Coros Vertix/ "Climbing" Watches

I've been listening to a bit too much Climbing Gold as of late and they've almost convinced me to buy a watch haha

In all seriousness, I'd like to take my health tracking and fitness up a level this off season and was wondering if the several hundred dollar price tag is that worth it.

Has anyone had any experience with the Vertix for climbing? Do you find it comfortable to climb with? Is it durable? Does the fitness tracking feature really help your training that much? Or is it just another gadget I'll end up leaving at home "on accident"?

I have a Coros Apex Pro, which is a predecessor of the Vertix. I won't comment on the climbing features, but is comfortable to wear. I only take it off if I'm expecting deep jams.

If you're being coached, having monitors to track your fitness could be helpful for them to properly coach you. If you don't, then YOU are the coach, and buying a watch like this will give you a new, unpaid job, with the time sink built in. If you don't have that time, don't buy a watch -- you'll never use the data it produces.

I just use the Indoor Climbing tracker on my Garmin. Tracks the height of climb along with heart rate. Plus it tracks all my other fitness/health metrics.

I gave up on my Coros because it couldn’t track steps, HR or swim laps accurately. I love my Garmin. 

I hated my coros vertix, it could not read my heart rate, the maps were unusable, their support sucked. The battery life was great and the selection wheel was nice but everything else was poor.  Mine broke after a year and I did not even bother with two year warranty.

I got a Garmin 945 and it is fantastic even if the model is several years old now.

Neither watch's O2 sensor work.

I'm always sad when I see a sponsored athlete wearing a coros, I guess it shows that the watch has no impact of training.

I had over 12,000 miles logged on my Garmin and switched to Coros last year and won’t go back. The tracking is infinitely better than Garmin and it has a ton of climbing specific features. The CEO Lewis is a big climber and awesome dude who’s always looking for more ways to make it more climbing oriented also. Every watch hr monitor is around 80% accurate and much less if you have tattoos or certain complexion or thick arm hair but coros also has the only arm band hr monitor that is 99.9% accurate. Full transparency I’m a Coros athlete but I wouldn’t have switched if I didn’t genuinely prefer it and would have nothing to lose by not chiming in here if I didn’t believe it. 

Long Ranger wrote:

If you're being coached, having monitors to track your fitness could be helpful for them to properly coach you. If you don't, then YOU are the coach, and buying a watch like this will give you a new, unpaid job, with the time sink built in. If you don't have that time, don't buy a watch -- you'll never use the data it produces.

I'd agree with Justin here - but if you like data, they can be really helpful.

Over the years, I've used a number of Watches: Garmin Forerunner, Garmin Fenix, Fenix 5, Fenix 5x Plus, Suunto Ambit 3,  Suunto Spartin, Suunto Sport, Coros Vertix and COROS Vertix 2.  

My favorite is the Vertix 2.

Tanner James wrote:

I had over 12,000 miles logged on my Garmin and switched to Coros last year and won’t go back. The tracking is infinitely better than Garmin and it has a ton of climbing specific features. The CEO Lewis is a big climber and awesome dude who’s always looking for more ways to make it more climbing oriented also. Every watch hr monitor is around 80% accurate and much less if you have tattoos or certain complexion or thick arm hair but coros also has the only arm band hr monitor that is 99.9% accurate. Full transparency I’m a Coros athlete but I wouldn’t have switched if I didn’t genuinely prefer it and would have nothing to lose by not chiming in here if I didn’t believe it. 

My coros vertix 1 could not reliably read my hr even after shaving my wrist..  Coros support said to use a polar chest strap which I did.  There was never any useful correlation between the chest strap and the watch's .  My coros often read 1.5X and 2X my actual heart rate.  It often lagged actual heartrate changes by minutes.  

The Garmin 945 has never had a different reading from the chest strap or medical finger hr sensors and I no longer have to shave my wrist.  It just works and is 99.9% accurate.  

The tracks I get from the Garmin are just as good or better as the coros tracks with the added benefit that the onboard maps work. On the coros the topo lines disappeared at some zoom levels making off trail navigation very difficult.

I contacted coros support over these issues.  They  told me to shave my wrist and when that failed to work they told me to get a hr strap.  I am very light skinned too.   when I complained about the maps  they  tied of me and pushed me to a Facebook page for further support.  I never got a solution to the mapping problem or anything else that did not work.

