take an existing route and navigate it, or navigate on-demand to certain locations if your phone is connected.

In my case, I mostly navigated with routes from Strava, which synced from Strava to the COROS App, and then I had to manually push them to the COROS Dura 2 (as I’ve noted before, please, COROS, just let favorited/starred routes automatically show up on my device like every other bike computer).

Once that’s done, then you can select a route to see more details about it, as well as toggle some of the navigation settings – such as whether or not to re-route automatically.

And from there you can start navigating. The unit will give you a turn prompt 100m before a turn, which is generally OK at normal speeds, though while descending fast, it could use a bit more warning (fwiw, Garmin is 200m out). Still, unlike with the Dura 1, this actually correctly told me all my turns. Previously, the Dura 1 would often miss turns entirely, tell me to turn the wrong direction (literally, left instead of right, etc.), so this is an improvement.

The maps here are super easy to read (setting aside display brightness issues), so I’m happy with that. Likewise, I like that on the main map page, if you hang out there, it shows distance till your next turn – nice and clear (even if that’s 11.5km away).

Additionally, if approaching a climb, you’ll get notified of a climb. However, oddly, it won’t change your data page to the Climb page. Something every other bike computer does. Instead, the map page (below) gets some extra bits on the bottom showing climb status (including distance/ascent/grade remaining), and you can manually change to this page:

But there’s also the dedicated Climb page, which you can manually change to. But that incorrectly shows my distance to the start of the climb I’m already on, increasing. Huh? Why would I care about the distance to the start of the climb behind me? Show me distance remaining, ascent remaining (the ascent field below stays static), etc. Sigh.

In terms of re-routing, things get a bit rough there. To begin, whether or not it re-routes me is certainly a question – regardless of cellular coverage (remember, it can’t re-route without your phone connected, but it is able to re-route without cellular coverage). However, pretending it does successfully do so, my experience in the routes it chooses are very hit or miss. Sometimes the re-route is downright wonky.

For example, this re-route here worked perfectly fine. I missed the turn I had on my route slightly, and it was easy to catch back up at the next block. You can see it counting down the 3 seconds till it reroutes.

Yet this one below? It’s literally asking me to take a tiny trail running goat path that includes bouldering/climbing up actual cliffs above the ocean. This is the actual picture of what it wants me to do.

But all of this still assumes it actually re-routes. Yesterday on the final firmware, I went out and did some super simple tests in my neighborhood, including missing a turn. I have full cellular coverage, big simple grid streets; all it had to do was pick the next block and be done with it. Yet, it can’t. Like, it just can’t:

No matter how many times I tried, it simply failed to re-route. Which then takes it into a re-routing hell loop.

And look, I know there is a sliver of the ultra-riding population that keeps saying re-routing doesn’t matter and somehow isn’t even wanted. But for the remainder of the world (which is 99.9% of people), re-routing due to road blocks, or just missing a turn and not realizing it, is important. And while this is definitely better than Dura 1, it’s still clearly far behind what Wahoo and Garmin have had for a decade in their bike GPS units (with no phone required).

Solar & Battery:

When the going’s good, things are really good on the battery side here. But as is often the case with solar gains, it only really happens when you’ve actually got sunny days. Otherwise, the battery life is still very good, but much more in line with existing units.

Further, and most critically, there’s a simple balance here that exists between COROS Dura and other units: Other units trade battery life for a more easily viewable screen. COROS trades that screen for better battery life. This is not debatable. It’s factual, and you can see it out on the road (or…err…you can’t see it).

As a reminder, here are the battery claims:

(COROS says the claims are without any solar added)

What’s cool here is that COROS automatically tracks battery life in two ways. First is that at the system level, there’s this nifty page showing battery usage since last charge, solar gains, and so on:

I did play around with some testing in direct Mallorca sun, off the bike, and it seemed to gain about 0.5%/hour in battery life. That’d be actually quite meaningful if you just left it in the sun each day for many hours, given how little battery life it consumes per hour. Of course, that assumes you live in a vaguely sunny place.

The second area it shows you solar gains is at the end of each ride; it lists exactly your battery usage and solar gains:

From there, I can input these values into the DCR Analyzer, and it’ll show me how this tracks against other units, but also just total estimates, such as this:

So, looking at all my rides, they’re basically broken into the following categories:

Full blue-sky sunny Mediterranean conditions
Very thin clouds, but mostly sunny conditions
No sun at all, either rain, dark clouds, or night conditions

For the most part, the first two conditions are relatively similar in my testing in terms of solar gains. I just don’t see much difference there. Whereas the last one essentially removes the solar piece from the equation, and simulates  UK or Netherlands mode. Thus showing what non-sunny users should expect.

Then, within that, you’ve got basically two different battery burn levels:

Without navigation (free riding)
With navigation (following a route)

When it comes to battery burn, following a route is pretty high on the list of things that drive battery burn. There are also aspects like sensor connectivity, though that tends to be quite minimal for most bike computers in terms of battery burn. In the case of all my testing, I had a simple heart rate (Bluetooth) and power (ANT+) connection to the COROS Dura 2. Sometimes I had shifting connected, but again, that’s even more negligible since data is quite infrequent there.

So with all that backstory, here’s where things stood overall on rides just focused on the last week alone:

Fully sunny blue-sky day with navigation (previous firmware, tons of solar gain): Burned ~4% in 5 hours, battery estimate of 123 hours (previous firmware)

Fully sunny blue-sky day with navigation (latest firmware, tons of solar gain): Burned 1.6% in ~50mins, battery estimate of 47 hours

Rainy day thunderstorms with navigation (no solar gain): Burned 5% in 62 mins, battery estimate of 22 hours

Overcast early evening with navigation (virtually no solar gain): Burned 1.3% in 60 minutes, battery estimate of 80 hours

Point is, things are all over the map here. There are obviously some crazy good days, like yesterday (albeit on the not-final firmware), and then we look at today with the exact same setup, and it’s half the battery life. I suspect some of that is due to orientation and length of ride. Sometimes you’re perfectly facing the sun, other times you’re blocking the sun.

When it comes to no-sun days, the battery burns a heck of a lot faster. I also have another ride that’s very similar to the 22-hour one, where I had tossed it in my back pocket (because I was riding with people). In that case, with no sun, it was estimated at 29 hours (no navigation, no sun, rainy anyways). But I typically don’t include data sets like that when they are typical usage. Still, it’s a data point in line with some of the other no-sun data points.

Still, while it can be all over the map – that map is still really good in terms of battery life. Yes, I think on the whole it falls short of COROS’s official 120-hours sans-Solar claims (since my best numbers above still required Solar). But equally, even setting aside those claims, this still has incredible battery life on most days. There’s no disputing that.

(P.S. – Relatedly, back this past summer I did a fun test comparing Dura vs the Edge 1040 Solar, might be interesting if long battery is your jam. Maybe I’ll do it again soonish.)

Accuracy (GPS & Elevation):

Good news, folks! Everything is good here across all my rides. I’m going to save you a whole lot of charts and such for the moment, and show a few quick ones from my longer 5-hour ride into the mountains, which covers lots of terrain, as well as altimeter data.

Here we can see a switchback section in the mountains, without any issues across the units.

