COROS NOMAD In-Depth Review: Copycat or Champion?

It’d be easy to look at the new COROS NOMAD and mistake it for a Garmin Instinct. Because visually…ummm…it’s darn near identical – down to the metal ring enforcement around the plastic bezel. But that’d be overlooking the fact that the Garmin Instinct series itself leans heavily on Casio design/styling, especially in its first iterations. These days it has a bit more unique styling of its own, but still, Garmin itself back then begrudgingly admitted inspiration from Casio.

But here’s the thing: While the COROS NOMAD might look like a Garmin Instinct, it’s a classic case of COROS going above and beyond. Priced at $349, it’s $50-$150 cheaper than the newest Garmin Instinct 3 (depending on models). Except, unlike Garmin, this unit has full blown color maps (Instinct has none). And voice notes (with geotagging and display post-activity), and music playback. And a slate of new fishing modes complete with all assortment of fish tracking. Garmin has nothing approaching this on the Instinct.

However, there’s counterpoints to everything. At the hardware end, the Garmin Instinct series has a built-in LED flashlight, and different size options, and the solar panel for far longer battery life. And when it comes to software, Garmin has the vast Connect IQ 3rd party app ecosystem, as well as a lot more nuance to the sports and health metrics. Point being, as always, the devil’s in the details. And that’s what this review is all about – details.

What’s New/Different:

Now, while this watch is a new product line for COROS, in many ways it’s best to compare it to the COROS Pace. Or, alternatively, you could think of it as a MIP-based counterpoint to the COROS Pace Pro (which is an AMOLED screen), after all, it’s the same price as the COROS Pace Pro. Alternatively, you could think of it as a renamed and lower-priced COROS APEX 2, and that’d be accurate too.

But, to keep things simple, I’m going to compare it to the COROS Pace (the company’s least expensive watch at $229). The reason I’m doing that is that the battery life for the COROS Pace is really good, and I think the starting point market overlap is pretty similar there. Also, it makes it easier to see how things differ:

So, in relation to the COROS Pace, this watch has:

– Added mineral glass display (vs plastic)
– Added aluminum enforcement within plastic bezel
– Added new brighter/more contrast 1.3” MIP based touch display (260x260px)
– Added full offline maps (32GB storage)
– Added new ‘Action’ button (customizable extra button)
– Added dual-microphone with voice pins/notes feature (first COROS watch with a microphone)
– Added new weather widget with saved locations
– Added street names with the offline maps
– Added POI database to offline maps
– Added separation of roads & trails to offline maps
– Added ‘Record a pin’ geo-tagged voice notes feature
– Added slate of fishing modes: Fly, Lure, Boat, Shore, Offshore, Inshore, Kayak, Boat Fly Fishing, Shore Fly Fishing
– Added fishing log features: Catch log, best fishing time, POI marking, location lock, movement detection
– Added environmental data to fishing activity profiles: tides, sun/moon, temp, forecasts
– Added some depth information to maps (super-duper limited though)
– [App] Added ability to save photos/videos to completed activities
– [App] Added ability to see completed activities in 3D view
– [App] Added ability to share a private link to completed activities (with photos/videos)
– Has WiFi, Bluetooth, and Bluetooth sensor support (no ANT+ sensor support)
– Water Resistance rating of 5ATM/50 meters
– Battery life claim is 22 days of regular use, 50 hours all systems GPS, and 34 hours dual-frequency GPS
– Weight: 61g with silicone band, 49g with nylon band
– Price is $349USD, 369EUR, 319GBP (the rest of the currencies are just down below)

When it comes to the color options, there are three color SKU’s for the NOMAD:

In this review, you’ll mostly see the ‘green’ variant, though I also have a second unit that’s a blend of the brown watch with the green bands. You’ll see a handful of those shots from testing in July. But they ultimately decided to go with the single-color cohesion as the stock options.

When it comes to pricing, here are those details for all the other currencies:

With that, let’s get into the daily usage of the watch first.

The Basics:

So, let’s start with the basics here, mostly the daily usage bits, before we dive into the sports pieces (and separate sections for navigation). To begin, the watch has three physical buttons (one of which is the Digital Crown/Dial). That’s notable, as it now includes a so-called ‘Action Button’ on the left side (that’s the same naming that Apple uses for their added left-side button). This button is customizable, albeit as I’ll cover later, you have to do it on a per-sports profile basis. Long-term, that’s great, but short-term it’s pretty cumbersome.