Perhaps the coros vertix 2 or later are better watches but the vertix 1 was an expensive piece of junk and I feel abused by the company. The Garmin forerunner 945 is from the same timeframe as the vertix 1 and is great.

80% HR accurate is not good enough for working out; you would never be in the target HR zone.  If your watch is 80% accurate it is a piece of junk.

The coros fitness/coaching features could only be unlocked by running.  I don't run so all those features were unavailable to me.  The equivalent features can be unlocked by running or cycling on the Garmin so I can access them.  On the Garmin the suggested workouts and recovery periods are a joke but kinda fun to play with. Neither company prominently inform the buyer of the running or cycling requirement to use these features.

This is my tracking experience with the fenix 7, alternatively my Vertix 2S just accurately tracked 4 big walls in a row. It obviously depends on your needs which it sounds like ours are much different. A watch HR monitor is around 80% accurate regardless of the brand that’s just the reality of a topside wrist sensor. It also sounds like you tried coros a decade ago when they made their first watch ever (they started as a company by making “smart” bike helmets) so I am sure the current model is significantly different. Personally I think the tracking is absolutely the most important feature because as soon as it goes stray your mileage and pace and location are all worthless and your watch turns into a clock. Again, I don’t have anything to gain or lose here I think it completely depends on your needs from the watch. 

climber pat wrote:

My coros vertix 1 could not reliably read my hr even after shaving my wrist..  Coros support said to use a polar chest strap which I did.  There was never any useful correlation between the chest strap and the watch's .  My coros often read 1.5X and 2X my actual heart rate.  It often lagged actual heartrate changes by minutes.  

The Garmin 945 has never had a different reading from the chest strap or medical finger hr sensors and I no longer have to shave my wrist.  It just works and is 99.9% accurate.  

The tracks I get from the Garmin are just as good or better as the coros tracks with the added benefit that the onboard maps work. On the coros the topo lines disappeared at some zoom levels making off trail navigation very difficult.

I contacted coros support over these issues.  They  told me to shave my wrist and when that failed to work they told me to get a hr strap.  I am very light skinned too.   when I complained about the maps  they  tied of me and pushed me to a Facebook page for further support.  I never got a solution to the mapping problem or anything else that did not work.

Perhaps the coros vertix 2 or later are better watches but the vertix 1 was an expensive piece of junk and I feel abused by the company. The Garmin forerunner 945 is from the same timeframe as the vertix 1 and is great.

80% HR accurate is not good enough for working out; you would never be in the target HR zone.  If your watch is 80% accurate it is a piece of junk.

The coros fitness/coaching features could only be unlocked by running.  I don't run so all those features were unavailable to me.  The equivalent features can be unlocked by running or cycling on the Garmin so I can access them.  On the Garmin the suggested workouts and recovery periods are a joke but kinda fun to play with. Neither company prominently inform the buyer of the running or cycling requirement to use these features.

Thanks for the warning!

I should mention, I've heard the coros vertix 2s now turns off the watch heart rate monitor when wearing a chest strap and they've changed the sensor in the watch to be better as well.

Really sucks that your experience was so poor and makes me think it's not worth the purchase though. 

I've also noticed only professional athletes wearing them (most likely due to the sponsorship). 

Might just wait until their programming improves. Also, for 700 bucks it should have spotify on the watch.

Anyone have any positive experiences with a Whoop?

Is it worth it to have both a watch and whoop at the same time or do you feel one is sufficient?

Cedric Salvador wrote:

Thanks for the warning!

I should mention, I've heard the coros vertix 2s now turns off the watch heart rate monitor when wearing a chest strap and they've changed the sensor in the watch to be better as well.

Really sucks that your experience was so poor and makes me think it's not worth the purchase though. 

I've also noticed only professional athletes wearing them (most likely due to the sponsorship). 

Might just wait until their programming improves. Also, for 700 bucks it should have spotify on the watch.

A chest strap is the way to go for any watch if you are trying to gather reliable data.  I've never seen a wrist monitor work consistently well with any brand (Garmin, Suunto, COROS).

Do any of these gadgets have the ability to capture additional weight added during exercise?  Pack weight on approaches, harness weight on routes?  I sometimes do the same approach with a 60 lb pack and sometimes a 15lb pack. I might climb a route hauling a 10lb bag, or maybe backpack the same gear plus a rope for descents. 5 lbs on harness or back makes a big difference in my climbing ability.  I don't see how you can quantify effort based on HR data when possibly the largest variable for alpine/big wall climbers is not tracked. 

