Why You Should Consider a Coros Watch Instead of a Garmin (2026)

There’s also onboard music storage for MP3 files (who owns that anymore?). But there are no third-party apps. If contactless payments and streaming tunes are non-negotiable, stick with Garmin.

However, when it comes to sports tracking and training analysis, the Pace 4 packs the same tools you find on all Coros watches, right up to the top Vertix 2S ($699). It measures everything you need to get serious about your training and supports most sporting goals, whether you’re just getting into cycling, running Bank up to 5Kor preparing to run a marathon.

Coros offers tools such as structured workouts, useful information about whether your workouts are productive, peaking or maintaining, what your fatigue level is, and recommended recovery times. It also has more in-depth features like Virtual Pacer, marathon training plans and fitness metrics with VO2Max and Lactate Threshold estimates.

Photo: Kieran Alger

As well as workouts, you get all the usual suspects: activity, movement alerts, sleep count and stages, plus stress, heart rate variability and menstrual cycles – a good bit of the holistic health stuff. The heart rate readings weren’t 100 percent foolproof — but show me an optic that is. For the most part it did well against the front chest straps. It sometimes struggled during interval runs, when I was shifting gears quickly. But this is common for pulse sensors.

Unfortunately, it falls a little short on navigation. There is breadcrumb navigation, but you’ll have to go a bit up the Coros food chain to the Pace Pro ($299) if you want offline maps. But otherwise, in my testing, the Pace 4 handled everything from overgrown forests to tough urban trails as well as more expensive rivals like the Garmin Forerunner 970 and Apple Watch Ultra 3, even if Garmin’s mapping and navigation tools offer more depth.