The same goes here, again – no problems at all (and I believe this section was downhill too):

Or this section here, again, all good:

Meanwhile, a quick look at the elevation shows the COROS & Garmin units very close, though a bit of offset from Wahoo. There’s maybe a smidge of initial elevation offset from COROS in the first 10-15 minutes of the ride (it’s reading too high), but it stabilizes quickly.

Anyways, all my other rides look pretty good across the board, nearly always matching the Garmin Edge units and other barometric altimeter devices.

The Bugs:

As has been the pattern this year, companies are getting more and more iffy with their product launches. Thus, I’m going to keep hammering it here until morale…err…quality, improves. As always, my general line in the sand is that if I include a dedicated bugs section, then things were pretty rough. Whereas otherwise, I’ll pull those (usually minor) bugs into the rest of the review as needed.

In the case of COROS, they delivered an updated firmware just last night that claims to fix a number of the issues I’ve been seeing. But upon delaying my review to re-test all of the issues, they’re all still here.

My main issue here is that this is *exactly* the hot mess of a product launch Dura 1 had. Where they pushed back/delayed the production ship date (just as they did here for Dura 2) to theoretically fix issues, but in reality it took far longer for issues to actually be resolved. And none of these are ‘quirky’ hard-to-find bugs. They’re fundamental things that just don’t work.

– Voice control is entirely useless, it just can’t figure out anything you’re saying
– Constant ANT+  dropouts of sensors & phone connections
– Climb metrics just not showing useful information on the climb page (e.g., not actually showing distance remaining or ascent remaining, just showing current distance within the climb)
– Navigation re-routing rarely works properly, suggesting mountain-climbing (like with ropes) routes for cyclists
– Offline re-routing also struggles, seemingly due to the Bluetooth connection issues to the phone (even when the phone says it’s connected just fine in the COROS app)
– Strava Live Segments aren’t triggering at all for any routes, even Strava Routes (apparently by design)

Here’s an example of the ANT+ dropouts during my ride yesterday. This is with an ANT+ HR strap that was also connected to both a Wahoo & Garmin unit without issues. Further, it was totally fine until I connected a Bluetooth power meter to the head unit, then it fell apart. I re-tested this earlier this morning on final firmware, and still the same issue. If I connect via Bluetooth, then it stays fine.

(Note the drops you see at the ~2hr marker on the Garmin are when I was in a cafe, and the bike was across the street a bit)

Either way, every reputable reviewer has pointed out in their reviews reporting numerous issues with the unit, all to receive a firmware update the night prior. Note, COROS says this final firmware that I tested on above is what users are receiving in 10 days when the unit launches. Again, I’m sure some of these will be fixed eventually, but did we not learn anything from the Dura 1 launch?

Wrap-Up:

COROS has developed a very loyal fan base of users, both runners and now also a segment of the cycling population. And in particular, that segment became friends with the COROS brand under the Dura 1-era, which had exceptional battery life with even more exceptional pricing. The brand’s positioning was to undercut the competition on price, and deliver the core cycling functionality with amazing battery life. And sure, things got off to a rocky start, but for long-life battery-needing folks, the trade-offs were mostly easy to make. And over that first year, COROS eventually sorted out most of the bugs.

This time around, COROS is aiming to compete head-on with the well-established premium players at their premium markets. The problem is, COROS isn’t delivering a premium device. Sure, it looks premium on the outside (seriously, I think it looks great), but both the software features and the stability of those features aren’t worth anywhere near $549. Even if everything had worked, it’s still far from what Hammerhead, Wahoo, and Garmin deliver at $499. Sure, they all show your speed and distance accurately, but that’s not really the bar for success here, is it? The others have had on-device mapping, navigation, and re-routing for a decade now. And it works.

Had COROS come in at $349-ish, that would have been a very reasonable price increase over the $249 of the past. At that price you could still give them a pass on phone-dependent re-routing (as long as it worked). Sure, they’d still need to get the other bugs fixed, but at least the pricing would have been semi-logical. Oh, and some rubber band mounts too. But at $549?

Ironically, included in every COROS wearable box is a sticker that says “Explore Perfection”, along with another sticker that protects the watch display, and also says “Explore Perfection”…Neither was included in the Dura 2 box.

With that, thanks for reading!

After some 7 months of being ‘closed’ to new entrants, Garmin has re-opened and revamped the Garmin Connect API developer program, focused specifically on 3rd-party platforms that want to receive data files from Garmin devices via Garmin Connect, or send certain types of data to Garmin devices. Things like receiving your completed activities/workouts, sending routes/courses or structured workouts to Garmin devices, receiving general health/wellness data, and so on. All of these leverage the Garmin Connect API today, and have for many years.

Before we get into the details of the new program, Garmin closed it to new applications back in March due to an overwhelming number of inbound applications. With the rise of AI-generated apps, Garmin went from a handful of (mostly legit) applications each week to a tsunami of new AI vibe-coded applications each day. Fun fact: Less than half of all applications that were requesting access even bothered to use it, once granted.

Of course, it’d be easy to blame vibe-coded AI apps for everything, but the reality was Garmin’s process was equally to blame. They treated every inbound request as if it were an enterprise-level company, rather than perhaps just a hobbyist developer or early-stage startup. That meant that everything from business case validation, policy validation, and such was all done at a level far beyond any other wearable in the space. Applications could take weeks to months (easily), compared with sometimes instant access to credentials from other companies like Polar, Wahoo, Suunto, and more. Garmin didn’t differentiate between the credential types: Everyone got the same full-fledged access, whether they really needed it or not.

That changes today, with three distinct tiers that essentially allow an app to ‘grow’ from hobbyist level, to startup level, to full ‘enterprise’ level access with 24×7 support/etc. The first two tiers are free, and greatly expand access to individuals wanting instant access to Garmin’s platform, effectively creating an MCP level of sorts…minus actually creating an MCP.

With that, let’s dive into it.

What Changes:

In short, Garmin Connect now has three different API levels, versions the previous level that required a bunch of paperwork and verifications. These three levels are now:

– Personal: Designed for a single person to have access to their activity and health data via the Connect API
– Startup: Designed for organizations that need to support up to 1,000 users, adds more API areas
– Enterprise: Everything above, plus more API areas, technical support, and historical data. Oh, and it costs money.

All of this is best shown in the chart below, which I’ve copied from Garmin’s Connect API site, but we’ll keep it here for long-term historical reference. Cause, if we know anything from the past, it’ll probably change again.

The key thing here is that both the Personal and Startup levels get both JSON summaries (which is what that means in this context), as well as full .FIT file with the activity data in it. Though, it does sound like Garmin is annoyingly stripping out some data they consider proprietary, whereas if you upload it manually from your watch/device, that data is there. I’m hoping they’ll change that, partially because it’s dumb, and partially because it just increases the ways things can go wrong and is overly complicated.

Still, I’m glad to see they’re offering the full .FIT file, as anything less would have mostly been useless when you start talking more interesting application ideas. Beyond that, you also get both general Health Data and Women’s Health Data JSON summaries (which is fine in this context, I think).

The process to create a Personal API key takes a few seconds in total.

I just did it again, end to end; maybe 8 seconds?

