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Running With Apple Watch

Running With Apple Watch

May 5, 2015

Holger Krupp:

If you don’t like taking your Phone with you during workouts or you like to analyse the data in detail, the Apple Watch is not a suitable replacement for a dedicated sport tracker. The current implementation is ok if you are starting doing sports or just want to have a summary and never look back on your data again. The 3% difference in the result compared to the Suunto is not that big to matter, the slow update of the pace might be also ok if you are not doing any interval training and run with a similar speed all along.

If you don’t mind taking your phone with you, the combination of the Apple Watch with a third party app like Runtastic is a ok replacement for a dedicated (and expensive) tracker, but maybe not much better than using the iOS App without a watch.

This is not that surprising, honestly. Given that the Watch lacks GPS, inaccuracies are bound to happen. I have to imagine that this will be addressed in future versions of the Watch, or maybe Apple — or some enterprising third party — will introduce a special GPS-enabled band.

Still, all these quibbles seem to take Apple Watch to task for being slightly less accurate than expensive, dedicated workout computers, and that’s not very reasonable. A mere “3% difference” between Apple Watch’s output and a leading dedicated fitness tracker’s is pretty impressive if you ask me, especially considering that fitness monitoring is just one small facet of what all Apple Watch does.

With the Watch, I can buy this $400 device that ties into my iPhone, has thousands of apps, sports a gorgeous industrial design, and offers future-proofed mainstream developer support. Better, I don’t need to spend another $250-$500 for a Garmin or Polar or Suunto because my Apple Watch performs all those functions within a perfectly acceptable margin of error for my needs (and those of the huge majority of its target audience).

Apple Watch isn’t the best fitness tracker for everyone. But it is the best fitness tracker for almost everyone.