Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Multisport watches can't get much better than Garmin's $450 Forerunner 920XT

Navigation equipment specialist Garmin is getting more and more aggressive about its prospects in the fledgling smart wearable market, unveiling the Forerunner 920XT less than a month after Vivosmart’s intro.



Misfit charges $49.99 for its newest fitness and sleep monitor, the Fitbit Flex starts at sub-$100, the Jawbone Up is even cheaper, and Motorola’s beautiful, advanced and complex Moto 360 smartwatch is $250 and up.

Meanwhile, Garmin wants a whopping $450 for the just-announced Forerunner 920XT. Huh, good luck with that… is what we’d say were we to not pay attention to the obvious superiority of the Forerunner compared to every single device listed above in terms of sports tracking capabilities.

You thought Intel’s Basis Peak was impressive? Well, it was. Past tense. The 920XT is essentially*the pro counterpart of the Peak, going in-depth with running, swimming, biking and a number of other athletic activities.



Aside from covering all the basics, such as following the distance you run, swim or walk between point A and point B, the latest Forerunner family member can track advanced stuff like pace, stroke type and count underwater, as well as cadence, vertical oscillation and ground contact time when running.

Oh, and you can of course get various predictors and estimates, stats of all sorts and rest timers so as to not overdo it with your hardcore training. Meanwhile, a heart rate monitor is available as a paid add-on, at $50 extra, and as far as smartwatch features go, the Forerunner 920XT doesn’t really excel.



Still, it can sync to both Android devices and iPhones, and display notifications on your wrist for unread emails, texts and other alerts. Outside of that, don’t expect it to run Android Wear apps, facilitate online payments or pull off any Moto 360 or Apple Watch-specific tasks.

It’s*not that kind of smart wearable, and luckily for Garmin, its target audience knows it. If you fit the description of a health and sports nut, you may also want to know the battery lasts up to 4 months in “watch mode” and 24 hours in “training mode”, and water resistance is covered up to 5 ATM.

The Forerunner 920XT is already up for grabs, in two chromatic versions (black/blue and white/red), although “processing time” is currently listed at 3 to 5 weeks.

Source: Garmin



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