In addition, the screen is a 1.3” touchscreen, which you can use for swiping through screens or confirming selections. The screen is a MIP-based display, which means that it tends to get longer battery life than AMOLED displays, though, as we’ve seen with competitors like the Suunto Race, they can achieve near identical GPS battery life to MIP-based displays like the NOMAD. The key difference though is when you get into the always-on configuration of AMOLED, you quickly burn battery.

In any event, for the COROS NOMAD, the screen is brighter and more contrasty than previous COROS MIP displays. Here it is side-by-side with the COROS APEX 2 Pro display:

Meanwhile, on the back we’ve got the same optical heart rate sensor as seen in other COROS watches released over the last year or so. As I’ll show you in the accuracy section, it’s mostly fine, but not industry leading.

So, flipping things back over, you’ve got the watch face. Here’s the stock/default watch face, which you can alternate the data along the bottom by pressing the lower right button:

Of course, COROS also has a boatload more watch faces you can install via their app, all of which are free. You can further create your own via photos/pictures. COROS definitely beats many of their competitors in the watch face variety department, and it’s nice to see them constantly adding watch faces.

Next up, from there you’ll swipe down into the widgets. These widgets are customizable, and show snippets from a more detailed tappable/clickable widget. So you can see for example my daily activity on this one, and then I can tap into it to see more details about the day/week:

Same goes for other widgets as well:

All of this data is of course backstopped with all your data syncing to the COROS app, where you can see the same data there, but with more details around reporting/etc:

When it comes to areas like sleep, I’ve had no issues with the accuracy of the sleep data in terms of the times I went to sleep and woke up matching reality.

As I’ve noted previously, I don’t grade/rate sleep stage/phase accuracy, since the comparative technology to do so is only about 80% accurate, which is hardly a great comparison bar (it’s actually pretty crap, in terms of using for accuracy comparison). But, for the pieces I care about, it’s been spot-on.

Likewise, for HRV, those values have matched Whoop, Garmin, and Oura for all the nights.

Generally speaking, HRV can be useful for looking at whether or not your body is handling the stressors placed upon it. This can include seeing HRV values plummet from training fatigue, sickness, travel-inducing jetlag, alcohol, and more. I find it a pretty good indicator of upcoming sickness, when my HRV values drop from their normal levels (everyone has their own baseline) to substantially lower levels (e.g. mid-50’s to 30’s).

Ultimately, though, most people (all people?) are buying a COROS watch for sports usage, so let’s dig into that.

Sports Usage & Features:

When it comes to the sports side of things, for existing COROS users, you won’t find much different here (there is differences in navigation though, and of course fishing in later sections). Nonetheless, I’ll dig into how things work, in case your new to COROS watches.

To start a sport, you’ll tap the upper right button. Here you can select the sport profile/activity profile you want:

COROS has a boatload of sports profiles, here’s all the current ones in the COROS NOMAD (keeping in mind COROS tends to add more profiles over time with subsequent firmware updates):

Run, Indoor Run, Trail Run, Track Run, Hike, Walk, Outdoor Climb, Man Climb, Indoor Climb, Bouldering, Road Bike, Mountain Bike, Gravel Bike, Indoor Bike, Pool Swim, Open Water, Speedsurfing, Windsurfing, Rowing, Indoor Rower, Whitewater, Flatware, Boat Fishing, Inshore Fishing, Offshore Fishing, Kayak Fishing, Boat Fly Fishing, Shore Fishing, Shore Fly Fishing, Triathlon, Strength, Jump Rope, Floor Climb, Elliptical, Yoga, Pilates, Boxing, Dairy Cow Tipping, GPS Cardio, Gym Cardio, Badminton, Table Tennis, Tennis, Basketball, Soccer, Ski, Snowboard, XC Ski, Ski Touring, Frisbee, Skateboard, Custom Activity

Once you’ve selected a sports profile, it’ll begin searching for GPS (if an outside activity), and you can toggle a few basic settings here while also enabling navigation:

However, the bulk of configuration will occur from the COROS smartphone app, in terms of changing data fields/pages, and other settings. Here, you can add up to 8 data fields per page, and choose from a slew of different arrangements.

