I’m unfortunately a gear-junkie, so my instinctive answer would be a huge YES – but if I hold myself back and rationally analyze the situation, I don’t think I’m so sure. So here we go, pros and cons of getting a GPS watch or smartwatch for running, with a mini-review of my Amazfit Stratos 3.
Why You Should Measure Your Runs
If you just go out for an occasional jog, enjoy the flow and not care about your distance and speed, that’s fine – but if you are using it as a part of your regular training, keeping track of mileage and intensity will be key. You need to know how much you are running to safely build endurance without overworking yourself by running too much too fast. Been there, done that and it’s not pretty, so just take my advice and try to avoid nasty overuse injuries.
Good news is, that we all have our brilliantly addictive little companions, our smartphones in our pocket. Simply download Strava (or RunTastic, or whatever… But I’m a Strava fan) and you can measure all the basic info there: where you ran, how fast, how long etc. You can even get your social media dopamine hit from getting kudos (=likes) from your buddies if you share your activities publicly or compete with them in challenges. But the important part is to track your weekly mileage, avoid overtraining and increase training load sensibly.
So, What’s Up With GPS Watches?
Well, if you get most of your info about your running from your phone, what’s the point of a GPS watch? I would say there are 2 key areas: heart rate monitoring and battery life. Having heart rate data while training is important once you start training more seriously. For different training effects, you do activities in different heart rate ranges (called heart rate zones) and it is also helpful for pacing efforts.
Running the GPS function on your phone empties batteries like crazy. Running Strava on your phone and your 24-hour battery life will be cut down to 6. Most GPS watches can do a lot better than that and your phone will remain fully charged for emergencies and such.
But let’s be honest, most people are not serious enough about their running training to need heart rate data and very few people run more than 6 hours non-stop. I don’t run for 6 hours very frequently either, but I also like to measure long bike rides and have GPS data from day-long hikes, therefore I need the battery life.
So, do you need a GPS watch? Probably not until you get pretty serious about your running training, or you want to track super long activities in other sports.
Unexpected Benefits of a Smartwatch
I ended up choosing the Amazfit Stratos 3 sports watch (more on that later) and I’ve noticed a few things that have been pretty darn useful. Side note – I wear the watch all day, every day, not just for sports. First big benefit is the step counter. Seems dumb, and it’s in my phone too, but since I see it all the time, it motivates me to move more even on lazy days.
The second one involves a bit of a confession: I’m not always the best at picking up my phone, because I frequently leave it on silent to minimize distractions. In fact, my phone is on silent 99.9% of the time. If it’s really important, I’ll call back, otherwise people can just email me. But now if someone calls me, my watch will buzz, so I see important calls, but I don’t have all the social notifications and emails bothering me. Pretty handy! Another convenient little feature is the alarm - it will buzz on my arm and I can get up without a noisy phone alarm waking Aisling!
Amazfit Stratos 3 Review
I wanted a watch with crazy battery life – I plan on running ultras in the near future, so I needed something that was damn tough and that keeps going in full GPS + heart rate monitoring mode all day. That, however, usually comes at with a big price tag from established manufacturers like Garmin or Suunto. That’s where Amazfit comes in.
Amazfit is sold by and branded as Xiaomi as well and I am a big fan of Xiaomi products, so when I noticed there is a “Xiaomi” sports watch, I got excited. Affordable price, 35-hour full GPS + HR mode (70 hours in ultra-endurance mode!), Strava integration and a really slick design. These kinds of features come in the £400+ range from Suunto or Garmin – this one? Under £170. Of course, the Garmins and Suuntos offer a ton of advantages over this, but they simply didn’t have any good offerings in my price range.
I’ve been using the watch now for 5 months and it has been awesome! Battery life is stellar – with my intense sports schedule (lots of GPS + HR use), almost constant Bluetooth connection to the phone I have to charge it 1-2x per week. GPS, as far as I can tell seems accurate and getting the GPS signal when you start an activity is just as fast as a Garmin Fenix 6 – I got do that test in my last job. The gorilla glass seems indestructible, with hardly any marks after 5 months of pretty brutal use – I’m not known to be too gentle on my equipment.
Now to the bad: if you ever get one of these watches BUY A SPARE CHARGER! Seems dumb, but Xiaomi stores don’t sell the charger separately – you need to order it off Aliexpress, and that takes ages. Ask me how I know, I lost the charger and had to wait 3 weeks for a replacement to arrive – that would never happen with a major manufacturer like Garmin or Suunto. So, save yourself some hassle and order a spare charger off Alibaba when you get a watch, it’s like £3 and will save you time when you inevitably lose the original. Less annoying, but two smaller grievances: updates sometimes don’t download properly and just cause a crash and the way the buttons are designed, you may accidentally pause or clear an activity if you put the watch too close to your wrist. The latter only happened twice in 5 months, so it’s more my own clumsiness than serious design flaw.
A high-end Suunto or Garmin will be superior in pretty much every way to this watch, but if you are willing to live with some small annoyances, you can save yourself some serious money. For the price, this thing is awesome and I’m super happy with it!
Conclusion
Do you need a GPS watch? Probably not, unless you are getting serious about running. Downloading Strava on your phone will give you all the stats you need as you start training, but once you start taking things to the next level, you might want to give it some thought…