Meanwhile, stepping up to the ‘Starter’ level adds the Courses & Training API’s. These allow developers to *push*  routes/courses to Garmin Connect, which can in turn end up on your device. And the same is true for structured workouts. Think things like Strava and Komoot Routes use this for routes, and TrainingPeaks or Final Surge uses this to send planned workouts. It sounds like approvals for this tier should be virtually instant.

Which then takes us to the ‘Enterprise’ level, which adds the Golf API that does small ball things, as well as, more notably, the Historical Data backfill. This means when someone connects a new account to their app, it’ll allow the user to backfill a predefined amount of historical data, versus just data from that moment forward. Further, it provides technical support and allows for more than 1,000 users.

But of course – there’s a catch. Once you hit that 1,000-user realm, you’re now in ‘pay-for-play’ land. Garmin is joining Whoop in charging a fee here. There’s essentially an initial $1,000 entry fee, which is a credit towards your monthly active user bill. That means as a company you’ll pay on a per-user basis, for “active monthly users” that are connected. That’s a big shift from the current ‘totally free’ realm that’s been the case for Garmin Connect since 2019, when they dropped the previous $5,000 entry fee.

Garmin is essentially saying they’re trying to recoup some of the costs of supporting the platform, while also being able to provide support at this higher tier. There’s also a reality here that many other companies are trying to build full businesses on the backs of Garmin’s platform (e.g. Bevel), and Garmin basically feels like if they want enterprise-level support, they should pay for it.

So what does that ‘monthly active users’ fee cost? Well, that’s to be negotiated on a per-company basis. It sounds like what Strava or Komoot would pay is undoubtedly different than what a smaller company would pay. However, for funsies, you may not know that the DCR Analyzer actually supports the Garmin Connect API today (along with Amazfit, COROS, Hammerhead, Polar, Suunto, Wahoo, Google Health, and Apple Health via HealthFit). So I asked what it’d cost us. We have roughly 20,000 total users, but a much smaller portion of those are monthly active users with Garmin Connections. While I can’t share the exact amount, it’s fair to say it falls within the rough category of ‘pennies on the dollar’.

This brings the next question: when will companies start to pay this? By April 1st, 2027. Between now and then, Garmin will work with existing Garmin Connect API partners to sort out that financial piece. By default, though, all existing partners become ‘Enterprise’ automatically. Further, no existing partner has to pay the $1,000 Enterprise entry fee.

I don’t love the idea of Garmin charging anything to access this data, and I largely feel like this should simply be the cost of doing business in 2026. If not, stick that cost into the marketing budget, because that’s what it is. It’s marketing for Garmin devices. Every single 3rd-party platform that integrates with Garmin is marketing for Garmin. That said, if I put on my DCR Analyzer hat, the cost here is pretty negligible – at least for one company. If a user wants to connect all of these platforms, then perhaps it’s slightly more notable, but even then, it still wouldn’t really matter to the bottom line.

Oh, and for lack of a better place to stick it, the existing Garmin Connect IQ program remains free and unchanged (that’s for widgets/apps/etc. on Garmin devices).

The Enterprise Competitive Landscape:

So what does the ‘API’ competitive landscape look like? Well, it depends. There’s no real question here that Garmin provides the most robust API in terms of features (e.g., routes, structured workouts, completed activities, health data, women’s health, etc.). That part honestly isn’t really debatable – it’s factually true. Equally, while platforms like Apple provide free access, they don’t offer a web-based API to push data into Apple Health. Meaning, a partner *has* to develop an iOS app to push/pull it there. That’s why for the DCR Analyzer we use HealthFit as our partner to pull data from Apple Health. The last thing I wanted to do was develop an app simply to get my Apple Fitness data; that solved our need.

Anyways, as for other device platforms – like COROS, Suunto, Wahoo, Polar, Amazfit, etc. – all of them today provide some level of API, but whether or not they provide it for the end-user to do something is heavily mixed. For example, COROS rolled out their MCP access for free for all COROS users. And Suunto announced the same thing last week for some time in the future. Wahoo and Amazfit have programs for companies, but those aren’t really available for individuals. Suunto and Polar also have programs for companies too, and both of those are pretty easy to access. In fact, fun tidbit: Out of all the API partners we implemented for the DCR Analyzer, by far Polar was the fastest and easiest to do.

Historically speaking, Whoop, for example, has charged for more detailed API access (such as the full workout files), while allowing free summary information. As an example, in the case of the DCR Analyzer, that’s not super useful, so we haven’t pursued it. Update: Whoop is no longer charging for API information, at any level, according to the company.

One of the things that companies are trying to avoid is ‘aggregator’ type platforms, such as Terra. Generally speaking, when I talk to platforms/companies in the sports tech realm, most have a strong disdain for Terra. It’s mostly for two reasons. The first is that most companies have felt that Terra consistently misleads their customers into thinking they have legit partnerships with the big platforms, when historically speaking, many of those platforms had never even heard of Terra. Second, Terra wasn’t using proper APIs (e.g. OAuth) for many of the sites they accessed, which makes it a notable security concern for the platforms in question. This 14-month-old community support question best exemplifies the issue in one efficient thread.

We saw this play out recently when Terra got themselves in a pickle as Garmin shut off access to the API for them, until they followed the rules that had been in place for years. Terra responded by asking people to e-mail Garmin’s CEO directly (and provided his e-mail address). Likewise, I got flooded with e-mails as well.

Still, Garmin’s shift here towards charging for API access will set a dangerous precedent for the industry. Especially for a company that bills itself as a (or the?) premium sports hardware provider. On the flip side, there’s simply no ignoring the flood of mostly AI apps that take up resources at Garmin and elsewhere to support. Heck, my inbox is flooded with these apps daily requesting reviews. It sounds like when Garmin shut off access to the API last spring, they were seeing inbound API requests at a daily scale that they’d previously only seen over a period of weeks. Simply put, there’s no good answer.

Going Forward:

Ultimately, there’s sorta a few groups of winners and losers here. For hobbyists, this is a huge win. A massive one. This is the first time that Garmin has provided access (and instant access) to their API for individual users to grab and play with their own data without having to deal with manual .FIT file uploads/management. Likewise, those users can easily/instantly get into the ‘Startup’ category and do more things – all for free up to 1,000 users. So for companies trying to test out a theory, it’s all good news there.

Where things get fuzzier is the bigger companies, though of course, 1,000 users is hardly ‘big’. Strava has 200 million users, for context. At least now the gates are back open again, and companies can start working their way through the process accordingly. It sounds like part of the goal here is that by offloading the lower-tier access, they can increase the response time for enterprise tiers, minimizing the delay to get through that paperwork approval pile. Plus, those bigger companies can get proper technical support too.

Anyways, interesting times indeed.

With that – thanks for reading!

P.S. – I found an old picture of Garmin’s Connect Developer Summit from 2019 when they first abolished the API fee. Seems appropriate here, even above.

Garmin has just announced three new cycling products in a rare mid-October cycling-focused drop. This includes the new Garmin Edge 1060 flagship cycling GPS, the Garmin Edge Explore 3/3 Plus cycling GPS, and the Tacx Nera smart trainer. But for this post, I’m going to focus on the new Edge 1060.

