There’s a new fitness watch in town, and it’s a Garmin. On Wednesday, the company known best for its Fenix line of multisport accessories revealed its newest wearable creation: The Forerunner 935. And unlike Garmin’s Fenix watches, it places fitness first.
Three key features round out the Forerunner 935’s training software. The first, Training Status, analyzes your previous workout sessions and fitness level to determine how well you’re performing. The second, Training Load, takes a longer view, tabulating a week’s worth of workouts and adjusting the next week’s sessions accordingly. The third, Training Effect, susses out the aerobic efficacy of a single activity — if you’re falling short of the app’s benchmarks, it will let you know.
The Forerunner tracks a bevy of specific activities, too. When you’re cycling, it records dynamics like your “power zones,” the time you spend seated and standing, and more. In the water, it tracks your distance, stroke, pace, and personal records. And when your hiking, trail running, skiing, participating in paddle sports, or golfing, it will automatically recognize and track metrics.
Sensors out the wazoo enable all that tracking. The Forerunner 935 incorporates GPS/GLONASS location tracking, and a built-in altimeter provides real-time elevation information. A barometer and compass, meanwhile, predict weather changes by showing short-term trends in air pressure. And a VO2 Max sensor estimates blood oxygen content.
Like the Garmin’s Fenix watches, the Forerunner is compatible with Garmin’s Connect IQ store, which packs apps like virtual trainer TrainingPeaks. And it can connect to the Strava app to calculate a “Suffer Score” — a real-time measure of exertion based on your heart rate.
The Forerunner 935’s shipping with a new accessory: The Running Dynamics Pod, a clip-on pod that tracks activity. It clips onto a pant waistband or bag strap, recording cadence, ground contact time, stride length, and more on the Forerunner 935.
Additionally, the 935 is compatible with Garmin’s Varia cycling-awareness sensors, the Vector pedal-based power system, the Index smart scale, and the Elevate wrist-based heart rate.
“As a top-of-the-line GPS smartwatch, the Forerunner 935 not only provides users with insight into how their body is responding to fitness, but also offers data for every activity”
The Forerunner 935 comes with swappable watch straps and a battery that lasts up to 24 hours when GPS is active (or two weeks when it isn’t). It starts at $500, and a package bundle with additional heart rate trackers for triathletes and swimmers will go for $650 later this year.
The OnePlus Buds Clip are a new pair of open-ear earbuds built around a simple convenience. They join Sony’s LinkBuds Clip in the growing ear-cuff category, but either OnePlus bud can go on either ear.
Sensors recognize how the earbuds are being worn and route the audio channels accordingly. There’s no label to check before putting them on, and the feature also works when only one bud is used.
We buy fitness bands and activity trackers to keep tabs on our exercise, but it is easy to forget to start tracking or switch modes when moving between different activities. For Fitbit and Pixel Watch users, that could soon become a lot less annoying, as Google is rolling out a major upgrade to automatic activity tracking that can recognize more than 100 types of exercise, up from just 10 before.
Google first showed off the improved tracking earlier this month alongside the Fitbit Edge. It is now coming to Fitbit Air and the Pixel Watch 3, 4, and 5, and Google claims the added context behind the system makes workout detection nearly twice as accurate while cutting missed activities by more than half. Fitbit Edge will support it too.