Favorite GPS watches for trail running?

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! 

Cool! I ordered the Coros Pace 2. Its reasonable price and the frequent firmware updates won me over. I do not need navigation at this point nor music. I like supporting a newer company. Competition is a good thing.

BUMP.
Fenix 6X Sapphire is awesome. Color topo maps, huge batt, sapphire glass, can load songs onto it to play over bluetooth.

Hiked Grand Canyon Rim2Rim a little while back on the regular trail run power settings (thought I was going to run, didn't end up doing so), didn't use music. Still had close to 50% batt left when we got to the other side 13h later.

In particular the color topo maps are awesome. Its a lot faster to just page over to that screen when you need to see if you should take the right or left fork on a trail rather than pulling out the cell and loading up whatever mapping app.

Regardless of watch, chest strap is necessary if you want reliable HR data. Also, buy the cheap charger off amazon, the cable that comes with it sucks.

If you use a Garmin watch, "Sendpoints" is a great watch app / website to quickly add GPS waypoints without having to enter them manually on the watch.

1. L Kap wrote:

The GPS accuracy might also have been impacted by being in a canyon for the climbing. 

Possibly. Common.

Compare it to your phone in some similar location b4 heading out. Some phones catch a greater variety of sats and have better chips. You can also get an app that details the accuracy of the location.

Both phones and watches have some pretty incredible tech but the GPS is highly uneven when you have poor sat geometry in places like canyons. And they can be prone to errors from environmental effects like sun flares, reflections, etc.

Height is harder to nail down than location (lat, long).

Bump... Coros Vertix 2 is designed to reduce the wall reflections encountered in climbing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkLVj1e9LoY&t=1370s.. Also has an interesting "multi-pitch climbing mode" shown in the second pic here: https://www.instagram.com/p/CS2Ben7nOxf/..  If this is really accurate (one YouTuber said it was meter-level accuracy), it would be cool to be able to time each pitch along with the change in elevation. I've only recorded approach/descent walks since the track during the climb has always been garbage using my phone.

Check the below link:

https://www.trailandkale.com/gear/best-running-watches-hiking-gps/