The new Edge 1060 got what is best described as ‘upgrades around the Edges’. It’s got a slimmed-down case, added an internal microphone for voice control and voice messaging, some new USB-C port features (and location), as well as some new routing-related features. Plus there’s a boatload of smaller enhancements, like tweaks to Strava Live Segments, the structured Workout Player, and more.

The best part is a number of these software changes are coming back to the Edge x50 series (550/850/1050), and some of them also to the Edge x40 series too. I’ll detail all of that in a post tomorrow after I finish getting everything a bit more structured.

With that, let’s simply dive right into things.

What’s New:

The Edge 1060 takes the core guts of the Edge 1050 (including the bright display, bike bell, speaker, battery life, etc.) and puts it in a smaller/lighter case, while adding in a microphone and a number of other software features. This does not feel like a major step forward for the Edge series, yet at the same time, it does bring the device in line with other voice features found on recent Garmin Fenix & Forerunner units.

Here’s what’s changed:

– Added 4 physical buttons (now 7 in total, matching Edge 550/850)
– Added microphone (already had full speaker)
– Added voice control
– Added voice messaging (via Garmin Messenger app)
– Added support for Garmin Messenger app
– Added Ride Readiness Checklist
– Added additional route details for on-device created routes (elevation graph, expected time, etc.)
– Added Free Flow Routing (routes with less slow/stop & go bits)
– Added Route Preview Metrics (Closure, Hazards, Traffic, etc.)
– Added Up Ahead Points of Interest (POI) both on route, and off-route
– Adding Google POI transfer to Edge for Android (iPhone already has), on November 3rd
– Added QWERTY keyboard
– Added predictive text when typing on said keyboard
– Added GroupRide feature to broadcast group ride if in group of other Edge users
– Added alternate data field feature
– Redesigned Workout Page to allow for collapsible portions
– Redesigned Strava Live Segments page for collapsible portions
– Redesigned Strava Live Segments page for competitor icons on map & elevation profile
– Now allows Strava Live Segments on *any* route (not just Strava Routes)
– Adding GarminLink for seamless watch heart rate broadcast (Q1 2027)
– Adding Carbon Savings feature to show benefits of bike commuting (Q1 2027)
– Moved USB-C charging port from back/end to underside (makes it easier to charge while riding)
– Added Reserve Charging Feature
– Unit now has an end-user serviceable battery like Edge 550/850
– Decreased weight from 161g to 142g
– Decreased case/bezel size: Now 58.5 x 107 x 16.3 mm (was 60.2 x 118.5 x 16.3 mm)
– Moved speaker location for better audio to the bottom (previous charging port area)
– Tweaked backlight design to have more even distribution
– Same 3.5” LCD display as before
– Same 480x800px display resolution (1,000nits)
– Same 64GB internal storage
– Same 20 hours battery life & 60 hours battery saver mode as before
– Still power charging mount connector compatible
– Same IPX7 waterproofing as before
– Price increased from $699 to $799

I’m a little bit surprised to see the price increase there. While Garmin has increased prices on many devices over the last 2-3 years, the general Garmin trend for 2026 was actually not increasing prices. Most products stayed the same this year. I suppose it is worthwhile noting that back when the Edge 1050 came out, it actually saw a price reduction (from $749 for the previous-gen Edge 1040 Solar, down to $699 for the newer Edge 1050). So I could see some logic in that this is finally keeping up with things. I guess.

Now, for lack of anywhere else to put it below, I just want to briefly note the extra 4 buttons. This matches the Edge 550/850, which have 7 buttons, and allows you to do *anything* either via buttons or touch. This is much appreciated, and I’m glad we’re seeing the comeback in buttons across the board from numerous companies.

Here’s the left side:

Here’s the right side:

And here’s the end, though, these buttons got slightly smaller, but now do sit more on the edge, which should make them easier to hit with gloves and a tight-fitting Edge out-front mount.

With that, let’s dive into the new features.

The Voice Features:

(Above: Me hands-free sending a voice message that I’m going to be late to a meeting, while riding as fast/hard as I can to not be late for said meeting.)

Now, as I’ve said countless times here before on all assortments of wearables – I don’t tend to like voice-control wearables. I just don’t see the value of it most of the time. Especially for wrist-based things, where I can grab my phone far faster in almost all cases (the only real exception is something like surfing, but…I don’t surf).

Still, let’s look at what Garmin is doing here to see if it makes any sense. With that new microphone, they’ve basically added two main features:

– Added voice control
– Added voice messaging (via Garmin Messenger app)

Remembering that there’s already a loudspeaker there from the Edge 1050, and that they already brought in the voice prompts (e.g., telling you to ‘Turn Left’, etc.). So this is all about you talking to your unit; your unit already was talking to you. Note that, technically speaking, the speaker remains the same, but is now moved down to the bottom of the unit where the charging port used to be. The microphone sits to the left of that.

So, starting off with when it comes to voice control, you’ll say “OK Garmin”, followed by whatever your quest (or question) is. There’s a surprising number of things it’ll respond to, albeit zero of them I can seem to remember mid-ride. Still, over time you’ll use the ones you use, and occasionally learn new ones.

At speeds up to about 50KPH, on both roadway (with rain) and gravel (with splashing water), it never missed responding to a single ‘OK Garmin’. Though whether it fully understood my question was a different matter. Most of the time, if it subsequently ignored me, it was because I phrased something differently than it expected. You’ll know whether or not it detects the ‘OK Garmin’ as it’ll have the little blue squiggly audio thing pop up at the bottom:

Now, with the voice control sorted, then we move into voice messages. This allows you to send someone a voice message purely hands-free. No touching of anything is required. You’ll say “OK Garmin, send a Voice Message to Des”, and boom, it opens up this page to send a voice message to Des. It waits about 2-3 seconds before it starts recording:

From there, you can send a 30-second voice message. At the end of which, you’ve got 10 seconds to either cancel it (manually), or simply let it fly (it’ll send automatically). Again, the goal here is being hands-free.

If, however, the speaker is triggered (e.g., a radar alert or navigation prompt), it’ll pause the recording. This can be a bit annoying in heavy traffic, making it a bit tricky to successfully finish recording a voice message. Otherwise, it worked flawlessly. The only slight downside is there isn’t a way to hands-free end a message earlier than the 30 seconds. You can certainly tap the screen, but hands-free today, you’re sending a 30-second message otherwise.

Also note that if you want to use your hands, you can assign a shifter button (like SRAM bonus buttons), or simply long-hold the lower left button to access voice control.

Once all that’s sorted, the message is sent via the Garmin Messenger app. The same Garmin Messenger as all their other devices use (e.g., inReach, Fenix, MARQ, etc.) for sending and receiving both cellular and satellite messages. This means the person on the other end must have the Garmin Messenger app. There’s no ability to tie in to either iOS or Android native messaging at this time.

What’s cool here, though, is that the Garmin Messenger platform will automatically transcribe things as well. So you can see this transcription for any voice messages sent to you (they’ll also play audibly, but that was very tough to hear while riding). And then on the other side, your recipient will see a transcription of your message. Note that you can play back the messages you receive (on your Edge 1060) via headphones from your phone instead. You cannot use your headphones/helmet/glasses Bluetooth mic, though to record messages.

