Watches

I love my Fenix 3, but I'm going to sell it as soon as the F5X is available.

After tons of research, I'm buying a Vivoactive HR this weekend. It will be my first sport watch since the Suunto. It seems to be the best for my needs, I hope that's the case. The map abilities on the Fenix series is intriguing, but not hundreds of dollars intriguing.

Look at the Polar M400. It's a combo HRM, activity tracker, and GPS with several sports profiles. You can download the info onto the polar flow website and it will give you detailed reports on a daily weekly or monthly basis. You can also link it to MFP. It does require the use of a chest strap if you want to measure your heart rate and accurately estimate your calories burned through exercise. It lists for $225 but is available at a discount (150) if you look on the web rather buy direct from Polar. The only drawback is that while they label it waterproof it is really only water resistant. I killed my first one while wearing it in the ocean while body surfing and got saltwater inside. I wear my new one in the shower but avoid immersing it fully in water

I love my Garmin Vivoactive. I don't have the HR version, I just use my chest strap and transmitter when I'm actively working out. Otherwise, I don't need to see my HR at all times. It does everything I need it to do, has GPS, bluetooth notificaitons from my phone, I can wear it in the pool, customizable watchface/apps, it syncs to MFP, it's decent to look at and a slim profile (the other reason I didn't feel the need for the HR version, it just looks so bulky to me), counts my steps, tracks my sleep, I like the Garmin Connect interface, and it syncs to Strava where I track all my running.

amandaeve wrote: »

After tons of research, I'm buying a Vivoactive HR this weekend. It will be my first sport watch since the Suunto. It seems to be the best for my needs, I hope that's the case. The map abilities on the Fenix series is intriguing, but not hundreds of dollars intriguing.

I've had the VA HR since it came out. I find it does everything that I want it to do. Really like it. Works great for lap swimming metrics, biking, running, step counting, etc.

The hard thing about asking "what features do you need?" Is that we often can't anticipate the need for features that don't exist yet. My best example is Shazam. When I got my first smartphone, I never in a million years would have imagined I could push a button and identify the name and artist of any song I hear anywhere. But it's turned out to be amazing and I use it all the time. Similarly, Garmin has "live tracking", a feature I wasn't aware of before getting one. My bf can automatically be emailed when I start my commute home so he can anticipate when I'll get there. It also sends him a GPS map (albeit delayed) which will hopefully ease his worry that I died when I'm on a long bike ride.
So far, the Vivoactive HR has been really fun. It's only been one full day and I've had some Bluetooth connectivity issues, but I anticipate ironing those out eventually and it being a great watch.

Probably a Forerunner 735. Maybe a Suunto Ambit3

The FR 735 is smaller and cheaper than the Fenix 3 or 5 - it's not quite as waterproof (50m vs. 100m), has a smaller battery (14hr vs. 50hr), and has a worse barometer (GPS based vs. barometric).
I discounted anything that does not have a multisport/transitions mode. If you aren't going to be racing tris/dus/aquabike/etc, I'd suggest something different.