Favorite GPS watches for trail running?

Title says it all.... I know there are a lot of trail runners on here. What are your favorites and why? Looking to move on from my horribly inaccurate Fitbit. 

Garmin Instinct is cool. Not godawfully expensive but still kinda pricey. Lots of bells and whistles, good heart rate monitor, and GPS. The only con is that the strap isn't very durable.

I have a 945.  The maps are the killer feature for trails, IMO.  While you can download gpx files from anywhere and load them to even the most basic Garmin, it’s really nice to not have to mess around with that and just use what’s on the watch.  It’s a little geeky and awkward with just a few buttons and a tiny view but the maps are incredibly detailed and autoroutable.  Most of the planet is on that little watch. The Fenix is metal and much heavier, most I talk to don’t like the extra weight.

+1 for the instinct. Best garmin I've owned. If you're looking to ball on a budget the forerunner 235 sells relatively cheap used. 

Bill Schick wrote:

I have a 945.  The maps are the killer feature for trails, IMO.  While you can download gpx files from anywhere and load them to even the most basic Garmin, it’s really nice to not have to mess around with that and just use what’s on the watch.  It’s a little geeky and awkward with just a few buttons and a tiny view but the maps are incredibly detailed and autoroutable.  Most of the planet is on that little watch. The Fenix is metal and much heavier, most I talk to don’t like the extra weight.

+1 for the 945. 

It supports Spotify music offline (leave your phone at home), global street & trail maps, and great battery life.

COROS is really good. The battery life far surpasses any of the other brands. They can go a couple weeks without charging. I have an Apex that I like a lot. 

Whatever you get, I’d highly recommend getting Sapphire glass for any climber! Inevitably, if you scramble with it, or you forget to take it off before a climb, it’ll bump against rock and you’ll be glad to have the Sapphire glass. That stuff is incredibly strong. Recently, I was climbing a route and forgot to take it off. I realized once I got to a steep hand crack when I cringed as it scratched against the crack with every jam. There wasn’t any good stances to take it off and I didn’t want to blow the onsight so I kept going. After about 30 feet of deep hand jams, I feared the watch was gonna be all scratched up. Surprisingly, Not a single scratch or scuff- looked as good as new! 

+1 for the Garmin Forerunner series.  I've been using a Forerunner 235 for years and it has held up well.  Has everything you need and more.

+1 for COROS, I have a suunto spartan and my gf got a COROS just after, man I'm jealous of how compact and capable her watch is compared to mine.

Thanks for the input everyone! My husband gifted me a Garmin Forerunner 645 today (my birthday). Can’t wait to try it out!

I just ordered a Coros Apex to replace my old Suunto Ambit3

I use Polar Flow with the chest heart rate monitor.  I like it but I have nothing to compare it to.

It doesn't have a map display if that's what you're looking for.

Max Manson wrote:

COROS is really good. The battery life far surpasses any of the other brands. They can go a couple weeks without charging. I have an Apex that I like a lot. 

Whatever you get, I’d highly recommend getting Sapphire glass for any climber! Inevitably, if you scramble with it, or you forget to take it off before a climb, it’ll bump against rock and you’ll be glad to have the Sapphire glass. That stuff is incredibly strong. Recently, I was climbing a route and forgot to take it off. I realized once I got to a steep hand crack when I cringed as it scratched against the crack with every jam. There wasn’t any good stances to take it off and I didn’t want to blow the onsight so I kept going. After about 30 feet of deep hand jams, I feared the watch was gonna be all scratched up. Surprisingly, Not a single scratch or scuff- looked as good as new! 

Yep.  COROS.

I've used quite a few watches (Garmin Forerunner, Fenix 3, 5 & 6) Suunto (Ambit 3, Spartan and 9) and the COROS Vertix is the best i've ever used.

J

ErikaNW wrote:

Thanks for the input everyone! My husband gifted me a Garmin Forerunner 645 today (my birthday). Can’t wait to try it out!

Remember it didn't happen if it's not on strava ;)

I have a Coros Apex. Haven't used it climbing much but I am disappointed that the HRM is wildly inaccurate in real time. I've seen it registering 95 when I know my HR was north of 140. I was also disappointed that the elevation gain and mileage were absurdly off while climbing. I was looking for a watch that would accurately record my mileage and elevation gain from car to car on a long day. This does not appear to be that watch. I dunno, maybe if I stop the trace at the end of the approach, switch from "hiking" mode to a different mode and start a new trace while climbing, it would be more accurate? The GPS accuracy might also have been impacted by being in a canyon for the climbing. 