Now, in the video I show three different speeds (0kph – standing still, 20MPH/30KPH on gravel, and 30MPH/50KPH on roadway) with you hearing the raw/original audio from the unit. In all three cases, it was pretty understandable in the recording, though slightly harder at the highest speed (with rain) to make out every word.

Ironically, it was as I was rushing back to a conference call with the Garmin Edge team that I found this feature most useful. DesFit had texted me to remind me of the meeting as I was definitely not close to home, so I was able to send him back a voice message while riding my ass off, to say I might be 3-4 minutes late. Super handy use of it.

New Navigation & Data Page Features:

Next, there are a few new navigation tidbits that I want to briefly cover. First, is you can now see details about the route as you load the course, pulled in real-time from Garmin Connect, including hazards, traffic, closures, etc.

Then, once out on the course, it’ll show you nearby POIs (points of interest), such as cafes or toilets. You can configure your two favorite categories to show above the map page, like you see here. These will be POIs on your specific route.

If you aren’t riding a route, it’ll just show the two categories as a dedicated page (which you can disable).

Next, when it comes to routing, there’s a new ‘Free Flow’ routing option that’s designed to minimize stop-and-go type routes. This routing option looks at more than just distance and heatmap/popularity data, but also looks at Garmin Connect activity data (from billions of activities) and calculates the average cyclist speeds relative to the expected cyclist speeds over that stretch of roadway. Meaning, if the roadway has a 30KPH limit, yet cyclists’ average segement/section speeds are far below it with frequent stops, that indicates it’s likely to have lots of traffic lights or junctions that slow down cyclists. This option lets you skip those routes for more ‘clean’ routes.

Next, when it comes to structured workouts and Strava Live segments, both features have been updated to allow for collapsible sections, allowing you to remove pieces you don’t want (or minimize them):

And then for Strava Live Segments, they’ve added icons on both the map and elevation profile of the things you’re chasing (e.g. KOM). Further, and this is a biggie – they’ve now enabled Strava Live Segments on *ANY* route, regardless of source. Previously, if you had a Komoot route, for example, you couldn’t see Strava Live Segments. Now you can. Finally!

Lastly, there are alternate data fields. The idea here being if you’ve got data fields with power meter data in them, but then ride a bike without a power meter, it’ll swap out those power meter fields for something else:

Personally, I’d just use a different ride profile, but I can see how folks might find this a good alternative as well. To each their own.

General Ride Tidbits:

Now, I’ll dive into a full in-depth review here shortly, after some longer rides. The crazy southern Spain rainstorms and such you’ve undoubtedly heard/seen about in the news are finally starting to pass, and I’ve got some nice long rides planned from tomorrow. Though, I don’t expect much of concern here, since this is largely a minor update to the Edge 1050 in terms of features. Meaning, I expect things like battery and GPS to be identical to before, since the battery and GPS haven’t changed.

Nonetheless, heading out for a ride today, both split on-road and off-road on some gravel/MTB terrain (in the rain), the unit pretty much felt just like the Edge 1050 with a few new tweaks. And of course, there’s nothing wrong with that; that’s not only Garmin’s flagship device, but is widely considered the best bike computer in the market.

In terms of all the core bits there from the past, like the bike bell (by far the loudest on the market), routing and navigation (the deepest), and just general basics like sensor connectivity – it’s all just as before. Though, I will say it’s slightly annoying that when it comes to migrating your sensors over from past devices (which it of course supports), you get penalized for being on all Garmin’s latest sensors (e.g., Rally pedals and HRM-600). Those require deletion and re-pairing because of the secure Bluetooth channel. Whereas my Quarq power meter ‘just worked’. So, I stayed with the Quarq for this ride. This is an area where I continue to think Garmin has either over-engineered their secure Bluetooth choices, or over-legal-team’d it. Nobody else has these issues.

But again, all of these things worked as expected. I’ve got a longer ride tomorrow where I’ll dig into the battery burn in more depth, plus things like the Strava Live Segments with non-Strava Routes.

Wrap-Up:

If you step back for a second and look at the larger set of Garmin features across all Garmin devices, it’s interesting to see the commonality starting to set in more than ever before on these ’smart’ features. Things like voice features, messenger integration, and predictive type-ahead text, etc. I’m a touch bit surprised we didn’t see an Edge 1060 Pro inReach model or something this time around, with satellite connectivity in it. After all, Garmin’s investor goal is to increase subscription revenue. To me, that’d have made the $100 price increase a bit more palatable.

At the same time, as noted before, the prior flagship Edge 1050 didn’t see a price increase, but rather a price drop from the previous flagship Edge 1040 Solar before it (from $749 in 2022). So in many ways, this was the ‘last’ of the Garmin products to finally get a price increase – despite almost every 2026 Garmin product launch seeing prices stay constant (following 2025’s hot-mess disaster of a pricing increase bonfire). Of course, we’ve seen other companies test these higher waters in recent weeks, and it won’t be the last company this week either. Whether or not consumers buy at these prices remains to be seen.

Either way, I’ve got more testing to come on this unit and an in-depth review – so stay tuned for that, and of course, stay tuned for the Tacx Nera and the Garmin Edge Explorer 3 series. I actually think the Explorer 3 & 3 Plus units will be the hidden sweet spot for many people now, especially with the increase in features they got. Sadly, I think the naming scheme still struggles to attract the core cycling audience for whatever reason. But that’s a separate post.

With that – thanks for reading!

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Let’s get right into it, cause I’ve gotta get back outside capturing data!

Withings Adds $100/year Apple Health Fee:

I’m putting this solidly in the category of ‘Wait…what?’. In short, Withings, the maker of the original WiFi weight scale, and generally speaking one of the best bets for a mainstream weight scale, has decided that if you want to update your weight in Apple Health, it’s gonna cost you $99/year going forward. This ‘feature’ will now be rolled into their Withings+, which offers a bunch of other features that most weight scale purchasers simply don’t need.

In response to the backlash, Withings noted that:

A) This won’t apply to existing users, only new users from Oct 13th, 2026
B) That you can export your data to CSV or PDF, for free, as well as other 3rd-party sync integrations, which are free

The problem with CSV/PDF is that it’s virtually useless to end users. There is no standard ‘weight data format’. For the most part, anytime a company skips using an industry standard fitness format and instead says “Oh, we can export as CSV”, that’s a solid red flag for me. Sure, on the surface it sounds good. But in practice it’s just annoying AF.

The kicker is, Withings probably thought they were being clever here by announcing this before the holiday purchasing period, to capture new revenue there. And there’s no product in the sports tech landscape that seems more predictable in sales/discounts than Withings connected scales. Like clockwork around Black Friday, every…single…year.

Except the thing is, they screwed up and announced this annoying change too close to Black Friday. Now, it wouldn’t surprise me to see many tech sites out there that will caveat their Withings Black Friday deals. I certainly will. Which will drive users to the boatloads of even cheaper random connected scales that do nothing more than measure weight.

And as I’ve proven many times over, when it comes to basic weight measurement, even the cheapest scales on the market get it correct. Inversely, when it comes to body fat and BMI measurement, virtually no fancy scales are getting that right. Thus, if you just want weight, Withings is saying: “buy the cheaper competitor scales”.