Kevin Stricker wrote:

Do any of these gadgets have the ability to capture additional weight added during exercise?  Pack weight on approaches, harness weight on routes?  I sometimes do the same approach with a 60 lb pack and sometimes a 15lb pack. I might climb a route hauling a 10lb bag, or maybe backpack the same gear plus a rope for descents. 5 lbs on harness or back makes a big difference in my climbing ability.  I don't see how you can quantify effort based on HR data when possibly the largest variable for alpine/big wall climbers is not tracked. 

If you have a coach or are following a training plan where say: weight is added, that would be something you would be monitoring as a variable along with other variables: HR, pace -- whatever -- depending on your goals. 

 A not so great training program would be not having variables you can easily track (and thus easily see progress). What you may be doing instead is the performance from the training if you knew it or not. You're now on the big wall project you've been training for all winter, or whatever. 

But if all your workouts are just this mismatched amount of efforts that don't really have an easy way for you to track if you're making progress on any one metric, what you're doing is not training, what you're doing is just working out (or like I said, constantly performing albeit sub-optimally). 

That's the difference between training and just general exercise. If you don't know how to design an optimal training program (and stick with it!), that's why you get a coach. The reason you make the first and get the other is because it works. Think of everyone who actually got stronger when they followed a reasonable hangboard routine for a long period of time after plateauing for forever when they were, "just climbing". Many can self-coach themselves on a hangboard routine -- you'll find it's pretty low hanging fruit. Why don't people do it more? Because it's f'n boring. Training is boring. Another reason to get a coach: financial investment to keep you on the program.

A watch isn't going to magically take your messy exercise workouts and let you make sense of them. It may market this and give you feedback on your workouts, but the advice it gives you is generally garbage.

If you like to look at stats -- if it gives you a dopamine hit -- hey: watches are good for that.

Kevin Stricker wrote:

Do any of these gadgets have the ability to capture additional weight added during exercise?  Pack weight on approaches, harness weight on routes?  I sometimes do the same approach with a 60 lb pack and sometimes a 15lb pack. I might climb a route hauling a 10lb bag, or maybe backpack the same gear plus a rope for descents. 5 lbs on harness or back makes a big difference in my climbing ability.  I don't see how you can quantify effort based on HR data when possibly the largest variable for alpine/big wall climbers is not tracked. 

HR is a notoriously poor indicator of strength based exercise load. But approaches should be well understood. You're definitely going to be moving slower (i.e. taking longer) at a higher HR with a 60lb pack, which will get captured by any HRxTime based algorithm. But if you're trying to get the workload from climbing (or other strength-based activities), you're almost always going to be better off using something that's perceived exertion based x time.

Which is kind of an issue with all fitness trackers. The hardware is almost all the same, the difference is in the software and work algorithms. Because the work algorithms are strongly tuned for cycling (it's where this whole thing started) where power is directly measurable, every algorithm has problems and they get worse the further away from classic endurance sports you get.

Here's an example of what Garmin and Training Peaks both think of the same activity:

Specifically, Sept 21, 22. Training peaks thinks I went ALL OUT, two days of 350+TSS with huge fatigue. Garmin thinks I did a little bit of recovery work. It was a 50mi 2-day semi-casual backpacking trip. If I was believing either one of them, I'd be getting bad advice. If I had less experience I'd probably be going mad at the inconsistency. This is just backing up Long Ranger in that if you have someone who can use the data, awesome. If not... "leveling up" can be a long and frustrating process, especially if you're not a road cyclist or runner.

Thanks for the help everyone!

What I've concluded from this forum is that climbing watches have mixed reviews as to whether they're comfortable, useful, and also accurate. The only strong and positive opinions for certain watches, are also from the people paid to wear them. 

Even if there was a watch that was perfectly comfortable and accurate, there's not really any trackable data that would benefit my training more than what I'm already doing. I'm already tracking my workouts with an excel where I rate my sleep, perceived effort and describe the routes, workouts, and other things I did. Also, Long Ranger is right about the dopamine hit aspect and I realize that was part of the motivation to purchase one. Which is childish.

I'll try my best to continue improving my diet, sleep, and climbing intensity. I might even look into a coach, if anyone know a good one that's not booked up like Lattice, PM me please.

I'll also have to improve my perceptibility to being influenced by advertisements haha.