GPS makers race into the ticker monitoring trade

THE Garmin and TomTom brands are synonymous with car GPS systems. Now they’re rivals in the growing activity watch market.

THE Garmin and TomTom brands are synonymous with car navigation GPS systems. But now they’re hot competitors in the growing activity watch market.

Garmin’s Vivofit is a pedometer watch with clever additions, but minuses too. And at $159, it’s pricey for what it does.

The device is comfortable to wear but the not-so-spiffy plastic wristband is fiddly to put on. Fortunately you can get by without removing it, as it’s waterproof. You can leave it on in the shower.

The Vivofit boasts incredible battery life — a year on two replaceable CR1632 coin cells; but you’ll need a screwdriver to change batteries. We couldn’t test battery life, given this timeframe.

The other great feature is its display. At the press of a button, it shows daily steps, steps to your goal, distance travelled, calories burned, time — and heart rate, if you have an ANT-connected heart rate monitor.

But I couldn’t read the time in the dark (no backlighting) or see data in broad daylight.

The Vivofit data is uploaded to a computer via a supplied ANT USB device, or to a smartphone, for further analysis. Syncing worked without incident for me.

The Vivofit records steps, although in a trial I did, no two devices show the same result. On a short walk, the Garmin notched up 2520 steps, a Jawbone UP 2137 steps and the RunKeeper smartphone app 2020 steps.

The Vivofit calculates calories burned and graphs sleeping patterns. You press the device’s sole button a couple of times to enter and exit sleep mode. You can manually add your weight via Garmin Connect or its website portal. Garmin Connect in turn links to MyFitnessPal, which lets you input food intake and count calories.

Vivofit’s main motivating feature is that it automatically adjusts your daily step goals. Set a threshold of steps and the Vivofit increases it when you meet that goal. You can join a Garmin community and compete against others using the “livetrack” feature.

A red bar appears across the display if you have been inactive for an hour or more, but you’ll miss it if you don’t look at your watch. The Jawbone UP, in contrast, has a vibration module that zaps you to get you moving.

Garmin’s software lacks integration with popular activity apps such as cycling app Strava, My­RunKeeper, and Withings scales.

Sports watches seem to be an iteration or two away from the iphone moment, when the last gaps are filled with new ideas and the best of the rest is nicked to create a toy we can all flock around. TomTom’s Runner Cardio gets as close to the moment as any yet still feels like only the early adopters will allow it to drain $349 from a bank account.

The big selling point for the Runner Cardio is the heart-rate monitor. It pushes training based on heart rate as the key to achieving goals by understanding how your body responds and recovers at different levels of intensity. The watch helps monitor and maintain performance at sprints, endurance, warming up and cooling down or locking on to your fat-burning speed of choice.

From there we can work on recovery speed via interval training — high-intensity bursts interspersed with short rests. In some cases it’s not as simple as letting the watch punch out your numbers in the paddock. The interval training requires an app to study your splits. The Runner Cardio can also be geared for a bike and it counts your laps in the pool, resisting water to a depth of 50m.

Results can feed into many of the best-known fitness apps, sites and other platforms.

The appearance is less bulky than some sports watches but far from the sleekness of Samsung’s Gearfit. While the Runner Cardio isn’t exactly a watch to wear to dinner, the screen is easy to read, scratch-resistant and held in an indestructible 3.5cm-wide wristband with a three-prong buckle.