After all, this connected scale here costs $20, has an astonishing 40,000 units per month sold on Amazon (I don’t think I’ve ever seen any electronic product that high before), and has 4.7/5.0 ratings. And of course, Apple Health integration is free (along with Google, Fitbit, etc.).

The same goes for this $34 travel weight scale that I use. It’s tiny, fits easily in the bottom of my suitcase without weighing much (~2 pounds/1kg), but still syncs to Apple Health and everything else on the planet. And the accuracy is spot-on with all the expensive scales I’ve tested.

Point being, Withings has long been the premium-priced scale with a few more bells and whistles, but moves like this will quickly alienate future buyers.

Omata is Back?

Silca has announced the acquisition of Omata and, with it, resumed sales of an updated Omata bike computer.

For those not familiar, nearly a decade ago I unboxed the Omata bike computer (photo above). It never ended up having a full review, as there was delay after delay in getting the software ready. And eventually, it fell by the wayside.

The gist of the Omata is that it’s a watch/gauge style bike commuter that simplifies things to just what you see on the display. Behind the scenes, it’s still recording extra data to review later and/or upload to Strava. Internally, it has GPS as well as Bluetooth & ANT+. So it can connect to power meters and heart rate sensors.

But in terms of what you see during the ride? Just three metrics:

– Distance
– Speed
– Ascent
– Time

It uses analog hands to do this, which are made in partnership with Seiko. Oh,  they’ve upgraded the charging to USB-C, which gets it about 17 hours of battery life.

The company says, though, that this batch is a “limited re-release” of the unit, though they don’t really say how limited that is. Unlike Withings above though, they do support industry-standard .FIT files, and can sync to various platforms/apps like most other bike computers. Note, though, that they are iOS-only, however, and don’t have an Android app.

The price is $800, which is obviously the most expensive bike computer on the market. You choose between two versions of it, seen below (Imperial and Metric):

You can head over to Silca’s site to enter your credit card.

While I think it looks really pretty on a shelf with other bike-themed things, it’s just not super practical out on the road for me. I want details like power and other metrics. But of course, there are plenty of people who prefer a more ‘minimalist’ experience – yet still want at least the core/basic metrics seen above.

—

With that – thanks for reading!

Suunto has just announced the new Suunto Race 3S, a small-form-factor watch that believes it needs a big-form-factor price increase. On top of that, Suunto has also launched a new subscription service, Suunto AI Coach, where new Suunto App features are being funneled into. I’ve been using the Suunto Race 3S over the last few weeks, and in this review I’ll dive into how it all works, and whether Suunto can justify the price.

The new Suunto Race 3S includes a brighter display, more storage, and some software feature updates that the existing Race S didn’t get this past summer. This isn’t really a major change from the previous model, but nonetheless these updates are appreciated. It also features upgraded materials, shifting from a stainless steel bezel to a titanium bezel.

In any case, I’ve been putting it through its paces over the last little bit, across all sorts of activities to see how it holds up, and how it compares to other newly announced watches from the last few weeks.

With that, let’s dive right into it!

What’s New:

Now, as you probably know, the Suunto Race 3S is an upgrade to the existing Suunto Race S. There was no Suunto Race 2S, and equally confusingly, there is no larger Suunto Race 3 companion at this point. When I asked about the Suunto Race 3 elephant in the room, Suunto simply said a variant of ‘No comment’. Thus, that elephant will stay with us for now, joining other elephants I’ll talk about later.

Of course, when you look at changes vs. the original Suunto Race S, that watch continued to get meaningful firmware updates until this past April. So I’ll ignore all of those things and focus on the new stuff otherwise (software and hardware).

Starting off with the hardware changes:

– Upgraded peak display brightness from 1,000 nits to 2,000 nits
– Upgraded lens cover material from Gorilla Glass to Sapphire Crystal glass
– Updated bezel material from stainless steel to titanium
– Upgraded optical heart rate sensor
– Faster processor (Apollo 510)
– Increased GPS time from 30 hours to 38 hours (dual-frequency), 45 hours (single-frequency)
– Increased smartwatch daily battery life from 9 days to 12 days
– Increased internal storage from 32GB to 64GB
– Added support for offline music playback (MP3 files, no streaming services)
– Increased number of SuuntoPlus apps in a single profile from 2 to 3
– Slightly increased official case size from 45mm to 46mm
– Decreased weight from 60g to 56g
– Increased retail price from $349USD to $599USD (and 349EUR to 499EUR)

Do note that while you might see NFC listed on some spec sheets, that’s only applicable for the China market. There’s no contactless payment integration elsewhere. Unfortunately, like the music streaming services piece, those industry gates closed a decade ago.

Then there are a few new software features, mainly ones that rolled out on the Suunto Race 2 this past summer:

– Added Tide Widget
– Expanded map labels (road names, water, mountain peaks)
– Added Ascent as an exercise target

Finally, Suunto has noted that there’s a new ‘Race Planner’ feature coming later this year to the Suunto Race 3S, though it’s not there at launch. Here’s a quick blurb on that:

This sounds super interesting, and so I’m keen to see how this works. Especially the pieces looking at weather. For example, does that also look at your historical training weather (e.g., if you train in cold temps, but then arrive at a hot-temp race day). And, best of all, it doesn’t require Suunto AI Coach.

Finally, when it comes to model colors, here are those three options – purple, white, and black:

With that, let’s get into the box.

In the box:

This section is pretty straightforward. Above is the Suunto Race 3S box, following the same design as other recent Suunto watches.

Below are the contents of said box:

You’ve got the band/strap, the pod (separated from the band), the braided charging cable, and some paper stuff.

The charging cable follows other recent Suunto models, and is magnetic and much better than the one that came with the original Suunto S model, which I found would often become misaligned.

In any case, you simply embark on a 10-15-second IKEA assembly project to attach the standard band straps to the watch pod, and you’re off and running.

The Basics:

In this section, I’m going to look at some of the basics of the watch, including daily usage such as activity tracking, sleep, etc. As well as pieces like responsiveness and general usability.

The Suunto Race 3S has a three-button layout, as well as a touchscreen. You can mostly use either touch or buttons for navigating around the user interface. The upper right button accesses the sport menu, the middle Digital Crown allows access to pinned widgets during smartwatch use (and of course scrolls up/down), and the bottom button acts as a back/escape button.

The left side has no buttons. Meanwhile, the touchscreen is a 2,000-nit display that’s perfectly viewable in both bright sunny conditions or shade conditions. I live on a Mediterranean island, and I’ve had no issues viewing the display in any scenarios out on the trails. Oh, for fun, here are three watches side-by-side: Suunto Race S, Suunto Race 2, and Suunto Race 3S

That said, it can’t be left unstated that virtually all watches released in 2026 are using 3,000-nit panels. The COROS Pace 4 Pro released a few weeks ago is using a 3,500-nit display (which is also larger), and atop that, the more-capable watch is $150 cheaper. To be super clear here, I have no issue with seeing the display at all. Period, hard-stop. However, we can’t ignore the fact that Suunto is putting in kinda old tech but with over-the-top premium prices. To me, the ‘savings’ on this display panel should be reflected in the price. It’s clearly not.

The only minor ‘nit’-picking I’d have with the display is that their power-saving algorithms seem a little bit aggressive at times, quickly dimming the panel within a few seconds of wrist-raise. Again, the display is still visible, but this could use a bit of work.