I have the Garmin forerunner 245 and love it..... Garmin makes the forerunners in all levels of fancy. The more expensive models not only allow you to bluetooth music from them, but they also can pair with multiple bluetooth devices, have a map for you, and auto-sync to your platform of choice (strava, etc).

Think about what you want to track. Elevation on trails is quite inaccurate unless you get a watch with a barometer in it. There is a jump in price for this but it beats re-buying a second watch like I did.

If heart rate matters to you, you will need a strap of some sort. The monitors in the watch itself are all inaccurate  

Beyond that the features are for me distractions since I carry my phone as well, but you may want more gizmos  

I also am happy with coros and would go that route again. But none of them are perfect. 

L Kap wrote:

I have a Coros Apex. Haven't used it climbing much but I am disappointed that the HRM is wildly inaccurate in real time. I've seen it registering 95 when I know my HR was north of 140. I was also disappointed that the elevation gain and mileage were absurdly off while climbing. I was looking for a watch that would accurately record my mileage and elevation gain from car to car on a long day. This does not appear to be that watch. I dunno, maybe if I stop the trace at the end of the approach, switch from "hiking" mode to a different mode and start a new trace while climbing, it would be more accurate? The GPS accuracy might also have been impacted by being in a canyon for the climbing. 

Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m not sure the inaccurate HR is COROS specific. I think the wrist based HR reading is a technology that is still lacking...no matter what brand of electronics it’s in.

Fwiw, Ive found the mileage and elevation profile for my Apex to be incredibly accurate. 

B Swizzle wrote:

Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m not sure the inaccurate HR is COROS specific. I think the wrist based HR reading is a technology that is still lacking...no matter what brand of electronics it’s in.

Fwiw, Ive found the mileage and elevation profile for my Apex to be incredibly accurate. 

Totally, wrist-based heart rate technology is not great and a HRM strap would be more accurate for heart rate. I was hoping the tech had improved since my 10-year-old Polar, but it looks like the answer is "not much".

I find the mileage and elevation gain on my Coros Apex to be pretty accurate while hiking. The wildly inaccurate readings happened when I turned on one "hiking" trace for the approach, then took off the watch and wore it (still running) in a pocket while climbing, and then put it back on the for the hike back to the car, all on the same trace. It was bizarrely off, saying that I had climbed for miles when I had done three 2-pitch climbs, maybe 600 vertical feet. My guess is that because it was in a pocket and I was in a canyon, it might have lost the signal and/or made some mileage assumptions based on my pace for the 2-mile approach and equally long return to car. 

Apple Watch.  Strava (and many similar), GPS, heart rate, Music, Altimeter, Walki-Talkie, mail, text, picture remote for selfie, ect.  It just works.  Honestly its so good why fight it?

For anyone else reading: I’ve been happy with my Garmin Instinct. 

Somehow I still find that my Garmin Forerunner 35 (~100$) is pretty much all I really needs. I like it for a few reasons:

• It has the wrist pulse. It's ~useless for an actual run (it seems all the bouncing tends to throw it off). However for regular life it works just fine. You may or not care about that, I got used to monitoring my resting HR and now I'm kinda hooked on those stats. Plus for mellow things like yoga it's still accurate enough most of the time.
• Cheap. Need I say more.
• Reasonably accurate. I run tracks sometimes, 800m, and it's accurate enough on the distance for that, so I suppose it cannot be too, too far off.
• Pretty small. I don't notice it's on my wrist most of the time, hence I don't mind wearing all day.
• Battery life is good enough for up to marathon (~4 hours for me). It would run a bit longer if you wanted, maybe up to ~6hrs on gps mode.

What it lacks/downsides:

• For actual training/running HR, you need a chest strap. From what I've read, this is still the case for most watches with wrist reader, if you really care about training HR.
• You cannot really preset trainings on it. I know fancier watches allow you to pre-program your own trianing on your watch (my gf's watch has that).
  • To be honest though, you can still use laps to differentiate between work/rest intervales in the data afterwards. It may just be a throw back from my competitive running days before gps watches (or even really gps, for that matter) was a thing. But actually having to plan & think about my training, as opposed to just following bips, feels like I'm more involved in things.

I run a lot (~3000 km a year), yet somehow I still can't quite justify to myself going for the nicer one at a few times the price, knowing it can do 100% of what I really need it to, and then for the details (like pre-programmed trainings) I have decent workarounds.

EDIT: just read you actually got it. Awesome! I find the Garmin UI is pretty good. I still use it on top of Strava, depending what I want to see.