Get yourself a sports watch and avoid the Garmin crash (Image: Polar)
Garmin has just , where owners of popular Forerunner, Fenix and other Garmin watches reported seeing a blue triangle (the Garmin logo) on the screen of their device when they tried to start a GPS activity, leaving them locked out of devices.
What followed can only be described as a meltdown, with reporting that they’d experienced the same thing. This appears to be the second outage for Garmin devices this year, with a previous incident resulting in .
Garmin offers some great devices, often with some great deals available – like this that’s cut down to £199 in H Samuel’s sale. but if you don’t want to risk it, or fancy trying another brand, here are some of the best Garmin alternatives you can buy if you’re a fitness fan in need of a GPS watch.
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There are some great alternatives to Garmin from Polar, Suunto and more (Image: Polar)
Coros Pace 3
Coros has been building a reputation in the fitness space, offering great watches that will track your workouts, with the offering a similar level of features to the Garmin Forerunner 265. The Coros is much more affordable as it’s £200 cheaper.
The Coros Pace 3 comes with an LCD screen rather than AMOLED that some Garmins now offer, and you’ll get around 15 days of battery life, loads of tracking features and a great app so you can see your stats.
Polar Pacer Pro
Polar has been in the heart rate tracker game longer than many brands and still offers a full selection of great watches, loaded with great features – especially if you’re a serious runner or fitness fanatic.
The Polar Pacer Pro comes with full training features for a range of sports, tracks recovery and sleep with accurate GPS and heart rate stats. There are also a range of tests built into the watch, to keep yourself in the picture about your performance. The watch only lasts for 7 days, but it’s a great experience, especially for runners.
A fitness watch can help you stay in shape. (Image: Getty)
Suunto Race
Suunto has been offering navigation devices for a long time and its evolution into GPS watches made perfect sense. The Suunto Race is a great Garmin alternative, with a wonderful AMOLED display, 12 days of battery life and a full range of running metrics.
You’ll get to see the impact of your training, there’s an AI coach to help you get the right intensity and support for a full range of sports. It also has onboard mapping and will sync Strava Segments, so you know when to really push it.
Apple Watch Series 10
If you’d rather stick to smartwatches, then the is a great choice. It might not offer all the same tracking and metrics that other sports watches do – but it still does great heart and GPS tracking. It also tracks sleep, as well as offering all those smartwatch functions.
The Apple Watch only works with iPhone, but it does support music, Apple Pay and a whole lot more. It’s not as sporty as a Garmin, but in some areas, it’s a lot smarter. There’s a £50 discount on the Apple Watch Series 10 at Currys – and you could get up to £100 off with trade-in too.