Speaking of brightness, note that for whatever weird reason, there’s no physical LED flashlight like there is in the Suunto Vertical 2 watch (which is priced the same at $599). You still have a screen-based flashlight, but obviously that’s not the same.

Perhaps given Suunto’s lawsuit with Garmin concerning the topic, they got a bit skittish. Either way, it’s a bit of a bummer.

In any case, scrolling down into the widgets, you’ve got a customizable set of quick-access data bits. I will note that if you watch the video, you’ll see it’s more laggy here than the older Suunto Race S – despite the claims of a faster processor. This is such a good example of why processor specs mean absolutely nothing in most devices. You can have the fastest processor in the world, but if the firmware/operating system isn’t optimized for it, it’ll still be slower than an optimized processor. Again, check out the above video for that.

As for those widgets, they all work just as before. Aside from the new Tides one, there’s nothing new here. You can tap into any given smaller widget in this list to open up details about that topic, such as steps, sleep, weather, etc.

When it comes to things like sleep tracking, the times I went to sleep and woke up have largely been correct here, usually matching the other wearables within a few minutes. The same goes for the HRV status values. I don’t compare sleep phases/stages, because doing so is peak faux-science. The best-case reference devices you can use to do so are only about 80% accurate, which isn’t all that great (and again, that’s a best-case scenario in perfect lab conditions). Thus, we’d never compare a heart rate sensor to a chest strap that was wrong 20% of the time. Therefore, I’m not gonna do it here either.

Meanwhile, most of the data around heart rate-driven metrics comes from the new optical heart rate sensor seen on the bottom. As I’ll show you within the accuracy section, this heart rate sensor is a huge jump up over the previous Suunto Race S sensor, which wasn’t super awesome.

Speaking of other internal-ish things, the unit now has 64GB of internal storage, which is ostensibly mostly for offline music (yes, it’s also for maps, but Suunto’s maps are so well optimized that you simply don’t need anywhere near that much storage…more on that in the next section).

Now, with Suunto’s offline music playback, it requires you to transfer MP3 files via USB cable to the device. There are no offline streaming services (e.g., Spotify/etc), and that’s simply not going to happen anytime soon. Those industry gates closed nearly a decade ago now, and the only way Suunto would gain access to them is by going back to WearOS. Nonetheless, if you’re one of 12 people who are still transferring your owned/“borrowed” MP3 files to your watch via cable, you can do that here. You’ll pair up any Bluetooth audio device (e.g., headphones) to the watch, and off you go. It all worked pretty easily for me, and you can also load in playlists as well.

Finally, when it comes to smartphone notifications, you’ll get the basic text and emoji from your phone.

Ok, with all that sorted, let’s get into the sports bits.

Sports Usage & Mapping:

Next up, we’ve got all things sports, including mapping and navigation.

To access a sport mode, you’ll tap the upper right button, which opens up the workout panel. Here it’ll automatically open your last sport mode, and start searching for GPS (if outside), as well as get heart rate lock. Further, if you’ve got paired sensors (like cycling sensors or an external heart rate sensor), it’ll pair to those too.

You can change the sport mode to one of a boatload of other sport modes in the list:

Back on that main page though, you can select to load a course (within Navigation), as well as select/load SuuntoPlus apps. The Suunto Race 3S supports up to three concurrent enabled SuuntoPlus apps within a given sport profile (you can have additional apps loaded but not enabled). In addition, you can also load up ‘Guides’, which would include things like structured workouts. However, you can only load two apps + one concurrent guide, if using guides.

Finally, there are also the exercise options, where you can tweak various display, map, and other target settings. For example, the Suunto Race 3S added the ability to set an Ascent target (similar to how you might set a calorie or distance target). This came in a firmware update for other newer Suunto watches this summer, but the existing Suunto Race S was skipped.

In any case, circling back, I’m gonna add a course to navigate for my trail run. So I’ll select that back in the Navigation/Routes area:

In terms of maps, the Suunto Race 3S doesn’t have any maps pre-loaded, though they are easily downloadable via WiFi from Suunto. You simply go into the app and choose the regions you want. Here are some random sizes to get a feel for things:

Since I’m here, one thing I really wish Suunto would sort out is their app to watch syncing/configuration situation. For years it’s been that as soon as the watch thinks you want to tweak something, it starts syncing, which in turn prohibits you from actually tweaking the thing until it’s done, taking forever to do that. It’s just very 1990s-modal style. I can’t think of a single other wearable device that still has that restriction left. And more critically, there’s no way to cancel the app from syncing once it starts. That’d at least half-way solve it.

It’s in this area of the app that you’d modify things like the data fields/pages of your sport modes, add new SuuntoPlus apps, create interval workouts, and more. Of course, like in the past, you still can’t modify default sports profiles; you have to create a new custom one if you want to tweak something. And it needs to sync a bunch back and forth too. These are the types of actual useful things I wished Suunto would focus on, rather than adding offline MP3 music support that virtually nobody will use.

With that all sorted, synced, and re-synced, we’re ready to start our workout. Off I go for a run. While running, I’ll of course see my data pages as configured:

From a navigation standpoint, I’ll get a little chirp and then an on-screen notification when a turn comes up. And then if I miss a turn, I’ll get a notification about that too, such as this:

Otherwise, the route shows as expected, and in terms of the responsiveness of the map, it’s a double-edged sword. For rotation, things were instant, and I didn’t experience any black square tiles. You can see this in the video.

But for zooming in/out, there was always at least a second or two of black square tiles. Ironically, a runner friend was with me as I was sitting there filming this, and not being familiar with Suunto watches, he was a bit surprised and asked “Is that normal?”

And ultimately, different companies handle things in different ways. For Garmin, when it slow-map renders, it has a fuzzy look or other color-matching tiles (or shows a tile at a higher zoom level first, before enumerating the detailed tile). Most other companies do the same. But in Suunto’s case, they’re just showing black tiles, which looks a bit sloppy.

Even more so, because I’d also notice these tiles as I run, if I had the map screen just open. Meaning, visible at a glance on my wrist even when not fully raised. Again, we can have an academic debate on slow-map-loading differences (more detail vs less detail, etc.), but I think we can all agree that the black tiles just look rough.

In any case, you’ll also be able to see your progress on the elevation and climbs, both for the full course, and then specific climbs as you trip them:

All of this worked perfectly fine. After the workout, you’ll get a summary of your workout as expected on the watch:

And then likewise you’ll see the additional detail within the Suunto App:

Assuming you have your account connected to one of Suunto’s boatload of partners (e.g., Strava, TrainingPeaks, etc.), it’ll automatically push that data off to those platforms. Again, all of that worked without issue for me.

So then, let’s talk about the accuracy of that data.

Accuracy of Heart Rate & GPS:

The new Suunto Race 3S has a new optical heart rate sensor compared to the existing Suunto Race S. Suunto says this new sensor has six LEDs and four photodetectors behind 2.5D curved sensor glass. No matter what it has behind it, I’ll just state things up front: It’s really darn good in my testing.

I’ll also cover the GNSS/GPS side of things, as well as battery and elevation bits down below. But the GNSS piece hasn’t changed here, so we’ll keep that efficient.

