Already wrote before that I have upgraded my external heart rate monitor to Polar one. And I would treat the as kind of moving away form Suunto towards another bigger player on running devices market. Previous monitor was from Scotsche. Independent company which producing almost just heart monitors. So, moving to Polar was a big deal already. And now that… Fenix 6 Pro from Garmin. This is a big change. For me and for my pocket 😂 Actually for my Wife’s pocket as this was very early Christmas present.
And how I ended up with new watch? I love my Suunto Ambit 3 PEAK. It is dated but it works. Battery last for ages. GPS locks quickly. Complain – no build in heart rate monitor. Again not a deal breaker cause Polar monitor is great. But what actually got me thinking about other watch was Suunto environment. Since last year you cannot view your activities in the browser on computer. And now Movescount (Suunto website for your watch) only allows you to change watch settings and add activity routes. Nothing else really. Not activities, no fitness details. This is gone completely. Only way to see all of this is to log into mobile application. So, even I loved new Suunto 9 PEAK it was not a contender for new device. I needed something with good environment and then something which has good battery, plus heart rate monitor. I knew that Garmin has good environment and apparently so has Polar. Investigated more and there was able to narrow down to 3 watches: Polar Vantage M2 and Garmin Fenix 6 Pro or Forerunner 945. Polar was cheaper but don’t know many runners who are using Polars. Garmins are more popular and account can be integrated to many other services more easily. So, two Garmin devices. Fenix 6 Pro (not S – smaller battery, not X – too big and Pro to get maps for hiking and other small perks) and Forerunner 945 (non LTE). Both Have very similar size, Fenix is heavier cause it has steel bazel whereas 945 is plastic. Still both much, much lighter than current Suunto. So, weight wasn’t a factor, more was material watch is build from. Functions are similar on both. Usual activities, hiking with maps, music (who need music on watch?), same size. Came down to price. 945 was cheaper. Not too much but still. One more thing before I will forget – Fenix is older. Forerunner 945 is quite new model. Decision made… 945. And then comes Back Friday and prices change. But really only on Fenix (there are rumours that Fenix 7 is on the way) and that changed the decision. Fenix it is…
Device arrived last Wednesday and today, day after, I had first run with it. First impressions – light, looks nice but setting it up is very complicated. Simple thing like change units to metric. You changing this on the app but device still shows everything in miles. Suunto was easier to set device up. Need to spend little bit more time before will get all the way i want. But for now it is great. Not using music, not using as smart watch. That should give me more battery. Will be able to check this after couple of days. Received it with about 60% battery. Now it is on 53% with one short run, couple of walks and plenty of setting watch time. Saturday interval training and then Sunday long run, will try not to charge and see how battery will held. One small issue for me is amount of different settings in the watch. Little too much 😂 But love idea that during running it can show me up to 6 different metrics on one screen. This is brilliant. But to set it up… You need Google. Environment is complex and have all the metrics needed. But to make your watch yours just takes time…
But I start to like this watch. Buttons are on the wrong was (Suunto has 2 on left side and 3 on right). But must say that cause size is smaller than Suunto and buttons are not too big I can say it fit well left handed person. Time to time with Suunto I could feel buttons pinching into my hand if watch was too tight on my wrist. Oki, that is sorted. Fit better. Another thing I have discovered today on the interval run. On Suunto when autolap was set to 1 km it was always showing time/pace every 1 km (1, 2, 3, 4…. kms) even when you were manually creating new loop. On Garmin autoloop set as well every 1 km but in here every new 1 km loop is counted from the last loop mark. And that works really well today when I had 1 km intervals. Autoloop was marker for me that rep has finished. Then new loop on recovery and again mark start of new loop for 1 km. There will be probably plenty of other things which I will like, some dislike but need time. But I know that I hate ‘watch faces’. There is too many to choose from…