In fact, you can also customize your button settings as well as activity alert settings in there too. Again, all of this is on a per-sport profile basis (e.g. one for running, one for trail running, etc…)

Now, before we start a workout, I’ll mention that if doing a sport with sensors (e.g. cycling), you’ll do sensor pairing within the sensors menu under system. The NOMAD supports Bluetooth sensors, including Bluetooth heart rate sensors, cycling power meters, cycling speed/cadence sensors, running footpods, smart trainers, action cams like those from Insta360 & DJI, and a number of other accessory types.

It does not support ANT+ sensors, though most ANT+ sensors are also dual ANT+/Bluetooth Smart these days, so it’s not too much of an issue for most people/scenarios.

Likewise, nearby this settings area, you can also enable heart rate broadcasting, which will broadcast your heart rate over Bluetooth to other apps/devices. For example, if you’ve got a Peloton bike or Zwift, or some other app where you want heart rate pulled in, you can do so here.

With all that settled, back to the sport menu with GPS acquired, to start the activity;

At this point you’ll see your workout details based on how you’ve configured the data pages. This part is pretty straightforward:

Once you’ve wrapped up your workout, you can tap to end/save it, and will get a summary gallery of details from the workout. Here’s those:

And then likewise, you’ll see all of these details on the COROS app afterwards:

If you’ve got the COROS app linked up to 3rd party platforms like Strava, TrainingPeaks, and more, it’ll automatically sync over to those platforms, usually within a few seconds.

Now, what’s cool is that COROS has a new ‘journaling’ option, which lets you add photos and videos to these activities, and then share a public URL (you’ll also notice there’s new 3D maps option, including making a little downloadable video). Further, it’ll automatically show you the photos/videos from the time of your activity, and on the 3D Flyover video, you can add music automatically too. It’s pretty cool.

Now, when it comes to training load and recovery metrics, COROS does have a few here. While the company touted a change to the 7-day training load to finally show it in 7-day trailing (versus resetting every Monday), in reality, it still resets every Monday, as evidenced just yesterday. At left, Sunday evening’s value, and at right, Monday morning’s value.

COROS says that they changed the Training Status to now be 7-days trailing, but that only shows the total current load in the app, not the watch, and still resets the darn thing every Monday morning for Training Load. Sigh, c’mon COROS. Suunto changed this last month to adopt the industry norm of a trailing 7-day load. There’s zero scientific or logical reason to reset your 7-day load each Monday morning.

[Update – a few hours before launch: COROS has just sent an e-mail saying they’re going to make changes to match the proper 7-day rolling training load. It won’t be there at launch, but will follow shortly. Good to hear!]

You’ll see metrics like Running Fitness & Race Predictor, which attempts to estimate your race paces/times.

Though I find it pretty consistently underestimates them. For example, let’s look at the 5K estimation above (20:53). Yesterday, during my 10KM run, I did the back half 5KM in 21:45, at an easyish pace with an average HR of 159bpm.

This sort of half-hearted estimation is consistent with all of my past COROS experiences, in that it doesn’t seem to predict anything physio-wise well. Likely, because it’s estimating far too low of a VO2Max, at a mere 51 (mine is closer to 57-58 right now).

Finally, it’s got both Training Status & Recovery metrics, which, are roughly inline with reality.

With that, let’s sidestep into the new voice pins feature, and then go a bit further into navigation/mapping.

The Voice Pins/Notes:

When I first read of this feature, I was mostly ready to crap on on it, due to uselessness, but in reality, it’s actually implemented far better than I expected. Albeit, I’m still not entirely sure how often people will use this. And furthermore, I feel like the entire microphone thing is kinda missing its counterpoint: A speaker (the watch has a beeper, but not a speaker). And there’s plenty of quirky limitations besides that.

With the COROS NOMAD, the company has added a dual-microphone setup, which will capture your voice notes. It doesn’t perform any other typical microphone functions like using it for a phone call, voice assistants, etc… (which is how most other watches utilize it). Instead, the idea is that you can create little geo-tagged voice pins/memos and then see them on a map of your activity later on.

To access this feature you’ll need to have GPS. Somehow oddly (unlike everyone else), you can’t just create a voice note whenever you want. So, to do so, you’ll want to either be in a GPS activity, or, you can go to the controls area (long-hold lower right > Pin > Add Current Location > Voice Pin).

