Survey: Which connected fitness gear do you use:

garmin vivoactive3-no music
they seem pretty accurate. no weird data

Withings Pulse 3D, turned Nokia, turned back to Withings.

I'm on my 2nd Garmin Forerunner 35 and I love it. The price is more affordable than other watches I've looked at and it literally does everything I need it to. The battery only needs charging every 4 days or so and it's completely waterproof. After drowning 2 fitbits this is very important to me. I have it connected to MFP for exercise and calories consumed. The phone app is very nice and gives a lot of detail. It has a nice HR monitor that works most of the time. Occasionally, it just doesn't get going but I'm pretty consistent HR wise and so I'm not too worried about it. The only time I look really closely at the HR function is when I'm running uphill............LOL At my age I have to be somewhat careful that I don't bust my heart right out of my chest or something.

It's a great product in my opinion.

I have the Garmin Vivoactive 3. I've only used it indoors at the gym (I got it just as winter started) but so far I love it. It's surprisingly good for strength training; you can design a workout, transfer it to the watch and it will tell you what exercise to do next, count your reps (not super accurate) and time your rest periods. Calories burned on cardio machines seem to be estimated well. The hr monitor seems accurate too, except on some weight lifting exercises where I flex my wrist muscles a lot. I have my calorie target set to my RMR in MFP and the extra calories that Garmin posts to MFP seems to bring the total to the ballpark of my daily burn. It has a built in GPS which I look forward to trying when the weather gets warmer.

I've been using Sleep As Android as a separate app to track my sleep. It works way better than the other ones. Unfortunately, there's a bug in the Garmin version that the developers have been struggling with for the past while so I can't use my watch for that yet.

Garmin Vivofit2. Bought it because it was inexpensive. Kept it because it works! It tracks sleep and steps. Mine is about 3 years old and they have upgraded them with HR monitors etc. What I like about my model is it uses a watch battery which is good for 1+ year. No daily recharging. It syncs with MFP.

Garmin fenix 5X love it. Rugged. The jewelry that tries to be active gear like the Apple Watch wouldn't last long on my wrist.
Note the scratches in the metal case.
On the Apple, it is a glass dome that would have shattered already.

Atlas Wearables 2 and Atlas Shape ❤

Was Fitbit Zip for covering daily activity levels, worked great for desire.
Now Garmin Vivofit 3, same functions basically used (not much but daily).
And Garmin FR 310XT for workouts, had for years, got a backup ready to go actually on sale.

Not really useful for the OP's goals, but a Garmin 920XT.
Why? - I wanted customizable fields per activity, course upload with turn cues, programmable training intervals, decent battery life (at least 2 days of tracking mountaineering between charges). Bonus features: running dynamics (I can check on my cadence and whether I'm favoring a leg and/or bouncing too much)-although, I only wear the HR/dynamics monitor occasionally on runs to get an updated estimated of VO2max (or if I think I'm doing something off in my gait/my knee starts tweaking and I want to check the dynamics data).

FYI- the Fenix came out *after* I bought this (totally would have sprung for that for the basemap capability and extra activities and outdoor features).

Usefulness for gym: customized fields - can have the time of day in larger field, along with elapsed time, and lap time (to measure rest periods).

What I wish it had: basemap capability (for when I opt to go off route on the fly in an area I'm not as familiar with), ability to show map/next cue along with 1-2 data fields (like on the Edge line), ability to see the Elevation profile on the map screen as I'm following a pre-programmed course (like on the Edge). If I was rich, I would splurge and get both an Edge and a Fenix.

It does have step counting, and sleep monitoring (in the sense that it logs whether or not there is movement, and is viewable on graph - not sure what people want when they ask for a device that "monitors sleep")..slept in it once out of curiosity.