Review on 🏃 Black Garmin Forerunner 35, 010-01689-00: User-Friendly GPS Running Watch by Larry Daniels

After carefully researching different brands and models of running watches and fitness trackers, I wore a Garmin Forerunner 35 and a Fitbit Charge 3 on the same wrist for several days and made an extensive comparison of my data ( e.g. spreadsheets with multiple tabs and charts). The metrics I looked at included daily resting heart rate, steps, calories, distance, and sleep. I also looked at activity data, which is distance, average heart rate, average pace, and calories from running and walking the dog. At the end of the day, the two fitness trackers provided fairly consistent data, with a variance of typically no more than 5%. , an acceptable margin, all things considered. However, after that experience, and despite the fact that I LOVE the Forerunner 35's built-in GPS (which the Charge 3 doesn't have), I chose Fitbit for three reasons: It sleeps every 5 seconds, compared to what what, apparently measured every minute (?) For Garmin. I found this out because I noticed that the Fitbit's green LEDs were always on, but they often went off (not blinking) on the Garmin and only came on intermittently. This is believed to be to extend the Forerunner's battery life. In practice, this meant that stats over time (e.g. average heart rate over a 45-minute run or resting heart rate over the day) were reasonably comparable between the two. But when I wanted to see my current heart rate at a glance, the Fitbit was mostly accurate at the sight of the device, while the Garmin was sometimes 30 bpm higher or lower. (I track my resting heart rate well enough to know that Fitbit was accurate in these cases and Garmin was off, especially since Garmin once told me it was 42 bpm and I know my heart rate was more than 50 seconds in Silence is.) As soon as the Forerunner noticed I was trying to look at the heart rate data, it started blinking its LEDs, and then the number either decreased or increased to pretty much match what Fitbit told me from the start indicated. It's a minor issue and won't affect the integrity of the heart rate data over the long term - after all, relative trends over time are what devices of this nature are best for - but I was annoyed to see the wrong numbers and having to wait Allow 10-15 seconds for the Forerunner to adjust. 2) Forerunner's sleep tracking wasn't as accurate as Fitbit's. I think it comes down to an issue with the sensor sensitivity and/or how the algorithms interpret the sensor data on the back. Basically, Forerunner kept telling me I was getting 20-45 minutes more sleep than Fitbit every night. I feel good knowing how I feel after N hours of sleep and I think Forerunner is overrated. Further evidence for this hypothesis is that I got up around 4am one night to go to the bathroom and check on my dog. . The next morning, those few minutes of "being awake" and the steps I took were reflected in my Fitbit data, but not in my Garmin data. In fact, Forerunner somehow missed me waking up, getting out of bed and walking down the hall to the bathroom, going to the living room and getting back to bed. I don't care about skipped steps, but how did the device not detect that I wasn't sleeping? Of course he should have noticed that based on my pulse and my movement. 3) Garmin's step count was overzealous. The Forerunner 35 kept telling me I was getting more steps per day than the Charge 3, sometimes just 200-300 steps and sometimes 800-900 steps. That's almost a 10 percent margin if you're aiming for 10,000 steps a day. I suspect part reason is that Fitbit allows you to customize settings within the app to wear down your dominant or non-dominant wrist, with the former causing the algorithms to make mistakes, excluding movements that might not be steps are. Garmin devices don't seem to have this setting, which means they're probably recalculating by interpreting some non-step movements as steps. too big for my taste. The screen was pretty much the full width of my wrist, and it was pretty thick too. I sometimes found it difficult to pull my sleeves on when my clothes were tight-fitting, like long-sleeved underwear I wore while running, just when I wanted to see the clock. Of course this is a matter of preference, but I found it a bit annoying. The Forerunner is a decent GPS running watch. Their built-in GPS is really great, the automatic laps feature is super handy, and the customizable workout data fields are fantastically brilliant. Weeks and date are shown on the always-on display. Battery life is competitive, especially for GPS watches. However, when it comes to combat, I personally prefer more reliable data. I couldn't keep using it and raised an eyebrow whenever the information the device was giving me didn't match what I knew about my own body.