When you do so, it’ll find GPS (if not already in a GPS activity), and then start to record the voice note:

At the completion of which, you can end the voice note. The same applies during a workout, where it just starts recording as soon as you dive into that menu. But again, it’s pretty darn cumbersome to get into that menu.

Now, that said, you can customize the ‘Action Button’ to trigger the ‘Add a Pin’ feature. Which, for better or worse, you’ll do on a per sport/activity profile basis (within app: NOMAD > Activity Settings > [Sport name] > Button Settings > Action Button > Add a Pin).

That’ll then bring up that same menu on pin adding, more directly. I do appreciate the customization options of the Action Button here, but at the same time, I wish I could also configure it globally first, and then change that configuration on a per sport profile basis. In other words, I appreciate the extra customization, but they totally put the cart before the horse here on getting the basics right.

In any event, once you’ve got your geo-tagged voice pins, you can see them within the COROS app, on the map:

From there you can play them back from your phone (you cannot play them back on the watch, because there’s no speaker). Voice-quality-wise, it’s so-so at best. Like most watch microphones. But, it gets the job done for recording a quick thing you want to remember.

Even cooler is that it transcribes the voice notes, and was virtually spot-on. This is a super nice touch! And atop that, it seems to summarize the entire note for the title automatically, and these titles seem pretty good too.

Now, as I said at the beginning, I was ready to crap on this feature, but they did get the geotagging part right. More specifically, a year later, and Garmin’s Voice Notes feature still doesn’t allow you to access/playback those voice notes from anywhere within the Garmin Connect app. So they’re just in a useless pile on your watch, without any real organization, or transcribing. Thus, at least COROS’s are in a more useful pile on your phone that you can access more easily (though, I wish it would bubble them all into a single screen, regardless of workout).

Still, I remain skeptical on how many people will leverage either solution from either company. In Garmin’s case, it’s too limited to be useful. And in COROS’s case, it’s limited in that you must have GPS (so isn’t useful for non-GPS activities, or daily life). Maybe the two companies can just borrow the other half of each other’s solutions, and it’d be perfect.

Mapping & Navigation:

The COROS NOMAD follows most of the existing mapping and navigation playbook that other recent COROS watches have, assuming they have offline maps. However, it also includes three newish mapping features: added Street names/labels, added POI’s, and added separation of roads/trails. Both of these are being rolled out to other COROS watches as part of firmware updates this summer. But nonetheless, they are welcome additions.

Now, before we get too far, note that there are basically a few levels of mapping & navigation when it comes to watches. At a very basic/distilled level, you’ve got:

Level 1: Watch can follow a route, but doesn’t have any offline maps, thus breadcrumb style (this is the COROS Pace)
Level 2: Watch can follow a route, and has offline maps, and maybe has POI/labels/etc… (this is the COROS NOMAD, COROS Pace Pro, etc…)
Level 3: Watch can follow a route, has offline maps, but can also re-route on the fly, fully offline (no watches except Garmin have this)

That last category also encompasses things like full route creation offline, etc… In 99% of the cases, this won’t matter much. The number of times I use on-device re-routing per year tends to number in the 0 to 1 times range. Level 2 is mostly where it’s at, and more specifically, COROS adding in POI labels, street names/labels, etc… is really the main thing that helps.

In any event, when it comes to those topographic maps, you’ll need WiFi to download them, and you simply tappity-tap the countries that you want within the COROS app. I do appreciate that COROS has nice small chunks to quickly download, especially over a cellphone WiFi hotspot. At the same time, I also kinda like the Suunto approach of letting me download larger country chunks. I wish there was more flexibility here.

In any case, once the maps are downloaded, you’re good to go on that front.

From there, it comes down to creating a route in the platform of your choice. That could be Strava, Komoot, or the COROS app itself. With Strava & Komoot, there can be some slight delays on syncing it to the COROS app, you may need to refresh it a few times to get it downloaded to the app. Once that’s done, then you can push it to your watch (manually).

This is the singular area I really wish COROS (and Suunto) would improve. In the case of Garmin, any route that I flag as a favorite on Strava/Komoot is automatically synced to the watch. I don’t have to manually do anything again. But with COROS/Suunto, you’ve got to both manually do it, and keep the number of synced routes below a pretty small threshold of a dozen or so routes. It’s just clunky (and unnecessarily clunky, given the 32GB of storage, and route files are stunningly tiny, at 20KB to 200KB usually).

