I’d really appreciate some thoughts and/suggestions…

During the summer this year I’m going to be doing some long walks culminating in the Yorkshire Three Peaks (24 miles, 12+ hours). I’d like to be monitoring my fitness levels during the event and when training, whilst [GPS] tracking the routes I walk.

I’d also like it to integrate with the Activity/Workout and Health apps on my iPhone.

Having trawled t’interweb I’m leaning towards getting a Garmin device of some sort (maybe Venu or Vivoactive) as they have a better battery life than the Apple Watches (which are brilliant but won’t last a 12 hour walk). Other contenders include FitBit and brands I’d not previously heard about.

So, anyone with experience of using such devices over long days?

Thanks…

There's a few of us using Garmin devices here (amongst other brands) : https://www.briskoda.net/forums/topic/487252-sports-gps-watches/

I've had a Vivoactive 4 and my wife still has her Vivoactive 3, my son still uses my Vivoactive 4 and all is working well with both the watches although as time progresses the battery life has depleted a little in them both.

Battery life is very subjective on sport watches (a bit like car manufacturers MPG figures), there are a lot of options/tweaks (ie..pulseox & bluetooth) that can be made to your metrics that will either use more or less battery so once you've made your decision its worth doing a few walks (2-3hrs) and checking battery usage against your metrics to see what can be tweaked to give you the data and battery life you need.

I'm now a couple of years into ownership of the Garmin Fenix 7 Solar and its simply great. ie..I charged my watch on wednesday morning, went for a ride on thursday with it running GPS/heartrate for about 5 hr's and almost 48hrs later the battery has only used 16%.

The only thing I can't comment on is how well or not Garmin integrates with Apple phones as I'm an android user, my sister however uses a Garmin Forerunner with her Apple phone and hasn't said she has any issues (she does lots of running/hiking)

53 minutes ago, matt_theforce said:

There's a few of us using Garmin devices here (amongst other brands) : https://www.briskoda.net/forums/topic/487252-sports-gps-watches/

I've had a Vivoactive 4 and my wife still has her Vivoactive 3, my son still uses my Vivoactive 4 and all is working well with both the watches although as time progresses the battery life has depleted a little in them both.

Battery life is very subjective on sport watches (a bit like car manufacturers MPG figures), there are a lot of options/tweaks (ie..pulseox & bluetooth) that can be made to your metrics that will either use more or less battery so once you've made your decision its worth doing a few walks (2-3hrs) and checking battery usage against your metrics to see what can be tweaked to give you the data and battery life you need.

I'm now a couple of years into ownership of the Garmin Fenix 7 Solar and its simply great. ie..I charged my watch on wednesday morning, went for a ride on thursday with it running GPS/heartrate for about 5 hr's and almost 48hrs later the battery has only used 16%.

The only thing I can't comment on is how well or not Garmin integrates with Apple phones as I'm an android user, my sister however uses a Garmin Forerunner with her Apple phone and hasn't said she has any issues (she does lots of running/hiking)

Thanks for the link, I didn’t think to look in the clubs section 🙄

Garmin seems a popular choice but I’ll also take a look at some of the other brands mentioned.