Let’s start off with this slightly hilly run I did. It started off with a long and occasionally steep descent, before some flats, and then going all the way back up again. As a reminder, hills (going down), can often be challenging for optical HR sensors. Still, the Suunto nailed it here. I’ve got zero complaints.

Next, we’ve got a 90-minute long trail run across plenty of varied terrain (steep stuff, shallow stuff, rocking spicy stuff, etc.). And again, overall very good.

About the only thing I could nitpick here is this section for about 20 seconds, where it’s off by about 3-5bpm. That’s nothing in a 98-minute long workout. Again, really good job here.

Here’s another trail run from yesterday. Setting aside whatever happened with the chest strap at the 28-minute marker for a few seconds, things here were quite good as well. Again, there’s virtually nothing to be upset about, and this also included some steep ups/downs.

Next, just for fun, check out this shorter morning gravel ride thing I did a few days ago. I was taking photos and such on this ride of a few different devices. So lots of stop-and-go. Lots of pretty spicy typical Mallorca gravel chunk (most would call it MTB material). And yet, it absolutely nails this. Like, really solid job while cycling.

Now, I’m going to continue to test this sensor, but switch over to the new Suunto Run 2 sensor over the coming weeks, so stay tuned for that. I don’t expect a difference though. Either way, this represents a major improvement for Suunto over past sensors.

Meanwhile, on the GPS side, let’s quickly run through some of these. Here’s that city run from a few nights ago. At a high level, obviously all look pretty good.

Meanwhile, in the actual city/downtown parts with tall buildings, none of the units did amazing. None were bad, but across the board (Garmin, Suunto, Apple), all of them were ‘blah’ accuracy-wise. I’m not quite sure why.

You can see this here as well. Again, nothing was crazy-bad, but all four units took turns crashing through buildings slightly, cutting corners, and generally acting like the drunk tourists that fill this area.

That said, as soon as I left the buildings behind, it was perfectly fine on the rest of the run:

Moving along, looking at yesterday’s trail run, which includes cliffs, ravines, trees, etc., things at a high level look good:

I could quibble about each unit being a few meters offset at different parts of the route. Here the Fenix 9 Pro briefly goes across the road, then the COROS and Suunto do the same some 20 seconds later.

Still, we’re talking less than a 5-meter difference in most cases, such as this here:

Or going around this gate for cars. The Garmin & Suunto were most correct here; the COROS went a bit more lazily around it.

Anyway, this is the pattern over and over again – basically all these units were spot on across runs, rides, etc. I’ve got some actual swim tests to do this weekend (I’ve spent a bunch of time in the water swimming with it, but wasn’t doing accuracy testing).

As for looking at the elevation, no major concerns on any of my activities. Here’s that 90-minute trail run:

This is the one I showed the other day in the Garmin MARQ Gen3 review, where for some reason both Garmin units started sliding downwards while I stood and took some photos (27min marker). Garmin’s already digging into it, as it’s likely firmware-related if two different units do it. I will say there’s a little bit of separation early on in the above that seems a bit odd between the Suunto/COROS and the Apple/Garmin watches. Though those all eventually bundled back up together again.

As for the battery bits, here’s the official battery chart:

Looking at my battery life in always-on display, with roughly 60-90mins of GPS time per day, I’m closer to about 5ish days, maybe a touch bit more, but a little shy of the 7-day above (which is spec’d as 60mins per day, versus my times a bit higher). Also, my routes had navigation enabled, which would draw more battery.

Speaking of which, looking at that 98-minute trail run, you can see it burned about 5%, putting me on a 28-hour battery estimate in dual-frequency/multiband mode. This is a touch bit lower than the always-on specs above, but again remember I did have navigation enabled, which draws more battery.

Also, kudos to Suunto for including battery data in their .FIT files (Garmin, Wahoo, and others do so, though unfortunately COROS does not).

In any case, in terms of all my accuracy bits, I’m good across the board here; I’ve got no concerns in any category. Again, for the heart rate sensor side, this is a big upgrade.

Suunto AI Coach Subscription:

Next, Suunto has announced a new Suunto AI Coach subscription feature, which let’s you use your current and historical Suunto data to get race planning information and tons more. This feature is launching on/with the Suunto Race 3S, though it is expected to go to other watch user bases. It’s currently fully on the app itself, as there’s no on-device component.

Suunto has a pretty good 10-minute video that explains the boatload of features that exist there.

My one (kinda big) quibble here is that Suunto Race 3S users get 3 months free to the service, yet Suunto hasn’t defined what said service will actually cost once that free trial ends. And somehow that rubs me the wrong way. Perhaps it’s because my inbox is filled with AI vibe-coded slop apps that often attempt to hook you into the platform before eventually charging you down the road. In this case, Suunto is clear they’ll be charging you eventually, but aren’t saying what that is. Thus, once you get hooked on it, you’ll feel compelled to start paying for it.

Now mind you, what Suunto is offering certainly seems a heck of a lot more compelling than what Amazfit, Garmin, and others are doing. It doesn’t seem as deep as what Fitbit/Google are doing, but again, we don’t know Suunto’s pricing yet. Suunto says that part of the reason they haven’t decided pricing is because they want to see what people actually use, and get feedback. Which is fair enough, but still seems like something they could have done before they launched it.

Now, despite my annoyance with Suunto’s AI Coach rollout, I will give them all the credit in the world that they’ve also announced a new Suunto MCP that’ll be free for all Suunto users. This joins COROS in offering such a thing for free. I have a feeling we’re going to see similar announcements in the near future from others. Note that in the case of Suunto’s MCP, the details are thin at this point, other than it’ll be free, and it’ll exist. Still, I take both of those for the moment.

Wrap-Up:

Suunto has had a string of solid product launches over the last couple of years, paired with frequent and meaningful firmware/feature updates on the app side. And good expansion on the developer side. They’ve been on a roll across the board. But I struggle to put the Suunto Race 3S in that category of wins. This watch feels…off.

To begin, the biggest issue is the price. At $599USD/499EUR, it’s more than a 70% USD price increase over the launch price of the Suunto Race S just two years ago. And it’s not like they’ve drastically changed the hardware. Sure, it has a brighter 2,000-nit display panel, but that panel is what other companies were putting in their watches two years ago, not the 3,000-3,500-nit panels that companies are putting in watches in 2026. Further, while they increased the storage from 32GB to 64GB, it doesn’t really serve any meaningful purpose. Suunto’s maps are tiny in size, and easily fit within even just 16GB of space. And while in theory the extra space is for music playback, the reality is virtually nobody is downloading MP3s to their watches in 2026 (since Suunto doesn’t support offline music from any streaming service). Plus, where are the other hardware features that other companies are putting in their watches for half the price (e.g., flashlights, voice, microphone & proper speaker, etc.)?

After a string of wins, I think Suunto missed the boat on this one. It feels both overpriced, and kinda seems like it’s just a collection of leftover hardware parts, rather than representing the start of a new Race 3 series generation of watches. Perhaps if it was priced at $399 or at most $449, I’d feel differently. But with the just-released COROS Pace 4 Pro being at $449, that’s a very tough spot for Suunto to be competing in with the specs they have in the Race 3S.

With that, thanks for reading.

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