Nonetheless, with the route synced, over on your watch, you’ll open up the activity type you want to do (e.g. Hiking), and then you’ll see the navigation option. Simply select the route you want:

You can then see some details about it, and do the route in reverse if you want to. You can also toggle on/off turn-by-turn alerts, as well as off-course warnings (Deviate Alerts).

Once that’s all set, off you go. You’ll then see your route atop the offline map page, which you can zoom in/out. The COROS map speed is really really good here, easily best in class when it comes to enumeration of the map page (of course, keep in mind they have far less data than Garmin on said map in terms of heatmap/etc data, which of course contributes to that slowness). Still, the COROS render speed is great:

You’ll see your route outline on the map page, and then as you approach a turn, you’ll see/get notifications about that as well. If you go off the route, you’ll get an alert about that. But as noted above, there’s no re-routing onto other trails/etc. It simply tells you which direction (compass-wise) to go to get back on-course.

Now, if you’re doing a climb, you’ll see the elevation map, but you won’t see any sort of ClimbPro-like pages (something COROS has on their COROS Dura bike computer, but surprisingly hasn’t put on their wearables yet). If you do a lot of mountain routes with big climbs, this is a significant gap to their competitors (mainly Suunto at this price-point, though Garmin has it on older devices that are now at this price point).

(Due to the stupid-steepness of the climb these might look similar at first glance, but the COROS is telling me total elevation gain on my *entire route* left, whereas the Garmin at right is telling me I have 4.58km to the top of the climb, 1009m to the top of the climb, ascending at 1,050m/hour, and an average gradient of 22%. Also, that it’s the 1st of 6 climbs.)

In any event, as for navigation, I had no issues with that on my hikes & trail runs. This included a pile of routes in the Alps (including a 7-hour triangulaor route up to a glacier), and a few more. Ultimately, it got me where I wanted to go just fine.

And that all gets back to the reality that while the COROS NOMAD has some quirks around syncing routes and such, it ultimately has offline topographic maps. Something that the more expensive Garmin Instinct 3 lacks. As I said when the Instinct 3 launched, it seemed bizarre to lack maps when all of their sub-$500 competitors had it, and the COROS NOMAD only doubles-down on that.

Got Fish?

COROS has a quirky little history of finding a sport niche, and leaning into it. And more specifically, leaning into a niche that they honestly have no history in being in. Take for example rock climbing – back a few years ago COROS decided they wanted to go deep on climbing features. That included both the watch software features, their marketing campaigns, even their CEO getting into rock climbing. Oh, and it included selling mugs with a severed finger imprinted on it.

Now it’s hard to tell whether or not COROS had made statistically significant market share inroads there, but, it appears their next segment is going to be fishing. They’ve added a boatload of fishing related features here, including logging in the app too. Obviously, fishing is a huge sport, but COROS has zero history or brand name recognition in it (or adjacent realms like boating). So whether or not COROS can find market share remains to be seen. Nonetheless, let’s talk about how it works.

First up, you’ll choose one of the specific fishing modes, which are:

Fly, Lure, Boat, Shore, Offshore, Inshore, Kayak, Boat Fly Fishing, Shore Fly Fishing

These are both part categorization, and part functionality. For example, in some modes it’ll track your casts, whereas others, it won’t. All modes allow customization though.

Once in a mode, such as Shore Fly Fishing, it’ll start tracking your GPS position, similar to other activity types. However, you can tap the lower right button to log various items, including a catch:

When you do so, you can also add a voice-note at the same time. There isn’t a way to log details about the catch (e.g. size/weight/etc…) from the watch, other than voice notes, so this is your best bet.

Afterwards, all of these will show up in the logbook, basically just like it does on the other sports. However, within a given fishing session, it’ll also show the number of catches you have, and then the session time between each catch.

In addition, it’ll show new environmental data pages (which you can customize). These include temp & precip, winds, tides & moon phases, and barometric pressure.

I had hoped to get out and test the fishing features this week, or rather, send my wife out to do it (fly fishing is her jam), but the scheduling hasn’t quite worked out over the past few days, so maybe later this week she’ll put some testing in on this feature.

Accuracy Testing:

So let’s start off on the GPS side of things first. And no better place to do that than the Alps (ok, maybe NYC, but we’ll get to that in a few seconds). Here I did a few treks up against Mont Blanc, and right alongside towering cliffs, dense forests, and more. A great place to validate accuracy of the dual-frequency GPS against other units.

First up, the wide view of the area we’re looking at:

Starting off on this section climbing up against a well-blocked sky (by cliffs to both sides), the units are nearly identical, and on-point:

Next, crossing back along a steep section, often blocked on one side by rocks/cliffs, there’s no issues here:

The next day, in much denser trees down lower, we see again, no issues. Obviously, the four units have slightly different takes here, but we’re talking about differences in the couple of meters range, nothing substantial.

Likewise, the altimeter data from all four units is nearly identical across the day – despite significantly shifting weather from the start of the hike (in rain) to the end of the hike (in sun).

Switching to something even more complicated, the streets of New York City.

What was super impressive was running under the viaduct, and having it perfectly track that section:

Now, all the units did blow through the sides of one building on this turn:

But the remainder was quite good. I thought it was notable that you can see the squiggles of waiting for the stoplight here, though, COROS smooths that out. The Venu X1 was properly in the road, versus the others in the building.

That said, the next day, it kinda flipped, and the others were properly in the road. None of these tracks were meaningfully different though, very solid job by all the units.

Next, we’ve got an openwater swim. Let’s just be clear – this is one of the best COROS swims I’ve seen to date. One could quibble about a few sections being barely off, but on the whole this is very solid.

Now, I could go through all my other workouts. That included 70KM road rides, wooded gravel/mountain bike rides, more trail runs, more city runs, and just other random runs. All of which are spot-on perfect GPS-wise. Boringly perfect.

So instead, let’s quickly look at some heart rate data. Starting off with a relatively boring run, this one is pretty good, though a small dropout of sorts early on:

This run, also sorta steady-state but slowly building, was also kinda good, but had some stumbles as well:

Next, we’ve got this interval run here. 4×800, then 4×400. As you can see, it was mostly good, but did stumble a few times at the start of intervals, compared to the chest strap. Another data source I’ll dive into in a later post backed up the chest source data.

And this 70KM ride was actually quite good across the board, with only some minor blips. I’ve added a 3-second smoothing, just to make the data easier too see here:

If I look at the data overall, I’d say that the COROS GPS accuracy on this unit is very strong across all of my workouts, with the altimeter data matching that. Solid job here.

On the heart rate side, it’s good, but not great. I continue to see little quirks here and there that I’m not typically seeing on industry-leading devices that have better HR sensors (regardless of price). Still, this does seem like the best implementation of the COROS HR algorithms to date, so kudos there as well.

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

Wrap-Up:

I’d argue that COROS is on a bit of a winning streak here. Last fall, they released the COROS Pace Pro, their first AMOLED watch, and one that delivered on countless features (including offline maps) at the $349 price point. Now, they’ve followed that up with what is effectively a MIP-based sibling to that watch, at the same price point, but with more features (and a touch bit more battery life). This, despite the current tariff environment, and everything else that goes along with it. I’d also argue this pretty much kills almost any product-spec reason to buy the COROS APEX 2 or APEX 2 Pro. But I think the writing was on the wall for those watches a long time ago.

In any event, COROS has steadily improved its GPS accuracy with each successive watch, and this is unquestionably the most accurate GPS watch they’ve ever made. Atop that, its battery handled long treks super well, and beat their specs even in the highest configuration of navigation-following, and full dual-frequency GPS. While I’m not entirely sold on how many people will actually use the new voice pins feature, their implementation is one of the best ones out there.

Of course, as always, there’s room for improvement. I’m glad to see the last-second change of heart on 7-day training load, but I’d still like to see a bit more focus on the navigation side of the house. Likewise, cleaning up some of the customization around the new Action Button and Voice Pins would be helpful. Plus of course, heart rate accuracy isn’t quite to the same level as their GPS accuracy.

Nonetheless, this is a fantastic watch. And it lets them compete well against not just Suunto and the Suunto Race S and related series, but also head-on versus the Garmin Instinct 3 product line. For many people, there’s probably little reason to spend an extra $50-$150 for the Garmin Instinct 3, especially if you want offline mapping. But of course, there are other reasons you might want the Instinct, like the LED flashlight or longer solar battery life. As always, to each their own.

With that – thanks for reading!